Interviews

JOYFULTALK is a multi-medium jazz extravaganza from the mind of Nova Scotian polymath Jay Crocker. The project involves massive visual installations, a staggering variety of live and recorded musicians, and sounds that you’d be hardpressed to find elsewhere. Just a month after the release of his newest work, an LP entitled Familiar Science, he’s starting his long journey across Canada to show off this batch of tunes. Starting in Ottawa tonight, he’ll be heading west, all the way to Vancouver, hitting up Suoni per il Popolo on June 14 before, and finishing with the Sweltering Songs Festival in Fredericton, NB on July 15th. As he begins his current tour, I got to chat with Crocker about his life, influences, cross-Canada move, new album, and much more.

PAN M 360: When I listen to Familiar Science, I heard a lot of varying but often pretty clear influences as to where your sounds may be coming from. What would you say are your personal influences that showed up on this album?

Jay Crocker: At the time, I hadn’t really explored the world of ’80s jazz before – some of the more outlier stuff. A good place to start for me was some of Ornette Coleman’s stuff from the later ’70s and early ’80s. I was listening to a lot of Steve Coleman, and lots of ECM (Records) stuff. Yeah know, lots of funny ’80s stuff. I think sometimes it gets a bad rap because of how it sounds – the production of it. It’s kind of an overlooked period of jazz.

PAN M 360: I heard some Chick Corea in there, maybe some John Zorn – some fusiony stuff.

Jay Crocker: Yeah, yeah, totally, definitely. The way we’re playing it live is getting into some pretty heavy fusion territory, which I’m totally fine with. It’s pretty fun and it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a while.

PAN M 360: The project that is JOYFULTALK would be pretty hard to narrow down to any particular genre. If you were to describe what kind of music you play to someone before they heard it, what would you say?

Jay Crocker: I would say that it’s jazz. I was trying to make a free jazz record but through my own lens and my own experiences. I think that constant exploration is more important than trying to stick to some form. I studied jazz and I was pretty heavy into the improvised music scene in Calgary before I left for Nova Scotia 11 years ago. When I moved out here, I moved to the country, so it was isolating. The last 7 years of my career have been a product of that isolation.

PAN M 360: Would you say that isolation is deliberate or at least self-imposed?

Jay Crocker: When (my family and I) moved out here, we wanted to have a house, and that wasn’t possible in Calgary. My partner and I needed a change. In Calgary I was playing with different musicians all the time, and after I moved I felt like I was really able to find myself and who I was in music. I was able to distill it down a bit more.

PAN M 360: The new album has a lot of sax and a variety of string instruments. Which ones did you play?

Jay Crocker: The sax playing on “Particle Riot” and “Hagiography” are samples from recordings I made about 15 years ago of a large ensemble I had. The player was a friend of mine who passed away. I got a few samples out of that. The other sax parts are done by a person out here who got me back into playing jazz. Her name is Nicola Miller. She played the alto and flute on this record.

PAN M 360: One of the songs has a long guitar lead, is that you?

Jay Crocker: Yeah, that’s me [laughs]

PAN M 360: So will the sax parts be played via samples when this is performed live?

Jay Crocker: Actually, this time I want to try to play the tunes, not the production if that makes sense. In Ottawa, I’ll have a sax player; in Montreal, I’ll have a violinist who will sit in for a few tunes. I want different musicians to be able to flow in and out of it. It’s a pretty jazz approach as far as the live stuff goes.


PAN M 360: Will the string quartet ever make another appearance with you live?

Jay Crocker: Before the pandemic, I had a whole tour planned with a string section in each city. It never happened but it will at some point.

PAN M 360: What is the primary synth that you use live?

Jay Crocker: It’s a modular synth, so I’m actually playing guitar and controlling the synthesizer with my guitar. Very Metheny, but maybe a little more stoned-out, a little more of a stoner rock vibe to it. With the modular, I can control the pitch and speed of my guitar, depending on what register I’m playing. So the higher I play on the guitar, the faster the tape (playback) is.

PAN M 360: Your new music video “Familiar Science” has some choreography. Was this your doing?

Jay Crocker: I had a friend come over and she did some improvised dancing while wearing a morph suit. I rotoscoped it all, took pieces, and looped it to create the choreography. Same kind of idea behind how the music is made: a physical interaction and then a digital manipulation, or sometimes vice versa.

PAN M 360: The name “Familiar Science” – what does it mean to you?

Jay Crocker: The idea is getting back to what is familiar to me. That’s why I reached out to a few of my old colleagues in Calgary, fellow improvisers that I came up with. Also, diving back into playing guitar and practicing a lot.

PAN M 360: What is a graphic score?

Jay Crocker: It can be whatever you want to use to create a different interpretation of what the music could be. The scoring system I use is something I developed called The Planetary Music System. It’s an elliptical system based on gearsets. The easiest example is probably like a 2:1 ratio. where one part is being played twice as long as the other. Imagine a circle where the diameter is 150cm. This could be a phrase of 150 quarter notes.

PAN M 360: I, therefore, have to ask, are you a fan of Steve Reich?

Jay Crocker: [laughs] Yeah, that kind of phased sound for sure. Harmony can build in different ways as the piece progresses, and it can even reach a point of no beginning and no end.

PAN M 360: Where in Nova Scotia do you live?

Jay Crocker: On the south shore. An hour and 15 minutes southwest of Halifax.

PAN M 360: How would you say Alberta compares to Nova Scotia?

Jay Crocker: [Audible cringe] There’s no comparison. I’m glad to be here, that’s for sure. [laughs] It’s really beautiful here. I’m close to the ocean, and at certain times of the year, especially around this time until late September, it’s kind of a paradise. When we moved out here, I was able to really find myself as an artist. I definitely would have come to a different place had I stayed in Alberta.

Kee Avil dropped her debut LP on Constellation, Crease, back in March, and it’s still melting and contorting minds in the experimental scene. At times, Crease feels like nails on a chalkboard or diving in a pool of alabaster paint. It feels like tiny microscopic lacerations on the mind as Vicky Mettler, quietly takes you on her darkened, obscure journey with buzzing electronics, frenetic guitar, and intimate vocals. It’s an album where you pick up different sonic parts with every listen and it’s unexplainable, sometimes sounding like Frank Zappa’s ambient phase or Bjork binging on methadone.

Kee Avil is playing Suoni per il Popolo alongside the psychedelic backdrop of Myrian Bleau’s moving painting visuals on June 17 at La Sala Rossa.

We spoke with Vicky as she was on tour across the pond about creating Crease, her affinity for creepy imagery, and always evolving her sound, even after the album is out.

PAN M 360: Hi Vicky. How is the tour going so far? You’re in the UK right now?

Vicky Mettler: It’s really good actually. I feel like I didn’t know what to expect. And we were present pleasantly surprised. It’s it feels like it depends on city by city, But definitely, some cities were really interested in the show. We’re doing a bunch of shows with Suuns and then Vienna, Prague and Brussels, and Antwerp and then back home.

PAN M 360: I know lots of these songs on Crease were kind of built from experimental guitar sessions and then recorded and put together within the album. But what about live? Is it pretty like close to the album? Or is there still some kind of like improv or experimentation?

Vicky Mettler: I’m touring solo right now but in Montreal, I usually play with Sam Gougoux on drums, the electronic drums. We built a setup that is like half electronic, using a bunch of sounds from the album. And also he uses a snare, like an acoustic snare, that he runs through pedals. It’s much more reactive, in a way. So it’s like half acoustic, half electronic. And it still like maintains the sound of the album, but I think we’d bring it it pushes it a bit which is cool for live. It’s all pretty close to the album, but now we’re building the sets with transitions and to like kind of build it as a performance of itself. So you know, it’s a work in progress all the time. The idea is to present something a bit different, but that keeps the sounds you know, of the album, so I’m not exactly sure how to do that, but I’m trying things.

PAN M 360: That kind of goes with the whole heart of it too. Like the songwriting on the album was just trying things and building songs over some of the weird sounds?

Vicky Mettler: Yeah, totally. But it’s not necessarily like improvisation, but it’s like … there’s a bit of it … but it’s more like how do you how to present it? How do you make it stronger, basically interesting to watch? And to listen to that in a different context, like a live context. It’s not the same kind of listening at home.

PAN M 360: Your vocal style on Crease, that kind of sinister whisper, always seems to physically pull me in towards the screen when I’m listening on headphones. Where did that approach come from?

Vicky Mettler: Yeah, I guess it wasn’t very intentional. I mean, we did work a lot on the vocals, but it also comes to the fact that I’m not a singer … like I’m not a trained singer. So I don’t sing loud in general. But I was trying to find a way to make it intimate, you know? Like it’s sung very, very quietly, but they’re produced loudly, in a way. And that’s, it’s kind of also what we’re trying to do I have to keep that set that sound live.

PAN M 360: And there’s a rhythm to the lyrics too. Like in “See, my shadow,” and “saf,” for example, the vocals play off the drums to give this uneasy feeling. We’re they written like that or kind of edited more in post-production?

See, my shadow by Kee Avil


Vicky Mettler: Yeah I kind of make demos with vocals and guitar and they are usually written like that. But we did work sometimes to make them very rhythmic as you say. Very staccato, to enhance that atmosphere.

