Tag: Montréal QC

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Guillaume Michaud Teams Up with JOVM Mainstay Naomi on Sultry “Poison”

Guillaume Michaud is a Montréal-based choreographer, dancer, producer and DJ. After initially gained recognition as a dancer and choreographer in season 2 of TVA’s Révolution and starring as the lead character in Cirque du Soleil’s Andorra-based 2022 production of MÜV, Michaud’s DJ career gained recognition as he played sets at Piknic Electronik, Igloofest, PY1, Burning Sun, Frontrite and a list of others.

Deriving its name for the Irish Gaelic word for “my heartbeat,” Michaud’s recently released 5 song debut EP, Macushla draws from deep techno, minimal house, house music and the raw energy and drive of the afterhours/rave scene. Sonically, the material sees the Montréal-based artist pairing deep bass grooves, immersive melodies, carefully layered buoyant percussion and catchy vocal hooks. While specifically crafted to make people dance and connect with one another, the material was written with musicality of choreography in mind, informed by the mathematically precise understanding of rhythm he developed as a dancer and choreographer.

EP single “Poison” is a collaboration with rising Montréal-based JOVM mainstay Naomi. They have a professional and personal relationship that goes back to when the pair were both 13. As they both pursued their respective careers in dance, they remained connected and eventually co-founded Audiomatique, an independent collective that organized techno and dance music events. Audiomatique helped to kickstart Michaud’s DJ career and led to building connections with many future collaborators — including DJ’ing for the rising Montréal-based artist.

“Poison” is a seductive, hook-driven club banger, featuring reverb-soaked skittering clang and clatter, trap-like triplets, broodingly atmospheric synths serving as a lush bed for Naomi’s sultry delivery. It’s the perfect song for late-night, hazy, smoke-machine, neon and strobe-lit rooms with sweaty humans dancing the night away.

Directed by Élise Lussier, the accompanying video follows Michaud and Naomi as they head to a neon-lit warehouse with a collection of fierce as fuck dancers.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Brooklyn’s TVOD Shares Punchy “Car Wreck”

Brooklyn-based post punks TVOD (Television Overdose) can trace their origins back to 2019 when its founder Tyler Wright recorded a high-energy cassette of punk songs on a Tascam 4-track tape recorder in the abasement of the DIY space he was living in at the time. Since then, the band went on to independently release two EPs, 2020’s Daisy and 2021’s Garden along with standalone singles “Alien,” “Mantis,” “Goldfish” and “Poppies,” and two limited run 45s.

Influenced by post-punk, krautrock and egg punk, the Brooklyn-based post punk outfit quickly established a sound and approach that sees them pairing emotional, sometimes juvenile lyrics with driving, hook-driven arrangements that get crowds moving and moshing. Thematically, the material draws from personal and external inspirations like the nightlife/music scene, heartache, World War II, the untimely death of a beloved pet fish and more while telling a gritty, often tongue-in-cheek picture of being a DIY artist grinding it out in New York, complete with tales about the degenerate lifestyle and all the good and bad that comes with it.

Wright then recruited a standout lineup of freaks from the Brooklyn scene that includes Mem Pahl (drums), Micki Piccirillo (bass), Jenna Mark (synths), Serge Zbritzher (guitar) and Denim Casimir (guitar), who now join I’m both live and in the studio. Now, as a sextet, the rising, Brooklyn-based sextet have quickly developed a reputation for raw, unpredictable and explosive live shows, which they’ve taken across the North American and global festival circuit, making stops at SXSW, Hopscotch, Sled Island, Concrete Jungle and FME among others. They’ve also shared stages with the likes of Warmduscher, Snõõper, Gustaf, Civic, Soul Glo, Balkans and Iguana Death Cult.

