Interview and Photos by Keira Zhou
How did the band form and how did you guys meet each other?
We all recently moved to Montreal. Louis had a house party at his apartment. There were a bunch of apartments of this unit. They were like “lets’s have a party”, and we were all invited. And it was the first time a lot of us met. We played for like four and half hours. And next weekend we got invited to play another house party. And we spent about a year and half just brining full PA system to various goings-on. So bringing the party to the party. And then at a certain point, we were like, hey why don’t we invite people to our party. So we had a show at a venue and people came. We didn’t play a real venue till half way through. We’ve done at least 6 shows before we played at a real venue.
Are all of you guys musicians or is this a side of desk project for you guys?
We are all musicians. We all also do other things. Sometimes music, sometimes some things that related to music, but the band has definitely been a really awesome platform for internally and externally working on what it means to be a musician.
What instruments are there in the band?
If you had to guess what would you think?
Drums, keys, guitar, bass?
Ok you’ve got four. What else?
Sax? Trombone? Trumpet?
Good! And one of them you said already, there are two of them but it’s not the guitar.
Two Drums? Two keys?
Yes two keys! And the sax player also does the vocal.
How do you guys write music together?
Kind of coming from a bunch of different places. The benefit of having 8 people and a very flexible creative structure is that ideas can come from anyone in the band, and they can take up a bunch of different forms once they are brought to the rest of the band. So there’s really no good answer to that. It also keeps it fresh, and gives it some variety. You can probably subconsciously feel the songs that were more flashed out before they were brought in. Sometimes it’s just nice that it just gets to the point. And then some songs took shape within the band. They just have a different energy. It creates a variety. Because if every song comes out of a jam, the whole record would kind of have this looseness to it. So every once in a while you just want a song that’s like “here’s the song”. And if the whole record is like preconceived songs, it would lack a bit of life.
Do you guys have similar influencers when it comes to music?
There’s definitely overlap, but we all bring in our own what we were checking out back to the band. And try to see how other people vibe with it. Like other people hear it and how to incorporate it. We all follow James Blake pretty close. And also some old bands, like Funkadelic. Other than that, there are a lot of differences, which is great. This is the most exciting part, is to know some people are in certain worlds, and the fact that we have a common ground to bring them together and see how they interact with each other is pretty cool. Some of us are in this 1940 jazz land, and some are in this top 40 land, like Ariana Grande. And we bring them together.
Could you guys tell us a bit about the latest single that just came out? How was the process of producing it? Was there any fun memories?
One of our keyboard players / vocalists had this idea for it and this theme. It’s a very energetic song, and had this idea with the lyrics. We just wrote up the rest of the chorus and the verses and the pre-chorus, and we just had the song. We played it and recorded in the studio and our producer was like, I think I can hit up with George Clinton, and he did. And we were like, that’s crazy. And it was funny, cause at that point when our producer was like, I think I can hit up with George, we went to put it (the song) more towards a track that he would vibe with, which is really sick, cause we were trying to catch the attention of someone we all respect, which is a different way of making music. Sometimes you make certain amount for yourself, certain amount for the listeners, but to have one listener in mind, as we were producing it, was kind of cool.
You guys are on a tour right now and New York is your second stop? Where else are you guys gonna play?
It’s a pretty short tour. We are just spending a few days in all the major cities, which is really fun. Cause we get to be around the community. All these cities, we have a little community. So Toronto was fun to have a few days there, getting to hang out with a few people in the scene. New York we are doing the same thing. LA we are doing the same thing. And then Montreal and Quebec City. So it’s like the 5 cities that have been most like home to us.
Have you guys been on tours before?
Yea a lot. We’ve been doing it for a while.
What can your fans expect in this new year?
Lots of new music and shows.