PAN M 360: And are the lyrics stream of consciousness or is there a core theme you play off for each song?

Vicky Mettler: Usually it is very stream of consciousness, yes, but I try to present an idea or theme in an abstract way. It often starts that way. I guess it’s finding imagery and whatever, trying to find interesting words and also what words fit rhythmically. There’s no main theme on the album. It’s more each song is its own thing.

PAN M 360: And I suppose the listener can derive their own meanings song by song if they wish.

Vicky Mettler: Yes of course. It’s very abstract, like the music and sometimes it’s just because the words sound cool. I feel sometimes people miss-hear the exact words too which is interesting. I would be surprised if people actually sang along.

PAN M 360: The visual side of the music videos is also a huge part of Kee Avil. And you produce and come up with the concepts for quite a few yourself? Is that also lots of experimentation?

Vicky Mettler: Yes so for the visualizers I’ve been working with Myriam Bleau and she has her own experimental style and techniques. It’s kind of like moving paintings and some will be projected live for the shows. And then there is the “See, my shadow,” which is more of a music video. That was inspired by the artwork really and finding a way to use that mask again.

Drying by Kee Avil



PAN M 360: Yes and that mask is of your face right?

Vicky Mettler: Yeah exactly. I knew about the artist Ariane Paradis, and that is her technique. The silk paper printing and she did a series of the royal family and stuff like that. I saw it a year ago and thought it was pretty amazing. I got an idea to do it with my own face for the artwork.

PAN M 360: And in the music video you are taking pieces of the mask off … it’s quite creepy.

Vicky Mettler: Yes for the album artwork I was trying to avoid the creepiness. The biggest tendency for masks like that is to go for the creepy, horror aesthetic. The album cover could have been very horrific, but with “See, my shadow,” we just went for it. It’s a very creepy song so it made sense. The music has its own atmosphere and that one is definitely the most creepy.

PAN M 360: I feel like your music could work really well pairing with some sort of art installation or something.

Vicky Mettler: I’m actually starting to work on an installation idea. I don’t know if it will be in Montreal. It’s very early stages and researching what could kind of be done. It’s just brainstorming right now. I’ve never done anything like this before so I have to take time and do it well. I really need to start writing more music too, but after the album was released I felt like I had to do other stuff you know? I think I needed to play it live and I like to finish the process a little bit. Because before it’s played live, it’s not, I don’t know, I feel it doesn’t feel finished. It still doesn’t, I know it’s not finished, but it’s still gonna always evolve.

The 2022 edition of the Concours musical international de Montréal features a prestigious international jury of world-renowned singers, administrators and voice teachers. Chaired by former Montreal Symphony Orchestra General Director Zarin Mehta, the jury includes British baritone Thomas Allen, former Juilliard Voice Director Edith Bers, Dutch bass-baritone Robert Holl, German accompanist Hartmut Höll, Lanaudière Festival Artistic Director Renaud Loranger, former Metropolitan Opera Artistic Director Richard Rodzinski, and German soprano Christine Schäfer.

Sir Thomas Allen is an English baritone. He is considered as one of the best lyric baritones of the late 20th century. In October 2011, he was appointed Chancellor of Durham University, succeeding Bill Bryson. We understand that his expertise as a juror is highly recommended and then this interview will bring us interesting informations.


PAN M 360 : What motivates you being part of this jury in Montréal?

SIR THOMAS ALLEN : The need to help maintain the flow of serious singers. The pandemic has u doubted.y taken its toll and I feel this as part of a long rebuilding process.

PAN M 360  : How have you been selected?

SIR THOMAS ALLEN: Always a mystery , but I was here some years ago and after 50+ years in the music business , perhaps someone remembered me.

PAN M 360 : What is your perception of Montreal classical music family and Montreal Intarnational Music Competition?

SIR THOMAS ALLEN: We haven’t yet begun so I shall know better in 10 days ……but its reputation has always been high.

PAN M 360: How do you consider this competition among the international classical major music competitions?

SIR THOMAS ALLEN: My memory of it is that it was very well organised and standards were high . It attracts the right singers and musicians because it is a very good showcase for them.I’m not familiar with so many other competitions but I imagine it is highly ranked.

PAN M 360 : Are those international competitions the front doors for an international career? Are the essential?

SIR THOMAS ALLEN: There is no guarantee . Some artists do not do well in competitions and auditions but it doesn’t stop them from being fine performers when it comes to lengthy rehearsal and performance.There are those who thrive on competition but then disappoint when it matters .

PAN M 360 : Each member of a jury has a specific sensibility regarding the candidates, what is yours?

SIR THOMAS ALLEN: Nature decrees that once in a while a Callas, a Sutherland or a Pavarotti emerges. For the rest of the time I’m looking to see and hear someone who can obviously sing but shows me that there is also a vital creative spark in them .

I’m not bothered about an occasional squeak if I think an artist is fully involved in what they are doing.

PAN M 360 : What are the objective criterias of your eventual choices ?

SIR THOMAS ALLEN: Primarily, the sound, as this is an aural experience .

PAN M 360 : What are the subjective criterias that could make a difference between candidates of same value?

SIR THOMAS ALLEN: It goes back to who can best convince me that they understand that as well as vocal technique we are dealing with literature, and the real secret is to interpret what the poet or librettist has set us for examination, and then to realise that singing is a melange of word and musical line.

PAN M 360 : Are there some cultural differences in the singing aesthetic that could divide the jury?

SIR THOMAS ALLEN: There may be , but to say yes , would presuppose what May not there, and singers are not as easy to define as actors since they are a combination of voice , leaning towards being an actor , or indeed having little or no interest in that aspect of their work .Fo r them it is an entirely vocal experience.

PAN M 360 : Do you plan other activities in MTL during this process?

SIR THOMAS ALLEN: I just go from day to day and see what it brings.

Story was originally published in March 2022. Thus Owls plays Suoni Per il Popolo on June 4, 8:30 pm – 11:00 pm / Doors: 8:00 pm at La Sala Rossa, 4848 Boul. Saint-Laurent, Montréal, QC, Canada

Montreal’s highly praised Thus Owls officially released the material for their fifth studio album a few weeks ago. The first concert was scheduled last Thursday, but was postponed because some members caught the variant BA.2. No matter what happened with the virus, here is the interview!

Who Would Hold You If The Sky Betrayed Us is a collaborative project involving three saxophonists: Jason Sharp, Adam Kinner and Claire Devlin join the trio of Erika and Simon Angell and drummer Samuel Joly.

The Angell couple in question on PAN M 360 is one of several highlights of this new project.

PAN M 360: This album is kind of a normal follow-up, but this one is more collaborative. Can you tell me the context of this approach?

SIMON ANGELL: I think all of our albums have been collaborative in some way, to some degree.  We like to try to change each time, changing personnel, instrumentation, textures.  We’ve always strived for that, and this time we’re leaning more towards our roots as improvisers. In this sense, you want to give your collaborators all the latitude to be themselves, to bring their voice and their expression to our music. 

And to do that, you have to make sure that you’re dealing with people that you get along with, that you like, that you communicate well with, musically and in life. And so yes, in that context, the idea came to me to do some arrangements for the saxophone, thinking of Jason, obviously, at first, and then Adam and Claire, who are part of a new generation and creating new sounds.

PAN M 360: We know your high standards. You don’t compromise in creation and you always collaborate with excellent musicians.  

SIMON ANGELL: Yes, we always try. For this project, we started a little bit like we always start, which is to go our separate ways first to refine our ideas and then share them with each other, not necessarily together in the same room.  In February 2020, our plan was to be at home and compose, you know, in March, April, May. Anyway, We had to take a break from touring and stay home, and we could focus on that. We put together some arrangements, and then we decided what to do with saxophones, so we got in touch with the musicians. In that respect, I feel like luck was really on our side these last two years. We started, not by rehearsing, but by having conversations, zoom meetings, talking about all kinds of things, not only music, getting to know each other, discussing art, philosophy, life.  Yes, it’s a good source of inspiration, even if it doesn’t necessarily translate into music.

PAN M 360: Yes, it’s also food for creation.

SIMON ANGELL: Exactly. And it connects people. So we created arrangements for the saxophones, but we left a lot of space in those arrangements for the musicians to interpret them in their own way and also to improvise, to try new things. When we were allowed to go into rehearsal, fortunately it worked out.  We were well prepared, I think, but we always try to leave room for improvisation in the recording process. So, on stage, every subsequent performance of these recordings can be different.

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about improvised music, in a context where jazz, the form par excellence of improvised music, is not as popular as it once was. What does improv have to do with Thus Owls? 

SIMON ANGELL: Yes, it’s true that jazz doesn’t have the same impact. But we try to maintain the spirit of it in our own way because it’s the form that many of us have studied. Samuel Joly and Jason Sharp are great jazz musicians, for example.

PAN M 360: How do you see this new cycle in relation to the previous ones?

SIMON ANGELL: The fifth album, you know, is a long, hard road, a real challenge to stay true to our instincts, our beliefs, our idea of the creative process. But if you persist over time, you give yourself a chance to succeed. In this sense, we are happy with the position we have reached, with the choices we have made. We are happy where we are.

PAN M 360: You also have an almost ideal configuration: you are a couple, you have started a family, you are creative partners. 

