Photo by Chus Anton

Barcelona’s Delorean has been constantly evolving as a band for the better part of a decade. Together they have grown from their abrasive punk roots to assemble their most recent full-length release, Subiza, a triumphant fusion of the band’s beloved Iberian club music sounds and traditional pop sensibilities. Delorean’s pristine sense of production, bubbling synth melodies and gently pounding percussion makes for a synthetic yet somehow wholly natural absorption into bliss. With the wild success of Subiza, as well as their immensely popular remixes for groups like The xx, Lemonade, Franz Ferdinand, and the Teenagers, the quartet have been receiving attention on the world stage.

When I rang up the band’s frontman Ekhi, Delorean’s vocalist and bassist, I could barely hear him. He politely said it was too noisy, and to hold up a second so that he could find a quieter place. The hustle and bustle of life on the road is a sign and symptom of where Delorean is as a band now and where they’re hoping to reach.  After Ekhi nestled himself into a calmer space, we chatted about the natural evolution of the band’s sound, their new album, and the trouble with “summer music.”

You can check out Delorean’s Montreal show (with Glasser) on July 13^th 2010 at Le Belmont.

LOOKOUT: You’re in the U.K. now. How has that been?

Ekhi: Yeah, we’re in London. We played here last autumn. It’s really cool. We’re playing in really nice venues and there’s a lot going on right now in the city. They’re taking care really good care of us here so it’s great.

LOOKOUT: Your most recent album, Subiza, is heavy on electronic-yet-breezily-organic dance pop songs. How has the sound of the band evolved through your various releases?

Ekhi: You know, Delorean, we were a punk band before. But as a band, we’ve been together for nine years, so the evolution has been very natural. We got together as teenagers and nine years is a long time. We’re a band that wants to try different things all the time. It’s kind of natural. I don’t know, it’s not something we think about. It wasn’t a conscious decisions, so that makes the evolution not a hard thing to do.

LOOKOUT: Your music has a blissful, uplifting essence, which has led the tracks on Subiza to be described as the epitome of “summer” music. What do you think about a classification like that?

Ekhi: When we make music, we’re looking for something that will lift you up and that will move you. I’m not sure if, as a band, that relates to the beach or the summer. Our music is very bright and I understand that people can relate that to the summer. I respect it and I understand it and I definitely see the resemblance, but, for us, it’s more in terms or something that to is able to lift you and keep you going. But, you know, consciously, we’re not making a summer album.

LOOKOUT: What’s the biggest challenge of being on tour?

Ekhi: The biggest challenge is to be fearless and to take a chance and to  feel that the next time you play your song, you’ll be better than before. That time that you played last month or two years ago, you want to make it bigger and bring in more people. You hope that that there will be more people and that they enjoyed the show and that they will spread the word. Reaching more people, getting more people to go to your shows—that’s challenging. And you have to be fearless about it. Having some sort of relationship with the audience is important. You need to feel that there’s something happening, and the audience notices that.

LOOKOUT: How important is the live experience for the band? Do you take into account how your music is going to sound live when you’re making it?

Ekhi: When we made the record, we didn’t care about how it sounded live. We wanted to pay attention to the song itself rather than the execution of the song. We recognize that the fact that we’re not paying attention to how the song would sound, like, is some sort of handicap or limitation. But if you don’t think about it, about how your song is going to work live, you’re more free to make music however you want to.

LOOKOUT: We’re all looking forward to your show in Montreal. Have you played a show alongside Glasser before?

Ekhi: Yeah, we’ve played with her once at CMJ. She’s amazing. She’s one of our favorite bands. It’s going to be awesome.

Photo by Alex Cowan

Y’know, I struggled for a while trying to find the perfect way to describe Blue Hawaii. It was going to be perfect; a transcendent revelation on one of my new favorite bands, featuring one of the members of another of my favorite groups, Braids. I poked my head around curtains and through doors of obvious descriptions. There were going to be subtle tweaks of wordplay that would alter the flow and content of the piece in ways invisible to the eye yet inseparable from the comprehension. After all that, I found that I couldn’t do any better than the short piece on the Arbutus Records website. Sometimes perfection is right in front of you. Enjoy that, a fully expository interview, and a new song and video below!

“Blue Hawaii tells the story of a lush paradise. The way begins ambient and uncertain, but beautiful white shell beaches and carefree sunshine parties await and nourish those travelers with love in their hearts; their peace thus raised above the arguments found along the rocky road. The duo consists of Raph and Agor; they use voice, guitars, synths, drum machines, and other electronics to create a kind of tropical-pop with love ache melodies and experimental club rhythms.”

There hasn’t been much press surrounding Blue Hawaii and your new album Blooming Summer. Who is Blue Hawaii?

Raph: Blue Hawaii is Alexander Cowan and myself. It’s a project that we started when we first met each other. We’ve been dating for the last while, so it’s kind of been, I don’t know, I don’t how I feel about saying it’s like a “love project,” but it kind of is, I guess.

It could be a project of love.

R: Yeah, I think so. The album that we just created is all love songs and revelations I’ve come to with being committed and being good to somebody and respectful of them. It’s a project of love.

Speaking of the album, it was recently released on Arbutus Records, though there’s been very little press behind it. Is that indicative of how quickly it came together or did you decide to embrace the anonymity of the project?

R: We just wanted to release something. Alex definitely had a real urge to finally release something because he was the type of musician who just did it in his bedroom while he was going to university. He had hundreds and hundreds of tracks on his laptop of him just strumming around and some of it was pretty good. He just really, really pushed for us to finish it. At time I didn’t want to finish it, I didn’t really have to do it. I was trying to balance Braids’ album, but he really pushed forth and I’m happy that it happened the way it did. We weren’t really expecting anything to come of it, but now that we have this piece of art in front of us we’re very proud of it. Now we feel the urge to really support it and get it out there. We didn’t know what Blue Hawaii was going to be it was just us jamming around, and now people like it. It’s fun.