The rising Brooklyn outfit went up to Montréal-based Gamma Recording Studio with producers Félix Bélisle and Samuel Gemme to record their Mothland debut, “Car Wreck” features a krautrock-like baseline, a steady backbeat, fuzzy and squiggling guitar lines, woozy synth bursts and the band’s penchant for catchy, shout-along worthy hooks serving as a propulsive bed for Wright’s punchy delivery singing lyrics about being reckless and happily embracing it.

Based on an illustration by TVOD’s Tyler Wright, the animated visual by Scott Palazzo features a Batmobile-like car speeding through a New York street.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Choses Sauvages Shares Tense and Danceable “En joue”

With the release of their Emmanuel Ethier-produced 2018 self-titled, full-length debut, Montréal-based dance punks Choses Sauvages — Totalement Sublime‘s Marc-Antoine Barbier (guitar), Theirry Malépart (keys), Tony Bélisle (keys), Philippe Gauthier-Boudreau (drums) and La Sécurité‘s Félix Bélisle (vocals) with Foreign Diplomats‘ and Frais Dispo‘s Charles Primeau (bass) as a touring member — exploded into the local and provincial scenes. The album was a critical and commercial success with the album topping Independent Radio Charts across Québec while receiving widespread critical applause. In 2019, the Montréal-based outfit landed Association Québécoise de l’industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la video (ADISQ) Félix Award nominations for Alternative Album of the Year and Indie Rock Album of the year, with a Félix Award win for Indie Rock Album of the Year. 

Throughout 2019, the French Canadian outfit supported their full-length debut with a relentless touring schedule across the province. During that tour, the band quickly developed a reputation for a must-see live show that they’ve brought across the global festival circuit, including stops at Reeperbahn, MaMA, FIMPRO, SXSW, Le Printemps de Bourges and Wide Days. 

2021’s Choses Sauvages II found the Montréal-based outfit pushing their sound more towards electronic dane music and nu-disco influences like L’Imperatrice and Lindstrøm while still drawing from their love of funk, Bowie and Bee Gees. The album also sees them furthering their approach which pairs rigorous and meticulous songwriting with a rebellious spirit. 

Choses Sauvages’ highly-anticipated third album, Choses Sauvages III is slated for a March 28, 2025 release through Audiogram. Earlier this year, I wrote about the album’s first single “Incendie au paradis,” a decidedly New Wave/post-punk song anchored around a propulsive bass line and a guitar driven melody paired with squiggling synth arpeggios and a subtly vocodered vocal. Seemingly drawing from Heroes and Low-era Bowie and Pleasure Principle-era Gary Numan, “Incendie au paradis” depicts artificial intelligence as angels that can transform and improve our daily lives. While addressing the technological advance’s promises and benefits, it raises concerns with an uneasy trepidation.

“I wanted to highlight the need to think about the ethical and moral implications and the still unknown limits of these new technologies, and the influence they have on our lives,” Choses Sauvages’ Félix Bélisle explains. 

Choses Sauvages III’s second and latest single “En joue” features a propulsive bass line is paired with angular guitar stabs, bursts of glistening synths paired Bélisle’s punchy delivery and the band’s unerring knack for catchy hooks. Seemingly drawing from Freedom of Choice-era DEVO, Pleasure Principle-era Gary Numan, Entertainment-era Gang of Four and even La Femme, “En Joue” manages to be simultaneously tense yet danceable.

The song as the band’s Bélisle explains “refers to the helplessness in the face of extremely violent international news of recent years. It also deals with the fear of the other, the dehumanization of certain populations taken hostage in armed conflicts.”

“En joue refers to the feeling of helplessness in the face of the extremely violent international news of recent years. It also deals with the fear of the other, the dehumanization of certain populations taken hostage in armed conflicts,” explains Félix Bélisle, the group’s singer and lyricist.