SIMON ANGELL: Absolutely. You’re always with the same person, that can be difficult too. And it’s a lot of work for us to do everything to stay independent in our projects.

PAN M 360: Let’s talk about the song and the lyrics. It’s about isolation, about questioning one’s identity. Erika, you’re Swedish and you’ve had to go through a lot as a result, haven’t you?

ERIKA ANGELL: You know, this questioning had already started in my personal life before the pandemic. I’m an immigrant here…after five or six years here, I realized what it did to a person, what it really meant to change culture and territory. There are a lot of these reflections in that title. When you’re ripped out of your own context, and what you learn from that, the good and the bad, the challenges that come with it, with the pandemic on top of that, then it was very obvious that I couldn’t go home, reconnect with the Swedes. I was more isolated than ever, when a normal context was already difficult.  So the general theme of the recording is belonging or what it means to belong, or how we think about it through another cultural lens that I don’t always understand personally. Several reflections, exchanges, conversations finally allowed me to express it in the texts of this album.

PAN M 360: How does this is translated into the poetic text?  

ERIKA ANGELL: When I write, I write everything in a big messy book, and then I pick and choose and organize the text. Well, I gather words that speak to that belonging, through a relationship, through my 6 year old daughter and my duty as a mother who has to be away, about my relationships scattered across two continents or around the world.  I also wrote this during the Black Lives Matter events. I was wondering how to support the cause, how to choose the right way, and how to have the right knowledge to support it properly. It was another way of showing that misunderstandings are common when we try to connect or communicate, and that maybe we need to question ourselves more in order to be in communication and connect with each other. That’s the conversation I talk about throughout the album.

PAN M 360: And the title, Who Would Hold You If The Sky Betrayed Us, perfectly sums up the state of mind. It’s also a gateway to this world that is not just songs, but poetry set to music.

ERIKA ANGELL: I feel like our pieces have always had this structure, they’re parts that follow one another. But I think the lyrics and the way I sing the text may have changed more. But I still like to sing the earlier ones because they are so free. I can still play with those forms and I get a new energy from them every time I perform them. So I wanted to keep that same energy for the composition of the new material, because it makes the live performance much more lively. 

PAN M 360: How do you work with text through the creative process?

ERIKA ANGELL: I bring several texts to rehearsals. I sing them, sometimes with a melody, and sometimes I recite them, I do a bit of both. I never write lyrics after a melody, I always write the melody for the text.  Because the text comes first. And then I write, I write music and on demand, and I use my lyrics randomly. And they kind of find their way into the material. So yeah, it’s not exactly conservative or orthodox, this writing is an enterprise of my own. I’m trying to find the best relationship between the words and the melody. I also need to be able to say it from my heart. And to do that, any melody that comes, any tension in my expression can be the right one.

PAN M 360: There’s a lot of literature/poetic songs and a lot of music. It’s not totally a song, that’s what’s very, very good… and it also explains why it takes longer for some people to embrace your personal style. But it doesn’t matter, because time will tell that you were right all along.


ERIKA ANGELL: Simon and I make music, it’s for our own well-being but that music has to land somewhere, it has to speak to someone. It’s also about communication in the world. But for me, it’s all about writing the music that I like to listen to. And I’m intrigued by the evolution of texturally rich material that you fall in love with over time. I need to be challenged.

Frog Eyes, a fiery and beloved indie rock band from Vancouver, had their first release 20 years ago with The Bloody Hand, and in 2018, after the release of their eighth album, Violet Psalms, they called it quits. Two years later, original members Carey Mercer and his partner, drummer Melissa Campbell came back with another project called Soft Plastics but had to fold again due to a band in New Zealand just beating them to the punch for the name. So after dissolving two bands, they went back to the studio again with past collaborator Shyla Seller and created what would eventually be called The Bees, a new record from Frog Eyes that dropped at the end of April. The record started off in the same electro-acoustic vein as Soft Plastics, but they ended up somewhat going back to basics and making the record as they would as Frog Eyes.

“When we started making this record we didn’t have the intention of reforming as Frog Eyes, we were just making a record,” Mercer says. “It was like every cell in our bodies was saying ‘Go this way, go this Frog Eyes way’ with these songs. So we shrugged our shoulders and thought ‘You are who you are.'” And so now we have The Bees, a classic Frog Eyes album in many ways, with Mercer’s untethered vocal approach, indie rock hooks, and general weirdness, but also a new refreshing take on a band that should be as big as a band like Arcade Fire.

We spoke with Mercer on this new iteration of Frog Eyes, the legacy of the band, and some of his inspirations for the lyrical content in The Bees.

PAN M 360: So how did this new album inspire the comeback for Frog Eyes?

Carey Mercer: We started off with a very similar kind of Soft Plastics template, which would be an acoustic-electric hybrid. So you start with the electronic drums, which puts everything in a very structured grid, and then you add a bunch of things, including the acoustic drums, and you end up with this pretty interesting tension between the two. When it came time to learn the songs, Melanie and I just started playing them the way that Frog Eyes played them, which is just here’s the song and they’ll be great the drum beat.

PAN M 360: So kind of back to basics a bit?

Carey Mercer: Yeah. So we ditched the grid which was very, very freeing, to be honest. Not that I’m not reactionary. I don’t hate music that’s made on the computer. Of course, so much good music is made within you know, a structured tempo, using an electronic template. But for us, it really did feel like an important part of our … the language that we speak is being able to kind of move in and out of time together to create that sense of the flow of speeding up or slowing down. But yeah at the end we laughed and said ‘This sounds exactly like Frog Eyes.’

PAN M 360: So why not bring back the old band name I guess?

Carey Mercer: We just kind of shrugged her shoulders and thought, well, ‘You are who you are.’ You can be aspirational in other ways, I think it’s good to have a little bit of aspiration for each record, and kind of a little bit of acknowledgment of the past, but your art is still you, right? So, there’s various, you know, when you make a bunch of records, you can kind of see the 30% You and 70% aspiration, or if it’s 70% You and 30% aspiration. Each record has its own balance in that sense, I suppose. So at some point, we realized we were good at creating this controlled chaos of Frog Eyes and that it’s pretty dope. And we haven’t always felt like that. We’ve felt discouraged by looking at the financial success of our peers and been like ‘Oh we never achieved that,’ and thought ’cause were just not as good.’

PAN M 360: I don’t know I would say on the Canadian indie rock landscape, you have the talents to be as big as a band like say, Arcade Fire. Their music is just more mainstream for a bigger audience and Frog Eyes might be a little to weird and experimental for some people.

Carey Mercer: That’s actually a really important thing for artists, to process your own success of your project. And it depends on what filter you apply. So if you go based on what level of show hall you are playing, a 100 seater, 500, or 1000 seater. Like you can’t measure off of records anymore. So if you go off of the type of venue size, that could be a hurtful filter, because it equates to economic longevity, but it doesn’t necessarily always equate to an artist’s longevity.

PAN M 360: I think that at a certain point in a band’s lifespan maybe you make the decision to make music that is more easily accessible to a general audience or you don’t.

Carey Mercer: Even just how you make the music too. Like when I am conceiving of our sound from record to record, I suppose I do think about spaces. So I’ve kind of come to understand that actually, ours works best within, let’s say 100 to 200 person space. Kind of a small space where the instruments can sound like they actually are. So if you were close to us, when we’re on stage, you will actually hear the kick drum, for example, and you’ll be able to hear how it actually sounds, as opposed to being processed and magnified by a speaker. That’s kind of my jam, is that size venue, and I think if your setup is connecting to a kind of imagined or idealized space, it really does impact a lot of the decisions that you would make. I think that sometimes we can have a really big sound, but it’s not it’s never intended to be staged in a stadium.

PAN M 360: I wanted to ask you about your lyrics in Frog Eyes. They always seem dreamlike and sort of like short stories, but there is always something kind of off to them. They’re kind of like fever dreams to me.

Carey Mercer: Sometimes they are very specific experiences or very specific sense impressions. I mean, a lot of the songs on this record can be boiled down to telling you a story and the story makes sense. You know, if I was to say this song is about the night that my partner and I met. We met during literally the closing minutes of 80s night at this cheesy, kind of electro goth bar. As they were kicking us out she forgot her ID and then we walked home together. But I mean, if you were to read the lyrics, you wouldn’t be like, ‘Oh, that’s what that song is about.’

PAN M 360: Which song is that?

Carey Mercer: That one is “Here is a Place to Stop.” So we were walking home at 2 am and she said ‘Here is the place to Stop.’ It kind of starts for me at that moment and then it kind of goes through the early moments of our relationship because I think a lot of this record was kind of looking back at what were some important very salient memories or sense impressions that I have from my life. When I think of making songs, it’s very painterly for me. Put a blob here, a blob there, and kind of move the paint around. And that’s how I painted too. I never had an ‘I’m going to paint the sunset on the ocean,’ moment but while I was painting, I might have just experienced a powerful sunset. And that might work its way into it. And so in the same kind with song. You kind of bounce your way into the heart of the song, what should we do usually, the heart of the song has kind of one line or anti line. Sometimes I’ll put a cliche right in the middle. Because sometimes the heart of something feels like a little void.

