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Ep. #150: Avec le soleil sortant de sa bouche

Avec le soleil sortant de sa bouche is a really cool, mostly instrumental band from Montreal who formed in 2011. The brainchild of Fly Pan Am’s Jean-Sebastien Truchy, the quartet includes guitarist Sebastien Fournier, drummer Samuel Beaubonie, and guitarist Eric Gingras. This past September the band issued Zubberdust!, their wonderful debut album featuring hypnotic, interlocking musical pieces that reimagine funk and psychedelia from an energetic, emotional, punk perspective. Zubberdust! is out now via Constellation Records and here, Jean-Sebastien Truchy and Sebastien Fournier, and I discuss snow in Montreal, perpetuating myths about Canada, being a trickster, what zubberdust means in Urdu, separating long songs and sound collages, how this band came together, being spied on, keeping a groove going but in a pop sensibility, serious fun in Montreal, the jelly bean scene, the band Ought, wordless vocals, jazz scatting, the influence of Afrobeat and long-form Latino music, the Neu! part, Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, Montreal’s west isles, disappointing dad, community and Constellation Records, Montreal’s old oppressive show bar culture, yellow waterproof Walkmen, Nirvana thanking Sonic Youth on In Utero, Panitopicon Eyelids and a great Montreal record store called L’Oblique, the homing beacon band that was Fly Pan Am, grinding, gatherings, fake parties, making new music, the band’s long-ass French name, the song “Super Pastiche – New Sun,” and then we say au revoir and ciao.

Related links: cstrecords.com/avec-le-soleil-sortant-de-sa-bouche vishkhanna.com

ALSartistpick

 

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Ep. #122: Heather O’Neill

Heather O’Neill is a talented and provocative novelist based in Montreal. Her first book was the celebrated Lullabies for Little Criminals, which won Canada Reads in 2007 and the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. Her latest novel is The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, which was published by HarperCollins Canada this past April and tells the compelling story of a pair of directionless fraternal twins in Montreal, Noushcka and Nicolas Tremblay, who live in the shadow of their has-been folk-singer of a neglectful father and bare certain emotional scars as a result. Young Quebecois coming of age in 1995, they are separatists on one hand, but unwitting sovereignists on the other. Their creator is bringing their story with her as a participating author at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, where she’ll read on Sunday September 14. Here, Heather and I discuss how to pronounce Nicolas, why it’s difficult to describe what The Girl Who Was Saturday Night is about, the magic in the mundane, having an amicable break-up with a book you wrote, separatism, separating, and needing people you need to get away from, establishing boundaries to become your own person, why we’re reading this world from Noushcka’s perspective, what this book might say about the separatism/sovereignty debate, class divides, promiscuous has-been folk-singer daddy issues, embittered former child stars, Raphael the sexy bad boy, fame might be a drag, people who think authors are their characters, how Heather relates to her characters, how Quebec today relates to Quebec of the mid-1990s, how a teacher’s encouragement drew Heather to write a story about shrinking machines and a cockroach, needing to write, delving into creative non-fiction and how it intertwines with a novel like The Girl Who Was Saturday Night, the political folk music of Montreal that’s conjured in this book via Etienne Tremblay, Heather’s thoughts on film treatments of her works, Wes Anderson and The Royal Tenenbaums, her forthcoming book of short stories Dear Piglet out this spring, writing more than one story at a time, what Heather will be doing at the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, @lethal_heroine, weird turns, and the end.

Related links: harpercollins.ca twitter.com/lethal_heroine vishkhanna.com

heatheroneill

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Ep. #114: Nat Baldwin of Dirty Projectors

Nat Baldwin is a talented double-bassist, singer, and songwriter who originally hails from the state of New Hampshire but lives in Maine. Baldwin is a skilled musician who studied with jazz and improvised music giant Anthony Braxton and, for the past decade, he has been a member of the Brooklyn, NY band, Dirty Projectors. In 2011 Baldwin released People Changes, his second solo album, and this year brings us its captivating, lovely follow up, In the Hollows, which is available now via Western Vinyl. Baldwin has a couple of shows in Massachusetts later this month and he plays The Monarch in Toronto on July 24, Casa del Popolo in Montreal on July 25, and Guelph’s Hillside Festival on July 26. Here, Baldwin and I talk about Love Lane, training for a marathon you can’t run and making music, an injured achilles’ heel, losing control of your physicality, the late, American middle/long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine, Nat’s long history of connecting athletic iconography with the music he makes, running rhythms, process-oriented parallels between bands and basketball teams, learning how to play music at 18, running/reading/music regimens, underground literature networks, Barry Hannah, Blake Butler, Lindsay Hunter, Amelia Grey, the song “Cosmos Pose” and bodybuilding, death, playing in a wedding band, Nat’s dad’s band Ben Baldwin and the Big Note, Ray Charles, seeing the Moonbeams sing the national anthem at Celtics games at Boston Garden, Larry Bird, visiting French Lick Indiana and Larry Bird Boulevard, getting into Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Charlie Haden, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton, and other jazz heroes, loaning William Parker a dodgy bass amp, losing interest in music, double bass and voice songs, what’s new with Dirty Projectors and David Longstreth’s writing habits, the song “Knockout,” and then we cross the finish line.

Related links: westernvinyl.com/artists/natbaldwin.html vishkhanna.com

natbaldwin

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