En joue pulses with a jerky rhythm, offering a danceable melody that manages to evoke the breathlessness of flight, of a race against the fears and anxieties that lie in wait for us and stick to our skin.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: VICTIME Shares Woozy and Glitchy “Résonne encore”

Initially formed in Québec City back in 2016 and now currently featuring members split between the Québecois cities of Montréal, Québec City and Gatineau, VICTIME — Ponctuation’s and Pure Carrière‘s Laurence Gauthier-Brown, Album’s Simone Provencher and Corridor‘s and Kee Avii‘s Samuel Gougoux — quickly made waves across the province with 2017’s Mon VR de rêve EP, 2018’s full-length debut La femme taupe and Mi-tronic, mi-jambe EP.

With their first three releases under their collective belts, the trio began to make the rounds of the Canadian festival circuit, playing sets at Sled Island, Up Here, Francos de Montréal, FME and Taverne Tour. Adding to a growing profile across the country, the band opened for the likes of Lydia Lunch, Guerilla Toss, Frigs, Ponctuation and Jesuslesfilles, as well as a series of tour dates in France.

The band’s forthcoming effort, En conversation avec is slated for an October 25, 2024 release through Mothland. En conversation avec is the result of a new creative process for the band, informed and inspired by the band being split across different cities in the province. Written over the course of the past five years, the trio frequently relied on the spontaneity of sporadic get-togethers and remote work in which they shared files among each other.

Reportedly the effort sees the band simultaneously showing a newfound patience while being among their most layered. While still holding on to their post-punk and noise rock roots, the trio explore a wide-spanning spectrum where tensions and openings coexist, colmating breaks and ruptures, cracks and fissures with elements of trip hop, avant rock and IDM. Thematically, the material touches upon feminism, vengeance, violence, being a female, speaking out, obliterating patriarchy and more.

“It was a long process, the sum of three minds in three different cities. We felt the urge to create in a new way, to break out of our guitar-bass-drums mold, to be less of a rock band,” the band explains. “So, we started from sounds and sonic explorations, finally recentering everything around a more simple songwriting process. And though it is packed with weird sounds and whatnot, we feel this is the best music we have ever written. It is informed by the many projects, contracts, experiences, etcetera each of us took on over the past few years, a logical follow-up to our individual paths.

We were inspired by many things, namely: the Sisters with Transistors documentary film, Kim Gordon and everything she represents, the sadness of roadkills; electronic prototypes, breadboards and sonic experimentations; musique concrète [or concrete music], mechanisms, eye (but also other parts of the body) surgeries, Giacometti, The Da Vinci Code, the total solar eclipse, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn.”

“We produced the album ourselves. We recorded everything way too hot, so it’s distorted. Also, we didn’t use a grid when tracking, so we struggled with the sessions quite a bit. Amongst the files we sent to Simon Labelle, who mixed the album, there are easily 47 tracks with takes we had no business keeping and well over a dozen tracks named “Noise 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8…”, so he probably hates us now. I guess we kept our reckless-kids-playing-in-the-back-alley mentality, all the way to the financial means. Simone [Provencher] builts effects pedals with Fairfield Circuitry, which meant we could use breadboard prototypes on a few tracks, so that’s pretty legit, right?”

En conversation avec‘s latest single “Résonne encore,” is the band’s first ever love song. Anchored around a propulsive and forceful, tribal drum pattern, “Résonne encore” features reverb-soaked vocals, angular guitar stabs and bursts of synth oscillations for the song’s first two-and-a-half minutes, before abruptly stuttering into a glitchy trip hop-like bridge seemingly inspired by Portishead’s “Machine Gun.” The song’s coda features bursts of guitar dissonance, the introductory section’s propulsive and forceful tribal drum pattern paired with an ethereal and dreamily sung vocal incantation. The result is a song that feels feverish, woozy and a bit heartsick, much like an uneasy yet new love.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy Belated 90th Birthday, Leonard Cohen!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms belatedly celebrates the 90th anniversary of the birth of Leonard Cohen.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Choses Sauvages Share Post Punk-LIke “Incendie au paradis”

With the release of their Emmanuel Ethier-produced 2018 self-titled, full-length debut, Montréal-based dance punks Choses Sauvages — