"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.

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: 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.

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.

LOOKOUT: It’s been four years since you attended the Academy. Do you ever still think about it?

SL: Each year around this time, RBMA contacts me to speak at the info session or to do an interview, etc. So this season ends up being a time when I reminisce about my experience. Usually when people find out that I attended RBMA they ask me to tell them about it. I also think about the academy every time RB [Red Bull] throws an event in town 'cause I end up seeing all the Canadian RB guys, which is always great!

Why did you decide to apply?

It's funny, I wasn't going to apply 'cause I thought I wouldn't get in. I was actually contemplating letting go of my musical aspirations at the time. However one of my close friends, Scott C aka The Incubator, who was a RB Mr. X at the time, pushed me to apply. It's really thanks to him for being so encouraging!

What was the most challenging part of RBMA?

The challenging parts for me were allowing myself to enjoy the experience without doubting my talent and feeling scattered by wanting to do everything all at once. At that time, I was still unsure of myself and wasn't fully able to assert myself in the way I would now. I knew that I had something interesting to offer musically, but I wasn't able to fully embrace the depth of my ability and uniqueness. I was still discovering my own voice. I also felt this strange pressure to do too many things at once. I wanted to write and sing on so many collaborations that I think my efforts were slightly scattered. In retrospect, I would have chosen only a couple songs to work on and would have enjoyed just being there more.

You've since collaborated with other RBMA grads, like David Ryshpan, Aklimatize, Camplaix, and Sikh Knowledge, on Messages from the Future. What is it like doing collaborations with other Academy participants?

Honestly, I love working with RBMA participants 'cause they are mad talented producers, musicians, and DJs with really unique musical worldviews. I feel blessed to have had the opportunity to have met and collaborated with all of them. I’m still look forward to working with more of them!

David Ryshpan and I became friends because we both live in Montreal and did radio together before the academy. Now, he's my go-to pianist in town. We continue to enjoy working together as he's part of the band that is currently reinterpreting my upcoming album in a live setting. I had the pleasure of meeting Aklimatize in Montreal when he was on tour and we hit it off right away. We spent a very fun day in the studio recording together. Camplaix is my Portuguese brother that I connected with at the Academy. He's amazing to work with. He sends me these incredible beats that instantly inspire me and then we go back and forth sharing ideas and building the tracks. We have two songs together on my upcoming release and I think they are very strong songs. Sikh Knowledge is another talented Montreal friend that I love working with. We get along like a house on fire. We have a couple tracks together on the album and we are working on building a live show together using our laptops, drum machines, percussion, and a loop pedal. We are going to work on an EP together in the summer.

Aside from collaborations, how did the experience help your musical career?

The experience marked a major turning point in my musical career. I think if I hadn't gotten accepted I might have given up on my musical dreams. It was a big confidence boost at a time when I really needed one. Being there inspired me to keep on dreaming and allowed me to begin envisioning my future album project. It also allowed me to meet and be inspired by all kinds of people in the business. It encouraged me to tap into an extensive group of amazing music people that are forever to be a part of my network. It continues to allow me to connect instantly with these folks whenever I meet them. Being a part of the RBMA family allows me to share my projects with a massive international audience that I wouldn't have had contact with otherwise.

Do you have any advice for this year’s RBMA applicants?

All I can say is make sure you apply! The application is long, challenging, and can be daunting 'cause it asks you to really examine yourself and express things that aren't often asked of you. However, it is one of the most incredible musical experiences you can have.  When applying, just be honest about who you are musically and personally. Don't waste your time trying to prove something or trying to be something that you think will please them. The application is an opportunity to get to know yourself better—so enjoy it!

LOOKOUT: How did you decide to apply to 2007's RBMA in Toronto? Did your decision have anything to do with Toronto as the place where you began to study music?

