Interviews – Page 83

Above: Yukino Inamine and Harikuyamaku

PAN M 360: Your main intention as a musician is combining Okinawa minyo (folk songs) with dub reggae. This is a nice mix – the two music styles fit well together, even though their energies work at different levels. By the way, I think Okinawan minyo might be the happiest music in the world.

Harikuyamaku: Okinawa minyo is very unique music, different from other Japanese styles. It’s part of everyday life in Okinawa. In fact, until the reversion of Okinawa to Japan in 1972, it had been the popular music of the Okinawan people. I’ve heard that so many new minyo songs were being recorded and released on seven-inches every day, like in the ’70s Jamaican reggae scene.

Okinawa minyo is on the offbeat. That’s also like reggae music. But it doesn’t have bass. When I rediscovered my country’s music after traveling abroad, I was also becoming affected by ’70s dub music from Jamaica. I was a bass player, I like low-end sound. Then I thought to match Okinawa minyo with dub. I added bass, drums and other things, collected analogue mixers, a Roland RE-201 Space Echo and ’70s effectors like digital delays and phasers. Then, I dubbed.

The melodies of Okinawa minyo are very beautiful. As for the lyrics, there are many varieties. Classical songs to be played in the royal court have beautiful words, but many minyo have sad, suffering lyrics. There are many songs about the war in Okinawa. In addition, there are songs about changes in society and life. And also, there are many with dirty lyrics. I like that.

PAN M 360: On your first album, Shima Dub (2013), you mostly used samples from old records. More recently, you’ve started working with musicians in the studio. In fact, you have a new single with the sanshin player Yukino Inamine. Tell me more about her, and about “Ohshima Yangoo Bushi”.

Harikuyamaku: Yukino Inamine is a new-generation singer of Okinawa minyo. I think minyo singers are mostly so typical that they just sing in a faithful manner. Yukino is free and alternative. She plays live sometimes with bass, drums, and other things, and also makes new minyo songs, with words for our time. I had hoped to record with real singer for a long time. I just discovered her this year, and we’ve played live together three times. “Ohshima Yangoo Bushi” is our first recording. It’s a very old Okinawan song about Amami Island, and love. We consulted an old SP record.

PAN M 360: Your new album, Subtropica, is very different from your other work. The track “Subtropica” is almost an hour long, and it’s a soundscape, a sonic environment. It was originally a group of separate sound channels, for an installation of ceramic speakers by the Okinawa potter Paul Lorimer. I didn’t know that one can make speakers out of clay!

Harikuyamaku: Recently, I’ve become very interested in synthesizers, for making some sound effects or noises in dub. Potter Paul Lorimer’s precious presence in Okinawa, working with his original climbing kiln, gave me nice chance to express my synthesizer works. He made many different speakers, with ceramic bodies and Audio Nirvana and Fostex speaker units. Each has its own unique sound. For his exhibition, there were eight of his speakers in the space. I selected and located them, and chose what kind of sound would be suitable for each. It was super-surround!

PAN M 360: Part of Subtropica is also used for the video of Aki Bandō’s butoh performance piece, “Ninth Sense Invocation pō 2”. This is yet another context for your work, avant-garde theatre and dance.

Harikuyamaku: Butoh dancer Aki Bandō is my friend. She was looking for a soundtrack for her performance, and asked me. I like extreme expressions, so I gave her some tracks, and she liked my “Subtropica 2mix” demo. I hear she’ll present the video at some film festivals. I hope it gets some good attention.

*Above: Harikuyamaku live in Tokyo with Heavy Manners Ryukyu*

PAN M 360: There is also a live track at the end of the album, from the show bar Love Ball in Naha City, Okinawa. It’s from a 2017 set… can you tell me more about it?

Harikuyamaku: I did improvisation live using a Korg MS2000 and ER-1, a Moog Mother32, minyo samples and effectors at Love Ball. Sometimes I do improv live, I’ve done up to seven hours before. Improv with machines is my musical challenge. Love Ball was very important club in Naha, Okinawa, that was managed by Akazuchi, the local hip hop crew. But now it’s closed. I caught a lot of good music there.

PAN M 360: So what’s next? What are you working on now?

Harikuyamaku: Right now, I’m making another song with Yukino. Recording is done. It will be released on the Chill Mountain label, managed by my friend DJ Ground. To match the label’s colour, I’m making a slow house track for the dancefloor. I’m inspired by some slow house scenes, using traditional sounds from South America. I hope to join them, using traditional Okinawan music.

I’m in some bands – Angama is a dub techno session unit with KOR-ONE, we just released our first cassette-tape album view in April. Churashima Navigator is a four-person electronic Okinawan band produced by Sinkichi – he’s also great DJ – and we’ve just released an album, and a remix album. Isatooment is techno/house production unit with Sinkichi, we released a three-track EP on Chill Mountain last year. We also use Okinawan samples. And Gintendan is five-person experimental dub band that has released two albums. I have my own DIY studio, I always work with them.

Photo: Nathalie Deléan

During her travels between Toronto, Paris, London and Montreal, Camille Deléan always believed that she would never find an anchor point.

“When I arrived in Quebec, I didn’t know anyone. In my mind, my stay in Montreal was temporary. I was starting from scratch. I stayed longer than I expected. But it took me a few years to surround myself with people I liked. Finally, I met Michael Feuerstack [a multi-instrumentalist who had worked on the first album with Deléan and British musician Ben Walker]. He helped me finish Music on the Grey Mile. We’re now friends. Thanks to him, I managed to meet other artists in Quebec.”

Thus, the second album was conceived with a little more stability. By the singer’s own admission, she knew more about what she was looking for as a sound for Cold House Burning.

On the other hand, she could count on her fellow singer Feuerstack, who invested himself even further into this new folk album, giving it a dose of rock. In addition to playing many instruments for the songs, he also took on the production. Most of the recordings were made at Breakglass Studios.

“I wanted the drums to be heavier, but the instrumentation to be more [refined] and sleeker. I also wanted to explore the backing vocals more. I wanted more than just vocal harmonies; I wanted to make them an important part of some songs. I used only necessary instruments. It was important to me that they felt like they were close to the microphone, like my voice.”

In addition to Feuerstack, Jeremy Gara (drums, piano), Mathieu Charbonneau (piano, synthesizer), Philippe Charbonneau (voice, synthesizer), Joshua Zubot (violin) and Adam Kinner (saxophone) also collaborated on the pieces, which are more refined than those of the previous offering, released in 2017. And Deléan’s voice flows, imperturbable, like a beautiful, tranquil river.

Earthquake danger zone

On the album, her voice is anchored in confidence, soft and very close. It’s as if the young woman reveals a part of herself, intimately, without hesitation. And yet she has had doubts over the years. A lot of them. And this opus with a touch of lyricism is precisely the artistic testament to a serious search for balance, both physical and emotional.

That said, even if Camille refers to earthquakes to evoke the atmosphere of her work, this one reveals maturity more than fragility.

During our telephone interview in times of pandemic, she recounted how her intimate story permeates all the material on her record. “Fault Line (Late July)”, in particular, is the epicentre song of the album, according to her. “Tread lightly! Think steady / Watch your jogging around the lines / Or you’re going down”, she sings.

“I’ve explored the theme of balance a lot, which doesn’t come naturally to me. In fact, it extends to everywhere and on all scales. … The lyrics of my songs are proof of this; so is the music. The music is a bit scary. Sometimes. I was in that spirit when I composed the album, which dates back to long before the pandemic. I’ve always been afraid of anchoring myself in one place. Plus, I’ve had health problems [dating back to childhood] that prevented me from moving around easily. I was afraid of possible danger. This fear fuelled my isolation long before the COVID-19 crisis. “The more you close yourself off, the harder it becomes to reach out to the other, to the unknown (the song “Afraid of People”).”

