Interviews – Page 82

LBDA’s 1999 album, Right Back, provided for most an adequate coda to the sad fortunes of a band who lost their enigmatic frontman, Bradley Nowell, to a heroin overdose shortly before soon-to-be legions of obsessive fans outside their SoCal stomping grounds would first hear of Sublime.

But music lovers who paid enough attention to become enamoured with LBDA in their own right have long lamented the group’s retreat into relative obscurity after their 2001 studio sophomore, Wonders of the World, dropped on the unfortunate date of September 11, 2001. The band imploded shortly thereafter due to a mix of personality clashes, substance issues, and the general downpressing of those strange, early-aught end-times vibes.

LBDA frontman Opie Ortiz – whose prior claims to fame were designing the ubiquitous Sublime sun logo as a tattoo for Nowell, and later being the toothless weirdo on the cover of Robbin’ The Hood – and his friends, ex-friends and bandmates would go on to form and disform myriad offspring projects, such as Hepcat collab group Dubcat, and Long Beach Shortbus, with the prospect of an LBDA reunion seeming increasingly less likely as decades passed.

The story between years gone by and today is too fraught to get into. The good news is simply that LBDA are back with a self-titled third outing that knocks, blending breezy roots reggae and subdued ska that doesn’t dwell in its own past. Names like Miguel Happoldt, Jack Manness, Marshall Goodman, and Tim Wu (familiar to many either from Sublime album credits or as LBDA personnel) are back, alongside vocalist/composer Ortiz.

And while dearly departed brothers Ikey and Aaron Owens may be better known for work with Jack White and Hepcat, respectively, they called LBDA family, and their deaths, as Ortiz explains, is where the story of Long Beach Dub Allstars, which dropped May 29, began.

PAN M 360: So I’ll start with a simple question and build from there. Why now, after all these years?

Opie Ortiz: I think it came as we were kinda doing baby recordings here and there. Me and Miguel would kinda work on tracks. Miguel would be consistently recording different people for different tracks. We were just kind of hammering away at little things. We wanted to actually just start putting out music, so me and Miguel and Marshall agreed to put out some songs.

We were working with Aaron and Ikey Owens. They were an integral part of Long Beach Dub Allstars and Dubcat, another recording venture that we did, and they passed very closely apart during that time, around the 25th anniversary of Skunk Records.

We had been working on tracks together and to be honest, I wanted to be sure that those tracks were used for the LBDA project, because that’s what we had all given our time to, you know?

That being said, with their passing, it was kind of like a push to finish the tracks and get them done. We had five tracks we had been working on, and there were others on the table that weren’t finished enough. We were also just kinda playing some live shows, that also pushed us. We played some festivals and that was the beginning of getting back out there.

Aaron Owens actually wrote the guitar lick [for memorial album track “Owens Brothers”] and had actually addressed it to me like, ‘Look, this one’s for you.’ I believe I sat on it for a while. And then I just started writing about them in the song and it just sort of happened.

PAN M 360: There’s a certain sense of what sounds like nostalgia on this record, combined with a greater feeling of coming into its own, compared to the earlier LBDA projects.

OO: If you listen to the song “Breakfast Toast”, that’s like, one night that happened, you know what I mean? Just taking in some of the stuff going on around, funny little things, and that’s my analogy. Some might say that time’s wasted but when you’re there in the moment, nothing is wasted. Everything’s great. So you’re toasting to really just doing nothing and partying in that moment. (laughs)

“All Gone Crazy” is like, how your chick just drives you crazy in some sense and you kinda have to… not necessarily put her in check, but like, as I say, ‘do you know what time it is?’ Funny little reminders that me and my chick have.

I was working on it for a while, and she started humming another song to it. I was like, ‘what are you doing? You’re gonna ruin me!’ She brought it to my attention that it reminded her of another song from this band called Dry & Heavy. So I ended up putting an interpolation of that in “Gone Crazy,” and it just sort of happened. I wasn’t forcing it but it just took form like that. So she kinda helps me. She helped me with “Owens Brothers”. My daughter helped me, too, ‘you should use this word instead of that word,’ that type of thing. Little nuances.

PAN M 360: Are your kids aware of the legacy of your band? Or to that end, do they care?

OO: Yeah, they’re very aware. My front room is an homage to music and I have the Sublime plaques up there. And I have a lot of pictures of Brad, and everybody from all the scenes. So they’re pretty aware of who’s who and why we’re doing what we’re doing. They were laughing like, ‘how come you haven’t put out any music in so long, dad?’ Well, I was kinda raising you guys, you know?

PAN M 360: I’m an old-school Sublime devotee and a huge fan of the first two LBDA records, and it was exciting at that time to get to see and hear your band spin things off and keep going. That said, the new record really stands on its own to capture where LBDA seemed to be headed, back then. How did creative decisions made now lead to bridging that gap?

OO: I think it’s a mix of the fact that we had some songs written and ready to go, and others that we were gonna approach the old Dub Allstars way where, say, I had the chorus, and we asked Moises from Tomorrow’s Bad Seeds, Jack and Tim, and they just kinda pieced together “Easy” in one night. That’s the old LBDA format, where there’s four or five dudes in a room and we just brainstorm, and go, and write.

That’s how [Wonders of the World track] “Lonely End” was born, and a lot of those Dub Allstars songs, that was our formula. This time, we did our homework before, had the songs all ready to go, and then decided who (could help). It was a pretty quick process.

PAN M 360: The first record came out at the end of ’99, when everyone was all paranoid. And the second one came out on 9/11. And now this album is coming out in the middle of a global pandemic and a social revolution. Any reflections on that?

OO: I try not to pay attention. Do you think that Picasso or Salvador Dali cared, when they were debuting their art, if anything was going on in the outside world? (laughs) Probably, to them, they were like, ‘this is the happening. This is the awareness.’

Of course, I mean, you have to be aware, to some extent. And on September 11th, yeah, we did get pretty stifled by that whole deal. This one was gonna drop April 17 and [the band’s management] decided to hold off because I think we knew that shit was gonna get weird. I think this music is more needed now. It’s kind of helping people out, in a sense. [In 2001] we were all so distraught by the news that I don’t even think we were listening to music. But if you think back, Wonders has some of our best work on there.

It’s funny to think back, but now when I look at this one, I feel more accomplished, and the album tells a good story, I feel. Even if it’s just a little reggae and a little ska, it feels right.

Photo: Yann Orhan

Diana Krall, Stacey Kent, Iggy Pop, Jeff Goldblum, and Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top are among the artists who agreed to join Thomas Dutronc in revisiting some of the greats of French chanson, numbers by Piaf, Trenet, and Claude François – in their international version, in English. All of this is enhanced by a cool, jazzy, and most sophisticated musical showcase, produced by the excellent Jay Newland (Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder, Juliette Gréco). And this, thanks indirectly to a certain… Donald Trump!

“We were looking for a project that would allow us to travel a little bit with our music in non-French-speaking countries. And we thought of this idea around the time of Trump’s French-bashing. We said to ourselves that France is nonetheless a gentle way of life, a sense of humour, beautiful songs, wine and cheese… At first, I wasn’t necessarily enthusiastic about the idea of covering songs that exist in sublime, historical versions,” Dutronc explains, insisting that if it was a question of just doing covers, even with very good musicians, it would have been banal. So it had to be only the finest flowers from the Hexagonal garden. The only way, according to him, to reach a state of grace.

Triptych?

When it came to choosing the songs for the conceptual album Frenchy, did he toy with the idea of drawing on the discographies of his father (Jacques Dutronc) or mother (Françoise Hardy), neither of which lack for classics, or did modesty prevent him from doing so?

“I would have liked to, but they don’t have any songs that have gone round the world. It’s the same for Gainsbourg, he doesn’t have any internationally famous songs. We could do a second volume, by the way, because we weren’t able to record everything. We haven’t even touched on songs by Aznavour, Trenet or Michel Legrand… We could even make a third album with songs that would have deserved to be known around the world, like ‘Syracuse’, composed by Henri Salvador, Gainsbourg’s ‘La Javanaise’, and Brassens – none of them are well known abroad – and yes, of course, some of my parents’ songs,” says Dutronc fils in a very sympathetic tone from Paris, where he’s on a promotional tour before returning to Corsica to meet up with the legendary creator of “Cactus” and “Playboys”.

Diana and the Iguana

The discussion then forks to great covers of songs throughout history and, although it’s a toss-up in terms of tastes, there is agreement that some Johnny Cash covers surpass their original versions. “My father called him le Taureau [the Bull], I don’t know why…”

Speaking of animals, let’s talk about the iguana – Iggy Pop. “He was approached through his European tour agency, to tell him about the project. He loves France and our musical culture, the 1950s and 1960s, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Gréco. He has often covered French songs, such as ‘Les Feuilles mortes’. So he agreed, and told us, ‘Diana Krall wants to do something with me. If we all did that together, do you think Thomas would accept?’ Ahahahaha! We were too happy. I thought it was great. He is both very professional and very simple in his superstar role. Awesome!” So says Thomas, who adds that he improvised a song with Iggy that could never be released due to its surfeit of dirty words!

