Montreal post-rockers Godspeed You! Black Emperor believe in collective action, writes Doretta Lau (from SCMP)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor don’t often give interviews. (They declined to do so for this article.) The Montreal post-rockers don’t have a frontman or leader. Recently, they conducted an e-mail Q&A with The Guardian, in which they issued answers as a collective, and made it clear why they rarely speak to the press.

“We started making this noise together when we were young and broke - the only thing we knew for sure was that professional music writers seemed hopelessly out of touch and nobody gave a s*** about the s*** we loved except for us. Talking about punk rock with freelancers, then as now, was like farting at a fundraiser - a thing that got you kicked out of the party.

“We knew that there were other people out there who felt the same way, and we wanted to bypass what we saw as unnecessary hurdles, and find those people on our own. We were proud and shy motherf***ers, and we engaged with the world thusly. Means we decided no singer, no leader, no interviews, no press photos. We played sitting down and projected movies on top of us. No rock poses.”

Godspeed - who will be performing at the Vine Centre 2 in Wan Chai on April 15 - are committed to making music, rather than treating music as an image or a lifestyle. Their lack of posturing has given them the freedom to make records on their own terms, and develop as artists.

Last year, Godspeed released their fourth studio album Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! on their longtime Canadian label, the Montreal-based Constellation. Their previous record, Yanqui U.X.O, came out a decade ago.

Allelujah! begins with Mladic, a track that lasts nearly 20 minutes. The song contains all of the Godspeed trademarks: first, a few notes drift in and repeat. Other instruments are added, building the sound to a crescendo. Then the spell is broken by an onslaught of virtuosic guitar riffs. The music demands attention, and achieves it without a hook or technological gimmicks. It is the result of collaboration, of musicians coming together and uniting their talents.

Godspeed were formed in 1994, and took their name from a 1976 Japanese documentary by Mitsuo Yanagimachi about a biker gang. The band put out four records before going on hiatus in 2003.
They reunited in 2010 for the British festival, All Tomorrow’s Parties. For Allelujah!, Godspeed comprised Thierry Amar (bass), David Bryant (guitar), Bruce Cawdron (drums), Aidan Girt (drums), Efrim Manuel Menuck (guitar), Michael Moya (guitar), Mauro Pezzente (bass), Sophie Trudeau (violin), and Karl Lemieux (film projection). Cawdron has since quit to spend more time with his family and Tim Herzog has joined in his place.

“We never doubted that … the band would remain active musicians - and since the hiatus we’ve released many records by other projects of Godspeed’s members - but we really didn’t have any idea whether the band would assemble again,” Graham Latham of Constellation writes in an e-mail. “When they decided to give it a shot, we were thrilled.”

There is a classical music structure and restraint underpinning most Godspeed compositions, but the final result is undeniably rock. For years, this orchestral style permeated the Montreal scene; acts such as Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra, Fly Pan Am, and Do Make Say Think share the Godspeed ethos.

“We’re not sure we’re qualified to speculate about the band’s influence on music, broadly speaking, but certainly we can see that the band has been able to generate a dedicated following of people all over the world, who seem to connect with their music in a deep and sincere way,” says Latham. “I can’t imagine it gets much better than that.”

The history of Godspeed You! Black Emperor is closely intertwined with Constellation. “In the mid-’90s, when Montreal was by all accounts a wasteland for independent culture - no affordable venues or scene infrastructure of any kind - Ian [Ilavsky] and Don [Wilkie], the co-owners of Constellation, started looking into the possibilities for opening a venue for live music,” says Latham.

“Through this they met folks who were running the Hotel2Tango jam space and studio in Mile End, from which Godspeed would eventually emerge, and realised some common purpose. Ian and Don’s venue project never quite materialised, but along the way they decided to release some recorded material from Ian’s band Sofa, the label was born, and it seemed natural that, when Godspeed decided to release an album, they would work with Constellation to get it out. F#A# Infinity, Godspeed’s proper debut, became the third release in the Constellation catalogue.”

Though the music industry has changed over the past two decades, the relationship between label and band has continued to flourish despite challenges. “We’ve always had a relationship with the members of Godspeed that feels bigger than the standard label-band arrangement: we’re friends, collaborators, members of a shared community,” Latham says.

“Over time we’ve all had to struggle together to make sense of the world we’re in, and to figure out how to deal with the monster of the music industry in which we’ve implicated ourselves. Of course we understand that the early commercial success of Godspeed gave us all some room to make decisions that stuck fairly close to our ideals, and the bottom falling out of the record industry has certainly presented some challenges to that.

“Thus far, though, it feels like we’re managing to keep moving without making many compromises that feel too egregious. When it comes to bands like Godspeed, who do maintain some particular stances on the way they operate vis-à-vis the music industry, we’ve always been proud to stand behind them on whatever decisions they make, and that hasn’t changed.”