Ironically, at a time when she was feeling more assured in Montreal, a city where she’s now surrounded by her loved ones, her apartment had a fire at the end of May! Adds a bit of resonance to the title Cold House Burning.

Deléan, whose work is reminiscent of that of the Canadian group The Weather Station, may be fighting a few little fears (the sad and more serious “Saturn Gravity”), but they suit her very well as an artist.

Worth a mention is that Camille Deléan is part of the programming of the Fun House event, organized by Pop Montréal. She plays on Sunday, June 7, at 1:30 pm.

Photo credit: Camille Gladu-Drouin

The kebamericanism of Laurence Hélie, who disappeared from the radar five years ago, has now largely been forgotten. One needs to recall the singer’s trajectory before the release of Late Bloomer, an excellent album under the pseudonym Mirabelle which has just come out on the Simone Records label.

“I come from the Beauce region, more precisely from Saint-Isidore. In high school, I was enrolled in the music program. I’m a teenager from the ’90s – in my gang, I was the music nerd who would go and chat with record dealers at the HMV in Quebec City. I was thirsty for music, I watched Musique Plus religiously, I missed classes so I wouldn’t miss anything else. I learned how to play the music of that time, I’m thinking of Mazzy Star, Sonic Youth, Pavement, Nirvana, Cranberries, and so on. I was very interested in the music of that time. I studied sound engineering at Musitechnic, but I made my living in the voiceover industry.”

Laurence Hélie has a beautiful voice, which first led her to country-folk.

“It was a quest for authenticity, I didn’t want any tricks. I had a lot of fun during that country-folk period, but I held back a bit. And… it’s not really clear what happened afterwards. In fact, I got a bit down after my second album. I didn’t want to play anymore, I couldn’t listen to myself strumming a guitar anymore. During that period, I had a child, I put music aside for a while.”

Time passed and her natural inclinations returned, first as a small step… then a steady trot… and then a full gallop.

“Slowly, I started writing songs again, and they came out different. I wanted to get to the bottom of my ideas, find out how to feel good, how to soak in my music. I don’t have a lot of self-confidence in life… except when I’m singing. If there’s one place where I feel perfectly at ease, it’s when I’m singing. I’m glad if I have the talent to go with it.”

The return to songwriting was gradual.

“It was not really premeditated, there was no plan for success behind it. I just wanted to make music for myself, I had to rediscover that pleasure. Nothing more. And I surprised myself – it’s fun, what I do! So I found the right team to work with.”

For nearly 10 years, Hélie has known Warren Spicer, the central musician of the group Plants and Animals, whom she had met through mutual friends.

“He did the sound recording for my second album, he made me feel very comfortable. Warren has great qualities as a sound engineer and also as a producer. When I approached him to produce Late Bloomer, I knew he was very competent musically, but it was his empathy and his ability to create a great working atmosphere that motivated my choice.

“It was really great to work with him! He’s super intuitive and he’s not afraid to try things, while I’m more modest with my ideas. But… during the recording sessions, I realized that I had more to say than I thought I did. I found myself making my point. Having someone like Warren, who gave me a lot of space in the creative process, was very cool and very infectious.”

Hélie thinks she grew up in this context of co-production.

“I used to be intimidated by all these colleagues who were musically much more educated than me. But this time around, I wanted it to come from me 100 percent, so I pushed the songs as far as I could, both in execution and production. I knew what I didn’t want, it took me longer to identify what I did want.”

Well beyond the working atmosphere, the exploratory spirit of these sessions led Hélie to explore unexpected terrain, a superb mix of ethereal wave, trip hop, space-rock, and ambient.

“I knew we were going to torpedo a lot to find our sound. It was a search and I was extremely stubborn. I wanted my voice to be central, and so I needed space… Fortunately, my producer was very open, without concessions. I didn’t have any particular intentions when it came to electronic music, and that’s where Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux came in, with synth sounds I fell in love with, perfect sounds for those songs with lots of space.”

Mirabelle’s lyrics, which are of a piece with the ethereal spirit, are extremely personal, a sort of rhyming version of a diary.

“When I started making music again, it was an all-or-nothing thing, and it reminded me of my state of mind when I was a teenager. I had so many dreams then – had I let my inner teenager down? Had I run out of steam after becoming a mother?”

Of course she didn’t. It was just a matter of waking up that inner teenager, who spoke in English when she sang.

“For the French lyrics on my first two albums, I’d asked for help from writers. Before that, I always sang for myself in English because this detachment from my mother tongue allowed me to go out there with less restraint. That’s why I wanted to write all the lyrics on this album in English, so I could identify myself completely with it, feel whole, accomplish something I’d be very proud of. Yes, it’s a bit scary to be judged… and then, no! I’m happy with what I’ve done and that’s what’s important. I’m coming out of this just luminous.”

PAN M 360: In a few words, how would you describe your career path?

Jäde: My musical career started when I was about 10 years old. Actually, my sister was making music, she had a guitar, she was writing songs, all that. She’s a year older than me, we often hang out together. Our favourite activity was making music when we came home after school. Then we bought a microphone, we started recording, and then time goes by. I was doing my baccalaureate in Lyon, and I wanted to go to Paris, because I think it’s a bigger city and it might offer me more musically, and also just because I wanted to move around a bit. I arrived in Paris and met people who are in the same delirium as me, musically, there were a lot of events that I found cool, I met producers. So I made friends with these kinds of people and then, from there, they tell me, “hey, I’m doing production”, and I tell them, “I sing”, and, from there, I started the Jäde thing.

And then, voilà, I released songs on SoundCloud around 2016 and I started singing in French, something I didn’t do at the very beginning. From the very first song, I started getting feedback, even from record companies and so on. After that, I put out a first project on SoundCloud, which is two years old, then I was offered concerts, I even had a group, we did small shows for a year, there were five of us on stage, I’ve got a guitarist, really, it’s cool. And then I signed to a label, the label where I am today, called Entreprise, which works with the label Sony Als+O. And now we’re working on a new EP that was released last week.

PAN M 360: Why Jäde?

Jäde: The umlaut is just for SEO, there’s no story, it’s just a name that I like, it’s a nice precious stone.

PAN M 360: Why the title Première fois (“first time”)?

Jäde: First of all, for sure, I arrive with a kind of mini-calling card, you know, where I try to show the different sounds I can do, the different universes I like, and I think because it’s the first time I do a project where I have people helping me in the studio, for the mixes and so on, it’s the first time I do a something solid. That was the real beginning, the ‘first time’ for that. And also because there’s a delirium, ‘first time’, in the sense, as I often talk about relationships with boys, love and so on, there’s this thing, when you think about the ‘first time’, you think about your own first times, and there’s this delirium in the lyrics of the EP.

PAN M 360: Where does this vintage pop universe that you’ve built yourself come from?

Jäde: So, ‘vintage pop’, I don’t really get it when people say that (laughs), but I think I understand a bit!

PAN M 360: Actually, it sounds like you’re a mix of Kali Uchis, Ravyn Laena and Tengo John.

Jäde: It’s true, Kali Uchis, I listened to her a lot and watched all her videos because she’s had this crazy identity, for a very long time. I’m an artist and I think she’s been a good influence for me. I like anything that’s a little bit rosy-picture, sweet stuff, because it reflects the clichés of love, all that, so it speaks to me, but on the other hand, I’m not too smooth and too into it either, so I try to counterbalance with other things so it’s not too vintage, too rosy and so on, but it’s still a facet of my personality.

PAN M 360: Your lyrics are worthy of the French language, rich in alliterations and double entendres, and your strength lies in the fact that even when sung, they have a rap feel to them. So what are your influences in hip hop?