Possible tour

It’s easy to imagine that Dutronc’s pedigree also facilitated matters with Mr. Pop. “Yes, he’d met my father a long time ago, he’s familiar with Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin songs, and my parents’ songs. It’s nice, there are people like that who are big fans of my father, like Johnny Depp. And Leonardo DiCaprio, on the other hand, is a big fan of Django Reinhard. We’d organised a gypsy jazz concert at Carnegie Hall, and he came…” Dutronc is still astonished, regretting not being able to sing on stage with the legendary Iggy Pop, as planned, because of the coronavirus.

As for an eventual tour, it will take place with the same gang of French musicians, to bottle lightning a second time, and yes, Quebec and the United States are in the battle plan.

In conclusion, asked if his father had finally passed along his famous piège à fille (girl trap), as he had told a French TV journalist when Thomas was just born? “Ahahahahaha! We’ll leave that to the imagination. But yes, it works, joujou extra…”

Photo: Ariana Molly

PAN M 360: What were the main steps forward on this new album?

Raphaelle Standell-Preston: We definitely wanted to attempt to capture the live energy that we have on stage. A lot of our previous records were built bit by bit, like narrowing in on things, almost squeezing the life out of things to get it to be perfect. This time, a lot of the captures were done with all the instruments, drums, vocals, bass, or synths at the same time, so we could get that palpable, visceral energy that is so pronounced in our live performances. And yeah we accomplished that.

PAN M 360: Things took a major turn when you brought in Chris Walla [guitarist, producer and former member of Death Cab for Cutie] to produce the record.

RSP: Chris became a dear friend of ours and was involved in our last record. When we started working with him, we thought the songs were done. And… he said we needed to throw a lot more stuff on them and develop them. He said our songs were very live, but not done. He really pushed us to see how lush and wide the songs could be, while still capturing the live energy.

PAN M 360: Isn’t the quest for more succinct works a sign of maturity?

RSP: Yes absolutely. We’re adults ! Fully formed! Yup, we both just turned 30 in the wintertime. I personally had a thirties midlife crisis meltdown. But we’re easing into it! Getting more precise. It’s something we strove for, to have more potency in our songwriting. I think previously, we felt we’d been a bit long-winded with things. With these songs, we wanted to create a nice, compact package of balanced emotion and balanced energy, and really tried to flex and challenge ourselves as songwriters. I think that’s part of why the record took so long.

PAN M 360: How has this change of course taken place over time?

Taylor Smith: There was an intense need for our music to be unlike something we’d heard before, with a strong emphasis on creating sort of an otherworldly feel. We were mostly using guitars back then, the idea was that if you could no longer recognize it as a guitar then it was a success! We were trying to wrangle songs out of experimental texture or sonic exploration. With this record, we wanted to write really good songs that existed no matter whether you dressed them up on a myriad of different instruments – piano, guitars, synths, drum machines, etc. Instead of songs being placed on top of experimentation, experimentation being placed as decoration on top of songs. Or, if someone wanted to cover it, that could actually be possible, because there is a song in there. Our relationship with that is always in flux as we grow as musicians, even now I see us having finished this record and learning back into more experimental pastures, but time will tell where this leads us to.

PAN M 360: As for the lyrics, is there a thematic direction?

RSP: There was a very conscious effort to have songs conclude hopefully, and for there to be hope in the lyrics. I’ve always been comfortable exploring human struggle and my own struggles, but with this record I wanted to put the listener hanging over the cliff, and wanted them to be put on solid ground, and in turn, put myself on solid ground. Writing the lyrics was very healing for me, very therapeutic, I wanted to have feelings for other people, being very vulnerable and very honest. I wanted to find healing and hopefulness through these songs. One of the inspirations for me was the poet Mary Oliver. I really got into her observations on relating human nature to real nature. So evocative for me.

Yeah, there’s actually moments on the record said from my perspective, but there are observations on friends’ relationships going through turmoil. Even though I’m talking about my own experience, it felt really important to me to widen my interpretation and presentation. I wanted to be very thoughtful with how I conveyed certain feelings or issues, such that the audience could truly relate to the lyrics, and see themselves in them.

PAN M 360: To make such a shift towards songwriting concision possible, what exploration have you conducted?
TS: The records that we reach for and listen to went through a phase in which we were reaching for really classic music – Joni Mitchell, CSNY, etc. – and seeing what our world looks like through that lens. But it doesn’t matter, at the end of the day. All the matters is how the music makes you feel. Sound is sound, whether you’re making it with traditional instruments or not.

RSP: Specifically for me as a vocalist, I was very drawn to big, beautiful voices, big singing, Freddie Mercury, Whitney Houston, Adele, Alanis Morrisette, big, belting vocals. I was also obsessively listening to the record Blond from Frank Ocean. I really wanted to learn to do this, and it felt so fine, physically, to do this.

PAN M 360: Was the album completed during the pandemic?

RSP: The album’s been done since October 31, 2018, so it’s been a while. Since then, we made a lot of music videos, and put a lot of work into the visual presentation of the album, and have been working very, very hard on a live set – and then COVID happened and everything got cancelled. Which has been a difficult blow, but we’re making the most of it, trying to continue experimenting and growing as artists. That’s exactly what we’re starting to do right now, working on new material, experimenting. I think we have five or six songs we’re working on right now. Blue Hawaii, my other band? I’m finishing a Blue Hawaii record right now. I was finishing the latest mixes last night, having so much fun, it’s going to be a really uplifting record.

PAN M 360: Do you feel that the long process has brought you to a successful conclusion?

TS: I think this record marks a big change for us as people in growing up, so to speak, and part of that represents a culmination of influences across our entire musical career. For me, it’s a notable summit of inspiration and development since we first started. This record was just as inspired by Animal Collective as the first one, even if you can’t hear it, it’s part of it. This is record number four for us, there are so many layers of inspiration over the years that culminate in the moment, after making 10 years of music.

This record very much feels like home – where all the skills and development and inspiration across our career have been pointing to. It’s not us trying to step out and do something entirely brand new, it’s rather a narrowing in, a focusing in, a chiseling of the group’s identity. Braids is an intimately personal project, and it’s very honest – what we are putting out as our music is a very close reflection as who we are as people, and it’s very close to our own identities, we place a lot of personal sense of self into the music. That’s been the case since we first started; it’s been a consistent through-line throughout the entire project.

Photos: 張實伶

From its Paleolithic and Gaoshan inhabitants, through successive waves of immigration and colonization, Taiwan has many layers of history, some of it rather dark. The small but vitally located island country is also incredibly complex in terms of its political status – and sacred beliefs.

A visit to the famous Longshan Temple, in the capital city Taipei, reveals something like a shopping-mall food court for divine blessings, to be sought from an assortment of Buddhist, Taoist, and folk deities.

It’s not surprising then that Taiwan has such rich folklore – especially the vengeful ghosts! – and so much room for outré perspectives.

There’s plenty of all that to be savoured on Mong Tong’s Mystery, released on Guruguru Brain, the label for Asian underground music run by Japan’s Kikagaku Moyo. Mong Tong is, more precisely, the brothers Hom Yu and Jiun Chi (who answer here mostly as a pair, due to linguistic challenges, or maybe some frightful fraternal psychic link… who knows?).

“The voice in ‘Chakra’ was sampled from a famous reporter talking about aliens and chakras in Hinduism,” Mong Tong say of the album’s first single. “So basically, this is a song for those who love alien TV shows and conspiracy theories!”

There are further dusty, uncanny wonders lurking in the grooves of Mystery, such as the elements that make up the second single, “Jou-tau”.

“In the beginning, we sampled the voiceover from the Monkey King movie,” Mong Tong explain, referring to the 1999 Taiwanese production Heavenly Legend, one of countless film, TV, and comic-book tales of the superstar simian demigod Sun Wukong. “The song is basically Chi’s organ riffs, plus guitar improvisation, plus Yu’s funky bassline, all put together.”

Then there’s “A Nambra”, which suggests that’s somewhere on one of the many levels of Diyu, or Chinese hell, there’s a decent dancefloor.

“‘A Nambra’ is our disco-funk hit! Funky ’70s basslines are our favourite, so we were making our version of disco-funk. We brought the synth leads into the funky song, to see what would happen.”

“In the K. Court”, meanwhile, subtly suggests a certain ’70s prog-rock reference, the mention of which delights Mong Tong.

“Glad someone finally found the King Crimson reference! In our live shows, we always combine this song with ‘21st Century Schizoid Man’, and surprise the audience – totally worth it.”

*A selection of book covers from Hom Yu’s Instagram page*

Back to the crazy conspiracy-culture stuff, and Mong Tong’s celebration of it specifically as they existed before the Internet, when lurid paperbacks, dubious magazines, and printed propaganda by mail were the primary platform. With all that, it has to be said, came an incredible visual aesthetic, entirely unmatched by the graphic mediocrity of today’s dabblers in the delusional. Taiwan, for its part, had no shortage of such fringe beliefs in their heyday.

“In ’80 and ’90s Taiwan, there were magazines that talked about ghosts, Taoism, and UFOs, and had supernatural photos. After decades, these themes are no longer popular. Most of these books are lost, and can only be found at a few second-hand bookstores. We’ve spent much time searching them out, and chose some of our favourite book covers, then put them on Hom’s Instagram.”

The cover of Mystery is a salute to that scene, and itself a sort of puzzle, a secret coded message to decipher. Pressed to provide any hint or clues, the brothers offer only this cryptic morsel. “There’s a conspiracy theory called Q33 NY, that’s all we can tell!”

Last fall, just a few months prior to the powerhouse Mystery, Mong Tong released an EP and book called Music From Taiwan Mystery – a sort of tourist’s guidebook to Taiwan’s rich reservoir of occult weirdness. There was even an amazing video for it (see above), bursting with black magic rituals and supernatural kung fu. Obviously, Mong Tong’s music is more than well suited to visual interpretation (see below, now, for the video for “717”).

“We’d love to experiment on any kind of artform! Basically, we do everything by ourselves, so we’re able to put Taiwanese elements we love into our music, videos, cover artwork, etc. Now we’re planning to release a second Taiwan Mystery, an EP for plants, and maybe in the future, we’ll make a video game – everything is possible.”

Mong Tong is just one of several arcane activities the brothers are involved in. They’re more than happy to talk about those, as well as the larger Taiwanese underground scene they’re so involved in.

“Dope Purple is a noise and psychedelic rock band,” says Jiun of one of his other projects, “mainly influenced by Acid Mothers Temple and Les Rallizes Dénudés. We’ve released a record on Senko Issha, a label for noise music and free improvisation lovers in Taiwan. Mong Tong has collaborated with labels like Future Proof and Karma Detonation Tapes. Both of them have great artists and release good-quality cassettes.”

“I play guitar and synthesizer in Prairie WWWW, an amazing experimental psych-rock band,” says Hom. “You should definitely check our latest album, Pán (yes, the same name as PAN M 360!). There are artists under the Lonely God label, including Scattered Purgatory, FORESTS, and Prairie WWWW, all making experimental rock and electronic music you will definitely love!”

He’s made his name with his numerous albums, EPs, remixes and production credits, and through his popular Karnival, Bounce le gros, Sud-West and more recently Qualité de luxe parties. For 20 years, Ghislain Poirier has been bringing us with him in his carry-on luggage. His music is in the image of Montreal, cosmopolitan, colourful, multicultural and very often festive. With Soft Power, his brand new, 11th album, Poirier wants to bring people together even more. Here, it’s all about balance and delicacy without straying off the dancefloor. PAN M 360 connected with this most groovy of travel agents.

PAN M 360: With your first album Il n’y a pas de Sud released in 2001, you’ve been making music for 20 years now, and yet it feels like it was yesterday…

Poirier: (laughs) You noticed that, huh? I wonder if a lot of people know that. Even I find it hard to believe. It went by fast. When I started making music, just finishing a piece was a small miracle because I never thought I would be able to make it to the end. It was a dream, music was for me a kind of creative Eden that I couldn’t reach, but when I started to compose a song, I realized that I was able to create music. And with every album or song I make, I’m still amazed that I’m able to do that. Now I look at the record I’m releasing today and, 20 years later, I’m still as fascinated by what I’m able to achieve.

PAN M 360: Which brings us to your 11th album, Soft Power, an astonishing record, much closer to songwriting than dancefloor heat. What was the plan?

Poirier: I clearly wanted to do something more paused, more relaxed. I wanted to refocus my music more towards a “song” format, to establish the right balance of something you can listen to quietly at home, but that will make you dance if you hear it louder at a party. So I wanted to explore and master this zone between the dancefloor and the song. I wanted to position myself between the two, but above all I wanted this album to be easy to listen to; I wanted to give my music more delicacy, so for me it was a real work of restraint, both in the mix of sounds and in the structure of the songs. I still believe in the format of an album, I still believe that an artist can take us on a journey of 40, 50, 60 minutes.

PAN M 360: Soft Power is a rather diversified album, on which we find several collaborators and guests. Did it take you a long time to get there?

Poirier: It took me between two and two and a half years. Because it’s not the kind of record you can make by isolating yourself for two weeks in a chalet. It took me several months to get through it, over the course of my encounters, and also over the course of my own creative and artistic development. Some songs took a long time to germinate and mature. The more I progressed, the more it became clear. Because sometimes you set yourself a goal, but you don’t have enough focus, so it takes a while before you can get back into focus. So, yes, it took a lot of hard work, but in the end it’s exactly the album I wanted to hear and I’m really happy with it!

PAN M 360: Flavia Coelho, Flavia Nascimento, Boogat, Daby Touré, Mélissa Laveaux, Coralie Hérard, Red Fox, Samito… There are almost as many collaborators as there are songs on this record. How did you choose them?

Poirier: Well, there are collaborators for the vocals, but there are also musicians involved. There’s a lot of people involved. It’s something that comes about through crossing paths, and according to the songs. Sometimes it’s completely by chance. But I like to have a good base in Montreal in terms of the people I work with, even though there are a few foreign artists on there. There’s no science in terms of the people I work with. Sometimes they’re people I want to work with and the timing is right, sometimes it’s not, or what I offer them doesn’t inspire them. So it’s often a rather instinctive process, I would say.

“Soft Power“ is a record that bridges genres and eras, it is also a record that bridges communities. It’s as if I was showing the face of Quebec today, how I see it, how I live it.

PAN M 360: The record goes in all sorts of directions. You’ve always been attracted to the larger family of soca and dancehall, but now you’re touching on Latinx, Brazilian, Mozambican, West African and Mexican music. Tell us a little bit about this tour of the world.

Poirier: I wanted to do not only a stylistic tour of the world, but also a tour of eras. I wanted the album to be timeless. There are tracks on it that could have been made 10, 15 or 20 years ago, just as they could have been made today and even 20 years from now! I wanted to find a kind of balance between periods and styles so that it all fits into a kind of great musical conversation. But at the same time, I didn’t want to ignore what’s happening today. My aim – and the future will tell me whether I’ve screwed up or not – is for these songs to be able to speak as much to people who know the music and the references I use as to people who don’t have the same references, maybe even no references at all, but let it all speak to them anyway. And also that it speaks to several generations. That’s what led me, for example, to collaborate with guitarists, to put more melodies on my rhythmic bases.

PAN M 360: Would you say it’s your most organic record?

Poirier: Yes, definitely. There’s a mix of acoustics and electronics, but I tried to do it in a subtle way, not to make it too obvious, to make it catch the eye. I wanted it to be a natural mix. I wanted a kind of warmth. And I wanted the voices to be in the foreground.

PAN M 360: And if we had to catalogue this record, where would we put it?

Poirier: I don’t see this record as being part of the global bass movement, although it’s likely to speak to people who are. I see it more in the songwriting category, a very Montreal record, with artists from all sorts of backgrounds, but fundamentally Quebecois. It’s a very global record in its openness, though. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do since my debut in 2001, which is to be part of a kind of global musical conversation. That’s always been very important to me. So with this record, I think it’s even more convincing. You could almost say it’s pop without borders. It’s a crossover of a lot of styles. I’ve played all over Africa, Haiti, Cuba, Ethiopia, Dakar, Cape Verde, Mayotte, Reunion Island, Europe… I want this album to speak to a lot of people, but I haven’t compromised too much to get there.

PAN M 360: How do you intend to promote the album in these uncertain times?

Poirier: We’re doing what we can. It’s a difficult time, but the music is still circulating and it was out of the question for me and the label to delay the release of the album; it’s been ready since February. I’m not going to play in the immediate future and if I have to wait until 2021, I’ll wait. Because I don’t intend to do a live thing on the web either. I didn’t make a record linked to a specific and current fashion, it’s more timeless. I’m not worried about that.

PAN M 360: After 20 years in the music business, what still turns you on?