Godspeed’s concerts are a visceral combination of euphoric rock and unrelenting classical precision. During one of their shows, it’s hard to pinpoint any one single moment that elevates it to greatness. There isn’t a specific hit that will animate the crowd, nor are there costumes so over the top that they generate more conversation than the music.

A Godspeed show is akin to going to the symphony - it is the complete experience that makes the performance compelling.

“We’ve seen them play countless times, of course, most recently in Bern, Switzerland, when they opened Constellation’s 15th-anniversary celebration festival at Reitschule [centre],” says Latham. “As always, their live show is an awesome, exhausting thing, and we truly feel it’s unparalleled by anyone else out there right now, to the best of our knowledge.”

[from South China Morning Post]

Grimes - aka Canada’s Claire Boucher - has shown she can be a nerd and still evolve into a pop star, writes Doretta Lau

Claire Boucher, the Canadian musician who has been recording and performing as Grimes since 2010, has blossomed into an international pop star in the space of a year. Since the release of her third full-length album, Visions, on the 4AD label in February 2012, she has toured the world, appeared in multiple editions of Vogue, and been shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize.

Despite her ascent to stardom, she still thinks of herself as a nerd. She tweets about interviews with classical pianist Glenn Gould, worries that she may have misspelled Shakespeare and muses, “I think I’ve been possessed by [Seinfeld character] George Costanza”.

Before dropping out of university, she was studying neuroscience. In her music videos, the fresh-faced singer is not afraid to wear hoodies, oversized coats and shirts that cover her collarbones. New York Magazine referred to her look as “punk-rock Rainbow Brite”. She’s the sort of woman other women want to befriend. Canadian writer Rebecca Godfrey puts it simply: “I love her.”

“I just like to read and work,” Boucher says via e-mail from Singapore. “When I say I’m a nerd, I think it’s just to express that I’m not a party person, because I think based on the music I make, and my involvement in fashion, most people think I party all the time.”

Not that she has had time to give in to Dionysian desires; she’s working on a new album, and lately her life has been a flurry of interviews and concerts. Earlier this month, the 25-year-old kicked off her Elf Quest Asia tour (the last one in support of Visions), which stops off in Hong Kong tomorrow night.

“My dancers couldn’t get visas, so we’re shifting things around,” she says of the upcoming concert at Kitec’s Music Zone. “I’m practising today to see what we can do. But it’s sort of an ethereal dance experience generally.” Boucher spent 11 years training as a ballerina in Vancouver, where she grew up.

As for life on the road, she says: “It’s been insane, that’s for sure. You really just travel eight hours a day and then load in, sound check, play, talk to fans and then get back on the road. Sometimes we break into abandoned buildings if we see something interesting. I’ve filmed a lot - we’re filming right now so we’re scouting locations across Asia.”

The shoots are for an upcoming music video. Last year, Boucher directed the video for her song Genesis, which looks like a cosplay road trip through California, and was inspired by The Seven Deadly Sins and the Four Last Things by Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch.

The Montreal-based musician is aware that, for the audience, image and music are intertwined. In Genesis, she drives a Cadillac Escalade SUV (even though she doesn’t have a licence) and brandishes a mace. For some scenes, her hair is in pigtails and she is dressed in a voluminous outfit inspired by schoolgirl uniforms. The accessory? An albino python draped around her neck - an homage to Britney Spears’ performance of I’m a Slave 4 U at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards.

“It was actually a really amazing experience to hold a massive snake like that. It was scary but it was also super fun,” Boucher says.

“I wanted to create a visual representation of how my childhood brain interpreted Christianity,” she continues. “I was raised in a religious household and I’m not currently a religious person, but when I was a kid I saw Christianity basically kind of as an insane action movie, so that’s what the video is about. The swords and things basically are just a visual link to depictions of Christian stories in medieval art.”

It has been widely reported that she spent nine days in isolation to record Visions, but she says: “It was actually around 21 days. I’m not sure why it says nine days everywhere, but I think it would be very hard to make a record in nine days. I decided to isolate myself because I was interested in medieval cloistering and its effect on the artistic process, and I also just wanted to avoid social stuff for a while. During that time I just recorded the album.”

Visions is the sort of record that yields returns on every additional listen - the listening experience is a journey down the rabbit hole into Boucher’s mind. Sweet, childlike vocals glide over frenetic pop loops and beats equally influenced by video games and electro. The album is as complex as its creator, who - despite having indisputable hipster cred - has confessed that Mariah Carey is her favourite singer.

Since she put out her first record as Grimes, Boucher feels performing has been the one thing that has changed her music most. “I think touring a lot really improves your relationship with the audience, which affects the recording process,” she says.

When asked about her influences, Boucher says: “Pretty much everything. Whatever I’m around at any given time is the thing that affects my process most heavily. Even things I don’t like usually have something I can find useful.”

