{"id":98635,"date":"2023-05-29T18:14:47","date_gmt":"2023-05-29T22:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/?post_type=interviews&p=98635"},"modified":"2023-05-29T18:17:27","modified_gmt":"2023-05-29T22:17:27","slug":"suoni-previews-ky-or-weird-sound-collages-and-some-nerd-shit","status":"publish","type":"interviews","link":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/en\/interviews-panm360\/suoni-previews-ky-or-weird-sound-collages-and-some-nerd-shit\/","title":{"rendered":"Suoni Previews: KY or Weird sound collages and some ‘nerd shit’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ky Brooks is a shining beacon in Montr\u00e9al\u2019s experimental music playground. Playing in past bands like Shining Wizard, Femmaggots, Lungbutter, and Nag, Ky also serves as the live sound person for Big|Brave, and house tech at mainstay Montr\u00e9al indie venue La Sala Rossa<\/strong>. Ky was also a central co-conspirator at the pivotal and fertile DIY loft space La Plante throughout the 2010s, giving birth to much of Montreal’s newer burgeoning experimental artists. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the pandemic, Ky had time to reflect on their own solo journey as an artist and then made the collaborative album, Power Is The Pharmacy<\/em>\u2014out now via the mighty, Constellation Records, along with 11 other musicians such as; Mat Ball, synth maven Nick Schofield, saxophonist James Goddard (Egyptian Cotton Arkestra), bassist Joshua Frank (Gong Gong Gong), drummer Farley Miller (Shining Wizard), and Andr\u00e9s Salas (Bosque Rojo). Many of those musicians became part of Ky’s live band, and are giving a proper live debut with a mini three-date tour, including one date for Montreal’s experimental music festival, Suoni Per Il Popolo. We spoke with Ky, and saxophonist, James Goddard, ahead of the Suoni show<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAN M 360: Hey Ky, so you must be in rehearsals for the Suoni show?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ky Brooks: <\/strong>Yeah it’s actually me and the band on the line; James, Mathieu, Farley, and Rob. We’re playing in Toronto tomorrow. So we’re getting ready for that and then Ottawa the day after. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAN M 360: Is it going to be mostly the new album, Power Is The Pharmacy<\/em>?
<\/strong>
Ky Brooks: <\/strong>It will be for those two dates, just all the new album. There are excluded, two of the more melodic songs. It’s a slightly different interpretation of it, I guess. Because there’s only one synth on stage. And there’s a ton of synths on the recordings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAN M 360: And I feel for this kind of music. There’s a huge amount of room for live improv?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ky Brooks:<\/strong> Yeah for sure. And you know, the songs are so weirdly structured on the recordings so we’ve like found ways to structure them and maybe making sense for playing might feel a little bit more concise. But it’s still weird.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAN M 360: Is it kind of like constant music too, with songs bleeding into each other?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Goddard:<\/strong> We’ve only done the set once in December and I think we kind of designed it to be like a freight train.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAN M 360: And Ky, how did you go about making this solo project, deviating from making music with full bands in the past?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ky Brooks:<\/strong> It’s kind of funny, because the actual album has, so many people playing on it\u2014like 11 different musicians play on it. And the folks here, with the exception of Rob, played on the record. I think it’s sort of this thing where like it would be amazing to have everybody in that whole group of people play, but it’s just too much to wrangle 11 people. I was just sort of thinking about how to put the music together live in such a way that we can cover all the bases, basically. And this is a group that ended up being chosen. And I’m sure there will be other configurations down the road. Honestly what happened is I did The Artist’s Way, which is this 12-step book course about reclaiming your creativity. It’s based on AA. So I did that deep into the pandemic and this album is kind of what came out. So I wasn’t really like, ‘I want to have a solo project thing’ at all. I prefer playing in groups and I like to improvise with people and you know, like pals and noise, that’s what I like. So doing this sort of like a self-directed thing, being isolated in the pandemic, I needed to be making something. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ky by Stacy Lee<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PAN M 360: And recording it, was it you bringing these skeletal structures of songs and having the musicians do what they do?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ky Brooks:<\/strong> That’s definitely part of what happened. It’s kind of like a collage<\/p>\n\n\n\n

James Goddard:<\/strong> Those initial recording sessions with Andr\u00e9s and Nick, You’re like, ‘I have a page of words. And I have no idea what the music should be around the words.’ And we’re just like, OK ‘Let’s do a music’ and some of that stuff ended up on the album. And then others got erased and replaced by different stuff. You would send it to Farley and he would come with a drum beat. And then you would take out the saxophone or whatever and then put on a synth and then like the song. There was almost no scaffolding and it was really your process of assembling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ky Brooks: <\/strong>It’s interesting, I and Joni Void interviewed each other on CKUT last week and bonded over that very similar process of making music. Basically a collage from sound, right? So, I didn’t write some music. And then my friends played on it. It was more like, it just was assembled from the things that people were doing. And like what people sent to me or like, did in the moment, and there was a lot of taking things from one place and putting them somewhere else. And there’s field recordings and stuff like that on there, too, which I think is sort of, like an odd again, to that process of like assemblage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n