Jäde: So frankly, there’s all the rap today, French rap anyway, I listen to a lot, it’s everywhere. I used to listen to a lot of artists from Lyon, like Jorrdee, Lyonzon, all those are people I see, people I know a bit and who have a great vibe, I think, a bit different from what’s being done, it speaks to me. Then, honestly, all those who do like PNL, Hamza… I don’t listen a lot but I like it a lot. As for the United States, I’m a bit lost, even if I know it comes from there.

PAN M 360: What about rapping, do you do it or would you like to do it?

Jäde: Well, as you say, there are rap ideas in there, it’s a bit like I like this delirium, but it’s true that I couldn’t just do a rap project, or really get into a “I’m the latest new rapper” mode. It would be weird for me because I’m really a singer, I love to sing, so it wouldn’t be like that. On the other hand, as I have songs, sometimes, which are more in that direction, more trashy songs and so on, I still want to be given that credibility, you know. When I try to do things a bit more in that direction, I want people to say, yes, it’s trap. Not just an R&B singer, if the sound isn’t that way. But people have a hard time with that, you know, because it’s easier to label everyone, they don’t really know where to put me, they’re a bit lost.

PAN M 360: That’s exactly what makes your work so rich.

Jäde: Seriously.

PAN M 360: Who’s behind the music of this EP? How do you make a track?

Jäde: These songs, honestly, I built them at home first. Usually I get beats, beatmakers or friends of mine send me beats by email, and I record and write at home. Once I’ve got a demo, I go to the studio, and if I can, I bring in the guy who did the production, so we can revisit it a bit, I re-record my own vocals, if need be, I rewrite the lyrics a bit and we rework the track, we make arrangements. Sometimes we’ll call a guy to play drums, to play bass, that kind of thing, I’ve done a lot of that on this project. All in all, it’s not the best process to make songs. Now, looking forward, I try to change a little bit, to start everything in the studio. I’m afraid I’ll lose the initial thing, the vibe of the moment. But the truth is, because I’ve got my microphone at home and I’m at home a lot, I often write at home first.

PAN M 360: You sing, “I want five stars, what’s wrong with that, I know what I’m worth and it’s a lot”. Is this second degree just playing with clichés, or do you think there’s something really meaningful in your lyrics?

Jäde: (laughs) There’s a purpose in the lyrics, because there are clichés about girls needing men to buy them things, that kind of thing, you know, and it’s boring because it’s bullshit (laughs)! That’s why you need a guy who’s going to buy you clothes, cars, restaurants or, I don’t know, hotels. So, me, I want that kind of thing because, of course, it’s always nice to have nice things, but I can have it on my own too and that’s better.

PAN M 360: You address boys in a very uncomplicated way, is that you in real life?

Jäde: (laughs) It’s so funny, but it’s so much like that, I have to say that word in all my songs at least 100 times. But yeah, I have to admit I’ve got a serious lack of complexes, I’m not crazy or anything! What’s weird about my songs is I’m really open about certain things, like sex and stuff, and the truth is, I’m a totally normal girl – in other words, I’m not, like, obsessed or anything (laughs). I’m not going to talk about that, like that, with just anybody, that’s what’s a bit weird actually. It’s just that, as a result, people are going to have a slightly delirious image of this chick, when I’m not that. I was raised in a family where we’re very open, without taboos, we speak freely, and that’s different from other people, I speak easily about these things. So, yeah, I’m uninhibited, but I’m not a crazy person.

PAN M 360: There’s another thing you say at the very beginning, it’s that, no matter what the lyrics are, we love the sound. Would you like to export yourself and your projects one day?

Jäde: Of course, besides that, we’re trying to see where it works according to the feedback. There’s Canada, so that’s cool, Germany… I won’t be able to vocalize in another language, it’s not possible, and in any case, staying in my French thing and trying to please the outside world, that would be the dream. It’s complicated but I think it can be done. For example, Rosalia, she killed it while singing in Spanish, you know. If I export my work, so much the better, but it’ll be in French.

PAN M 360: It’s not easy to make songs in French, and your lyrics are simple but well worked out.

Jäde: Nah, it’s actually super hard (laughs). My lyrics are simple, you have to try to find a little recipe, because at the beginning I was trying to do something well written and, as a result, to be a bit in poet mode. You realize that it’s not natural, and therefore weird, but you don’t want to do something too much like SMS text language, because it’s a bit cheap, it’s really in-between (laughs). You’ve got to find the middle ground, that’s what’s complicated.

PAN M 360: Are there other facets we haven’t yet seen? Any ideas for the future?

Jäde: There are other things that I’m still experimenting with, that I’m going to share in the future, but for the first project, I still need to do this a while to stake out my identity, because if I go all over the place, people won’t understand my foundations, but I’m already experimenting with electro (laughs), things that have nothing to do with me, but in the end, it’s going well, so there are a lot of things to test again. I’m just going to focus on a longer format with more tracks for next time, so I can really show more stuff.

PAN M 360: Last little question: we know that the coronavirus has put a lot of things on hold, but what are your future projects in terms of live shows?

Jäde: Well, that’s fucked up. The only gig that is still going on is in November, because it’s my release party six months late (laughs), so maybe we’ll celebrate another project at the same time. All the summer projects are cancelled. After that, we are working on sounds in the studio and we will be able to move ahead quickly because we have only that to do, so we spend some time in the studio, and then we shoot some videos, and then go back as soon as possible.

PAN M 360: And do you have any collaborations planned?

Jäde: Yeah, well, on this project, there weren’t any, so now I want to invite people for the next one. On the other hand, I really need to invite people I like. I’m going to try to collaborate especially with Lyonzon, and to open up and try to get out of this wave because there’s a lot of other people, but yes, I’m planning strong collaborations.

PAN M 360: Great, thanks. What are your plans for the day ahead?

Jäde: Right now, I’m going to do some sunbathing, it’s nice out.

Photo credit: Gaetan Tracqui

Adventures in Foam (1996), Bricolage (1997), Permutation (1998), Supermodified (2000), Out From Out Where (2002)… it’s already a long time ago that Amon Tobin was flirting with old Gene Krupa-style hard swing recordings and other treasures of modern American jazz, coated with hip hop, breakbeat, drum & bass and jungle. This period coincided with an extended stay in Montreal and the rise of the English label Ninja Tune.

Preceded by Foley Room in 2007, ISAM (“Invented Sound Applied to Music”) was released in May 2011. The music on the program revealed important mutations, namely the use of new techniques intended for the production of synthetic sounds and associated with film music. This new aesthetic has been associated with innovative audiovisual performances, the fusion of music and mapping, and has been applauded at all the major festivals of digital arts and electronic music, including MUTEK, Sonar and Moogfest.

In 2015, he launched Dark Jovian, inspired by space exploration. Under the Two Fingers name, he also released the Six Rhythms EP. In 2019, Tobin founded the Nomark label and released an eighth studio album under his own name, Fear in a Handful of Dust. In October of the same year, six months later, he released his ninth album, Long Stories, largely made with an omnichord.

Released under the Two Fingers banner, the album Fight! Fight! Fight! is the pretext for the conversation, but we’re soon enough talking about six different and interrelated projects. Fear in a Handful of Dust and Long Stories, both on Nomark, 2019. Time To Run (Nomark, 2019), as Only Child Tyrant, Six Rhythms EP (Division, 2015) and Fight! Fight! Fight! (Nomark, 2020) as Two Fingers. Figuroa will make its own debut on Nomark in the coming months, with other aliases such as Paperboy and Stone Giants also making their debuts.