Poirier: I’ve always loved the beauty of art for the sake of art, that the beauty of art can be enough. I like to think that there are statements in the records I’ve made. In 2003, I did Beats As Politics, I did Conflits, I had the Boundary project too… I think Soft Power is in the same vein. It’s a kind of quiet force of art and music that can hopefully change morals, or at least positively influence them. Because you could say it’s really a “living together” record. Just as it is a record that bridges genres and eras, it is also a record that bridges communities. It’s as if I was showing the face of Quebec today, how I see it, how I live it. This record is a musical and social statement.

With Savages, Berthomier had built an artistic identity. But now…

“I needed to see how to enrich it, not deconstruct it.” she says. “I wanted to be a character you can draw in one go. In Savages, I made the choice not to say things about myself, no one was stopping me, mind you. I was the one who decided to restrict myself, to be clear, easily identifiable. I think that was very helpful in Savages; the band had a soul, we all agreed with that identity, we were all going in the same direction.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYcVIPQiOpU

The image on the cover of the album To Love Is To Live does not lie: Jehnny Beth wanted to reveal herself without deferring to others.

“For the album cover,” she says, adding to her explanation, “we decided to close the pores on the skin of the image. It’s an image without regrets that represented a certain strength, which is one of the recurring themes on this album, and also on my songs in general. I’m thinking of the album Adore Life. So I do my own thing, even if I do it at a degree of removal. It’s a bit cliché to say it, but this album’s a way of revealing sides of me that I didn’t express in Savages. I figured this was my chance to do it. I had help thinking that way and making this album, from Romy Madley Croft, for example.”

Before beginning this creative process, Berthomier didn’t know what to do with her contradictory thoughts, the essential source of the lyrics in To Love Is To Live.

“I was full of guilt and shame about thoughts that were passing through my mind,” she says. “I’m lucky enough to be able to make songs out of it, to get into a dialogue with myself. I’m trying to figure it out a little. So I started by exploring the thoughts that kept me awake at night. I was unable to make this album without talking about what was bothering me so much at home. The human being is imperfect, plagued by contradictory thoughts, we tend to not put this complexity forward. And I think that’s what art is for!”

Berthomier uses the example of her song “I’m the man”.

“The lyrics speak of the need to take responsibility for the evil that exists in the world, not just on the other side of the planet, but also in my neighbour’s home or even in my own. The man I’m describing in this song is also me. This responsibility is reflected in the context of our current failures to address racism. We have to look each other in the face, see each other without complaisance, and art is there to do that. So I don’t want to show just my good side. I refuse to draw a white line between good on one side and evil on the other, and put myself on the right side by saying that I have pure thoughts. No! We mustn’t have only a pure voice to allow ourselves to speak. That’s why I worked with Joe Talbot from IDLES, he has the courage to say I’ve been a jealous man and can be again, and I’m fighting with this violence inside me. And I say the same thing, except I’m a woman.”

It can be deduced that “self-doubt, apathy, and isolation” are key vectors in To Love Is To Live.

“But it’s not just that,” says Berthomier. “I juxtapose these darker moods with other states that break them up. It’s like we’ve been working towards a sense of happiness, going through all this. For example, the lyrics to ‘French Countryside’ were written in an airplane during an episode of harsh turbulence. I thought we were going to crash, I had started to take stock – I should have loved better, done better, been more generous, been better, etc. And then the plane landed,” she laughs, “I survived! The next few days, I really enjoyed life, the flowers and the birds… before I forgot. It’s important not to forget.”

In terms of gender, the image that the artist projects is clearly in line with queer pride and the diversification of sexual identities. She corroborates without going into detail.

“I am a woman making art in 2020 and reflecting what women are becoming in 2020. I’m not doing this out of political envy, but I’m doing it anyway, I’m a woman. I never quite understood the tomboy label. People don’t necessarily realize… ”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8WMhLzBU94&feature=emb_logo

Flood, Atticus Ross, and Johnny Hostile co-produced To Love Is To Live, a visibly ambitious project given the reputation of the professionals recruited.

“Johnny Hostile,” says Berthomier, “has been much more than just my accompanist for 15 years. He’s notably the producer of several songs on this album. I like to describe him as my muse, because he inspires me so much. He’s always suggesting new ideas, he gives me a lot of freedom and gives me strength. It’s mutual, by the way. As for Flood, he came along to make things better, among other things to make me record without headphones, with the speakers open. ‘Tell me what you feel, don’t tell me what you think,’ he suggested! For his part, Atticus Ross added layers and layers of sound to the original music.”

Clearly, To Love Is To Live is not a pure rock album. Jehnny Beth didn’t draw from the ’80s and ’90s like she to obvious success with Savages. She has taken a different path and added arrows to her quiver, enriching a course that is atypical to say the least.

Originally from Poitiers, Berthomier had lived in London for over a decade where she co-founded the bands Pop Noires and Savages. She re-established herself in Paris for three years and pursued a multipolar approach. She was nominated for a César in the category of Most Promising Actress for the film An Impossible Love. She appears in Alexandre Astier’s Kaamelott, due out in a few months. She recently launched a new music series for Arte, entitled Echoes with Jehnny Beth. She also released a collection of erotic short stories, Crimes Against Love Memories (CALM). On Apple Music, she has been hosting the web radio show Start Making Sense for a few years now.

“Hosting Start Making Sense on Apple Music,” she says, “forced me to listen to a lot of music and led me to be eclectic. Which I’ve never done before. It really changed my life and connected me to what’s happening now. Take Bowie’s Blackstar, Beyoncé’s 2013 album, or Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly – these recordings mix genres and break the structural codes of the songs. Such albums reflect the fragmentation of today’s world, they command a discontinuous and destructured state of mind.”

This amply justifies the choice of his new poetic and musical orientations, one is tempted to add.

What about Savages? “I don’t have any plans right now. I don’t know what I’m going to want to do after the tours that will resume in a few months, at least I hope they do. My stage band is currently half French and half English, we did a concert in London shortly before the pandemic.

“What I’m most proud of right now? Just doing To Love Is To Live.”

Photos: Gaëlle Beri

PAN M 360: I discovered your work first through your recent Sans Mouvement, and worked backwards to 2017’s En Mouvement – reverse chronological order. In that spirit, I’ll start by asking you about the future before we walk back through the past. Does Sans Mouvement conclude the arc of the Mouvement works, or will there be further Mouvements in the future?

Angèle David-Guillou: My feeling, at the moment, is that Sans Mouvement will be the last of the Mouvement series. When I put out Mouvements Organiques, in 2018, as a response to En Mouvement, reworking some of the pieces of the original album for the pipe organ, I did have in mind a possible Mouvements Organiques Volume II. I got a lot of material from the recording sessions I did at the Union Chapel in London back in August 2017, and I do have more material, which arguably could make up a follow-up. Let’s see.

En Mouvement, to me, was very much about coming out of oneself and reaching out, I like the idea that if it is indeed a trilogy, it ends on being forced to retreat into oneself. Also, I have a new full-length album which I have just completed, and should come out early next year at the latest, as well as an accompanying EP that is more conceptual, so there’s quite a lot on my plate already!

PAN M 360: Coming back to the present – my own interpretation of Sans Mouvement is that it’s a tiny, split-second moment of conflicting emotions, stretched out in slow-motion over close to an hour. That distortion of time seems very familiar in the current stay-at-home situation that most of the world is living with. How would you explain the piece?

ADG: Your interpretation is wonderful and I like that you mention conflicting emotions, certainly this is an aspect central to the piece. To me, Sans Mouvement is a wave, a sine wave, an ocean wave, a wave of sounds, of resonances, of contradictory emotions and motions. It’s also very extroverted and introverted at the same time. It is a sort of submerging that comes both from within and from without, both aspects either alternating or, yes indeed, being in direct conflict with each other. It felt incredibly apropos at this moment in time, when we have been feeling both very much cut out from the world, but also incredibly connected to it.

PAN M 360: The Mouvements works were begun years ago already, the first record was in 2017, long before the current pandemic – and yet their themes of time and movement are acutely pertinent right now. This brings in a consideration of timing, of random chance and the somehow preordained. What are your thoughts on that?

ADG: Mr. Jung would say that there is no such thing as coincidence. I wasn’t planning on releasing a new chapter to the Mouvement series now, but yes, the circumstances were just around us and when I suggested it to my record label, Village Green, they were just thrilled, which I am incredibly grateful for. It’s odd though because I haven’t been enjoying this lockdown at all. I have been feeling totally trapped, submitting to someone else’s rules in a way – I always long for stillness and solitude, but when they are chosen, not imposed.

Yet, indeed, there are definitely echoes of the current situation in my music and what I am interested in in compositional terms in particular. Certainly, central to my writing, perhaps less obviously in my less ambient output, but as fundamental to me, are the questions of change, repetition and stillness, which I try to explore in the stretching of sounds and textures, but also in experiments with time signatures, motifs, canons, etc.