Boucher’s music interests are wide ranging: “I’m super into Majical Cloudz right now. Also Taylor Swift.” She’s been listening to Vancouver band White Lung. “I just like punk music a lot,” she says. “I think [vocalist Mish Way] has a really incredible voice.”

And she is also a fan of Korean pop: her favourite artists are G D, TOP, Big Bang, f(x) and 2NE1.

In a Tumblr post, which she has since deleted because she felt her words were being taken out of context, she wrote: “I’m sorry, but I think it’s f***ing incredible that a Korean-language song is the most popular thing on the planet. That’s so good for humanity.

“Psy wrote and produced Gangnam Style himself and directed the video himself. No one made Psy. Psy is a genius and I don’t think it’s so terrible that he’s been recognised for this. His art is creating a generation of kids that will grow up seeing Asian culture as being as valid as Western culture, which they currently don’t.”

She also wrote about Beyoncé in the same post: “How can you hate Beyoncé? She’s changing the world. She stands for people of colour and women everywhere succeeding in a stifling patriarchy without compromising her morals. And she makes challenging, interesting art.”

It’s clear that Boucher has an enormous respect for her peers who work in creative industries and make music and art. She’s part of a new generation of fearless young women, such as American director and actress Lena Dunham (Girls, Tiny Furniture) and Canadian writer Sheila Heti (How Should a Person Be?, The Middle Stories) who are defining what it means to be an artist in the contemporary world. They take risks and are enriching their respective artistic mediums.

Grimes makes us dance, and she makes us think. We’re lucky she chose music over neuroscience.

19841979:

chart (1600px) re The Contemporary Short Story, a craft class by Tao Lin in Sarah Lawrence’s MFA program

These are the books I thought about and read during grad school most of the time. Then I worked at NOON. Diane Williams is a genius.

From SCMP:

Musician keeps it personal

Musician Alex Zhang, aka Dirty Beaches, tries to stay true to what inspires him, writes Doretta Lau

Alex Zhang Hung-tai, better known as the genre-defying recording artist Dirty Beaches, has had a tumultuous yet productive Year of the Dragon. The Taiwan-born musician quit a film project for political reasons, suffered a break-up, moved from Montreal to Berlin, and finished recording two full-length albums - to be released as a double album in May. He’ll kick off the Year of the Snake with an Asia-Pacific tour that will bring him to Hong Kong for the first time on February 13.

“I recently gained a new viewpoint about life, about being an artist,” says Zhang, who spent his high school and university years in Hawaii, before shuttling between San Francisco, Vancouver and Montreal. He had this revelation while speaking to his father about the new double LP, Drifters/Love is the Devil, which he says is “more electronic”, and - he fears - perhaps less commercially viable than his previous works.

His father asked him if commercial success - which could require compromising his artistic vision - was what he really wanted. “I was like, ‘I just want to make the music that I want to make’,” he says. His father’s response? “Why don’t you just do that? If you’re going to make music and be f***ing complaining about it, you might as well quit and come back to China and work in real estate with me. You’ll make more money that way.”

Zhang says: “[This made me realise] I am supposed to be making what I want to make and make other people accept it. This is the battle. I’m trying to survive. I’m not going to quit music - I’m not going to work in real estate ever again.”

It’s hard to imagine the charismatic Zhang, who has played in bands since 1999, abandoning his music - which The Guardian memorably said “veers between doo-wop balladry and garage rumble, with the occasional interfering guitar drone, like an incursion into this forgotten past from a future Sonic Youth” - to work as a property agent or developer. “I make music for very selfish reasons because it’s the only way I can function,” he says.

“It’s the only thing I’m good at. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been complimented on. My whole life I’ve never really been good at anything and as soon as I started making music, it was the first time I realised people actually liked what I did. I’ve never been encouraged to do anything my whole life. It’s kind of like validation for me. I have to write music or else I feel like I don’t really exist or something.”

Zhang first started recording and performing as Dirty Beaches in 2005. “I moved to Montreal and I had trouble finding people to play in a band, so I just did everything myself,” he says.

He later recorded his 2011 breakthrough album, Badlands, in his apartment. “In Vancouver, the lady that lived downstairs hated my music so much she banged on the door one day when I was recording and she told me, ‘Whatever you’re doing, it’s not music’. She was so upset and so furious. I thought it was kind of funny. It made me feel I was doing something right in some way.”

When writing a new song, Zhang says: “Most of the time it starts with an idea or image that I have in my head and I try to make sense of that image and what it means to me. And if I’m there, it’s kind of like casting in film. I do a lot of research and then, for me, the sound is the leading man. That’s why every Dirty Beaches record kind of sounds different, but the content is always kind of the same. Some people can recognise it, but I’m not really loyal to a sound because for me it’s just a face I use for the movie.”