I’m not familiar with the timeline of the project’s development. Did it progress fluidly?

R: From the time that we met, we met in January of 2008, we both just started jamming together. He was in the Lab Synthese art studios. He ran it with Sebastian. We started jamming out and doing a lot of improv.. We did a set together and then I left for Calgary for two and a half months. When I came back we wanted to make it more structured and it just went down the drain. We were making such shitty music for like three months or maybe four or five months. We were trying to make it structured. We were writing music on a laptop and it wasn’t going anywhere.

Then we went to Guatemala and we became really close friends and got to know each other really well. When we got back we started fully recording the album. It’s a work that’s been in progress for quite a long time.

The sound you’re producing is quite distinct from your other projects. Was it a decision to move away from that or was it just a natural influence?

R: It was just a natural influence. Every project that I do really takes on its own sound. Except for a few of the tracks my voice doesn’t sound like it does for Braids. It’s such a different art form in itself that I become a part of the music. This one was very romantic and wispy, whereas Braids is very urgent and angsty. It was a different part of me, just like Indiensoci is. Indiensoci is very feminine and ethereal.

From the name of the group, Blue Hawaii, to the veneer of the sound you’re playing to some of the imagery you’ve adopted, it seems like there’s a very specific aesthetic that you’re going for. Do you have a description for what it could be?

R: We spent a lot of time in Belize when we were traveling. We were traveling for about 2 months and it became about seeing as many oceans as possible and going swimming in as many places as we could. I think that really influenced our music, that feeling of happiness that we got by being by water and hot, warm climates and people bustling around and everyone being excited. When we came back we wanted to have something that felt like that, because our trip was so amazing. We wanted the record to feel really tropical and really lush and watery and stringy. I think that’s kind of where the sound came from.

The name Blue Hawaii came from our friend Trevor. I remember we were sitting around a table and we were playing with some band from New York. We were sitting at the kitchen table at Lab Synthese and we were like, “What should we be called?” Some one suggested the name Black Indian, which would be so bad,

That would be the trendiest name possible.

R: Yeah, exactly, We were like, no, we can’t be called Black Indian. Then we thought of Black India and I was like, “No, I can’t have a ‘Black’ name, I don’t make ‘Black’ music.” Then our friend Trevor suggested the name Blue Hawaii. The album is called Blooming Summer, but we thought maybe we could make another pop reference, like Primitive Vacation, which is an Aerosmith album, but we decided to dump it.

The sound on the album is really unique. What kind of hardware did you use to produce it?

R: We did a lot of it through Ableton. The whole thing was recorded on Ableton and then we brought it onto tape with Sebastian. Sebastian is an amazing producer. He went to school in London, the same school as Aphex Twin, which is pretty cool He graduated at the top of his class and he has a studio at La Brique now, where his studio has been moved to. He has a reel-to-reel, so we transferred everything to reel-to-reel and then we brought it back onto the mixing board. We did really drastic things with compression just to get a sound that’s really unique. A lot of people don’t go so overboard with compression. The sound of the songs are as though they’re breathing. Some of the songs sound like they’re really alive.

The live performances of Blue Hawaii feature stylistic elements that are absent from your other projects. Is that adoption part of achieving the blissful aesthetic?

R: For sure. Especially lately, coming into my twenties and performing for the last three years, I’ve become intrigued by the amount of control and freedom that you have as the performer. With Braids, if I were to put on face paint and stuff like that I would just stand out like a sore thumb, and that’s not really what Braids is. With Braids, everybody is just wearing jeans and get out of the van and play the show. Blue Hawaii is a bit more of an outlet for the urge in me to explore what it really is to be a performer and to have face paint and to bring all the artistic elements into the performance. I’m excited about it. I want to go even crazier if possible. I want to bring projections and jellybeans.

Jellybeans?

R: Yeah! I really love jellybeans. I love when you put jellybeans in water and the really beautiful way the color diffuses. Luckily, we got Taylor and Austin [of Braids] to wear blue eyeshadow for that Blue Hawaii performance. I’ve never, ever seen Taylor wear blue eyeshadow in all my life, so it was a real treat to see everyone done up in blue eyeshadow for the Blue Hawaii show. It’s been really fun. I want to definitely get some outfits in there at some point.

I recently saw the video some one made for you around the single “Dream Electrixra.”

R: Yeah! Rosie made that and it has jellybeans in it! When it’s a closeup and there are flowers. Rosie Aiello makes amazing sculptures and she takes pictures of it. What is that called?

There’s claymation and stop-motion photography.

R: Yeah, stop-motion. She did a time-lapse of jelly beans melting into the water. There’s an ice cube in there too and it cracks. That was for “Dream Elctrixra.” I tried as hard as I could to write something that stuck in my head for a really long time. Braids is catchy but it’s also difficult.

Blue Hawaii seems to me to be a fundamentally pop enterprise.

R: Yeah, we tried really hard. I really wanted to make a pop album. I really wanted to learn how to write love pop songs, and I tried.

It’s unique in its construction, but the sensibilities are definitely pop-oriented.

R: The songs have all been ripped apart like three times. For “Castles of Clouds,” you know, it’s a really slow song. When we first did it, it was a funk song. It’s the same with “Katie.” “Katie,” was a soul song. We just ripped everything apart three or four times. It’s hilarious listening to the stuff beforehand.

Do you still have the original masters?

R: Oh yeah. I made Katie and Austin listen to it and we were all laughing so hard. Braids has gone through many different stages as well. We have to the recordings to prove it. From our early songs like “M is for Matrioshka” and the Set Pieces EP. Blue Hawaii had to do it very quickly so that we could put an album out that was up to speed.

Obviously you’ll be on the road for the next few months with Braids, but what are the future plans for Blue Hawaii?

R: That’s kind of hard. We’re going to figure it out. I know that next year Braids is going to be touring an awful lot. Alex and I have gotten some interest from people in Europe. The Europeans love it. The equivalent of CBC in Sweden did an interview with Alex today. They’re digging it over there and we’ve definitely had some interest. Maybe we’ll tour over there, maybe go to Japan or something like that. We’ll make it work. It’s going to be a lot of on-the-road for me next year but I’m looking forward to it. I want to see places.

Are you an Elvis fan? Blue Hawaii was the title of one of his greatest films, and one that would suit the aesthetic you’re going for.

R: You know, my mom is, and she would always sing him in the kitchen. I’ve seen clips from the film. I don’t know how everything came together, with Blue Hawaii sounding like Blue Hawaii, but it’s nice when things come together like that.

Blue Hawaii – Floral by Arbutus Records

LOOKOUT: There were some fantastic HG! remixes over the last while. How does your approach to remixing other artists differ to your approach to your solo creations?

NICK (HOLY GHOST!): Sometimes it’s similar, but in general as we’ve been working on our record there’s overall concern with making something that is aesthetically cohesive. With remixes we’re not thinking about a larger body of work. Each remix only has to function as a single, one time piece of work because they are for a different artist every time, are usually for stand alone singles, etc. So with remixes I think we often to go to certain sonic and/or aesthetic extremes that we don’t necessarily go to with our own solo stuff.

How do you feel the new EP compares sonically to the music you were making when you first signed to DFA?

HG!: When we first “signed” to DFA the only completed song we had was “Hold On.” There were a bunch of very rough demoes but nothing finished really, so there isn’t a lot to compare it to. We’ve spent our time since then trying to figure out what we wanted Holy Ghost! to be. However, a song like “Static On The Wire” has been more or less done for almost two years now and doesn’t differ drastically from the demo version that we did way back when. Sonically all the same elements are there – big, live, drums, poppy vocals, synths galore, heavily delayed guitars, etc.

Have you had any experience with Montreal before? How do you think it fits in with your overall idea of this select cities tour?

HG!: We haven’t as Holy Ghost! actually, though our old band Automato played our last and perhaps best show there in the 2005. I’ve been through there a couple times with The Juan and we always had a good time.

Is it true you guys were among the pandas in LCD’s “Drunk Girls” vid? If so, what was your favorite part of terrorizing your labelmates?

HG!: True. Alex and I are the first two pandas you see on screen. The whole day was really fun but the worst/best part for me was spraying Pat in the face with fire extinguisher. Worst because when I first did it I really thought I’d hurt him and almost ruined the video by taking my mask off to check on him (which you can see if you look closely). Best because he was fine and, well, I got to spray him in the face with a fire extinguisher. Payback for years of being made fun of for how softly I play drums.

Interviewed by Rowan Spencer (Paper Route)

LIVE – Monday, May 24 @ Metropolis TICKETS

Buy the new EP – ‘Static on the Wire’ from DFA Records.

Photo by Marc Rimmer

Braids is a band poised. A group of four young friends from Calgary transplanted in Montreal, they make what they call “experimental indie pop.” We don’t know what to call it, but we know that the sound is at once boldly personal and intimately loud, strung along with unique musical construction and sly pop sensibilities. Does that make sense? Anyone who’s caught one of their extraordinarily fluid and involving live sets, including their Pop Montreal show this past fall, knows what the deal is. For those uninitiated, take a look at the beautiful video constructed by the wonderful folks at Blogotheque.

Now, the band stands before both the completion and assumption of a lot of hard work and reward. Having completed their debut full length Native Speaker, out in the fall, they are about to embark on a summer-long tour, including their first-ever American dates along with hopes for a European voyage in the near future. The interview below is an extensive look at the mindset regarding their album, their history together, and their hopes for a future.

Enjoy, this is one of Montreal’s finest:

On their new, debut album, Native Speaker…

Raph: It’s done. Finished. Really finished. Mastered.

Austin: It sounds great. We’ve been holding it for quite a while. We’ve been holding it for the past couple months. We’re just shopping it around to American labels right now, going down to New York to play some showcase shows. A good man in Brooklyn named Kip Curry from Tell All Your Friends Promotion, he’s helped us get in contact with a bunch of labels. Now it’s like, they’ve heard it, now they want to see us play live. Now it’s like, we’re just waiting to get down there and play live and see how people like it, how they receive it.

On learning how to record in order to self-produce the album…

Raph: For sure [it was an artistic decision]. We wanted to have as much control over it as we possibly could

Austin: We had a bunch of offers from people saying, “Hey, can we help you do all the post-production on the record, all the mixing,” and we said, “No, we really want to do it all ourselves. We really want to learn how to do it, and now for next time, we’re that much further ahead.”

Raph: It’s just good to know how do something new.

On how learning the recording process affected writing new music…

Austin: We learned a lot about the actual creating process of music, as well. You can tell because we’ve been writing a few new songs since we finished the record where, after having gone through the process of recording, our live writing is very different.

We were always trying to push the boundaries of what we were doing in the live environment, but now we’ve tapped into the recording environment, which is literally limitless. You can tell because it took us 9 months to record our record.

