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Having impressed with their 2023 debut album, Montreal’s Cope Land look to keep the momentum going with their second studio release, Expire, set to come out February 14th. I had the chance to talk to Ben Gilbert, who leads this heavy-hitting fusion septet, and ask him about his writing process, and plans for the future.
PAN M 360 – Your debut album was highly praised at PAN M for your ability to mix jazz, metal, and rap. Can listeners expect to hear more of that on your new album?
BEN- For sure. But I think the main difference that you’ll find between our first and second album is that the first one was mostly instrumental. About two-thirds instrumental. Whereas this time around, close to every tune has lyrics. Much more rapping as well. I think I really wanted to explore lyric writing and songs as opposed to pieces, you know? I was also really interested in exploring bilingual lyrics on this album. The lyrics are really half-half English and French.
PAN M 360 – You were previously known as Crossroad Copeland. What’s the story behind the name change?
BEN- Um, well, it’s more for practicality than anything else. Crossroad Copeland, over the years I realized, was quite difficult to say. Especially for francophones. But also the driving point of the band name is that we’re in the land of coping. We’re all living in quite a difficult world right now. This is even more relevant between Trump coming into office and everything that’s going on online too with Meta. Basically, I feel like a lot of people are coping in their lives right now and so I kind of wanted to play that into the band name. [Copeland] also happens to be my middle name. So basically, yeah, I feel like it was just simpler to say but then also made the message of the band name stronger.
PAN M 360 – You’ve released the songs “Shame,” “Breathe,” and “Enfin” as singles and I couldn’t help but notice the recurring themes of psychology and strong emotions. Do you explore that further in the rest of the album?
BEN- Yeah, for sure. I wanted to kind of start and end [the album] with songs that sort of speak about our experience and about society right now. So the first song of the album is called “Attention Span,” the last is called “Real Life Video Game;” and on those I’m especially exploring themes of social media, the internet, AI, and the kind of alienation that’s creating in our society. You mentioned “Shame;” that’s a song about addiction. About someone who’s close to me who was struggling with that. And “Breathe” is about getting whispered in your ear by the powers that be to “just breathe in, breathe out, and everything will be fine.”
PAN M 360 – Like a soothing thing?
BEN – Yeah but a kind of backhanded soothing thing. You know, “get up, go to work, come home, follow the system, and breathe.” So for sure, there’s a lot of emotional content on this album.
PAN M 360 – You play some mean solos on this album. How much of the guitar work is improvised and how much is determined before going into the studio?
BEN – The parts are mostly predetermined except small sections maybe where I’m, you know, “comping,” to use Jazz speech. The guitar solos are the final cuts on the album and are sort of half improvised, half concocted.
PAN M 360 – Same question for your rap sections: Did you freestyle any portion of them or were they predetermined?
BEN- The rap sections were definitely all written in advance. It’s funny; [freestyle] was the thing that I did quite a bit as a teenager. Probably most of it wasn’t any good. But it feels like in more recent years, as I’ve gotten more seriously into rap, [my writing] really is quite conceived. A surprising amount of editing happens after the fact. You write a first version and then you realize, “oh, I could, three months later, change that sentence.” We’re going to be putting out a live session a couple weeks after the album release with an earlier version of the song, “ A Cage.” You’ll be able to hear slightly different lyrics on the live session version versus the studio album version.
PAN M 360 – Have you been experimenting with any genres other than jazz, metal, and rap lately? Any chance we’ll hear them in a song in the near future?
BEN – Well, I mean, I think on the album itself there’s already a few tunes that could be considered other styles than those. There’s a more ballad-like tune on the album, some more acoustic tunes on the album. But the short answer is, I’ve been focused on making this album as good as it can be and on everything that goes with putting it out. As far as what’s next for the band? Um, that’s a good question. Keep things evolving and keep things changing. That’s something that I’ve always valued in a lot of the artists that I listen to. If we were to name a couple, I’d say the Beatles, or Radiohead, and people like Miles Davis. People that have had this capacity to constantly reinvent themselves over the course of their career and, as a result, stay relevant.
PAN M 360- How do you go about writing for a seven piece band? Is it collaborative or do you write everything from ‘A’ to ‘Z’?
BEN- I mostly write everything. What I’ve done these last two albums is that I make a sort of a maquette. Basically, in Ableton Live, I record a kind of passable demo of how the song would go. I’d record on a guitar, program a drum beat, play bass, record MIDI horns, and get a really good idea of how it’s going to sound. And then, at that point, I transcribe it. For rehearsals we put it together and then, for sure, there are changes made. It’s amazing how sometimes you think something is going to sound a certain way, and it really doesn’t sound that way. And vice versa; you have kind of pleasant surprises. It’s fair to mention too, over the course of the process, that Jeanne [Laforest] our singer served as somewhat of an advisor and so I would often bounce ideas off her.
PAN M 360 – As you look to the future, what are some short term and long term goals following the release of this album?
BEN- To become world famous rock stars! No, but seriously, as a musician, I think it’s hard not to have the long-term aspiration of making a living and making meaningful music, you know? And that probably means original music. And that doesn’t have to be my music; it can be other people’s music. But I think that that’s probably the goal for lots of people. And obviously, as is quite well known, it’s not an easy thing to attain in today’s day and age. So, I mean, I would be thrilled if people liked the music. We’re going to be playing our album launch show on March 14th at Petit Campus, in fact. Karneef is going to be doing our first part; this crazy project of progressive Jazz Rock. Come check us out.
PAN M 360 – Perfect! Well thanks a lot for sitting down with us Ben. Best of luck with the launch and all the rest.
BEN – Thanks, Vitta.