During the past eight years, Zhang has drawn on numerous sources for inspiration, covering ground as disparate as the Albert and David Maysles documentary Grey Gardens, Taiwanese night markets and horror films. Yet the musicians, writers and filmmakers he first encountered as a teenager loom large in his cultural landscape.

“I’m beginning to realise my core influences all came from when I was 16,” he says. “I haven’t really changed that much, even though I’ve been reading more and listening to more music. But I think the core of who I am is never going to change. I still really like [author Charles] Bukowski; I still really like Wu-Tang [Clan rap group]; I still really like Wong Kar-wai. That never really changed, even though I’ve dabbled in other stuff.”

Despite his love of Wu-Tang Clan, Zhang never made hip hop. “I really didn’t like fake rappers,” he says. “It’s obvious that I can’t rap, so I’m not going to try to rap. I’m more into the culture of the beats and how they construct them. I’m not really into the rap culture. I did graffiti and tagging and s***, but that’s about it. I didn’t really enjoy baggy pants and calling girls hoes.

The conversation soon becomes as expansive as his music. Zhang switches from English to Cantonese to talk about the food he wants to eat while he’s in Hong Kong, then makes fun of my Putonghua. (“You’re like one of those difficult Hong Kong people who tries to speak Mandarin.”) His favourite Bukowski book is Love is a Dog from Hell. Since the break-up, he has had a new appreciation for Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together.

He left Montreal, he says, because “I got tired of everyone patting each other on the back for knitting sweaters and having garage sales - like it’s accomplishing something, doing something creative. It’s not healthy for me.” As for why he stopped writing the music for a documentary on Taiwan, he says: “It’s shot from a completely American point of view. Just like: ‘Look at how weird these Asians are, playing Dance Dance Revolution and little girls giggling with their cellphones’; just that f***ing fetish portrayal of Asian culture.” This experience, he adds, gives a quicker understanding of who he is than any discussion about his influences.

For his upcoming show in Hong Kong, Zhang will be performing with two other musicians. Although he’ll include some songs from Drifters, he’s unlikely to play music from Love is the Devil. “[The latter is] a break-up album,” he says. “It’s really sad. I put a lot of my heart, blood and tears into it. It’s really emotional for me - I might end up crying on stage or something. I don’t want to do that.”

The rest of the set list will draw on his entire catalogue - he won’t be sticking to his most popular songs. “I want the audience to know I’m not going to play Badlands exactly how it was when it first came out two years ago,” he says. “They should just be prepared for that. It’s been two years. Who wants to do that for over two years? I’ve moved on.”

Dirty Beaches, Feb 13, 8.30pm, Backstage Live, 1F 52-54 Wellington St, Central, HK$230 (advance), HK$280 (door). Inquiries: 9709 2085

The Saddest Mascot in the World: Singapore’s Merlion

So, is it supposed to be king of the sea?

Heman Chong, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, 2012. At Gillman Barracks, Singapore.

Window of a photography studio in Hudson, New York

(View from patio at Six Acres, Vancouver)

Overheard at Six Acres

Guy: “I’m sorry I’m late.”

Girl (laughs nervously, obviously likes him a lot): “I’m always late, it’s okay.” (Note she was sitting there for at least 15 minutes, because that was how long I’d been sitting and she arrived before I did.)

Guy: (tells story about going for a run).

Girl: (laughs).

Guy: “This and Vertigo is a good night for me.” (Asks her about her interest in Hitchcock.)

Girl says something, but she’s not the gold in the conversation, and she was talking more softly than him.

Guy: “Are you taken by any old movies?”

Girl: (pauses then reveals she has seen Swiss Family Robinson dozens of times).

Guy: “Family movies done right are the best.” Then Guy reveals that he has never seen E.T., and that he saw Babe for the first time ever that day. I could tell he secretly felt this was a badge of honour. You know, he’s above the desires of the common man.

Girl talks about how Babe is the cutest movie.

Guy talks about how family movies are now considered kids movies, and condescend to children, so they’re not very good.

Guy: “Canada Day treat you well?”

Girl: “What?”

Guy: “How was your Canada Day?”

Guy goes on to discuss people in his film class, and how people are polarized on their opinions about George Lucas and that the people who neither loathe him or love him are usually misinformed.

At this point, to my chagrin, two women sit down on the patio between us, making it hard for me to hear the conversation. The two women are talking about a friend of theirs who is in grad school, yawn.

But then! Girl: “I think it’s because I’ve been taking philosophy this summer.”

Guy: “What are you reading?”

Girl: (lists books) “I think Plato was an asshole. Can you imagine? He went around telling everyone they were wrong.”

Guy: “So he had a big dick.”

Girl: “He was just a dick.”

Truman Capote’s bedroom.

Jimmy Fallon sings Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy,” with Jeremy Lin-related lyrics.