Raph: It took as long as a baby [laughter].

Austin: Yeah it’s actually interesting because the gestation period was perfectly nine months.

Raph: There’s always this problem with people doing something that they don’t know much about and not doing it well. We’ve always heard, “Oh, you should just leave the mixing to the people who actually know how to mix,” But I think, because we took so much time to learn how to do it well, we avoided that problem.

A lot of people were coming up to us and being like, “where did you get this recorded?” and we were like, “oh, in our house [laughter], in our back room that has a laundry machine.” But we really pushed ourselves to make it amazing.

Austin: We didn’t have to constrain ourselves by asking, “how are we going to play this live?”

Raph: We already have songs that we really enjoy playing live and that we’re really proud of live, so we just took it a step further for the record.

Austin: If we head something in our head while we were recording we thought, “I’m not going to do this live, but I don’t care because it’s going to sound really good on the record.”

On evolving musically through their years of playing together…

Austin: Yes [this record is a progression of Braids’ earlier sound], very much so. Especially from our last record, which was the Set Pieces EP, and this is like a complete removal from that.

Raph: I didn’t even have effects on my vocals when we did Set Pieces. I didn’t even know how to go “AHHH.” I didn’t know how to do that.  It’s a total evolution, especially from older songs like ‘M is for Matrioshka,’ where all of us were trying learn how to play together in time and I didn’t know how to play guitar yet.

Austin: That was a different time in our lives.

Katie: We were very excited. We’re not jaded now, we’re just very used to everything.

Raph: It was like, I’m going to play the guitar as fast as I can, but now it’s different.

Austin: I guess we have a little bit more restraint and maturity in our writing now. There’s been a continual progression where we realize that we write really long songs, like a 7 or 8-minute average track length. For working on things past Native Speaker, we’re trying to make things even more poignant. We try to write, like, let’s keep it down to a one or two-minute track and now it’s like, 4, but still, that’s short for us.

On their extensive tour schedule, including their first ever American dates in New York and Boston…

Austin: We’re very excited. We’ve got basically two months on the road in Canada throughout the whole summer through August and then, after that, there’s not even one show in place but we’re hoping to just tour as much as we can.

All of us through our friends, like the band Women, that have toured Europe have instilled this “GO TO EUROPE” vibe in us. So we really want to go to Europe. We’ve been getting emails from people and little bit of interest saying, “your music would be well-received here,” and all our friends that have toured Europe say that our music would suit audiences in Europe. Hopefully in the spring or something like that we can go to Europe.

Raph: Say Europe again.

Austin. Europe. Europe.

Katie: We’re up in Europe!

On influences…

Raph: For sure, Animal Collective is a huge one for all of us. That one was big for us. I think Animal Collective was huge for us last year, definitely. It changed the way we think about how to make music, for sure. We started out varied in terms of musical taste, with everyone showing each other music and we came together with Animal Collective. Now we’re spreading out again. Like Katie’s really into New Wave, like New York No Wave, New Wave. Taylor’s starting to get into a lot more electronic based stuff.

Austin: Every once in a while, Taylor and I throw out the idea of starting a micro-house band, with live drums and effects.

On life after the album:

Austin: It’s kind of nice to be done with the album. We’re starting to listen to so much music. I found that when I was recording the album I was forgetting to listen to music. I became so saturated with my own music.

Raph: I didn’t listen to any music.

Austin: I just don’t want to hear that album for a while. Now it’s like I’m listening to a lot more new stuff and it’s nice.

Raph: This was the first time [that we got so immersed in the recording process]. We had only done one day recording before, like live to 2-track at a radio station.

On integrating new material into the band’s fluid live show…

Raph: For sure, we have a couple new songs

Austin: and a couple tweaks to our old songs

Raph: There are tweaks with the endings and I have different ways of singing the songs now. Still, the album is very fluid and the live show is very fluid. All the songs that are on the album, we’ve played live a million times and we’re very happy with them. It’s pretty similar, but you know, the album is like nine months of playing the same songs over and over again, so it’s just a little different.

Katie: I know that most of us really want to kind of move past the album a bit. We want to write as much new material as possible and really try new things. We want to try new sounds and not just do new things like Native Speaker was.

Austin: For sure, to keep pushing the boundaries on what we can do physically and emotionally and as friends, in terms of how much we can beg of ourselves. We’ve spent some time already sitting down and thinking, “How do we want to progress?”

We found that it was best to not talk about it so much (Laughing).

Raph: Yeah, you just dig yourself a hole when you do that.

Austin: we got kind of heated a couple nights talking. Now it’s kind of like, let’s just see where it’s going and it’s going in a nice direction. I think we’re going to come back to it and speak a little more about it. It’s just a balance of how can we remove ourselves from what we’ve done before without losing our cohesive sound.

Raph: It still sounds like Braids. We just want to challenge ourselves because we’re 19, 20, and 21 years old and we’re full of energy.

Katie: We get bored easily.

In addition to the new album, Braids will be releasing a split cassette with Raph’s other group Blue Hawaii to promote their tour. For a full list of tour dates, check Braids’ myspace. They will be playing in Montreal on May 21 at the Savoy with the Holly Miranda.

LOOKOUT caught up with Mark Sandford of the Montreal dance group, Fluxus. Fluxus’ five members (Mark Sandford, Chris Ploss, Scott Nelson, Phil Gordon, Matthew Kolaitis) all play their own instruments and bring about a thrash-filled dance rock blowout. Mark is also involved with the netlabel and music community, Sixteen Sixteen. Oh, and he’s got a side project, Master Tone. Oh, and a blog. When we chatted, Mark had just made a bisque for the first time and was, to say the least, uber-impressed with himself. And I was, to say the least, uber-impressed with his engaging interview.