PAN M 360: I think my favourite song on The Bees is “He’s a Lonely Song.” It’s funny you bring up painting because Frog Eyes songs do feel like little abstract paintings. They change every time you look at or hear them. So when I heard that song for the first time, I thought it was someone telling the listener God is not dead. But after hearing it a few more times, I realized it’s a father telling his son. Is this a memory of yours?

Carey Mercer: Yeah I have a very powerful memory of my dad coming into my room when I was six or seven years old, and he said ‘Can I talk to you?’ and he sat on the bed with me he tried to explain to me using you know the language of his time, the kind of impact of colonialism on his life. And he grew up in the prairies, and he used the slaughter of the buffalo as an example. It was a different time so I’m sure he didn’t use the term, anti-colonialism. But he did talk about the European impact on the place where he grew up, and the colonial impact on Indigenous peoples. And I was six years old, and I was like, Oh, my God, whatever you’re saying is so important because he had never done this before. So I was all ears and I think that conversation had a big impact on me.

PAN M 360: So it wasn’t due to a specific event or anything he just decided one day ‘I’m going to teach my son about this?’

Carey Mercer: Yeah to teach my son about the horrors of our collective history exactly. So the very common reaction to learning about this horror was, ‘Okay, well, how can we be? How can there be an overarching intelligence that views all of this and is OK with this?’ I think it’s a very understandable reaction. And I know if, you know, I don’t know if I’d said, Well does this mean that God is dead? (laughs). But I can remember, you know, growing up having definitely feelings of like weight, you know? When we first learned about the Holocaust it was like ‘Well wait, how could this happen when there’s this overarching intelligence?’ It just seems impossible. So now it’s like I’m looking at my own son and wondering when I’m going to have this conversation with him. It’s an ongoing conversation. But that song starts in a pummeling rainstorm and came about when people started using drones to murder other people in different countries. It just seemed like this whole new level of nefariousness. But that song actually came about when people started using drones to murder other people in different countries. It just seemed like this whole new level of nefarious. Now, the direct reaction to it seems … like we’re actually in a transitional moment where technology is being deployed in really horrific ways. So thinking about that led me back to how to process the horror and that led me back to being six years old and my dad seeing me as a peer.

PAN M 360: Are there any plans to tour this new album and get on the road?

Carey Mercer: It’s just the environment is too chaotic to commit to live shows outside of our region right now. This is very frustrating because our region is extremely geographically isolated. The Pacific Northwest, especially Vancouver, Vancouver feels like a big cosmopolitan city but we are actually quite trapped by the borders. You incur, like 1000s and 1000s of dollars of visa processing fees before you even get in your van. And then, of course, it’s so competitive and intense to go into the United States. And then if you’re like, ‘Okay, well, I’m just gonna stay within my country.’ And you don’t want to fly for ecological environmental reasons and I mean, you have this basically impossible wall of mountains you can only get through in the summer. And of course, now, with the wildfires, that’s also kind of intimidating. So it’s an odd time for thinking of yourself as an international musician.

PAN M 360: Not to mention an ongoing pandemic…

Carey Mercer: Of course. You could devote intense energy, intellectual energy, to booking shows elsewhere, and then it can all be canceled by someone coughing at me in the wrong direction at a supermarket. Of course, we did play one show here in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago and it was one of the best shows we’ve ever played. So it’s a great, sad irony where you’re like, ‘We’re finally there. You know, we’re positive about our live performance.’ I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.

This story was originally published in July 2021. A Place To Bury Strangers play Bar Le Ritz on June 3, 8 pm

As for so many others, 2020-2021 was a pretty tough time for A Place To Bury Strangers and its frontman Oliver Ackermann. Covid, quarantine, the band disintegrating… Many thought it was the end of the road for APTBS. Yet the noise/shoegaze band, not new to upheaval, has used this crisis to better rebound, returning with the Hologram EP and two new members on board, bassist John Fedowitz and his wife, drummer Sandra Fedowitz. 

Formed in 2002, New York’s loudest band seems intent on continuing their sonic experimentation beyond 2021, with this new incarnation intended as a return to APTBS’ rawest and most chaotic efforts.

Reached at his Queens studio, cluttered with ramshackle guitars, all sorts of machines and cables of various colours, the friendly mad scientist Oliver Ackermann talked to PAN M 360 about this new release, his Death By Audio effects-pedal lab, and his new label Dedstrange. 

PAN M 360: There have been some changes in APTBS in the last year. Dion Lunadon, bassist with the band since 2011, and drummer Lia Simone Braswell have jumped ship, and John and Sandra Fedowitz have taken over. Would you say it’s a new beginning for APTBS?

Oliver Ackermann: Yes, I would say so. I grew up playing music with John, so these two are among my best friends. Every time I hang out with John and Sandra, we just have the best time. They have this very cool band called Ceremony East Coast which is sort of a similar band to APTBS. The know what APTBS is all about. It’s like we’re going back in time with the band. It’s like a pure form of APTBS. It’s really fun and natural with them, and I’m so excited with what is coming up with this new band. You know, you always have these kind of doubts like is this really gonna work out, what will happen? I’m super pleasantly surprised with what’s going on.

PAN M 360: When did they joined the band? 

Oliver Ackermann: It happened sometime in early quarantine. It’s been I guess for a year or so. We’ve recorded a lot of new material and we’ve worked on some stuff for future tours.

PAN M 360: Who are these two? Aside from being in the band Ceremony East Coast, they’re also cooks ?

Oliver Ackermann: Yeah, yeah. I grew up in Virginia with John. We were in a band called Skywave a long time ago. He was the drummer of that band and also an incredible songwriter, and stuck around Virginia after I left for NYC. He ended being the head of some catering place, working in restaurant kitchens, and also they started their own little sandwich business. So they still play music because they’re having fun doing it, and they can afford it in a way. Having built APTBS over the years, it’s sort of a company that can support itself and that’s some sort of a luxury in a way. I do this because I love it. It’s all about passion, the music that I want to hear, and do fun things with this music. So to have that opportunity to work with that kind of people, I think you don’t get into the sorts of conflicts you can get into with musicians who are making music to be popular or to make money… So it’s cool to work with people who don’t have these weird goals. You know, you sometimes play in bands where some musicians wants to be paid more, have more money for what they do. I get it, of course we all hope to make more money on some tours, but you can’t really garantee those kinds of things. I’d rather concentrate on creating something really awesome, so it’s good when you find people that share these same kind of goals. 

PAN M 360: Is it why Dion and Lia left?

Oliver Ackermann: It’s all sorts of reasons, stuff that built up over time, some unspoken things. I had a few conflicts with Dion and things kind of turned a little bit weird, I felt kind of let down by the whole scenario. Those things happen when you’ve been hanging out with people for a long time. You become good friends with them but sometimes, mixing friendship and work is not a good idea. You always hope to have the best of times with your friends in a band forever, but sometimes the relationship turns sour…  

PAN M 360: Well, you might be getting yourself into that kind of situation with your old friend John!

Oliver Ackermann: (laughs) Yeah… You’re right… Maybe the difference is that John and I knew each other before making music, whereas Dion and I met as musicians who wanted to collaborate on a project together. So with John it is more of a natural occurrence because we’re friends, first and foremost. I don’t think Dion and I would have been friends if we hadn’t done any music together. 

PAN M 360: Tell me about Hologram. It’s your 13th EP. How was it created? 

Oliver Ackermann: Well, we got hit by the quarantine, everything was shut down here in NYC, I got the corona virus, so all of this messed up my time cycle. I was up at 3 or 4 a.m., so I dived into writing music, recording… And at Death By Audio, we would do a few days at the workspace, then it would be someone else’s turn, so I had a lot of time to build circuits, playing and recording drums every single day, and recording all sorts of different things, just experimenting with stuff. The band had just broke up, I didn’t really know what the future held. So I recorded around 80 or 90 songs that I thought were really good, and then I assembled an album with that, and then I assembled an EP with some of the leftover songs. But with the new band forming, we were playing a lot and I thought it would be best to write a couple of more songs together. It was more exciting, it was fresh and new. So it all came about as a result of what happened, everything being messed totally up, New York being messed up, me being messed up, not knowing what my life was gonna be with the band breaking up… So you can hear that on some songs of the EP, these kind of pissed-off, contentious kind of songs, mixed with some more hopeful stuff. I guess its just music to put up to such a weird freaky time.

PAN M 360: The second song of the EP, “I Might Have”, sounds strangely like “Song 2” by Blur. Was this intentional, a kind of wink?

Oliver Ackermann: No, it wasn’t at all. That kind of things happened to me before. I did stuff that sounded like something else, but you can’t help it, you know? Someone told this story when they went on a long bike ride and forgot their iPod, so they had no music for a month. But he said that it was kind of cool, because eventually your mind just plays all sorts of music anyways when you’re doing stuff. I heard that comment years ago and since then I noticed that so much. It happens all the time! I’m walking around, going to the subway and I’m hearing all sorts of crazy songs. So I’m sure we all get influenced without knowing or noticing by all sorts of stuff. So yes, it’s difficult to avoid some sorts of similarities between a song and another. We’re at that point in music where almost every song or melody have been written. So similarities are kind of hard to avoid.

PAN M 360: The album came out on Dedstrange, which is a label you recently started with a few people. Was it something you’ve been aiming to do for a while?

Oliver Ackermann: Yes, this is something I always thought about. You know, when you’re working with record labels, there are all sorts of advantages, but also all sorts of disadvantages. We just wanted total freedom, to do whatever we wanted to do no matter how stupid it could be. I grew really tired of all these norms with the record labels, many times I think they make you focus on the wrong things. Often all this stuff is about promoting yourself and all this junk or releasing your record at some particular time because its more advantageous, or having someone tell you, “Oh, I don’t know if I really like that album cover”, I didn’t want to hear that anymore… I just wanted to get rid of all that influence. It thought it would be a more pure form of expression if we sort of doing things with our own label. And then, as we were starting this, we also realized we could help out a lot of bands that we really love who are in this sort of similar situation, or aren’t really getting some of the help they should get. We got a distribution deal with Red Eye, so that has been a real big help. So I started this with these two friends of mine, Mitchell O’Sullivan who’s from Berlin and Steven Matrick who is from New York. 

PAN M 360: So far, which bands have been signed on the label?

Oliver Ackermann: So far we’ve signed Jealous and Plattenbau from Berlin, Data Animal from Auckland, Wah Together (with an ex-LCD Soundsystem and a Rapture on board), and a few others we’re about to sign.

PAN M 360: You do remixes here and there, the latest being “Death Racer” by Data Animal, retitled “Death Raver” for the occasion, but you also did the mastering of Paul Jacobs’ latest album, Pink Dogs on the Green Grass. How did that happen?

Oliver Ackermann: We played some sort of a festival or something outside of Montreal, I don’t remember exactly but that’s where I saw Paul Jacobs, and I thought, “Oh man, that band is so wicked!” So we became slight acquaintances with them. And then we played another show with them, and that was incredible too. And then Steven, who’s part of the label, started helping out Paul Jacobs, trying to put up a tour with us and them, and he told me that Paul wanted someone to do the mastering of the album, and asked me if I wanted to do it. Paul even recorded some drum tracks for me that’re gonna come up in the future, I guess as a gesture for me mastering his album. It was a cool, fun record to master. I think he is an awesomely talented musician.

PAN M 360: You also have been very busy with Death By Audio. You create pedals but also synthesizers, it seems. 

Oliver Ackermann: We haven’t really focused on that but we have built a bunch of them that we use sometimes with APTBS live, they’re synthesizers inside cases or inside guitars, they’re basic synths, you can basically do what you want with it.

PAN M 360: What is the latest pedal to come out of the Death By Audio lab?  

Oliver Ackermann: We’re designing pedals for the Levitation festival, which is pretty cool. They have a super-crazy psychedelic sound! We did that with them a few years ago too. It started out as a joke or a challenge from one of the employees. I said, “It would be so easy to make this crazy sound by putting in this filter and a delay feedback loop,” and he said, “this is going to suck.” So I just wired it up and it sounded like a sick thing! I thought, “Oh, they’re gonna love this at Levitation!” It sounds like a psychedelic dream… People need new sounds all the time, so I think it makes sense to bring that. We’ve designed a lot of effects over the course of the quarantine.

ABSOLUTE DESTRUCTION

PAN M 360: I was wondering if you were familiar with Mile-End Effects and Soratone from Montreal. Two small local businesses, one owned by a musician and the other by a soudman. They create handmade pedals like you do at Death By Audio. 

Oliver Ackermann: No, never heard of them. That looks cool, I’m gonna write those two names down and look them up for sure. I always like new crazy stuff. You know, when you build effects, you realize you can build nearly everything you dream of, and have it work any way you want, so I think there is enough room for thousands of effects makers. What is useful to us particular artists is different than what’s useful for another particular artist. I love how those two worlds come together – the music makers and the instrument makers always pushing each other to try to make something new and crazy. If you like making effects, hopefully you like making music as well. 

PAN M 360: Any short- or medium-term plans for APTBS?

Oliver Ackermann: Yeah, we have a few dates in the US, a small festival, a show in Berlin and I’m also going to be playing by myself with Yonatan Gat, who is putting together a thing with Brian Chase from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Things are falling into place little by little, but right now I’m really looking forward to playing all the crazy stuff we’ve done with the band. 

(photo : Heather Bickford)

Ideas of Space, Tess Roby’s 2nd album that came out last April, can raise questions about the singularity of art. Where does this singularity come from? How can it be explained? Undoubtedly by the course of the artist. By her/his influences, conscious or not, to a certain point. Probably by her/his training and her/his musical mentors. One of the distinctive aspects of Tess’s music and lyrics is what they evoke: soft and fuzzy worlds, old and new, daydreams and daytime floating where no fears or regrets lurk. Pan M 360 was able to ask Tess Roby a few questions about the creation of Ideas of Space, the SSURROUNDSS label she created, what sets this new album apart from Beacon, released in 2018, as well as a circle of stones located in Stanstead, in the Eastern Townships.

Pan M 360: Hello Tess! Well, you really foiled the sophomore slump with Ideas of Space. Beacon was impressive, and Ideas feels stronger, even if only because it offers two more songs! Are you equally or more satisfied with this new album?

Tess Roby: Beacon was written and recorded in 2016. So by the time it came out in 2018, I felt like it wasn’t necessarily as representative of myself as a musician as I would have liked. I still really loved the songs and believed in them. As for the new album, the most recent song was finished last year, in the spring. So it feels more representative of myself, as a producer and a musician. It was four years between the release of the two albums, and even more, if you think about when Beacon was written and recorded. So, I feel confident about Ideas of Space.

Pan M 360: Did you have your own label then, SSURROUNDSS, or is it a new thing?

Tess Roby: It is a new thing, Ideas of Space is the first album ever released by SSURROUNDSS.

Pan M 360: Now about your voice. It is pure, and it is both very real and ethereal. It seems to come from times immemorial. What particular training did you have, and how do you train your voice still?

Tess Roby: Oh, I sang with the Canadian Children’s Opera Company, from when I was eight to 16 years old. We worked on operas and we did a lot of choral and classical music, which really gave me this introduction to voice and harmonies. And it also gave me this discipline of practicing and rehearsing. So it was a very interesting thing for me to do as a young person. And we would tour in Europe and I sang in the big opera halls in Toronto, with the Canadian Opera Company. I guess I got a lot of inspiration from that. And now I don’t sing with a choir or anything. I really just sing for myself and write songs.

Pan M 360: And I guess the listener can feel all that training behind your voice. And musically, you manage to create electronic sounds that feel mostly futuristic, both also vintage somehow, on some songs. How do you balance the usage of vintage synths and state-of-the-art technology?

Tess Roby: I’m still growing as a producer. I work with new and vintage synths. I’ve written a lot of my songs around my Roland Juno 106 for Beacon. For this new record, I added new ones, like the Waldorf Blofeld synthesizer. But I write and produce in this very intuitive way. Personally, I’m not taking influence from specific artists or specific songs. I listen to a lot of music. And I do listen to some new music, but I’m really not trying to chase anyone else’s sound. I use synthesizers in a way that is very unique, to carve a sound shaped or influenced by more vintage style stuff, but also just create my own art as I go.

Pan M 360: That’s true because usually, it’s kind of easy to pinpoint influences. But in your case, it’s quite hard, if not impossible. I mean, some sequences do remind me of stuff that I’ve listened to, but again it’s really hard to pinpoint anything.

Tess Roby: For me it’s the biggest compliment because my music comes from a very honest and intuitive place. We have this tendency to–and it’s not wrong–compare artists to each other. I’m making music, making art because I have to. It’s really like not to be chasing anyone else’s sound or anything. So I hope to keep going like this.

Pan M 360: These are hard times maybe not for everyone, but for a lot of people around us. Thus your new album comes out at the right time, because it possesses soothing properties. I’d be curious to hear what a musico-neurologist would say about it. I hope the word will get around! You’ve had quite a bunch of collaborators on Ideas of Space. Austin Tufts, from the Calgary band Braids, worked on the percussion side. Joseph Shabason took care of the woodwinds and some percussions. Ouri, who is a cellist but also a producer and many other things, plays the cello in one song. And there is guitar by an Eliot Roby on “Eyes Like Babylon.” Can you tell us more about these fellow musicians?

Tess Roby: Before this record, I had never collaborated with other artists on my own music. I was introduced to Austin–who was really my main collaborator on this record–by Sebastian Cowan from Arbutus Records. The first time we met, we were actually in his studio, listening to my songs with the intention of working on some drums together. And this was before the pandemic happened. So the first time Austin and I got in the studio together was February 2020. We did maybe three days of back-to-back recording for the drums. We planned our next studio dates, but then COVID hit. Then there was just this really big break from the record, completely. I really stopped making music. I stopped thinking about the record, everything was on hold for almost an entire year.

Because of this, Austin took on this bigger role. We found ways to go into the studio together, in January 2021. And then he started engineering more of the recording. We started doing more electronic drum work. Austin eventually said, “Who is going to mix this record?” I said I didn’t know and he said “Okay, let me let me mix a song for you, and tell me what you think.” He sent me the first mix of Ideas of space. This had me in tears, it reached this completely new level. So I invited him into my whole sonic world, which is not an easy thing for me to do.

As forJoseph Shabason, we were featured on a compilation together in 2020 And I love his music so I reached out and asked him if he wanted to collaborate. So we ended up working together. On the songs that he’s featured on, I think that he brought so much life. I’ve never worked with these acoustic elements before, like Ouri’s cello. It was really cool to produce these songs in a way that I hadn’t before. As for Ouri, we knew each other. I’m in awe of her, she’s a very, very inspiring person to me.

Pan M 360: Will they be there with you on stage, for your June 2nd concert at Phi Centre?

Tess Roby: Unfortunately not. I was trying really hard to get some people in. We’re back to touring schedules, everyone’s out in the world again. But I do have my brother, who’s flying in to play. It’s gonna be an amazing show and the band shows a lot of like power onstage.

Pan M 360: I’m looking forward to it. Just one last thing: I noticed the video for the title song was shot in Stanstead. My family had a cottage in Fitch Bay, a hamlet that has been incorporated into Stanstead. I haven’t been there in a long time, I didn’t know there was a Stonehenge-like structure in Stanstead!

Tess Roby: The whole video was shot in the Eastern Townships over three days, with a very small team of close-knit friends. I found all of the locations of the Ideas of Space video on my phone with Google Maps. So when I found the stones circle, I knew it was perfect. We were in touch with the city of Stanstead and the mayor to make sure we had that shooting location. So I got really lucky!

Pan M 360: Yeah, just about an hour and a half away from Montreal! Thank you so much for this interview, Tess. And congrats again for the album. Really looking forward to the concert!

Tess Roby: I really appreciate your kind words about the record and for the opportunity for the interview. I haven’t gotten much local Montreal press, I’m very happy to have a bit before the other launch at the Phi Centre.

POP Montréal Presents Tess Roby + Thanya IYER at Phi Centre, Thursday, June 2nd, 2022, 8 p.m.

Photo credit: Ryan Molnar.

Just “Try Again”

The building is vast and the outside looks like an abandoned postal office. Inside it’s a maze full of artist lofts, wayward businesses, and jam spaces. The hallways never seem to end and you can easily get lost in the space, as I did many times. After a bunch of rights and left turns, I open a door into a dimly lit studio. There are five musicians; two guitarists each with their own scattered pedal setup, one drummer, a bass player, and a vocalist standing near a synth. 

This is La Sécurité, a new art-punk outfit made up of members from other projects such as Chose Sauvages, Laurence-Anne (who is one of the guitarists), Silver Dapple, DATES, and Jesuslesfilles. I later learn that the drummer, Kenny Smith, has his own whacky new wave meets post-artcore project, Pressure Pin (read our review here.)

La Sécurité is in the middle of rehearsing a couple of songs—art post punk burners that sound a bit Blondie, Television, and Devo—they have written while a man in a funky black and orange short sleeve shirt, Philippe Larocque of Mothland, runs around with a vintage handheld camera. 

“So he’s filming us playing and then we are going to play it backward and that will be the video,” says the bassist, Félix Bélisle. 

He’s talking about the new DIY music video for “Try Again,” the second single, following up “Suspens.” This time, “Try Again,” is sung in English and led once again by vocalist/synth player Éliane Viens-Synnott.

The song has a curious atmosphere to it with its jumpy backing noise-rock guitar, smooth bass, and a playful synth line, as cowbells, woodblocks, and motorik drum beats. Much like the first single “Suspens,” “Try Again,” is full of cryptic wordplay, kind of a patchwork of phrases about euphoria and paranoia all linking back to a theme of conquering failure. You could derive your own meaning, but Viens-Synnott admits the lyrics are quite random and spontaneous. 

“I think I’m used to writing in an abstract kind of poetic way. I’d say writers like Jack Kerouac are an influence,” she says. “Eventually everybody is going to jump on backing vocals though. That’s the plan.”

La Sécurité started when Viens-Synnott and Bélisle started making a few bass and synth demos on Abelton. Eventually, they got guitarist Melissa Di Menna on board and found Kenny, who frequents and DJs at the popular punk rock underground dive bar, L’Escogriffe. 

“It was all kind of a vibe thing,” Viens-Synnott says. “I was a DJ back at L’Esco like two years ago and we started chatting about music, he showed me his insane solo project [Pressure Pin] and we just became buddies.”

La Sécurité is looking at recording the album in the Fall and for now, it seems like the group is up for any ideas to get their name out there and their music heard. Just check out their tongue-in-cheek Instagram stories that feature images of traffic pylons, exit signs, potholes, etc., all with the caption “Stay Safe.”

“We’re kind of just in a period of experimenting with everything right now,” Viens-Synnott says. “I’m not even sure how the live show setup is going to go and that’s why we wanted songs in French and English. I’m from the West so I want to be able to play things like Sled Island at some point.”

La Sécurité’s first show will be at Entrepôt 77 during Distorsion’s second concert series of the year from July 22 – 24.

On the eve of this year’s Concours musical international de Montréal, dedicated to voice, PAN M 360 talks to a member of the jury, the great soprano Adrienne Pieczonka. 

A native of New York State, Adrianne Pieczonka grew up in Burlington, Ontario. She studied at the University of Western Ontario at the Opera School of the University of Toronto in the 1980s.  She moved to Europe in 1988, where she won first prize at the International Vocal Competition in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands, and first prize at the International Singing Competition in La Plaine-sur-Mer, France, also in 1988. She became a member of the Vienna Volksoper in 1989.

She moved to London in 1995 and returned to Toronto ten years later to perform regularly with the Canadian Opera Company. She made her debut at the Salzburg Festival in 2001 and at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 2004 as Lisa in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades. 

Over more than three decades, Adrianne Pieczonka has sung with some of the greatest companies in the opera world: Bavarian State Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Berlin State Opera, Hamburg State Opera, Zurich Opera, Teatro Real, Liceu, Teatro Arriaga, Opéra de Paris, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Los Angeles Opera, Teatro Colón, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, etc.

She has worked with the world’s finest conductors in concert and opera, Kent Nagano, Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Zubin Mehta, Pierre Boulez, James Levine, Kent Nagano,   Daniel Barenboim, Donald Runnicles, Philippe Jordan, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Richard Bradshaw, to name a few.

In 2019, she was appointed as the first vocal chair of the Glenn Gould School, where she regularly teaches master classes and oversees the vocal department and their opera productions.

PAN M 360 : What motivates you being part of this jury in Montréal?

ADRIANNE PIECZONKA: It is a huge honour for me, a Canadian opera singer and educator, to be on the jury of this very prestigious International Competition in Montréal. In 1988, I competed in three international singing competitions in Europe (and won First Prize in two of them): s-Hertogenbosch in The Netherlands and La Plaine sur Mer in France. I have such wonderful memories of being a competitor and winning them helped me to immediately launch my career in Europe

PAN M 360 : How have you been selected?
ADRIANNE PIECZONKA: I was approached by Zarin Mehta, President of the Jury many months ago and I immediately said yes!

PAN M 360:  What is your perception of Montreal classical music family and Montreal Intarnational Music Competition?


ADRIANNE PIECZONKA: Montréal has a thriving classical music scene, one which is very rich and exciting. I wish I could come to Montréal more frequently to see many recitals and concerts featuring amazing artists. Québec produces wonderful musicians, including wonderful singers!

PAN M 360 : How do you consider this competition among the international classical major music competitions? 


ADRIANNE PIECZONKA: This competition is world renowned for its excellence and high standard. Many world class artists have competed in this competition and have gone on to enjoy world class careers.

PAN M 360 : Are those international competitions the front doors for an international career? Are the essential?

ADRIANNE PIECZONKA: : As someone who competed and won some competitions many years ago, I do think they can be extremely useful for global exposure – to agents, opera houses, orchestras etc. They are not essential of course but they can certainly be a way to advance one’s career and also make important connections.

PAN M 360 : Each member of a jury has a specific sensibility regarding the candidates, what is yours?

ADRIANNE PIECZONKA: I am interested in the artist as a whole. Many singers have amazing voices but I am also interested in a singers’ “inner life” and artistic his/her sensibility. Having an amazing voice is not everything. A great artist needs to touch our souls.

PAN M 360 : What are the objective criterias of your eventual choices ?

ADRIANNE PIECZONKA: Objective criteria are correct pronunciation, inflection, nuance. Singing correct rhythms and pitches are a necessity but heightened musicality can also enhance any given performance.

PAN M 360 : What are the subjective criterias that could make a difference between candidates of same value?
ADRIANNE PIECZONKA: This is where you have to trust your “gut” and be open to a singer  moving in unique ways.     As listeners, we want to be moved, we want to experience something magical. It’s hard to describe just exactly what this is but I can assure you, when it happens, you just “know”.

PAN M 360 : Are there some cultural differences in the singing aesthetic that could divide the jury?
Adrianne: No, in my opinion, I don’t think this will be the case.

ADRIANNE PIECZONKA: : Do you plan other activities in MTL during this process?
Adrianne: I’m afraid we will be very busy with the various rounds of the competitions! I am giving a masterclass and taking part in a Round Table discussion with a few other jurors. I hope to do some walking and perhaps visit the Musee de Beaux Arts while I am here.

Although Montreal multi-instrumentalist Marie-Hélène L. Delorme officially carries her experimental pop project Foxtrott solo, her latest independent release shows us that it is, in fact, an elegant and spontaneous dance that is not danced alone, but between her and the instruments.

A composer for film and TV, Foxtrott kicked off her career by singing about the power of liberating energy on A Taller Us in 2015, a Polaris-nominated album of R&B, soul, and electro-pop overtones, which she continued to explore in 2018 with her Meditation I-II-III series. Following the lyrics of her track “Intuition,” Foxtrott finally manages to permanently unite with her instruments in the form of loosely composed EPs in the traditional style of diptych paintings.

Just as Dirty Projectors took us on a journey through an exhibition of EP paintings in 2020, Foxtrott will take us on a year-long journey through a series of spontaneously composed songs in pairs. Made in collaboration with harp and cello artist Ouri, “The Motion” and “Looking for Your Love” are the first pair that reflects a return to softness and innovation for Foxtrott.

While Daniel Ek foolishly told artists to forget the necessary period of creation between two albums, Foxtrott finally demonstrates that artists cannot be reduced to simple products that are ordered and pressed at the factory, in the cadenced and automatic step of the industry.

PAN M 360: Your project reminds me a lot of the one realized in 2020 by Dirty Projectors. This kind of project can potentially create a new relationship to music or a new listening space, knowing that albums are less and less listened to in their entirety. How do you see it?

FOXTROTT: I wanted to do things a little differently. I’ve done two full-length albums in my time. I do most of my music on my own, producing, writing, etc. I can spend a lot of time on my work. I needed something lighter and more spontaneous. I wanted to do things differently. I didn’t want to stay two years in my bubble, make an album and then release it.

PAN M 360: How did the idea of the diptychs come about?

FOXTROTT: There’s not really a rule anymore, some artists release 25-piece projects, and some release singles. There’s no right or wrong way to do it, everything works. You have to follow what you want to do. I can’t be constrained in one given form. As an artist, you have to let the art itself guide you. I had no enthusiasm when I was thinking about making an album. When I thought about pairs, I could see the pieces breathing and growing better.

PAN M 360: You even talk about getting away from rigid forms. What do you mean by that?

FOXTROTT: You make the album, you mix it, then the promo… They’re like big cycles and there are times for that. But I don’t think there’s a rule. At the moment, I felt that musically speaking, it was not what I wanted. I wanted to build a project over time. That’s when I got the idea of doing a series. I was working on pieces that always came to me in pairs. I had the idea of bringing out these two pieces that tell a story together, there is a kind of resonance. It’s not the same as going into a bigger story with a 14-piece project.

PAN M 360: Do you know how many you plan to release?

FOXTROTT: Time will tell! (laughs)

PAN M 360: For this recording, the vocals are less sung in a pop style and are more processed and worked on than usual. It sounds like you let yourself go into your instruments. What were you trying to experiment with?

FOXTROTT: I’m not really someone who intellectualizes much about what I do. If my work sounds different, it’s because I feel different too. I just play the music that is expressed through me at any given time. I feel that I now have more freedom in using my voice. In this diptych, there are different tones of voice that respond to each other and interact together. It happened naturally, around the textures in particular. There are inner voices and outer voices that respond to each other.

PAN M 360: For you, the creative process starts from the inside out and not the other way around. What do you mean by that?

FOXTROTT: With other musician friends, we notice that a lot of people start from the outside by trying to sound like one style of music or by trying to mix the influence of this artist with that of another artist. I can’t approach music in that way at all. What interests me is to be at one with an emotion that I want to express. Music is used to say things that are impossible to express in words or images. I have an instinctive approach, I just want to let what comes to me rise. For example, “Looking for Your Love” is a love song. I wanted to create a warm, enveloping feeling, like a warm caress. That’s what I was trying to capture and translate with this piece. Something natural that radiates.

PAN M 360: How do you think the two pieces complement each other?FOXTROTT: If I presented only one of them, it wouldn’t work. The two together create a little world. I hadn’t released music in three years and “The Motion” is like my comeback piece. I was working on film music but for the Foxtrott project, I wanted to rework things, and also rest a little bit after the fast pace of the two albums (laughs). I wanted to wait for the music to make me want to share. It came back to me in full force with “The Motion,” it’s a heralding piece for me. I feel like I’m coming back in a new way with a new chapter and a new sound that leads to “Looking For Your Love.” It’s a real love song, which I’ve never done before. I used to talk about love sometimes but always with some doubt or insecurity. I let go of a lot of things, I feel freer. These two pieces express the authentic freedom of who I am musically.

Photo Credit: Hamza Abouelouafaa

On April 8, November Ultra released Bedroom Walls, her first album. Between this wave of sweetness (I mention it in this review) and today, the singer has been so solicited (French media, concerts in France and in the United Kingdom and display of her album in Times Square) that setting the day of our meeting has taken some time. She explained to me afterward that this time is necessary for everything. To let things come and to give oneself the space to exist, that’s what this album tells us. Having just recovered from COVID, November Ultra took the time to speak to PAN M 360. I was greeted by a person with pastel colors, a straightforward line of liner, and a warm and familiar tone.

NOVEMBER ULTRA: Here we are, I’m so happy and I hope you’re doing well. It’s my dream to come to Canada!

PAN M 360: For this first album, in an interview, you talked about provoking the break-up when you are in depression. How did you live this passage?

NOVEMBER ULTRA: It’s a long process. You have to realize that you are going through something that is not obvious. The first step is to accept that you are not well. Very quickly, when you have accepted it, the next step is to take action, to ask yourself how to cope. I know that these are, unfortunately, little creatures that we live with all our lives. I realize, as I grow up, that I’m able to deal with it in a much quicker and healthier way. Depression is saying to myself, “What’s the point of getting up in the morning? I don’t know where I’m going, what I’m doing…” I have learned to provoke the break, that is to say to go out of my comfort zone. It’s not easy, but once you’ve done it, your experience speaks to you and says, “See, it’s going to be okay.” Even if it doesn’t work out, it will have taken you a step forward to something. Making an album is a step towards that. The first track on the album, “Over & Over & Over,” is definitely a step. It’s acceptance. After that, the next step was the creation of this total state of brokenness.

PAN M 360: This album took almost four years to complete. In a pivotal time, that’s a lot of emotion. What did you learn in all of this?

NOVEMBER ULTRA: I made the first track in 2018. “Soft & Tender” was April 2019. For six months I did other pieces that I didn’t keep, but they were necessary to get to “Soft & Tender”. When I met my friend Guillaume Ferran, we were in the studio, I made him listen to the album. He started listening to it from the track “Le Manège,” then to the end. He wanted to come back to “Over & Over.” At that point, I told him “No, please don’t listen to this one”. When he asked me why, I realized how uncomfortable I was with that first song, and that it was over, I wasn’t that person anymore. So I knew the album was over at that point.

I realized that I had gained a lot of confidence and peace, which you can hear on “Open Arms,” the last track. It’s not insignificant, there was the passage of the thirties in the middle of the album. I also started seeing a shrink in the meantime, so there is something correlated with who I was and who I have become. The beginning of the album is really about coming to terms with everything that’s wrong, for example in the track “Monomania,” which is almost short-circuiting, and then there’s a peace that comes with “Nostalgia/Ultra,” with “September,” and with “Incantation.” It was long, and at the same time, I needed it. We are in a world where we do not allow ourselves to live anymore. I still had things to live for before I could finish.

PAN M 360: When it was over, how did you feel?

NOVEMBER ULTRA: I couldn’t wait! I couldn’t wait for it to come out, I felt like a pregnant woman! (laughs) It was a celebration. I was ready. Music is about sharing, it’s about singing in front of people, with them. A song exists in a different way, once it’s heard. It becomes bigger than what you’ve done. It’s so nice to see how people received it. All of this is a new stage that I’m very interested in.

PAN M 360: You are very good at conveying emotions.

NOVEMBER ULTRA: Thank you very much. That was my compass. Emotion takes precedence over technicality. There are fragile vocal takes. All the backups of “Soft & Tender” at the end are very “blue.” It didn’t work when I tried to redo the vocals and it was right. It’s a choice to put emotion above technicality. I didn’t want people to hear my album and say “What a voice!” I’m not Celine Dion, I love Celine Dion, my God, but that’s not what I wanted! I wanted my voice to convey emotions and my technique to serve that, not just me going “AAAAH!” (operatic singing voice) for 45 minutes! (laughs) And at the same time, I sing because it calms me down. I think these are things that I can crystallize in audio.

PAN M 360: You talk about your voice. Live, it is powerful and captivating. In concert at the Trianon, I saw your sensitivity and your intensity. Can you deal with all that?

NOVEMBER ULTRA: It’s true, I cried at the Trianon, and I seldom cry in concert. I am often very moved. The interpretation is important. With “Nostalgia/Ultra,” all of a sudden I was taken. There were a lot of people, my parents, and I realized what was happening. At the same time, afterward I sang and it was square. Since it’s something I’ve been doing since I could speak, it became like breathing, it’s visceral. It’s funny, you’re not the first person to tell me that. In the Spanish parts too, my voice becomes different. It takes another space in me. It can be surprising, but that’s the beauty of listening to an album and going to see the live show.

PAN M 360: I’m glad you said that because it resonates with the album review. Languages allow for exploration, indeed.

NOVEMBER ULTRA: Yeah, I learned Italian too… Not! (laughs) I learned a song in Italian. It’s something else, it’s funny. It’s interesting, the language channel, what it’s going to look for. It’s also our relationship to the language, and how we learned it. For me, there are two intrinsic things, the languages and the voice. I never asked myself if it would be weird to go from one language to another. They are tools for my voice to change. My voice on “Nostalgia/Ultra” is very different from everything else. At the end of “Soft & Tender,” in the Spanish part, people asked me who it was. We have multifaceted personalities. The music is beautiful in that, to wonder where you find that.

I saw a documentary yesterday about Simon & Garfunkel. Until the end, they were looking for what they can find that will take them out of their comfort zone. They tap their jeans and make all this rhythm that will become Cecilia‘s drums. I thought, that’s what making music is all about. There’s something about excitement and brokenness. It comes from all the tools that you bring. I want that on stage too. The difference is that the third tool is the people. You realize that the people will make the concert different. There is this thing of alchemy, my relationship to life, to people, what more can I become. What magic power I can hang up on my belt. Look I’m excited just talking about it! (laughs)

PAN M 360: It’s so intense these concerts, how do you manage them?

NOVEMBER ULTRA: (big sigh) Like everybody, I think. Sometimes you are full of energy, you link two weeks, and then it is a little harder. I am learning to verbalize better when I need time. I am well surrounded by people I love. I don’t drag my feet. I love my sound engineer, Percival. Everything is funny, all the concerts, I try to make people laugh. My stage manager, the same, my manager, everybody. Every morning I tell myself that I’m lucky to do what I do, with these people. Verbalize especially.

There was this stress when I got sick and I knew that I would have to cancel a date, that people would be sad and me too. That was my first thought, without allowing myself to be sick. I said to myself, “Be careful.” We are performing entities in this society. Be careful to allow ourselves to rest. My manager and I say “Chi va piano, va sano e va lontano.”  I want to do this until I’m a hundred, I want to do it until the day that I die! (laughs)

It’s also the way we consume music that makes us feel like we’re always behind on everything. I release a lot of covers and it will take me a long time to release my own songs. I like this double speed, it must always be in the idea of pleasure.

PAN M 360: Concerning the fact of being a woman, and producing alone on a computer, you were talking about it lately in your stories on Instagram.

NOVEMBER ULTRA: Yeah, I think there are plenty of female musicians, non-binary people, and transgender people who do it, but we don’t allow ourselves to. We make a big deal out of it, but there’s a learning curve, like learning a lot of things. The nerve of the war consists in putting a status on these people. If at some point you co-produced your piece, you should have that credit, if you directed, or wrote. When I did those stories, it was to say, I did it on my album, and a lot of people do it, but look at how unvalued it is. I think it is changing. More and more dare to say and ask.

A friend of mine who was producing with Ableton explained automation to me. It was that simple, actually. I did “Soft & Tender” as an incredible beginner. It’s good too, not knowing how to use the software. Not having gone to conservatory, I don’t think it’s a big deal. I went to the conservatory and I have a lot of trouble playing without reading sheet music. I would like to be freer. On the contrary, we have to embrace all that. I learned the guitar by ear, and I make chords that don’t sound like anything! (laughs) The way I compose is my own, because I’m a beginner, and that’s OK.

You have to give yourself the space to do it, not to wait to be an expert, it has to be done now, right now. It’s going to be a picture of our life, of our career, at some point. That’s the only thing I could say: do it, get out there, don’t be ashamed of anything, get your statuses. Go get your fucking money! (laughs) Because money is about being able to live, to be steady, and do this job for a long time. That’s the only reason I say it.

When they first started out back in 2008-2009, Copenhagen post-punks, Iceage, were just “lashing out,” throwing sounds at a wall to see what felt right and stuck. Vocalist Elias Rønnenfelt can’t even recall some of the phrases he came up with and where their inspirations lay. For that period he calls them “blindfolded,” like a crooked bird with no eyes, flying aimlessly. This could be why they became known as a band that took sonic risks and always wanted to journey deeper and deeper into the musical fray—when in fact, they had no real idea what they were doing.

Flash forward to now and Iceage’s fifth album, Seek Shelter, has been out for exactly a year and has received critical acclaim for toeing the line between post-punk and straight Britpop and being the band’s most “accessible” album. As a band born out of strangeness and finding influences wherever they venture, Iceage relies yes on the melodic janglings of guitar and bombastic drums, but also Rønnenfelt’s approach to lyricism. He leaves an intentional vague cloud over the meanings behind his songs, using them as a form of therapy for himself that he sometimes completely forgets.

We spoke with the messy-haired Rønnenfelt—before the Iceage show this Sunday at Ausgang Plaza—while he was in Copenhagen drinking wine and smoking (at what we assume was a house party) about his evolving lyrical strategy, people’s interpretations of his lyrics, and using music as a vessel to document his own insanity.

PAN M 360: Would you call Copenhagen an inspiring city for an artist such as yourself?

Elias Rønnenfelt: I mean, if I feel like any city might be, but it’s home. And then it’s the surroundings I grew up in as an artist. So yeah, I think it’s inspiring. And it puts me in a good mindset, but there’s also a lot of like village mentality and part of the culture that’s quite a bit behind. So it’s also inspiring in the ways that there are things to dislike.

PAN M 360: I know you write your lyrics kind of all in one go for the records. Do you have to retreat from home to do that?

Elias Rønnenfelt: That’s what I’ve been doing for the past few albums. When I know the date that we’re going into the studio, I will usually retreat somewhere and work on all the lyrics all together to try and create some sort of not narrative, but just so it isn’t too scattered, that it’s coming out of one mindset. I never really found a formula that permanently works. So you always have to find a new angle to attack from no matter what. But, I mean, sometimes you’re in a place where you have a certain kind of lucidity, and things just come to you other times, you have to work for it.

PAN M 360: Do you believe songs evolve based on world events? Like the interpretation of them that is?

Elias Rønnenfelt: Like in hindsight or as you’re writing them?

PAN M 360: Hmm I guess in hindsight for everyone else? I mean Seek Shelter is regarded as a pandemic album, but it was written before any of that happened.

Elias Rønnenfelt: I think that album ended up being a pandemic album because it came out within it and I’ve heard from a lot of people that they thought it was freakishly close to the newfound reality they were sitting in and the title itself is a little … the needle on the nose. But that was completely unintentional. But I think the context is always tailored by the individual to fit … if you’re feeling a certain kind of way or if you’re heartbroken or something like that. The song is yours and now about you and your specific condition, and that’s kind of the beauty of it.

PAN M 360: Right. When you release a song to the world it’s not really yours anymore and people can interpret it any way they want. Does that excite you at all?

Elias Rønnenfelt: I’ve had people coming up to me at concerts or people writing in, and they will cry gracefully, and generously explain that a certain song is attached to the loss of a friend, or a house cat, or even a period that was a transition, or that song became attached to that period of their lives. And that’s, like, the biggest compliment you can get. That the song had the ability to sort of mutate into the individual’s situation.

PAN M 360: And you can never expect that when writing a song.

Elias Rønnenfelt: No I would never write something that is intentionally or universally vague and be like ‘Oh many the people are going to get this one (laughs).

PAN M 360: So why do you write? I mean obviously, you’re a musician and it’s your job but is it a cathartic release for you. Is your mind always racing?

Elias Rønnenfelt: Yeah, the mind is always racing, and it’s become a sort of vessel. And one of the few ways that I have at my disposal to make sense of things. And if I don’t distill my emotions—and my emotions are usually quite hard to do defer. I have never seen a psychologist or anything like that, you know, so I’m not too smart but I would say songwriting is one way to try and make this whirlwind of feelings or things you live through have a way to narrow it down and make it tangible. So, yeah, I know, if I didn’t do it, I think it would go mad.

PAN M 360: There are many little references to religion in Iceage songs, almost from a sort of … omniscient point of view. Are you a religious guy or do they just sort of creep in?

Elias Rønnenfelt: I wouldn’t be defined myself as religious, but neither specifically nonreligious either. I come from a Catholic background and I went to Christian School. So from an early point in life, that imagery was just kind of something that was used to make sense of things and, you know, in that kind of religious upbringing, those stories from day one
brought to make sense of the little things that we go through here and in mundane normal life. So it’s just kind of something that happens. That imagery is something that I find natural to apply, but sometimes I get tired of it like I’ll be writing and then like, ‘Oh no. Here I go on about this Catholic-sounding shit again. But I guess it’s part of my
process.

PAN M 360: Was it nice to have a break from touring due to the pandemic. You guys were hitting it pretty hard for like, quite a few years. It seemed you were touring forever?

Elias Rønnenfelt: We’ve been road-dogging it since we were like 17 and 18, playing usually between 100 and 150 shows a year. I think it was ultimately good. I think it might have saved this in a way. I’ve always been quite addicted to running away and having a very hard time sitting still anywhere. As soon as I had some time in my life that could actually be used for some peace and quiet, I would immediately seek elsewhere and try and be on unsteady ground. But we were forced to be steady and it wasn’t as bad as I thought. But you know, then after a year, whatever, then you’re like, ‘Okay, I think I’ve learned my lesson. Now. I’m ready to get back at it.

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