“Each one has their own aesthetic. Some came out under my own name. The most recent is based on catchy rhythms that could be compared to the freshest music from some of my early albums, that is, before I took a more experimental direction at the end of the previous decade. The energy and spontaneity of that time was captured and developed into a full-fledged entity of its own, with surprises added along the way, including the use of the human voice.”

It must be deduced that Tobin has not been idle, while some people associate him with an increasingly distant past.

“So there was a lot of activity, a gestation period where I developed something, doing new things that I didn’t know about, it was really intense. I didn’t want to immediately put something in place, I wanted to develop. It took shape gradually, because it was very new to me. I needed to learn before I did, and then do it again until it was good. Yes, it took time! But it’s good, I’m really happy with the result. Last year was the busiest year I’ve ever had.”

Listening to Tobin’s brand new music, it is clear that it’s both autonomous and interdependent:

“The idea is to put different things in specific lanes so that they can all develop in parallel, and they can also inform each other. Something I learn by recording a Two Fingers track will influence something in an Amon Tobin track, something I left in an Amon Tobin track will influence an Only Child Tyrant track, and so on. Then I hope to be able to feed these different projects as they grow. Nevertheless, these projects all have one thing in common, they are created with the same tools, it’s electronic music.”

Tobin’s fascination with the notion of imperfection follows a sequence in which almost obsessive perfectionism prevailed.

“At the time of the ISAM album,” he recalls, “I worked in a very technical way, in order to clarify my proposal. To achieve this very precise goal, I cut out everything that didn’t contribute to it, even if it was a nice idea. Anything that didn’t serve my purpose was excluded. It took a lot of discipline to reach a kind of end point in this process. One of the consequences of this approach was the loss of spontaneity and excitement resulting from the mistake. Because we can learn a lot from our mistakes in creation, we can have a more rewarding experience from a creative point of view.

“Hence the importance of imperfection. For me, it’s important to let this feeling of imperfection return to my artistic process. I want to welcome these things I didn’t expect, let them be born, let them live, and let spontaneity express itself in the music.”

It’s not a question of favouring the unpredictable, he notes.

“There must be a balance between random imperfection and the organization of sounds. You can’t expect to discover things from the air either, it can generate pointless music. But if the structure allows for a certain freedom, then you can reach the balance with useful elements that serve one form and also allow for reproduction in other forms. My recent music is the result of this approach.”

What are the genres found in Tobin’s recent discography? His is a multipolar and extremely diversified approach; several genres are involved, from ambient to techno through krautrock and more conceptual electroacoustics. For his part, our interviewee refuses to clearly identify the sources.

“I’m not overly concerned with musical genres, nor with the language used to describe music. If, as an artist, you are interested in the genres in the music you make, you may be more interested in an external image of yourself. This may be important when you are young, because you need to build a strong image of yourself. Over time, this becomes less and less important. Instead, it is important to feel and identify what you like. So I listen to all kinds of music created by all kinds of artists. Good music is good music, it’s in small quantities and there’s bad music in all genres… what’s the point of concentrating on it?”

One thing is certain, Amon Tobin is an artist in perpetual transformation. What he offered us in the ’90s has been constantly changing ever since. For him, the only constant is… change.

“Change,” he says, “is perpetuated by the artists but their fans are generally opposed to it. You know, this tension is understandable because artists also produce commodities, and their audiences like to understand and embrace what they consume. But my compositions don’t take the listener into account at the time of their conception. If the work is well done, however, I can change the tastes and interests of their listeners.”

Photo credit: Richmond Lam

To make up for the lack of live performances, many bands find themselves having to independently promote their albums on Instagram. The Dears followed the trend and took the opportunity to broadcast their discography live throughout the past week. A pleasant surprise for fans, who were able to chat with the band and enjoyed Lightburn’s lyrics, which are built to last, a bit like the Biblical stories that inspire him. We spoke with him to better understand what lies behind this desire to remain timeless.

PAN M 360: Lovers rock is a kind of reggae known for its romantic sound and content. Are you a fan of this genre? Does the title refer to it?

Murray Lightburn: When I was a much younger guy, I worked with someone who made me a lovers rock mixtape of all that stuff. I don’t listen to much of it now. Originally, we drew inspiration from those days, but also from The Clash a bit too. In the end, it became something totally different. Lovers Rock, for us, became a fictional place. We could have changed the name of the project altogether but it just sort of stuck.

PAN M 360: Your songs generally give the audience the incredible sense of being heard and understood. How does this benevolence come about during the writing process?

ML: That’s interesting. There isn’t a lot of intention to what we do, aside from very general things like sound and production and concrete things like that. Our work, otherwise, is abstract. We speak in terms that can be interpreted in various ways to apply to anyone who might hopefully get something from it. We take a literary approach to the lyrics. We want them to stand the test of time and hope that, even if people don’t get it now, they’ll get it later.

PAN M 360: From which paintings did you choose the covers of the singles? Do they have a symbolic meaning to you?

ML: I grew up having a depth of knowledge in Bible stories. They creep into songs from time to time. It’s not a religious thing. Some of those stories are very poetic and told using wild imagery that I’m attracted to. For example, I’m somewhat obsessed with Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt. Or the story of Cain and Abel. It’s some wild, wild stuff.

PAN M 360: It seems like the lyrics can be interpreted at different levels, introspection that’s personal or social. What kind of discussions do you hope to start?

ML: On this album, we examine choices that we make. There is a dark path and one guided by light that leads to love. We have to clearly define each path so we know what is clear. We feel that love is something we want to know more about, and so that is what we will always be looking for. We’ve been covering this for 25 years now. It is what we offer.

PAN M 360: The lyrics seem to reflect our current reality and what we are going through. What is your insight about the current changes we have to face individually?

ML: We’ve always sung about this stuff. Challenges are always going to be there. Some are great and universal. Some are very personal. And some are both. You could listen to almost anything in our work and apply it to what is happening now. We are like the boy who cried wolf.

PAN M 360: You said that Lovers Rock is in a way related to No Cities Left, which was written after the events of 9/11. What are the common thoughts that you had during the writing process of these two albums? What are the differences?

ML: People in charge make decisions on our behalf that we have almost no choice but to live with. It sets up a backdrop of constant impending doom. Our approach to doom is now grizzled. It strengthens our resolve. We are determined more than ever to hold each other.

PAN M 360: Your albums have an apocalyptic background for sure. At the same time, they are about love and rebirth, which makes the apocalyptic subject even more tangible or easier to grasp. How has this contrast evolved during the writing process of this album? And in comparison to your previous ones?

ML: I think what it possibly boils down to is this: I don’t take my life for granted. My life could end or the world could end. When that happens I want to be surrounded by people I love and I want them to know that I love them. And so now as I approach 50, I find myself saying “I love you” to a lot of people these days. And I do love them. I really do. Even if they drive me nuts sometimes or we don’t always agree on everything. When push comes to shove, I want to hug them and tell them that I love them and that I’ll be there for them. It’s a genuine feeling that I have inside me. That feeling was not always there. It was taken up by lots of unimportant bullshit.

PAN M 360: What do you think of the evolution of the Montreal music scene since the beginning of your career? Do you know any upcoming band or artist that you would like to talk about?

ML: I’m not really aware of many new bands in Montreal and that is 100 percent my fault, and I’m a little ashamed. I have two kids and maybe go out once a year. But at the same time, the way we find out about bands now is driven much more by bigger international press and stuff like that. When we were coming up, there was a much more robust local network to engage, and to hear about cool upcoming artists. You would come up locally first, then nationally and, if you’re lucky, internationally. There’s barely any of that kind of structure now.