To download Fluxus’ latest release, Navy Blue (free), click here.

LOOKOUT: For those who don’t know, can you tell us a little bit about your record collective Sixteen Sixteen?

Mark Sandford: Basically, when we started Fluxus, we needed a place to put our music. You know how every single person and every single band has a MySpace? Typically, it’s like “Oh, go check out my MySpace.” That doesn’t carry any weight anymore. So, we thought why not build our own little website and put all our music and our friends’ music up there. Myself, Chris Ploss, and Scott Nelson started the website. Scott, who’s a computer science major, built the most insane website and application to stream music. It ended up being a warehouse for our music. So we could record something and then send it out on the internet. We were recording other bands here at our apartment, and it was like, “Hey, why don’t you put this stuff on the website?”

I noticed a distinct change in sound from Cargoes of Empire to Navy Blue. How did that musical change in Fluxus end up happening?

When we recorded Cargoes of Empire, we had a different group of people than we do now. Fluxus itself was a project between Chris and I and so it was whatever we were working on at the time. When we recorded Cargoes of Empire, there were six of us. When you have six people in a band, it seems like the biggest group of people ever…  Just so many people in a band. We have five people in the band now and it seems so much lighter. I don’t know what one person changes, but it made a big difference in sound. The sound that you hear on Cargoes of Empire came out of the people that were working in the band and these people moved away and moved to different projects. Chris and I wanted to make what we really liked: dance groove, dance music. We got two new members and they were totally down with that and it started taking shape from there. We’ve taken some of our Cargoes of Empire songs and made some of our own remixes, kind of in the vain of Duran Duran or Soulwax. So, it’s like a weird evolution and it seems like a right fit.

What do you think is special about Montreal in terms of making music and playing shows?

Montreal is such a creative place and people who are creative here are very serious about their creativity and that’s a really excellent environment to be in. Montreal’s not a big city and that’s what makes it good because we hang out with people that are in so many incredible bands and they’re just our friends. It’s such a rich network of people. I can’t speak for other people in other cities, but the creative network is so big within a small city and that’s really powerful because you can go to a show and chances are, a lot of people in the crowd are friends of the people up there, which is really encouraging and special.

Have you ever been playing a show and everyone’s standing around no one’s really dancing? What do you do? How do you keep the energy up?

That’s one of the reasons I wanted to make dance music. In Montreal, we did a show at this really weird venue, it was packed but everyone was sitting at tables. So we played forty-five minutes of nonstop dance music, and people really enjoyed it, but in a weird way, in a “I’m-gonna-sit-here-with-my-beer-way.” That’s a challenge for me, like how will I make people start feeling what life is?

We’ve talked about this as a band. If we’re going to play dance music, music that is somewhat repetitive and upbeat, it’s our job to look enthused or at least pretend that we’re into it. That’s what you have to do. Montreal’s kind of a weird city for that, maybe it’s part of the European thing. I lived in Detroit for a while and people go crazy. It could be a folk song and it’s like a rave.

What’s next for Fluxus?

We’re taking a little break right now. The next thing that’s up for us is that we’re possibly shooting a music video. We’re trying to secure money for that, which is, you know, kind of difficult. Les Appendices, a franco-comedy show, were at one of our shows and dug what we were doing and we’ve been in a conversation with them about shooting a music video. We’re all waiting on government funding.

Yesterday, LOOKOUT caught up with Devon of the Pop Winds, a Montreal-based band signed to Arbutus Records that have been making music together for just over a year. When I called, Devon was in the midst of putting together CDs for their Ontario tour with other Arbutus bands Sean Nicholas Savage and the Silly Kissers. The Pop Winds (Kyle Bennett, Austin Milne, and Devon Welsh) fuse vocals, guitar, sax (yes, a saxophone), with electronic instruments like synth and drum machines. The dreamy, almost despairing vocals are propped up by poppy electronic sounds and the unexpected rich wail of the saxophone. They’ve followed up their 2009 self-released EP, Understory, with their recently released full-length album, The Turquoise.

LOOKOUT: How did The Pop Winds get started?

Devon: Austin and myself were roommates at school when we first came to Montreal. Kyle and I knew each other from Uxbridge, Ontario,  and he moved to Montreal, liked playing music and then we all got together.

Where does the band name the Pop Winds come from?

It’s the name of a song that Kyle had written the summer we started playing music together, the summer of 2008. I’m not sure the significance of it… I don’t think it was meant to have any specific meaning.

You’re all originally from Ontario. Do you think the Montreal vibe has influenced how you make music or how you approach making music? Would you have made the same music anywhere in the world?

We probably would’ve made the same music anywhere. How we approach music has more to do with interest and various technologies and what we were good at initially. And what we could contribute in terms of what instruments we played. The city affected the way we would approach how or where we would play or music, and how we would release it and stuff like that. The ability to put something out yourself, I guess, was probably an idea from people who were playing music in Montreal.

What are some of your musical influences?

I would say, I don’t know… When I think about that question, it’s as if it implies some conscious decision to make music in a certain way. We’re not trying to do music a certain way, and we all listen to music in different ways. Maybe any kind of music that uses the same approach.

What kind of approach?

Maybe say, like using electronic equipment, writing music that doesn’t necessarily always have a pop song structure. I don’t know, that’s really broad.

Is it important to you to give out free music? Or is it something you had to do because that’s the way music is heading these days?

We sort of had to do this. After a certain point, it’s going to be easier and more effective to get people to hear your music if you give it to them for free. And it’s pretty easy to do that nowadays. I expect music to be out there for free sometime or another. A couple weeks after an album comes out, it’s everywhere on the Internet. It seems like the natural thing to do.

How has the band grown over the last year, from the release of Understory to The Turquoise? First as bandmates, but also musically?

What you would expect, we’ve gotten a lot better at writing cooperatively. We make a song less and less based off of ideas that were fully developed by one of us. Now it’s much more cooperative and more of a mutual writing experience. Musically, we’ve made more interesting songs that we’re more excited about playing.

What can readers/listeners expect from a live Pop Winds show?

We will always focus on doing the best we can for a set. And have at least some new things, new ideas, and new ways of playing specific songs. We would hope to do a performance that is engaging and makes people want to pay attention and listen attentively.

Brother Ali has never been afraid to speak his mind in his rhymes. Apparently that hasn’t changed with the release of Us, his sixth full release to date, last September. Recently one of LOOKOUT’s own, Galen Macdonald, got the chance to talk with the Rhymesayers MC about the Breakin’ Dawn Tour with Fashawn and BK One, honest lyricism, and hip hop in the Midwest. You can check out Brother Ali in Montreal at Foufounes Electroniques this Sunday, April 11. Check out the event and LOOKOUT’s interview with co-headliner Fashawn!

So you’re Breakin’ Dawn right now, huh? Other than eating your Wheaties, what keeps you going through 25 shows in a month?

Just love doing it, you know. Got a really good team of people, everybody’s really thorough at doing their job. And I just love doing it, getting up every day and doing the shows. Everyone that’s with us is fun and energetic, and really excited about what we’re doing.

You’ve been very successful making music that’s personal and honest, even on topics—like the verse on closeted homosexuality on “Tight Rope”—that a lot of MCs seem scared to touch. What drives you to make that music, and what pressures come with it?

I don’t think there’s any pressure at all. I make what I feel. Well, I guess the only pressure comes from me just wanting to make the best art that I can, something that’s important to me. I think that everybody has their thing that they’re able to offer as an artist… and I’ve just spent a lot of time–between my own experiences and the people I’m close with—just looking at life, analyzing it and trying to figure it out, and, you know, figure out what makes people do the things they do, what the feelings are behind the situations that we’re in. And I’ve had to learn to navigate my way through my own stuff and then communicate that to the people I’m with. I think those are my best moments as an artist. Even though I like making the more upbeat, rapping for rapping’s sake tracks, those aren’t my strongest moments. The moments people really care about are the ones where I’m talking about something a little more substantial than that.

Yeah, you’ve gained a lot of fame from tracks like “Uncle Sam, Goddamn” and “Forest Whitaker,” but that rapping for rapping’s sake bravado is still there. What does that hip-hop mentality mean to you?

I mean, it’s nothing you do consciously. I don’t have to say, “this has to have this edge, cause it’s hip hop”. This is just how I grew up, you know what I mean? Because I had to fight for everything. So once I get something I want, I start fighting for the next thing.

Being a dad must make that all the more real. Has being a father affected you as an MC?

No, not directly.  It just makes it all more important, because the time you spend with your music you spend away from your kid. So when I’m making music, I have to make the most of it.

Well, you seem to have surrounded yourself with the right kind of musicians for that over at Rhymesayers. What’s it like working with Ant, Slug, P.O.S. and all those guys, and what does the Midwest mean to that label?

I’m really close with Ant, and Slug, and I’m really close with the guys that run the label, Siddiq and J-Bird and Scott and Kevin. That’s the main group of people, and it’s like a family. The Midwest thing, you know, we don’t have the glamour. There’s not a lot of showing off. When you say you’re from New York or LA there’s an image and a personality that comes along with that, but the Midwest—what does that mean? So it’s just me and my story, and what I’m about. I have myself to offer. And I think the same is true of everybody in the Midwest, from Eminem and Common and Kanye West all the way down to me and Slug and P.O.S. The music we make is really personal, It’s about our own lives and who we are as individuals.

Speaking of which, you’ve got a pretty unique website [www.brotherali.com/], with a twitter/forum function. What’s the concept behind that?

What I really wanted to happen was two things. I wanted a centralized place for people to see whats up with me, a home base. And then what I was trying to do on there was to give people a forum to talk about issues, and I’m having a little more difficulty getting people to communicate with each other. What I really want is for us to have conversations about issues worth talking about.

Well good luck with that, and good luck with the tour—we’ll see you in Montreal on April 11^th at Foufunes Electroniques?

Yeah, thank you.

Tickets available at:

Downtown:

Foufounes Electriques

Off the Hook (1021a St. Catherine O.)

High Times (1385 St. Catherine O.)

NDG:

Sub V (5666 Sherbrooke O.)

Plateau:

Lunetz (4269 St. Denis)

G&G Barbershop (28 Des Pins E.)

Straight out of Fresno, California, is 21-year-old rapper Fashawn. His critically-acclaimed debut album Boy Meets World, produced by master producer Exile, and released in October 2009, is an honest insight into the life and struggles of growing up in Fresno. Adding to his growing list of accomplishments, the somewhat overlooked Fashawn is sharing the cover of XXL’s April issue, dubbed “A New Breed of Hustlers,” which include other up-and-comers J.Cole, Nipsey Hussle, Jay Rock, Big Sean and Wiz Khalifa, in XXL’s third annual Freshmen Class feature.

Aptly described as a breath of fresh air in an industry that gets the bulk of its attention from rhymes on consumerist preoccupations, Fashawn is breathing new life into the stifling milieu of mainstream rap. Fashawn is a hardworking, but somewhat overlooked emcee who’s holding his own in what’s increasingly being considered the West Coast revival. Influenced by the golden era of hip hop, there’s no doubt that Fashawn has developed an artistry of his own in his self-reflective and politically aware music.