DR: I'm friends with Scott C (The Incubator), who served as one of Montreal's "Mr. X"s that year. He urged me to apply. It was the first year I had ever heard of RBMA, so I applied without really knowing that much about it. The decision didn't have anything to do with Toronto being my hometown; it was, however, a really different experience of the city for me. I moved to Montreal when I was 16 so I never went clubbing in Toronto, and I wasn't really ever immersed in Toronto's electronic or hip-hop scenes. It was like being a tourist at home, considering the majority of my musical experiences in Toronto happened at The Rex and the Top o' the Senator (which doesn't exist anymore).

Did all of the members of Indigone Trio apply for RBMA? How did you take your personal experience and translate it into something that the entire band could benefit from?

I was the only member of Indigone that applied to RBMA. Being able to work closely alongside engineers and producers, I got enough of the technical language of recording and mixing to make the recording of our album, Cycles, a much more fluid process. The awareness of music as sound, and how to deal with different kinds of sound, has definitely influenced my composition since RBMA.

How was RBMA different from other workshops you’ve participated in like the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop and the Banff International Workshop in Jazz and Creative Music?

It's pretty remarkable how similar they all are, actually. I often refer to RBMA to my jazz-inclined friends as the "Banff Centre for electronic production." They're quite similar in the sense that they foster immense amounts of creativity in a short timespan. In all of the workshops, there's an expectation that you're in a creative, artistic headspace the whole time. That phenomenon of having the artistic impulse always turned "on" is really refreshing, something I still find hard to replicate in my daily life. The only major difference I can think of was that for BMI, there were concrete deadlines - we had a reading session with a real live big band every two months, and we were expected to bring in significant amounts of new material to the reading. At Banff, too, there were concerts and shows to prepare for. RBMA wasn't structured around deadlines but there was definitely an awareness of the fact that we only had two weeks to make the most amount of music possible.

Having studied jazz performance at McGill, did you learn anything unexpected from artists who had never gone to school for music?

I was blown away by the inherent musicality of people that had little or no formal training. Our ears are our guide, anyway. One thing I took away was this sense of being able to break the rules – if it sounds like it works, then it does, regardless if it's theoretically totally correct.

What kind of relationships – friendly or work-related – did you make during RBMA? Have you kept any of them?

Sarah Linhares and I have been working together since RBMA. We knew each other through radio and didn't actually know that the other had applied, or that the other played music, before RBMA! I'm still in touch with some of the RBMA alumni from our term. Heliponto, a house producer from Belo Horizonte, Brasil, produced a track with me during RBMA that came out on her record, Eletronia, and we have another project together on a back burner. I'm still in touch with Mara TK, Kez YM, and Camplaix, among others, and I hope to work with them all again soon.

Do you have any advice for this year’s RBMA applicants?

Take your time with the application and be honest. I know the 17-page questionnaire can be daunting, but the reality is that the answers given throughout the 17 pages is how RBMA creates an instant 30-person family.

I want to re-iterate something I said at the info session. It may appear that RBMA is geared strictly towards "electronic music." It's not. It's a balance of electronic music production, and music creation of all kinds. I encourage anyone who's remotely interested in learning any element of electronic music production – from improvising with Live or Max/MSP to recording their own albums to producing hip-hop, electro, or whatever – to apply.

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

LOOKOUT: About your debut album Toeachizown, the five different volumes each have a life of their own, but still form a comprehensive whole and has an underlying story . Can you tell me something about the different volumes and why you decided to put it together this way?

Dãm: I wanted to make a concept record like progressive rock records I used to listen to back in the day. They would have a theme around it, as opposed to a bunch of hit singles on the record. “I Wanna Thank You (For Steppin’ Into My Life)” is one song that I think could be on the radio right now and be a hit. But, I didn’t want to make a record of hit singles, I don’t even want to aspire to do that. I wanted to create the record I've always wanted to make… and why not make it? In Toeachizown, the first volume is more electric based, the second more serious, Sky more positive, Hood more dark.

Is there something about L.A. that makes it a unique place for funk? How did growing up on the West Coast influence your style of music?