Photo credit: Christian Zidouemba

“We’re a bit penalized. For sure, [radio stations] are going to prioritize the stars, Drake and company, instead of local artists. That’s the difference when you’re an English-speaking Quebec artist.” Koffee K is categorical: the road to success is harder for rappers speaking the language of Shakespeare in Quebec.

Real name Christian Zidouemba, he believes that English-speaking artists are somewhat out of the public eye in Quebec, “unless you really make it” outside the province. He’s not wrong, the gap is wide between the success stories, like Kaytranada or Arcade Fire, and emerging DIY artists.

To remedy this, Koffee K has launched a first single in French in 2019, “Diva”.

“It was to give me visibility in Quebec, and it still worked very well.” He had carved out a place for himself in the media sphere, with interviews in several major media outlets. “I’m probably going to release another song in French in collaboration with a Quebec artist… it could be another string for my bow.”

Moreover, if he had to choose a term to describe himself, musically speaking, he would choose “versatile”.

“My music, I’d say, can correspond to many vibes,” he says. “When I was growing up, I listened to a lot of different styles of music – electronic, rap, R&B, rock, metal, reggae, dancehall… It’s reflected a bit in my versatility as an artist. I’d even like to make a rock album one day. I would like to explore as many genres as I can.”

His new song, “Human Drug”, stands out from his discography and his most popular tracks, often in a lighter trap mode. In this R&B serenade, Koffee K depicts his emotional dependence on his girlfriend. “When you’re in love with someone, you develop a habit. And when you’re cut off from that person, you can go into withdrawal,” he says.

He’s recently begun to refine his style to write songs with more complex lyrics, with the aim of connecting even more with his audience. “Over time, I’ve started to make songs that go deeper, where I tell stories about how I feel. Someone once wrote to me one day to tell me he was having suicidal thoughts, and one of my songs helped him with that. I’m happy to be able to do good and at the same time do what I’m passionate about,” he says.

Looking at his Spotify profile, where more than 50,000 different people listen to him every month, you can see that references to drugs are omnipresent in his work, with tracks like “Xans”, “Backwoods” and “Lotta Dope”. However, he never intended to glorify or promote drug use. “By the time I released ‘Xans’, I wasn’t doing drugs anymore. It’s been eight months since I quit smoking. Every song I write about it is part of my journey… but I don’t want to advertise it.”

Although KK produces instrumentals and provides them to other rappers, it’s the German beatmaker ALECTO, whom he met on the web, who composes and records the majority of his tracks. It wasn’t until 2019, during a trip to Los Angeles, that he was able to shake his hand for the first time. After a call from a club promoter inviting him to perform at his establishment, he travelled to California. He took the opportunity to network with a number of players in the field.

“I don’t think I’m going to have to leave Quebec to achieve my goals. There are artists from Montreal under contract with major labels who are doing that today. But I’m going to have to go there more often, make contacts, lead a kind of second life there. The more I think about it, after the virus, I might go back and forth to L.A.,” he predicts.

The COVID-19 pandemic inevitably had an impact on Koffee K’s career, as he was in the midst of negotiations with several Montreal and American labels. “Everything is in slow motion,” he laments. While waiting to sign a contract with a record company, he will be content to release singles.

From a local perspective, the 21-year-old rapper laments the flagrant lack of solidarity between the 514 hip hop artists. “I would say that the rap scene in Montreal is pretty exclusive gangs. People don’t help each other enough. Everybody wants to be the Montreal Drake, the first person to really break through and put Montreal on the map,” he says critically. Compared to cities like Atlanta or Toronto, where Young Thug and Drake built empires in their respective area codes, the big names in Quebec rap often prefer to go it alone.

Koffee K’s ultimate goal is to collaborate with the artists he admires the most: Travis Scott, Dom Kennedy, or Snoop Dogg, to name a few. “When I’ve seen artists like them on stage, I realized that they’re human like you and me. It made me realize that it was possible to work with them someday.

“All of this, representing Montreal,” he hopes.

PAN M 360: How did your respective musical approaches connect, to become what your band is today?

Silvia Konstance Constan: Coming to Barcelona in 2014 and working in Màgia Roja, both a label and an alternative cultural centre closed last December, completely changed my life. Here I discovered most of the music that sculpted my tastes. After a few years of immersion in this underground community, I decided that I wanted to do something on my own, and I ended up jamming with Víktor and recording what would become the first song of Dame Area, “Luce”. It was at the end of the year 2015.

We started doing other songs again only in early 2017. At the beginning, we didn’t talk about the identity we wanted to have, we just started to play and little by little, we realized that we had something special.

Víktor Lux Crux: In addition to producing and recording records for several musicians, I’ve played in different projects over the last 15 years. My first serious project was the band Qa’a. The concept had to do psychedelic and tribal minimalism, combined with what Can, This Heat and Nurse With Wound were doing in the studio. At the end of 2013, I started a trio, Ordre Etern, where I did vocals and developed homemade guitars and instruments, very influenced by Swans, Einstürzende Neubauten, power electronics and black metal. In 2015, I started to have weekly DJ gig in Màgia Roja until it closed. A few months after the death of Ordre Etern in 2017, Dame Area was born and I immediately understood that I had never had a collaborator like Silvia.

PAN M 360: Màgia Roja seems to go beyond the simple framework of the show-bar. What effect has this creative space had on your musical project?

SKC: First of all, Dame Area wouldn’t exist if Màgia Roja hadn’t existed, and that explains quite well the close link between the two. Everything we experienced, learned, and discovered through Màgia Roja shaped us as people, which then translated into the music of Dame Area. A kind of symbiotic relationship.

VLC: We’d never known such a place before, which makes it harder to describe. Maybe you could say it was an anti-club, a place of freedom, very wild. The members nevertheless behaved there as a kind of extended family. People danced there in communion to sounds you’re only supposed to hear in your room. Weird and surreal situations would occur spontaneously.

PAN M 360: Given the current crisis context, how was the launch of this latest EP carried out?

VLC: There was no official launch, but before the virus arrived, I played almost all the songs at some point in Màgia Roja before playing them live, to test them somehow. In particular, “La Notte É Oscura” and “La Soluzione É Una” became kind of local hits.

PAN M 360: This is your fifth release in only two years, in addition to travelling a lot – how do you divide your time between recording, rehearsals, and touring?

SKC: Since we created Dame Area, the band has always been our passion. When we worked at Màgia Roja, we could organize ourselves to tour whenever we needed to, and I think that’s a key point compared to a normal job, where you depend on your holidays to tour. We live on the first floor of Màgia Roja and we have always rehearsed and recorded – and we always do – in the room itself, which is very convenient, because all the material is already there and all you have to do is go downstairs. This makes it possible to record songs quite quickly too.

VLC: We are both very creative and we complement each other quite well. I’m more obsessed with details and sound, while Silvia is very good at not complicating things and finishing what we are doing, so you could say that we balance each other. Our music is a free-for-all, we keep the best ideas, no matter who did what. In the end, the music is divided fairly evenly.

We don’t like to take out filler tracks, so there are a lot of discarded songs and failed experiments. So far, all our songs, without exception, have been played on the radio, which is quite remarkable for us and it would be nice if it stayed that way.

PAN M 360: On La Soluzione é Una, we find the industrial-tribal signature of your album Centro Di Gravitá. How did you approach the creation of this latest opus?

SKC: The songs of La Soluzione é Una were recorded between 2018 and 2019. It was only in the fall of last year, when we decided to release another EP, that we chose from our library some existing songs that would fit together, and the EP took shape. Three songs are like that, because that’s how it sounds for us, but it was neither intended nor planned.

VLC: There are two or three songs with tribal elements, but we consider this release as more industrial-synthetic. We didn’t put more tribal songs in this EP because we kept them for our second LP and we created a lot of songs in a ‘cold tribal’ style, so to speak. There are some Throbbing Gristle accents, but I think we are more and more influenced by ourselves, by the idea of the band.