Fashawn, who counts Planet Asia, The Alchemist, Evidence and most recently, Talib Kweli as collaborators, is on the road to becoming a luminary in his own right. In case you missed it, be sure to check out Fashawn’s freshly released track, and homage to Nas, “Life’s A Bitch” featuring Talib Kweli.

LOOKOUT: How was South by Southwest?

Fashawn: SXSW was unforgettable. It was my first time experiencing SXSW and it was like a musical high school reunion because a lot of the people I’ve gotten to work with were there. And I just turned 21, so I got to drink free beer.

Your music has a really positive message. Despite what you’ve been through, how do you maintain that energy and motivation to keep following your dreams?

I still keep the same mentality that I’ve always had, like having nothing and trying to get out of the situation I’m in. Get out and get something. Now it’s just the start and you know, people call me the freshman. I’m doing well for myself and it pays the bills, but my mission has just begun.

To what extent is music and the writing process therapeutic for you?

It’s therapeutic because if I don’t get these emotions and ideas out, it’s just going to explode inside my head or my heart. If I put this energy out into the world and spread my joy and my pain, maybe it’ll help somebody. It’s all in the energies you put out and maybe some day down the road you’ll get something back.

Referring to the title of the mixtape you did with The Alchemist (The Antidote), do you consider yourself the antidote to all the crap in rap game right now?

Yeah I would. Me and The Alchemist called it The Antidote because we were sick of all the shit and we felt like we were the antidote to help the people, the rappers and the hip hop heads. With the project, I had the freedom to say whatever I said like. The Alchemist really hates typical, mediocre, club records, and he wanted to make something dirty and raw.

In terms of rappers currently in the game, who would you consider an influence?

I would say Jay Electronica, Blu, which is one of my peers that I admire, he’s incredible musician and lyricist, and Black Milk, for production.

You’ve been hailed as the future of hip hop and some people in the media have speculated that Boy Meets World is going to become a classic. How do you respond to that kind of pressure?

I respond with a dope show, more music, and try to prove the people right. You know, every emcee has an attitude of “I’m gonna be the best” and hopes that their work will become a classic. But yeah, all I can do is try and prove them right.

Boy Meets World is a concept album with a cohesive narrative running through it of what life was like as a kid in Fresno. Do you have an idea on how you want to approach your next album?

The song called “The Ecology” on my first album is kind of like the science and the study behind the behaviour and the environment I come from. I want to take that concept and expand on it. With this next project, I can dish out everything I’ve seen and learned in the past year. The shit that I’ve seen in the last year, it’s really incredible compared to the last 20 years of my life. I’m even wiser now. My next album’s executive produced by DJ Khalil, with productions from Exile, The Alchemist, and some new people. You can expect a lot of surprises.

How has traveling, touring, and being able to be exposed to so much in the last year changed your outlook on life?

Now I truly understand when they say music is the universal language. I’ve been to places where they don’t even know how to pronounce my name, but it’s still nothing but love. I’m not a rich man but I live a very wealthy life because of these experiences. Ten years ago I wouldn’t have said that. I would’ve said, “Yeah, cool. The graffiti was dope.” I soak in different things. My life has more meaning now. I see myself when I’m fifty writing novels and shit.

So, I’ve seen some videos of you, and you’re a dope skater.

I’m okay. I could use some practice.

You’re also working with Orisue and etnies. Is it important for you to do things outside of rap, career-wise, to kind of diversify, if you will? Or is it more natural?

It’s just natural for me. I love skating, I love clothes and I’m from Cali where skating was born. Working with Orisue and etnies are really just extensions of my life.

You sampled “Shut up and Let Me Go” by The Ting Tings a few years back. What kind of music do you listen to outside of hip hop?

I love all kinds of music. I like listening to music from the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and shit. I’m not prejudiced when it comes to music, I like all different genres. I like Feist…

She’s Canadian!

Yeah, that’s right. Hopefully she’s out there when I come up. Maybe we can have lunch or something.

Fashawn begins his “Breakin’ Dawn” tour with Brother Ali and BK-One on March 29^th, and will be performing in Montreal at Foufounes Électriques on April 11. For more info, click here.
Tickets available at:

Downtown:
Foufounes Electriques
Off the Hook (1021a St. Catherine O.)
High Times (1385 St. Catherine O.)

NDG:
Sub V (5666 Sherbrooke O.)

Plateau:
Lunetz (4269 St. Denis)
G&G Barbershop (28 Des Pins E.)

Established off their excellent Blap to the Future mixtape, Lazer Sword are the prime San Francisco representatives of the bass-heavy, glitch-ridden synth sound championed by artist like Flying Lotus, Hudson Mohawke and Montreal favorites Megasoid and Lunice. Though no one’s sure what to call the new music yet (as the interview below candidly reveals), Lazer Sword, comprised of artists Lando Kal and Low Limit, bring their own flavor by straddling the ever-shrinking barriers between hip hop, dubstep, and electro. Coming off a new EP and in anticipation of their debut full length album and upcoming collabos with some of the Bay Area’s best Hyphy amabassadors, Lazer Sword sat down talked with us.

In the past, I’ve heard some pretty outlandish genre names used to label the music you and your peers have been producing. Have you guys heard one that feels accurate yet? Do you have any suggestions or do you feel like people should just stop gooning over the name?