PAN M 360: 2018’s Mouvements Organiques saw you migrate your compositions from ensemble performance to solo pipe organ – an instrument that has the strength and range to match a group of several musicians at once. At the same time, your compositions require a great deal of subtlety, and I’d guess that means tempering the force with which an organ can resound. What led you to that decision?

ADG: I was given the chance to perform on the organ of the Union Chapel in London, for a Daylight Music event organised by the London promoter Ben Eshmade, it must have been in 2015. He asked me whether I would like to play interludes on the organ, and I said yes, of course. One morning I was shown how to turn the instrument on and off and how to use the stops, and the next day I was playing it in front of an audience. It was a total discovery and I was amazed at how the instrument responded so well to some of my compositions.

It’s not just the instrument itself, it’s the room too. You are playing a room as well as keyboards. Perhaps this is why it is called an organ, it is as if you are inside a breathing organ that you are operating yourself. I loved that idea totally. It is very much a sensory experience, I love the physicality of playing the instrument. Especially if you play very repetitive pieces, it’s like being at the helm of a strange spaceship going through turbulence.

Perhaps you’ve played acoustic guitar before, resting your head on the instrument’s body? You can really feel the vibrations and resonances inside the guitar, not just the notes. It’s a similar feeling playing a pipe organ, but you are inside the actual sound. That’s really what drawn me to write Mouvements Organiques and later Sans Mouvement. I didn’t think of it so much as transposing pre-existing music, but as a physical experience.

PAN M 360: Now back to the first album, En Mouvement, out of which the later two records evolved. En Mouvement is more conventional, like an introductory portfolio. The presence of the ‘usual suspects’ is obvious – Philip Glass, of course, I hear Michael Nyman, and Steve Reich’s phase-shifting as well. But there are other sources of inspiration that are quite intriguing, like Gurdjieff and Cocteau, Sufi literature and Sumerian art. What insights can you share about that?

ADG: To me, these are all linked. They share an interest in illusion, in playfulness, while creating art that is profoundly serious. They also draw from the deeply personal, which is how they allow the reader, the viewer or the listener to look at the world and at oneself from an unexpected angle. Sufi parabolas are the most wonderful pieces of writing, they always seem so light at first sight, but they are so astute and shine a mirror directly at one’s soul – amazing.

Similarly, take Le Testament d’Orphée, possibly my favourite Cocteau film. There is an incredible joyfulness to it, humour even, yet it is extremely profound and never trivial, and the personal is expanded out into something unexpectedly universal. It’s not just in the writing or the story, it’s in the image of course.

Cocteau films are a huge influence on how I approach production, typically. Illusion in sound, not knowing what one hears, or being shown what we should be hearing but hearing something else, I am fascinated by all these processes, which in my mind are as much at the heart of Sufi writings as they are of Philip Glass compositions. I would need a full interview on Gurdjieff, but his writings have all these qualities and his music for the piano, deceptively simple, is just incredibly powerful and emotional.

PAN M 360: My final question: if you could write a letter today and mail it to yourself, five years ago, what advice, encouragement, or frantic warnings would you include?

ADG: I would tell myself to get on with it, and to stock up on French wine.

PAN M 360: The way I understand it, the philosophy and practice of TENGGER is to visit new and unfamiliar places, not to document them, but rather to access your creativity through the heightened awareness and extended experience of time caused by immersion in a new environment. Is this correct, and if so, how does it inform your new album Nomad?

itta: TENGGER’s mission, or role, is to convey the various moments and places that have been consciously and unconsciously accumulated, through music. I think it makes me feel like I’m visiting “this space” because the moment it’s expressed, there’s a space shared by everyone who shares the moment. As for the new album, our identity means that in the presence of the two other countries of the 21st century, we would like to welcome the “we” who walk somewhere where there is nomadic freedom, where the life-bearing people of nature, can meet – perhaps not anywhere.

PAN M 360: TENGGER is frequently referred to as a duo, that of itta and Marqido. You are a trio, however, with your son RAII present and actively involved in your art.

itta: His name means “a person who is loved by all things and who knows how to give love to all things in the world”. He turned eight years old in May this year. We think of ourselves, as TENGGER, as being with nature and the environment that we see every moment, not limited to a duo or a trio. RAAI’s birth is what made us a family named TENGGER, and the change in our music also began at that point. RAAI accompanies us during our field recording and live tours, wherever possible and whenever possible.

This child also has the perception that he is a member of TENGGER himself. Yesterday there was a full moon, and RAAI, who had suggested we make a wish while looking at the moon together in the evening, told me his wish. “I wish I could live as part of TENGGER with my mom and dad for a long time.”

His gestures and movements have a great influence on our music, especially when it’s performed live on the stage. We respond to the atmosphere and the space in the audience, but I think it’s becoming more organic after RAAI’s appearance.

PAN M 360: The music you create is meditative, inviting a more peaceful, reflective, and appreciative state of mind. The practice of meditation can be used to expel troubling and unhealthy feelings, but it can also serve to heighten one’s awareness – of both oneself and one’s surroundings. I feel there’s a sort of paradox there.

itta: I think meditation is important. You may get some enlightenment from meditation, and it begins by emptying your mind. Yes, as you said, it’s kind of a paradox. I think “emptying your consciousness” will help us when we are standing in front of an unknown forked road, to find the wind blowing from the narrow entrance to the next destination.

PAN M 360: You’ve explained elsewhere that you apply to your art the principle of shanshui. The term, which is generally applied to classical Chinese poetry and painting, but not music as far as I can tell, translates to “landscape”, or more precisely “mountain-water”. Can you explain this idea a bit more, as you perceive it?

itta: When it comes to shanshui, sansu in Korean, I think it’s important to show respect for nature, not to interpret the mountains, rivers, and seas that we see. It’s like feeling the majestic energy of yeongsan, which means sacred mountains, where temples or shrines are located, known to have a spiritual energy. We are making music to keep reminding ourselves that we are part of the natural. That attitude is the relationship between shanshui and TENGGER’s music.

PAN M 360: I appreciate remarks you’ve made to the effect that when we speak of our environment, the line between the natural – untouched by human beings – and the artificial – the spaces we create and alter to accommodate our lives – is not firm or absolute. You’ve also mentioned, in one interview, that you are “not trying to express paradise”.

itta: Nature is beautiful but dangerous, and it cannot be on its own. You can co-exist only when you rely on many other existing beings and are supported by them. If we face the fact that we are living with the help of all the beings around us today, it becomes pretty clear that the boundaries should be lifted. Yet we still have to experience boundaries in many ways. Boundaries between nations, racial discrimination, and the distinction between mankind and nature. I don’t think these things have ever existed, but they should be lifted from our consciousness as well.

PAN M 360: Your themes, ideas, and therapeutic music are of particular pertinence right now, in this time of collective isolation, distancing, and anxiety over our relationship with nature. What are your reflections on this? And of course, what art are you working on now?

itta: Boundaries only create anxiety, so we are trying to live today well and gratefully, and to continue to learn from nature. I think it’s the same as exploring humans. Compassion. I live preparing for what’s next with the mindset of identifying myself as the same as the object itself. Please look forward to the next work from TENGGER.

PAN M 360 thanks Jinsun Taylor Kim for translating this correspondence.

Reached in the hip 17th arrondissement of Paris, Ben Shemie didn’t return to Montreal when the pandemic broke out and the borders closed.

“I left Montreal in January,” he says “Then, in Paris, I started an artist residency, I’m there since, I decided to stay after the residence was cancelled. My girlfriend is here, so we are staying cozy in her apartment and waiting out the storm.”

Before crossing the ocean, the musician had finished recording his second solo album in as many years. Like A Skeleton, released in the winter of 2019, A Single Point of Light is another poetic journey into the land of synthetic minimalism.

“I recorded this material in Montreal at the beginning of the winter, so it’s been a few months that it’s been done. I mastered it here, and generally organized the whole thing from Paris, but the actual creation and performance of the record was done at home in Montreal. I’ve been working on other stuff here.”

What, exactly?

“I’m doing a collaboration with Chloé, the producer-DJ that’s here. I’m also involved in organizing a radio installation project, and in production with Suuns for an EP that will come out this fall – and we have a new full length coming out next year. Most of this stuff was supposed to happen now, but it’s all been pushed off.”

Since that’s the case, focus returns to the solo project. With A Single Point of Light, Shemie believes that he has strengthened his song structures, that he’s become more invested in this aspect.

“The songwriting is more involved. the actual ‘songs’ are more developed. I’ve spent more time on lyric writing, to be honest, than on the actual composition. I didn’t change my setup at all because I still want it to be mostly improvised and raw. However, it’s less lo-fi, and sonically deeper. I also tried new techniques on the vocals, the melodies. it’s more ambitious.. but not a lot more. I still tried to keep it simple, like the last record. It’s all done in one take – live off the floor, no overdubs. In a sense, the development in this record is actually the development of my live set.”

How was the composition considered, then?

“I think I put more time into writing the lyrics. Okay, but at the same time, the musical aspect is very important, you also have only instrumental parts. Of course, all the instrumental parts are made by feedback. So it’s entirely improvised in the moment. It’s a feel thing. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how to control the elements of the feedback, and getting interesting sounds. But it’s not actual composition, it’s improvisation.”

It can be assumed that modular synthesizers are involved, and…

“No, I don’t use modular synths. I still use the same shitty MicroKorg and the same cheap synths I have for years. I still haven’t gotten tired of what they are capable of, and still discover sounds that I like. It’s very basic, but if you know basic synthesis, you can unlock all sorts of sounds from a programmable synth.”

And that’s why we’re noticing new sounds in Shemie’s palette.

“Yeah. I’m always searching and trying new stuff. I suppose I will get into modular synths, when everyone else is over them. Maybe they will be cheaper then…”

And when this repertoire is played in front of an audience, do we see new improvisations to support the same lyrics?

“Not really. The instrumental parts will be very different, you know. It could go in any direction. The parts where I’m singing, for the most part, are just tunes. I can change the sounds around forever, but the arrangements will stay more or less the same. I’m trying not to mess around with the song parts too much live because those are the hooks of my live show. Also, I like the tunes to remain the same. If I get bored with them, I’ll write more… or use different tunes in my set.”

This way of improvising the music of the songs can come close to a jazz form – always the same structure, but with new variations in real time in front of an audience. What does Ben Shemie think?

“Kind of, but I wouldn’t ever compare my set to a jazz set. It’s not the same lexicon. I have a jazz background, so I get where it’s coming from, but when I improvise I’m guiding the feedback, I’m not ‘playing’ anything. Therefore, it’s kind of divine. Some nights it really doesn’t work, sometimes it’s great. But I don’t practice it, in the traditional and jazz sense of the word.”

Before keeping what’s in the final recording of A Single Point of Light, was there a lot of improvisation?

“I ran the set a lot and I toured the music. I had the transitions tight – which is kind of the hardest part, moving from one song or improvisation to another. but in the studio it all happened in the moment. I spent a lot of time setting up the right circumstances, so the feedback would react nicely, but I didn’t work anything out ahead of time. So, I suppose it is kind of jazzy in that way.”

Will the instrumentation chosen for these two solo albums be kept for the future?

“I don’t know yet. I’ll keep doing what feels natural. Part of my decisions are also about what makes sense for touring. I’m not going to record on instruments that I don’t own or that are really expensive or heavy… because I would never take those instruments on the road. So parts of my decisions are being true to the live show.”

A Single Point of Light is more than a title, Shemie argues, pointing to its unifying intent.

“My records are centered around a theme. This record is about light and our perception of light. figuratively and literally. Some tunes are about light and in its literal sense, other tunes are about how we see the same things, but perceive them differently based on a whole array of different things. Our different points of view, our different world views especially make us see the same things differently. It’s like magic… there it is.”

Shemie goes further still.

“A lot of the songs use light as metaphor, or as an image to work with. ‘Magic Eye’ is all about seeing light bent by heat, like in the desert, from a different angle it appears differently. The single ‘Change’ is about changing one physical position to see how someone else sees the same thing – which is really meant to illustrate how you need to change your worldview to see how someone else sees things. Songs like ‘Single Point of Light’ are more celestial and use light to break apart into a spectrum, revealing things you can’t see normally.”

The album strikes a beautiful balance between thought and the emotion that accompanies that thought. This poetic project is linked to a philosophical vision of perception, which Shemie corroborates.

“I didn’t set out for it to be that way, but once you get an idea, you develop it more and more and things come out, different angles that you didn’t think of before. There are also a couple love songs in there too. Because that’s also how I feel. It’s a very personal project.”

As is always the case in his work, Shemie remains minimalist on the lyrical side.

“Simple ideas are always the most effective. My best ideas have always been transparent ideas.”

Beyond the disruption caused by the pandemic, Shemie’s solo projects extend the pause of Suuns, his flagship for expression. Pure coincidence?

“No. We changed things up with Suuns. We needed a break too. It’s been a very intense and backbreaking 10-year stretch. We’ve had some rest, so we are ready to try new ideas and it feels better now. I’m always writing new music and I’ve felt for a while I wanted to try a project in a singular voice. So it’s much more simplified than Suuns. I really didn’t want to try and recreate the sound, or even try to imitate the production of Suuns too much. I wanted a project that could totally crash and that I was totally in control of. Which is where the feedback comes in.”

After the solo experiments, Shemie announces, Suuns will be back in action.

“We have an EP coming in the fall. it was supposed to be a full-length but because of COVID, we couldn’t tour. So we’ll wait until next year for the album. In the meantime, we have an EP of some very vibe-heavy tunes. We have a record… just waiting… it will probably change since it’s weird to sit on music. So likely new stuff will come up and we’ll add to it.”

Another point of light on the horizon…

PAN M 360: Have you wanted to release an album in Spanish for a long time?

Oscar Souto: I couldn’t tell you how long we’ve been working on it, but it’s been a long process. The idea came from our manager Carlos Ponte, who realized while doing research that Latin America is a whole world to discover. We’ve already been to Mexico to open for Blind Guardian. Since we sing in Spanish and speak Spanish, we feel that we have certain qualities required to try and “conquer” the South American market, and even Spain. At the same time, I have to admit that I didn’t like the idea of taking a song already recorded in French or English and translating it. I thought it was weird because it reminded me of what Julio Iglesias and some Quebec pop groups used to do at a certain time! I didn’t like it, but sometimes you have to tell yourself that you’re not the only one with good ideas. You have to listen to others and make room for their ideas, and that’s what I did.

PAN M 360: Would you have preferred to start from scratch and write new songs in Spanish?

OS: Of course I would have preferred that option, but like I said, it’s a work we started a long time ago. Maybe two years ago, we were in a bit more of a rush than we are now, with shows and everything else. Writing a song from A to Z is longer than translating one. That’s why we chose to translate them, to see how it turns out.

PAN M 360: The translated songs are “Bajo Presiόn” (“Sous pression”, from Stress, 1997), “Bicho Loco” (“Vermine”, from Sacrifices, 2019), “Violencia Versus Violence” (“La violence engendre la violence”, from Sacrifices, 2019) and “La Bestia” (“Je suis la bête”, from État brute, 2010). Why did you choose those ones?

OS: At the beginning of the adventure, we prepared a game plan. We want to conquer South America and the countries where Spanish is spoken. We said we wouldn’t go in with a weak hand. That’s why we chose the songs that were the strongest, that best represented Anonymus. We also wanted songs that spanned the years of our existence. We present ourselves as a Canadian band that sings mainly in French, but is able to sing in Spanish.

PAN M 360: Who is the target audience for La Bestia?

OS: The diehard Anonymus fan might want to listen to the songs in Spanish, but basically, we made this album for Latin America and even the U.S., because they speak a lot of Spanish.

PAN M 360: While doing my research, I saw that the videos of the songs “Sobrevivir” and “Terromoto” have been shared on foreign sites, including MetalInsider, TheInvisibleOrange and Atanatos, a Mexican site dedicated to metal music. How’s the record’s promotion going?

OS: We’ve had feedback from Latin American fanzines, websites, a guy who’s doing promotion in South America, and so far it’s all good opinions. For us, it’s a new adventure. We don’t know where it’s going to take us, but we’re excited about it. Like I said at the beginning, I wasn’t too sure, but now I’m starting to get on board.

PAN M 360: Was it harder for you, because you are the singer and bass player of the band?

OS: Yes! At first I told the guys, you play the music and it doesn’t change anything for you. But for me, it changes everything! The phrasing is not the same, it’s like a new song for me. I have to split my brain in two and ask myself, “Are we doing the Spanish version or the French version?” Lately, we’ve only been doing the Spanish versions, so if you ask me to sing “Sous pression” in French, I’m going to mix them up a bit. It puts a lot more pressure on me than it does on the other, but if I have to do it, I’ll sacrifice myself (laughs).

PAN M 360: Did you re-record the music for each song?

OS: We re-recorded “Bajo Presiόn” and “Máquinas” because we didn’t have the tracks from 1997. As for “Tierra”, we kept it as it was because Marco [Calliari, former Anonymus singer] is no longer in the band and because it was produced by Colin Richardson [Anathema, Slipknot, Napalm Death], which can get us interviews, you understand the concept. For the same reason, we kept “Terremoto” because it was recorded by Jean-François Dagenais from Kataklysm.

I must admit that re-recording “Bajo Presiόn” and “Máquinas” after almost 21 years was quite weird. We wondered if we were playing them as fast as we did back then. We recorded “Sous pression” in our early twenties and we won a big award! When I listen to the songs from back then, I think they’re all too fast (laughs), but that’s okay. “Bajo Presiόn” is a bit slower than the original. In fact, it’s like we do it live now, and I think it’s for the best. I don’t think we’re gonna get tomatoes thrown at us for it.

PAN M 360: Do you plan to do an online concert like other bands have since the beginning of the pandemic?

OS: Nothing’s for sure, but if the trend continues and we can’t perform live, maybe we’ll go that route. There is talk of reopening the venues, but to what extent? Another possibility would be to have access to a venue like Club Soda or Café Campus and film a live concert, to make it professional. A bit like Mononc’ Serge does with Le point de vente. He sells tickets and people watch the show from home.

PAN M 360: You keep rehearsing – if not for a concert, then why?

OS: Because you get bored and you need to play. After a month without seeing each other and rehearsing, we thought we had to find a solution before we went crazy. Finally, we found a solution with the rehearsal space at the Boîte à Musique. We went into different rooms and played with headphones. It wasn’t ideal for old-timers like us, who were used to jamming in the same room at full volume. We started rehearsing again at Cité 2000 as soon as it reopened. After the first rehearsal, I felt good and it reminded me why I make music. It takes a lot of pressure off. It’s not just the musical aspect, it’s also the liberating aspect that it brings and I think I speak for everyone in the group. We were bored with our little routine.

Photos: Emma George

PAN M 360: I understand you already knew each other from the Brussels scene, but that schroothoop came into existence on a bit of a crazy impulse.

Timo Vantyghem (bass & clarinet): True, it all kind of started as a joke, nothing really serious. For several years, we have been playing together in La Clinik Du Dr. Poembak, a local brass band in Brussels. Last winter, I noticed there were still some open slots for a local jam session in Brussels. So I contacted Rik and Margo to see whether we could put together a small act or play some music. I knew Rik has been building homemade instruments from recuperated materials for many years. And coincidentally, Margo was constructing a drum kit from illegally dumped garbage at that same time. We decided to gather our junk and improvise our way through the night. We had such a blast during that jam session that we decided to play some more gigs. Since we did not have enough songs to fill one-hour concerts, we mainly played songs with lots of room for improvisation. That’s how schroothoop came into being.

Margo Maex (percussion): A few weeks after our first jam session, a couple of friends proposed to record some of our work, and eventually we ended up recording a mini-album, called Klein Gevaarlijk Afval – Dutch for domestic hazardous waste, like batteries, white spirits, or other chemical waste that cannot be discarded in normal garbage.

PAN M 360: Schroothoop’s music is basically, to my ear, mysterious but playful jazz, incorporating sounds and ideas from other global styles. How would you describe your recipe?

Rik Staelens (wind & string instruments): Living in a multicultural city like Brussels, we are exposed to all kinds of music. On the radio we mainly hear pop and rock, a bit of jazz, blues, and Western classical music. But out on the streets – or in our backyards – we can also hear Moroccan chaabi, Andalusian or Egyptian classical music, rai, Turkish melodies, Balkan, Bollywood songs, West African rhythms… It comes quite natural to me to try and incorporate these sounds in the music I play.

There is no real recipe, or rather, the recipe depends on the song. Sometimes it starts from a melody, at other times it could be a rhythm that we want to explore. Every so often, the starting point would be to create a certain mood or atmosphere. Or maybe we would just jam to see what comes out. But we do like a nice and sweaty party, so there’s often a danceable element that sneaks into our songs and sets our toes tapping.

MM: Apart from delivering grooves from around the world, I also like to bring in some more dark and atmospheric sounds – as you can hear in “sluikstort”. This song was inspired and driven by my obsession with leftfield electronica and experimental ambient music, with artists like John Also Bennett, Cucina Povera, Kate NV, Steve Pepe, Capitol K… Timo, on the other hand, uses his vast experience from his other band Sea (Peoples) to tie our songs together with basslines that bring a kind of indie-rock sensibility into the mix. Rik delivers elements of jazz and world music. Although Rik, Timo, and I have pretty different musical backgrounds and tastes, we turned out to be very complementary and easily agree on what direction a song should take.

PAN M 360: Something else I hear quite prominently is in fact music from a “somewhere else” that doesn’t even exist – 1950s exotica. That stuff is often dismissed as silly kitsch, but in fact was quite avant-garde, a pioneering style not only for stereophonic experimentation, but also for intercultural hybridization on a foundation of jazz.

RS: Good point on the exotica, but if it’s an influence of mine, it would be a rather subconscious one. I first heard some work from Martin Denny about 20 years ago. Although I liked it, at that time I found it a bit of a novelty thing. I never really dug into it and subsequently forgot all about it. When some friends of mine started an exotica big band, The Left Arm of Buddha, a few years ago, this music found its way into my life again. It’s certainly an interesting genre and I understand how our music could remind people of it.

But even before exotica, Sidney Bechet made a Haitian record in the late ’30s. Dizzy Gillespie already incorporated Cuban rhythms during the ’40s. At probably around the same time as Martin Denny’s efforts, Dave Brubeck explored Turkish rhythms. During the ’60s, John Coltrane, amongst others, explored Indian music, Yussef Lateef researched Middle Eastern and African music, Phil Woods made a record with Greek musicians, there is the work of Don Cherry, Gato Barbieri… I feel that a certain openness towards other cultures is somewhat inherent in jazz.

MM: I must admit I am quite the fan of 1950s exotica. I simply love the not-so-subtle and playful references to Oriental, Caribbean, Japanese, Andean, or Hawaiian music, spiced up with animal vocalisations and tribal rhythms. Over the past years, I have been listening to many of the exotica albums released in the ’50s by Les Baxter, Martin Denny, Yma Sumac, Frank Hunter, etc. So, you cannot imagine how happy I was when John Caroll Kirby released his album Travel in 2017. For me, this album felt like a little exotica revival. I remember John Caroll Kirby called his music “third-generation” exotica. Your question made me realize we might have unconsciously made our own third-generation exotica album. Hooray!

PAN M 360: The production work of David ‘Dijf’ Sanders is quite remarkable. He handles your sounds a bit like a good chef, carefully bringing out the flavours of the ingredients. What are your thoughts on what went into the Dijf machine, and what came out the other side?

MM: I did not know Dijf personally, but I certainly knew of his work – my personal favourite: “Retired Sportswatch”, from the album Moonlit Planetarium. One day, a friend of mine heard an iPhone recording made during one of our rehearsals. He knew Dijf Sanders well and asked him whether he would be interested in mixing our music if we ever got around to recording it properly. Apparently, Dijf was pretty enthusiastic. When I heard this news, I got super excited and convinced Rik and Timo that we could not let this opportunity slip through our fingers. I told them our music could not be in better hands than his, and we agreed to give Dijf carte blanche on our recordings.

It’s nice that Dijf did not fundamentally change our recordings, rather he added the right colours, gave percussive passages more spatial depth, deepened and flavoured the bass and thumb pianos. He also added subtle effects, like panning, reverbs or pitch-modulated delays to the flutes, clarinets and violins. We are extremely delighted with the result!

*Above: schroothoop’s instruments, including the “street-i-varius” tin-can violin (upper right)*

PAN M 360: On to the instruments themselves – I imagine that the basic percussion and even the washtub bass were pretty straightforward to build. On the other hand, the PVC-pipe wind instruments must have been more challenging, especially with different scales to consider.

RS: Each instrument requires a specific building approach. Things that look easy at first glance can still meet with unexpected difficulties. Even basic percussion, like making a drum skin from plastic tape, is not as straightforward as you would imagine. If you would span all the strips in the same direction, you would get a bland and not durable result, whereas, when spanned diagonally they will reinforce each other.

The PVC flutes and clarinets are especially challenging. There is a lot to be calculated and a great deal of trial and error involved before you can get good results. By using tape to cover up incorrectly drilled holes, I found a way to make up to three or four experimental models out of one pipe, thus drastically reducing the amount of PVC that is ultimately wasted. In order to keep things as eco-friendly as possible, I am now considering building my future pilot models out of papier-mâché.

PAN M 360: You’ve also been making lamellophones, thumb pianos and such, out of discarded kitchen knives. You know, it just occurred to me… do any of you have any emergency medical training? I mean, just in case?

RS: I have basic first-aid training with follow-up sessions once a year. Since I lead workshops in lutherie sauvage [unorthodox instrument-building], it’s useful to have some basic knowledge of first aid. Luckily, I rarely have to put this to practice. Touch wood.

MM: Just saying, these knives hurt like hell when you play them a bit too long. But for now, never had a real cut.

PAN M 360: Following consideration of unhappy accidents, let’s talk about the happy kind. Instrumentation built from found scrap must necessarily have limitations compared to those manufactured to professional specifications. However, I’d imagine they offer a lot of unexpected, and useful, surprises along the way.

RS: About limitations, I can’t state it better than Georges Braque did in his collection of aphorisms Le Jour et La Nuit – “Les moyens limitées engendrent des formes nouvelles, invitent à la création, font le style” [“limited means lead to new forms, invite creativity, make the style”]. Sometimes the idea is not so much to expand the borders but rather to obtain the maximum results within them.

TV: Those borders or limitations are what I enjoy so much in this band. No complicated synthesizers to lose my mind over. You know, it’s a relief to only have a couple of notes and sounds per instrument.

RS: An example of this can be found in the clarinets I make. Since I haven’t found a way to make a proper working keying mechanism yet, some of them are limited to a pentatonic scale. But on the positive side, this enables us to really dig deep into the possibilities this pentatonic scale has to offer, both melodically and harmonically. Plus it encourages us to maybe think more rhythmically about a solo.

A very useful concept has been the idea of a slide clarinet, kind of hybrid of clarinet and trombone. These seem to have been commercially available during the 1920s but have been forgotten since. Our models are made with two pieces of PVC tubing of different diameters, but I have seen some alternative approaches to such clarinets by Ralph Carney and Bart Hopkin, which also spark my interest.

Another find was that certain imperfections in a violin bridge caused a loud and raunchy additional buzz, which we used to our advantage. We later discovered that this very same concept was already used in the medieval and renaissance instrument tromba marina. This was however used to obtain certain harmonics on the string, instead of creating a loud buzz.

An advantage of the PVC instruments is that they can even be used in the water. Maybe we should try that out during a swim party in summer.

TV: In Canada?

PAN M 360: Rik, you have a long history of pedagogical music workshops, a very different musical practice from entertaining the public with concerts and records. Has that aspect of your collective curriculum vitae affected how and why you do schroothoop?

RS: Well, I was a performer – playing mainly the different members of the saxophone family – long before even considering doing the workshops. Regardless of playing in a professional band and touring internationally, I still needed a job on the side to make ends meet. So in the end, I decided that it would be nice if this day job could also have a link with music. That’s how I came to organize music workshops.

The bands I play with and the workshops I host are really two different worlds. Schroothoop was created as a band of its own, not as a demonstrational orchestra to promote the workshops. But of course there are some links. The workshops have enabled me to experiment with many types of instruments and made it possible to build a big collection of working gear, some of which ended up being used in schroothoop.

Photo credit: Laurent Malo and Pier-Luc St-Germain

The following conversation is the result of a conference call with Jean Massicotte in Montreal and Arthur Comeau in Dakar. Comeau currently resides in Meteghan, Nova Scotia, and was in Senegal for family reasons.

PAN M 360: Let’s start with the genesis of Doubleheader.

Jean Massicotte: Arthur had an appointment with artistic director and producer Denis Wolff in our shared space, so that’s how we met. I’d loved Radio Radio for a long time, and what Arthur had done with Pierre Kwenders. Denis introduced us, shortly afterwards we jammed on a track he had started, Samito was present at this session. We had managed to do something really viby. I liked doing something more beat-based because I don’t do that often as a producer. A little bit later, Arthur played me a Louisiana beat and I flew out to jam at his house in Clare, Nova Scotia. Over a few days, we recorded about 15 instrumental tracks.

PAN M 360: Doubleheader, isn’t it beatmaking? Explain your methodology.

Arthur Comeau: We record, we treat the music and the voice as samples, that is to say we take the best takes and we rework them, a bit like a DJ. There’s something chaotic in there, trial and error, let’s try this, let’s try that, let’s do the voice takes two or three times before we find what fits.

JM: The artists come to the studio, we make them listen to instrumental tracks, they choose one. While the piece plays in a loop, we discuss, ideas come out, the artists propose sounds stored in their phones. We try things out, then they go to the microphone and they sing. And then we take their voice tracks and make a song with them. We often put ourselves in danger a lot of the time. We want accidents to happen. It creates sparks and it’s a lot of fun because we force ourselves to do things that we wouldn’t normally do. If we’re hired to make an album, there are a lot of interesting things that won’t click with the client. Here, we bring out the overflow. »

PAN M 360: How is Doubleheader a two-headed animal?

AC: Yes, its two heads of production. I wanted to work with Jean, I wanted him to producer my music when those around me see me as their producer. The world comes to me and I go to Jean, we form a doubleheader. Two gravitational forces pulling at the same time, it’s even more powerful, right?

JM: Doubleheader is a train pulled by two locomotives. We also encourage collisions when we try to make the beats connect with artists who don’t usually sing on them. Dominique Fils-Aimé, for example, had never really done space funk disco. The Malian singer Djeli Tapa had never done reggaeton, and she was very happy to have had that experience. We like to juxtapose inspirations that don’t naturally go together, and make it work.

*Photo credit*: Laurent Malo et Pier-Luc St-Germain

PAN M 360: Samito, a Montreal artist from Mozambique, seems to be a little more than a guest with Doubleheader, tell us about his involvement.

AC: Samito and I work a lot together, I sometimes stay at his place when I come to work in Montreal. We’ve done great business with him in the context of Doubleheader. The vibe was good! For the past few years, Samito has been more interested in electronic music, he has worked in Portugal and France in particular. He has worked with a lot of people, notably with Djeli Tapa, he also introduced us to EIHDZ (pronounced Heidi). He brought us a lot of ideas and vibes.

JM: We wanted Samito to do tracks on keyboards, a bit in the spirit of what he’d done with us beforehand on the Wurlitzer keyboard during a first meeting. When he sang after choosing his beat, however, it gave another dimension to the project. It really did! We were off on a bit of a party vibe. When Samito did his vocals, we saw that we could be just as spiritual while maintaining the party and dance vibe. We found a way to present the sound so that we could appreciate it in a dance context, and also in a listening context. The vocabulary of the project was enriched as a result.

PAN M 360: You also worked with Caleb Rimtobaye, alias Afrotronix – a new electro direction for Caleb?

JM: With him, I was a bit intimidated because I have a lot of respect for his work. I had an appointment with him at my studio, but I wasn’t really ready for it. Caleb showed up anyway and I got him to play a beat, a big reggaeton beat. He plugged in his guitar, he played that beat. I was really happy with the result, I suggested he sing and he agreed. He also did some vocal harmonies. I sent this to Arthur who made us a very nice mix.

PAN M 360: We know less about EIHDZ and Quenton Hatfield. Who are these performers on the soul-pop song “Other Side”, which will released in the coming months?

AC: Quenton is a guy from Weymouth, in my part of Nova Scotia. He’s been making music around here for a long time. He’s known in Halifax and he works with us, he’s part of the same group of friends as P’tit Belliveau. Quenton came into the studio, we wanted English voices and I really liked the contrast between him and EIHDZ.

JM: EIHDZ has every talent – she sings, writes tunes, draws surfboards, is part of a core group of songwriters in New York. She does a lot of business!

PAN M 360: What’s the story of “Trumpet”, led by Arthur’s voice?

AC: It started on a beat from P’tit Belliveau, and then I recorded my voice over it. In Montreal, I went to Breakglass Studios to add drums, then I introduced the whole thing to Jean. who refined the sound, put his golden touch on it. Samito did the keyboards, Jean did the bass. A tour de force!

PAN M 360: Presenting such a considerable project with the release of the first extract, “Diamond Flake” with Dominique Fils-Aimé, isn’t customary. The material will be unveiled over the coming weeks and months – why?

JM: It’s a bit like the working method. The beats were created almost at once, and then we did the development. It took a long time to associate these beats with artists, but we’re getting there. Basically, we have an album almost ready and we have enough material for two. Apart from the sung parts, by the way, we have small instrumental episodes from a lot of studio jams. The artists to come? We won’t name them all but I’d say we’ve worked with Maya Kuroki from Teke::Teke, who recites a Japanese poem on it. There will also be the singer Sandra Luciantonio. Other artists will be recruited or revealed later.

AC: I dream of inviting Paul Daraîche and trying something with him! We’ve already included country music, but it would be great to have him… The idea at the end of the day is to mix everything together. You meet a lot of artists, you remix their voices and instruments with the advice of Denis Wolff, without whom Doubleheader wouldn’t exist.

This series of productions will be launched by Ray-On, a Montreal-based company dedicated to artist development – digital distribution, synch, rights management, marketing, consulting. Denis Wolff, former artistic director at Audiogram and owner of the Maisonnette label, is the founder of Ray-On.

JM: The idea of our project goes very well with Ray-On’s concept, to find small niches in many different territories. In the meantime, of course, Arthur and I have to carry out other projects which are our livelihood. So it’s good that Doubleheader is born. We’d like it to last.