The music we grew up with on the West Coast is a little more laid back. Even though we have sunshine, there’s the darkness and the light… We’ve cultivated something a bit different from East Coast approach.  The warm weather, the palm trees, and the driving culture of L.A. definitely influences my music.

Prince was a big inspiration for you. What Prince era do you draw influence from most?

1978-1987

I feel like you’ve coined the term modern funk. I don’t want to suggest a clear break in “old-fashioned funk” and modern funk, because there’s a definite continuation, but what is modern about your modern funk?

It’s a mix of subject matter, log extended tracks, instrumentals, reverb vocals... It’s a different approach. It’s the funk you’ve always wanted to have. The modern funk approach pertains to some of the science aspects of things, like of exploration of different worlds. Funk is more like funk 45 vibe. Modern funk is more electric based and appeals to post-disco funk. You know what I’m sayin'?

For more Q&A with Dam-Funk check the March 4^th issue of The McGill Daily.

Dam-Funk @ Club Lambi - Mar 5, 2010

Listen:

Speak The Truth - Dam-Funk

Toeachizown - Dam-Funk

Passion - Dam-Funk

Listen to a few of her tracks:

Grimes - Rosa

Grimes - Venus in Fleurs

Grimes - Zoal, Face Dancer

When I think of Grimes, I think of words like grimy, raw, gangster and thug. Where did that name come from? Why do you perform under that name?

Haha, I don’t know really where it came from.  I have this problem of deciding on project names. When I was 17 or 18, I was making really crappy music on a tape recorder, like wannabe classical music, and I would just record it and write Grimes because it seemed like a weird contrast that doesn’t seem to fit. Later on, I decided I didn’t want to use my own name, and I already started with Grimes and it wasn’t that embarrassing so I just went with it.

You’re also a visual artist and you designed the cover art for Geidi Primes.  Is it watercolours that you use?

I use ink and food colouring. Food colouring is actually really great as long as you don’t get water on anything.

Your artwork has very unearthly, scary, dark and uncanny elements. How does your art influence your music?

My art is a visual manifestation of my music. If my music would look like anything, it would be my art.

You’ve been compared to a lot of people on the blogosphere including Kate Bush, Bjork, and The Cure... Personally, I got reminded of a little Tracy Chapman while listening to Rosa. As much as bloggers can compare, I've really have never heard anything comparable to your sound. Are comparisons progressive and positive? Or is it more of a burden?

It’s not really either. It’s weird because I never really listened to Kate Bush. Now I’ve been listening to it nonstop for the past couple of days. The Dreaming is my new favourite album, but I’d never even heard it before. I feel like people compare musicians to other musicians because it’s easier to say that people have a similar sound so that readers might be more inclined to listen. It’s the best reference point in order to compare different artists.

A couple of the album reviews say things like, "I can’t describe her music, so I won’t. Just listen." When making your music, do you intentionally make it beyond words and distinct from what's currently out there? Or is that just part of your spirit of making music?

I’m pretty technically limited, so I kind of make the music that I can make, if that makes sense? It’s really simple because that’s the only way I can make music. Like, every song is 4/4, most are 120 bpm and most are in the key of C. I’m trying to move on from that right now. I make music that I want to hear. Or I try to.

What are you working on now? What’s the future looking like?

I want to make a new album that’s more epic. I also want to make a better live show because I’m very inexperienced.

Why do you think you need to improve your live performance? What is it, for you, that makes a live show?

Well, I have a debilitating stage fright. I used to vomit before a show. It's getting a lot better lately. Usually I would only play for 12 minutes because it was really hard for me to make anything longer. I get super-critical of myself when I’m trying to make something live because it’s just so different from how I compose. The songs I’ve recorded aren’t what I think would do well in a live environment. I just want it to be louder, you know?

Grimes has a show coming up on February, 25, 2010 at 8:00 PM at Casa Del Popolo with Blue Hawaii and Pop Winds. Check out her MySpace for more info.