Yeah the name game has been the ultimate dilemma for us in the past no doubt. We’ve gotten shit all across the board! Lazer Bass (the worst), Future Blap (name of our first mixtape), Electric Whomp, Turbo Crunk (which we’re sure our good MTL bruvs Megasoid, Hovatron, and Lunice are familiar with), Street Bass, Molly Wop, Glitch Hop (OUCH), Future Funk, and that’s just the ones we can remember. We’ve even come up with ridiculous shit to make fun of the genrefiers, like “Surf Knock” or “Colossal Thump”.

The Bay Area is bubbling right now, with new artists and even new genres popping up all over the place. What’s it like living and creating music there, and are there any Bay Area artists you would be excited to work with?

The Bay Area is truly inspiring in every aspect, living, creating, interacting. I myself live in Brooklyn, NY currently for the last 9 months or so, (also a very inspiring place in its own!) but i’m originally from the Bay and it’s a very vibrant city with lots going on. Yes music is is popping up in all forms and the people there are open to all sorts of styles and very enthusiastic when in comes to the nightlife and local talents. This leads to more weeklies and monthlies starting up.. for instance 222’s “Icee Hot” monthly in SF. That night put on by residents Disco Shawn, LL, and Ghosts On Tape, showcases Uk Funky, Garage, 2-Step, Grime, and the likes of and with an exception of New York or maybe L.A., there’s not really too many cities in the states really stepping in those territories yet. Of course there’s the Hyphy movemnet which lately hasent been as booming as it was a couple years back back but there’s some secret heaters still lurking in that territory.

We’ve actually started working with some big names in the Hyphy rap community which is a huge deal for us, and would definitely like to keep that trend going with artists like, Laroo, Fab, E-40, The Team, and the whole hyphy blap squadron! get at us.

With so much new electronic music being produced by duos or groups, it feels like the dynamic of production and creation is shifting. What’s your collaborative process of creating or remixing a song?

When collaborating on tracks between both LL and i, there’s nothing really special to it besides the fact that we are very familiar with each others production process and interests when it comes to writing songs.

Other than that we simply start a track, wether it be me or LL coming up with the initial vision, then swap audio files via an online server back and forth until we are both fully satisfied and content with the final finished product. it’s always fun to hear what direction the other has taken the song to and that’s what really keeps things interesting. We’ve learned one thing though, you cant ever overwork your initial vision and become too attached because when working with two people, things are always bound to change within writing process, but always for the better.

Any exciting plans for official or bootleg releases coming up in 2010?

As far as 2010 releases go, we just released a Low Limit vs. Lando Kal EP via Glasgow based Numbers label, called “The Golden Handshake” on March 15th. we also have a slew of remixes coming soon, but the big kahuna is our first full length Lazer Sword album via Innovative Leisure which is due out around end of June – beginning of July. We’re extremely excited about it as we’ve been working on it for some time and it’s the first release where we’ll really be able to show the full spectrum of of lazer sword material. We also just recently did a free mix for FACT Magazine, which is available for download for the next few weeks. BOOOM.

Check out their new mix at FACT magazine, available for download for the next three weeks:

Lazer Sword FACT Mix

LOOKOUT: See Mystery Lights is the first YACHT album after the induction of Claire. How have you both built on the old conception of YACHT as a solo act? Or is this reincarnation completely different from previous forms of YACHT?

Jona: Well, I think there’s a similar spirit to the band. The core message and core goals are the same, but now they are shared with Claire.

Claire: There’s no distinction of before me and after me, we had this shared experience (The Marfa Lights) and it changed our perspectives. It’s something that we share as a common source of inspiration.

Jona: We came together through this paranormal phenomenon of Marfa Mystery Lights. There’s no explanation for the paranormal phenomenon of the Marfa Lights, and teams of scientists have been trying to figure it out. After we saw it together, we felt we need to continue our journey together in everything we do together.

I find the very existence of something like a “modern mystery” very odd and kind of disturbing and unnerving to curious people like myself who think there should be an explanation for everything. Were the lights the first or main reason why you both decided moved to Marfa, Texas?

Claire: Yes, it was the reason we moved there. We hadn’t been looking for it, it just came to us in a random way. Jona saw it while he was driving on a tour.

Jona: I had no idea what it was going to be. I thought it was going to be an explained natural beauty but it really changed me and ended up being really supernatural and unexplainable.

Claire: We decided we had to live amongst them and figure them out.

Montreal, much like your hometown of Portland, Oregon, has long and depressing winters, but a thriving artistic population. How did Portland influence your creativity and the making of your music?

Claire: It’s always interesting to make music and art in a place where you don’t have access to the tools other people have. We were lucky to have a cool music scene but it wasn’t always there. A lot of musical trends in the Northwest is born out of a DIY period.

Jona: Yeah, we didn’t have the means to make anything, but I don’t mean in a political sense.

Claire: It’s interesting to make music with limitations and to have no big record label, no awesome venues, no professional studios.

The band is very stylized with the black and white represention. What’s the intention behind the black and white dualities? Are these dualities completely distinct from each other?

Claire: We’ve always been interested in duality. We both have had a renewed interest in the ritual history of the world. We like to study religion, the secret societies of the world and any codified set of beliefs. There are huge commonalities between different threads of ideological history, whether it be Inter-Babylonian, Syrian or contemporary Western religion. We are all motivated by the same impulses. We want an understanding of things that are beyond human understanding. The light and the dark are two different paths, there’s no fundamental evil or fundamental good. There’s no right or wrong path, we all live in this interconnected universe. We’re all just a bunch of monkeys trying to transcend our situation.

For more Q&A with YACHT, don’t miss the March 4^th issue of The McGill Daily.

Listen:

Psychic City – YACHT

So Post All ‘Em – YACHT

See A Penny (Pick It Up) – YACHT