PAN M 360: The lyrics play a central role in your music, how do they come about?

SKC: The words are always mine, even if sometimes Víktor suggested a subject or a concept. I’m very interested in the process of learning new languages and how the mind of a polyglot works. This has eventually led me to write lyrics in most of the languages I speak.

I started singing mostly in Italian. It was a way of connecting with my inner self by speaking my mother tongue that I never use while living in Barcelona. And not using it regularly helped me to find my own musicality of the language more than if I had lived in Italy and spoken it every day. Somehow I felt like having fewer rules in mind and more freedom in the use of words and syntax. Then I started to make songs in Spanish and also in Turkish, as on the song “Zaman çabuk geçiyor”, and in German.

Each language has its own musicality, and searching for it is like a challenge and a game at the same time that leads me to new ideas and melodies. Each language is linked to a different part of my character and personality and it is a door to express different aspects of myself.

PAN M 360: The situation relating to the COVID-19 crisis has been quite difficult in Spain. How can this situation, however complex, be translated into music?

SKC: We don’t count the days of confinement anymore. On the one hand, this forced break has given us time to work on our music. We’ve finished our next two releases and we’ve made about 10 new songs in the last few weeks. The music of these days helps us more than ever to escape the reality of the outside world. We’ll have to find the light at the end of the tunnel, I guess. And music will help us get through it. But who really knows what’s going to happen two weeks from now?

Photo credit: Chantal Anderson

Editor’s note: That was May 22, 2020. It was our first interview with Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith on www.panm360.com and you know the rest… so far: the pandemic brings back the same topic, just as relevant a year and a half later, and 21 months after the postponement of the Caribou / Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith program originally scheduled for March 2020 and… held this Monday, November 22, 2021. That’s why we’re bringing you back for the next 48 hours this text… that you may never have read.

In her most recent creative cycle, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has linked daily exercises for physical flexibility with the practice of composition. Every day, her movements became different, and so did the music.

The multiplicity of her poses and movements, somewhere between contemporary dance, contortionism and yoga, thus constitutes a constantly renewed language, a “mosaic of transformation” intrinsically linked to her sound explorations.

It was an opportunity for her to reflect on the circulation of energy flows, both in her body and in her works. Here is the holistic expression of body movement and sound through the flow of energy: electricity.

“Electricity,” Smith points out, “allows my analog synthesizers to produce sounds, and also what makes the sound reach the ear, strikes the imagination. I was inspired by the simple fact of thinking about the capacity of electricity and how it brings my instruments to life. For me it is the most fundamental source of energy.”

As a result, The Mozaic of Transformation is a sonic testament to that admiration for electrical energy.

“You know, when you see something beautiful, whatever you can think of to replicate translates into sounds. It’s like when you’re watching a beautiful sunset – wow, it’s so beautiful. I wish others could see it – I felt like I was overwhelmed by the beauty. The inspiration for this album was electricity, and the only thing I could do was to give it sound. The intention was also to show how amazing electricity is.”

The notion of sharing is also important for Smith, who rejects the idea of shutting herself up in an ivory tower.

“I always think of music as a language, that is, I always try to refine my ability to translate inspiration and what I feel inside into a sound form that I can pass to others so that they can feel inspired in turn. This inspiration of electricity is like when I see a sunset, so beautiful that I wish others could see it. The intention is to share this inspiration.”

The dramatic arc of The Mozaic of Transformation is thus constructed:

“The short tracks follow one another and build up this framework until the last track, much longer than the others. This dramatic ascent takes you on a kind of transformation, the journey is made through constant back and forth between the combinations of sounds and music. I try to mix a lot of things. The last piece on the program was the first one I composed. The intention was to record it with a full orchestra but I didn’t find a taker. I always wish I had the resources of a chamber orchestra or a symphony orchestra. In this case, therefore, it is I alone who creates my orchestral sounds – especially from instrument samples.”

Smith, a native of Orcas Island adjacent to British Columbia, lives in Los Angeles. Trained as a musician, the 33-year-old artist followed a typical path before branching off into the atypical. “I started playing classical guitar and learning to compose for the orchestra,” she explains, “and then I switched to analogue synthesizers, and then mixed it all together. I really like the mixing of these sources.”

The composer thrives on music whose references are not immediately identifiable.

“When I studied music,” she says, “my brain was trained to identify music theory, instrumentation and production elements. Today, I’m inspired by music excluding the analysis of its construction. I like music when my brain gives in to it, period. The Japanese composer Joe Hisaishi, for example, is a great source of inspiration for me. I didn’t try to find out how he made his music, but I know now that it’s a mixture of orchestral and electronic music.”

After the release of her excellent album The Kid in 2017, Smith has directed her creative energy in several directions. She founded Touchtheplants, a multi-disciplinary ecosystem for projects hosting the first installments of her instrumental electronic series and texts on the practice of inner listening. In the same vein, she has continued to explore the textural possibilities of electronic instruments as well as the forms, movements, and expressions found in the relationship of the human body to sound and colour.

One of the most accomplished American composers of her generation, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith also acknowledges the feminine electricity that nourishes her work, although..

“I’m glad that this feminine energy is received as such, but I try not to compare my work with that of other women. And… if the feminine energy is always there in the music, I don’t think it comes exclusively from female bodies. I hear a lot of female energy coming from male bodies as well. I’m not exactly sure… it’s a complex thing…”

Let the mysteries do their work.

Photo credit: Anna Webber

Sparks are a nice anomaly in the little story of the big pop family. Since their debut record in 1972, and more particularly their breakthrough with the now-classic Kimono My House and the 1974 masterpiece This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us, brothers Ron and Russell Mael have never ceased to surprise and reinvent themselves, from one album to the next. Slightly strange and nonconformist, always hyper-stylish, the two musicians have touched on all kinds of styles over the years, from glam-rock to electro-pop, bubblegum, baroque pop, classical music, music-hall numbers and film scores. While the duo has never had the success of Queen, with whom one could vaguely compare Sparks, their influence on popular music is enormous. From Björk to New Order, from Faith No More to The Smiths, Depeche Mode, and Franz Ferdinand (with whom the Mael brothers formed the band FFS in 2015), the Los Angeles duo is what you might call a cult band.

Now in their seventies without sounding it, the Mael brothers are back with A Steady Drip Drip Drip, a refreshing album that follows from their previous, Hippopotamus, released in 2017 – a record that catapulted the Sparks to #7 on the British charts, 40 years after their last Top 10 appearance.

Which longtime artists can still boast of being as relevant as ever after more than 50 years of music? You can count them on the fingers of one hand. One wonders then, what is it that still motivates Sparks so much? Ron Mael, the keyboard player with the perennial little moustache, didn’t answer this question, but he told us about his influences, Jacques Tati, Leos Carax, aesthetics, humour, the new Sparks and many other things.

PAN M 360: Does A Steady Drip Drip follow a bit what you did with Hippopotamus, that is, a return to shorter songs and a more pop format?

Ron Mael: In a way, yes. Stylistically and aesthetically, it isn’t a radical departure. There have been albums that we’ve done where we tried to completely sever the line from the previous album and started from zero, but we felt that we came up with something strong with Hippopotamus, that maybe we could continue from that sort of a mood or general feeling behind it. The songs don’t sound like they’re from that album, which is the idea that it’s a collection of songs done in a variety of different styles we enjoyed working in. It’s a progression from that album. You know, it’s very hard for us to judge it objectively, but we feel there is more depth and substance to this album than Hippopotamus.

PAN M 360: Who did you work with for the new album?

RM: Russell does all of the engineering. We produced all of our last six or seven albums. Russell has a studio in his house, about seven minutes from where I am, so it’s pretty easy for us to record. We worked with many great producers in the past but I think we’ve learned enough to be able to make good decisions about things, and be really merciless as far as choosing the right songs and that sort of thing. For the Hippopotamus album, we gathered a band that we felt was strong, young, and passionate, and also true to sounding like Sparks, so we had them over in the studio to play on the songs that are more rock- or pop-orientated on this new album.

PAN M 360: On some tracks, you seem to have gotten back to a sound that you had in the ’70s, with more guitars, more pop-rock sounding and less electro…

RM: Not necessarily. There’s all kind of different styles on the album. Something like “Please Don’t Fuck Up My World” [the album’s first, premonitorily titled single, released in December 2019], “One for the Ages” or “Left Out in the Cold”. Those, I wouldn’t consider particularly ‘band’ songs. There are things that are more aggressive, like “I’m Toast” and others, but the intention was never to be going back to our ’70s sound, because we just don’t do that.

PAN M 360 : To what extent do you attach importance to aesthetics or image?

RM: We kind of don’t separate music from the image and the visuals, since the very beginning. When we were starting in Los Angeles, the L.A. bands in general were only into the music, and if you had any kind of visual sense at all, you were seen as detracting from the music. So we felt a kinship with British bands, where the visual side was something that was very important. I think that’s carried through to this day, it’s just natural for us to put a lot of emphasis on the visual and our personas as well.

PAN M 360: Is this why you’ve always had these kind of tongue-in-cheek lyrics? To counterbalance the aesthetics? To show that you guys aren’t taking yourself too seriously?

RM: There is humour, but we always try to have another side to our lyrics, a more serious side, because we don’t want to be a comedy band, so our lyrics need to have depth but yes, there is a lot of humour on the surface and if you dig deeper, there is another layer that’s either bittersweet or has some kind of other meaning.

PAN M 360 : A Steady Drip Drip Drip is your 24th record. Over the years, you’ve made a lot of different-sounding albums. What would you say are your main influences, from the early years to now?

RM: When we first started, our influences were early Who and The Kinks. British bands who were really flashy and were writing about subject matters that were very specific, like writing about tattoos and all that sort of things. But over time, we kind of don’t really feel like we’re getting that much out of other people in order to incorporate it into our music. There have been influences along the way as far as producers, like when we worked with Giorgio Moroder in the late ’70s [No. 1 In Heaven and Terminal Jive], it was with the intention of incorporating an electronic sound into what we were doing, so he was more than just an influence, he really had big responsibility for that.

PAN M 360: After some 50 years of making records, in retrospect, what would you say you are the most proud of?

RM: Just maintaining a level of quality for that long is very difficult, because at a certain point, you can kind of say, “I’ve done all I can and now I just wanna relax and do an easy album that’s kind of looking backwards”. Thinking retrospectively, we’ve never done that, we’ve always been pushing. So from our perspective, the thing of having many albums that we think are of really high quality, and also moving things forward in one way or another, that’s something that we are especially proud of. And we’re also proud that there are people that have been following Sparks from the very beginning, and that there are new people coming in.

PAN M 360: Do you have any regrets?

RM: Not for something that we did, but rather things that did not happen. We were working for a short time in the mid-’70s with the French director Jacques Tati, but that film unfortunately never came to pass, just because of health issues and money issues to get that film made. So in that sense, yes, we really regret that that couldn’t happen. It was a film called Confusion and we met with him several times in Paris. He had this idea of a small French TV station and that we were brought in as experts from America to help solve their problems, all in a Tati kind of way. We were huge fans of his. At least we were offered the opportunity to work with him for a short time, and just to see how amazing he was, just like the Hulot character in real life.

PAN M 360: You have a strong penchant for theater and movies. You directed the radio musical The Seduction of Ingmar Bergman in 2009 and also presented it on stage in 2011, and you recently worked on another film project.

RM: Yes, a movie musical directed by Leos Carax that was finished being shot towards the end of last year. We shot mostly in Brussels and a little bit in Germany and Los Angeles. Leos Carax finished editing the film in time for it to be premiered at the Cannes film fest, but unfortunately that’s not happening, so whenever the next festival is occuring, it will be shown there. Maybe at the end of August, there’s the Venice film festival and the Toronto one in early September. But no one really knows what is gonna happen. It’s a project that we came up with about eight years ago. We never really intended it to be a movie, but rather a live show and maybe a Sparks album, but we went to the Cannes film fest around that time just to try to sell that an additional project we were working on. We were introduced to Leos Carax, who had used a song of ours in his movie Holy Motors, so we talked with him for a while and, once back in L.A., we thought that we should send him this other idea we had to see what he thinks… and he told us he wanted to direct it! But it took eight years for everything to come together, as far as financing and finding actors. So its starring Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard.

We’re hoping we can play Montreal at some point
because it’s been way too long.

PAN M 360: You do all the music for this film?

RM: Yeah. The story is something we came up, with and most of the music is close to what it was eight years ago. It’s just that Leos Carax wanted to have some of his personality in the thing, so there are additional pieces of music that we wrote and other things that were slightly altered, but in general it’s quite close to our original idea. Ninety-five percent of this film is songs. And both actors do such an incredible job. It’s just a thrill for us to be able to hear things that we wrote and have actors of that quality doing performances on that music.

The movie is called Annette. It’s basically about a shock comedian that Adam Driver plays. He’s really abrasive and kind of abusive to the audience, but also really popular, and he has an affair with an opera singer played by Marion Cotillard. So it’s kind of an unlikely pairing of the two. Then they have a child, and that child has some special talents, which the film is about. His career is taking a nose-dive while hers is skyrocketing, and the conflicts between the two set off a lot of fireworks. I cannot reveal more.

Photo credit: Béatrice Vézina-Bouchard

“Since 2015,” he begins, “I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Gaspésie, but I have been there full-time for the past two years. I lived there in a yurt until 2018 and then I bought a house in the area of Maria, at the foot of the mountains. I had a girlfriend at first, then we split up, I ‘hermit’. I won’t always live alone, but I needed that quiet.”

Chocolat, the band that once introduced the singer to the world, and which has returned to the forefront in recent years to the delight of its fans, is on an indefinite break.

“It’s a group effort! Decision making and all that,” sighs the singer. “When my father passed away, we were in the studio doing Jazz engagé, I was between Gaspésie and Montreal at the time. At the end of the sessions, I felt that I might not be able to continue. But we went on tour in France anyway and… at the end of it all, I didn’t feel like doing any more shows, I didn’t feel like doing anything at all. I’d had some creative years with the return of Chocolat and three more albums. I’d squeezed that lemon dry.”

The death of his father was a turning point.

“It’s always a time for great reflections on life, for introspection. My father and I didn’t see each other physically very often, but we were very connected. Sometimes I didn’t see him for several months, I rarely saw him towards the end, once a year. Since he died, I realize we had a lot in common. He had really influenced me, much more than I thought.”

After death, life: Jimmy Hunt conceived Le silence in his Gaspesian solitude. The project of long-form writing finally turned into that of writing concisely.

“I thought I’d decorate my preferred texts, but in the end, I liked them that way. Things can happen when you read such lyrics, the imagination can work more. In the beginning, the music was ambient around the lyrics, rather shapeless. It was interesting but too flimsy. I chose chords and melodic lines while keeping the lyrics super simple.”

Apart from Hunt’s voluntary simplicity, the minimalism he chose was appropriate at the time.

“We’re bombarded with information, an overflow of pitches. It feels good to have a little space created by a minimalist statement. I talked to the people from Dare to Care about the short duration of the record. Add a bit of filler to get to 40 minutes and a bit? Uh… no. It’s the result that counts, which is a good thing in itself. It’s a good time for creation in that sense, there’s room for all formats.”

Hunt walks us through his new record, song by song:

“Étoiles”

“I’m still planning to write and I’m going to end up doing a songbook. Obviously, I have several fragments of a longer format on my computer. Like this: one evening, I was coming back from a neighbour’s house and I thought that my literary work wasn’t making sense. The sky was starry at the time, I had a panorama of beauty in front of me while I was living this doubt, this creative malaise. I finally came up with this text about doubt in creation. Aesthetically, it creates a beautiful image, I think.”

“Les gens qui m’aiment”

“Being publicly recognized can turn into a form of narcissism, that’s what I’m talking about in this song. Towards the end, the lyrics become darker, the narrator becomes the the holy light of the people who love him. In real life, I’m not a superstar, these lyrics are ironically pompous, exaggerated. With the music, however, the text becomes more touching, more sensitive.”

“Recommencer”

“Doing my life over, wanting to start over, that’s a typical midlife crisis reflection. The text is somewhat ironic when the narrator wants to become a virgin again and fall in love with a writer. Since he can’t be one, he might admire one. I didn’t add anything to the original text of this song because I would probably have weakened it.”

“Vieux amis”

“I was taught about the microbial phenomenon in science shows. These organisms are found in our intestines and have existed for millions of years. Microbiota cause us to exchange microbes with other humans, they influence our behaviour. They encourage us to socialize and share, which is something we avoid at present. Microbiota don’t like the pandemic! In short, our intestines steer us; we are less in control of the boat than we might think! So, I brought the subject back to the context of isolation and solitude, and to the questioning of my own identity and control over my life. »

“L’arbre”

“I wrote this erotic text, I reworked it into song form. It’s a kind of forest myth (laughs).”

“La chute”

“This waterfall exists, it’s on my land. In winter, it is covered with turquoise ice, the water flowing underneath produces beautiful sounds. I think it’s wonderful that it’s been happening like this for a very long time, usually without a spectator.”

“Ambulance”

“My father died alone in his cabin. A neighbour found him, my brothers and I arrived when he was at the morgue. I was shocked that strangers brought his lifeless body back in an ambulance and put it in a drawer (which is quite normal).”

“Mental”

“It’s a love separation song. Someone was writing my bio for the album and thought I was still talking about my father… you can see it that way, I’d rather leave it open. It’s also about mental illness; everyone has their own problems, there are moments of peace when you reach equilibrium and then you get caught up. We’re only safe from our ills for a short time.”

“La décroissance”

“There are these social movements that question consumption and capitalism, which I’m putting here in perspective with my own distancing. The ultimate goal is to take a step back to find a more viable path, to be distant from others to finally get closer to them.”

“Le silence”

“Winter was beginning when I wrote this. I couldn’t wait for the snow to set in, to think about something else while the scenery changes and the whiteness appears.”

The lyrics on this album, as you can imagine, are not carried by heavily weighted music, although…

“I wanted to go for experimental sounds at first, but it was a bit too much. We recorded some pedal steel, it steered the matter towards a kind of Americana folk, while highlighting more instrumental moments, close to psychedelia, prog or space-rock à la Pink Floyd. But no musical genre manifests itself very clearly.”

What’s the bottom line, Jimmy?

“It’s not a fireworks display. It’s composed and calm, it’s a good representation of my state of mind, where I was during its conception.”

PAN M 360: The album was written and recorded before the passing of important people in your life. Mike, it was your wife, and Rob, it was your dad. How does it feel to promote it?

Mike Di Salvo: What’s past is past. You know, personally speaking, I live in every day. It’s in the past, so when I listen to that record, it’s a record that speaks to me of perseverance and strength. We were one unit that put this album out together, even through all that craziness that was happening. It’s an album that I can listen to and feel quite good about, actually.

Rob Milley: I can never be in Mike’s shoes and he’s not in my shoes, but, basically, the album is like a moment in time for all of our lives, and unfortunately, some sad events happened. Now that the album is out – and I only speak for myself – but it’s kind of putting a finality to whatever I was feeling through the making of it. I definitely feel good, now that the album is out. That, in a way, I can move on?

PAN M 360: If we say that an album captures a moment in time, do you feel that Come Forth to Me is still prevailing because you began working on it in 2012 and we are now 2020?

MD: The album is still fresh to me, even though we started this up in 2012. I think it’s sort of a testament of my belief in the record and the songs. When I listen to it, there’s not a moment where I want to fast-forward through it. The record was built through a bonding, you know. We wrote this album collectively, even though Rob and I had some ideas before we brought the other two in [bassist Oli Pinard and drummer Tommy McKinnon], but ultimately, this is a real testament of four people putting together an album that in the end I still feel is very, very fresh.

PAN M 360: Did you have a goal when you started working together?

RM: It was basically just me and Mike. We just wanted to get together for the pure goal of creating music. Just the creativity, not to make a name for ourselves or anything like that. It was just to create music together because we’ve been friends for a long time and were also jamming prior to that. It was just pure creativity, right, Mike?

MD: Yeah, it was for the love of music. Rob would come in with songs pretty much already seasoned out. And then, I had some words. We crafted the two together and then it just spun out to where we are now.

PAN M 360: Did you want to explore a specific style of music together, or just go with the flow?

MD: Everything that you hear on the record was by design. We didn’t want something that was gonna be cookie-cutter, everything just sort of 1-2-3-4. We did want something that was gonna be technically sound, but also progressive in ways that could expand the sound and head in different directions. These songs were written for us. So that’s the starting point. We wanted to expand on the sound and bring people into another territory that perhaps they wouldn’t be expecting. I think that we achieved what we were looking for.

RM: We spent about four to five years, taking our time, like Mike was saying. We were doing it for ourselves. There was no deadline, where we had to have something finished and then maybe have regrets after. We took as much time as we thought we needed and that’s why we’re saying that we are very, very satisfied.

PAN M 360: You could have worked another five years.

MD: That’s true! (laughs)

PAN M 360: So who told you to stop?

RM: We could have, but I mean, we also realized that we felt like it was nearing the completion. We can tell these songs are now complete. You asked about our goals, and one of our main goals was to record this album with all the musicians together in one room. Kind of old-school, like they used to. So that when we listen to the album, we can actually feel the human energy. I don’t want to sound mystical but you can feel it’s humans playing this. Not like nowadays, everybody recording everything on a computer where everything is separated and it’s very robotic.

PAN M 360: My favourite song on the album is “Souvenir Gardens”. This is your cinematic song.

MD: I think that’s largely thanks to Luc Lemay’s talent and generosity. We had been speaking with Luc, because we are obviously big fans of his. He was also very motivated and interested in doing something for us. When we heard the results of what he sent us, we were blown away! Basically, we were not expecting what we heard, in a good way. It is very cinematic in a way, and it complements perfectly the rest of the songs, once it gets into the heaviness. It’s a perfect combination to have that.

PAN M 360: The first songs on the album reflect what I was expecting from Akurion. Then come “Souvenir Gardens”, that show us that Akurion is more than that.

MD: We did want that, for sure. We did want people to have a journey with this album. We wanted to have an experience that was going to hopefully bring something new to the table. Then again, when we were putting this album together we weren’t thinking about what people were gonna think. It was really if we’re listening to this, we want to have this soundscape, this projecting kind of album that brings you in different directions at every turn. Then, of course, once everything is realized, then you can start to sort of say, well, hopefully people fall on the same sort of path that we’ve been on.

Earthquake danger zone

We’re hoping we can play Montreal at some point because it’s been way too long.

We’re hoping we can play Montreal at some point
because it’s been way too long.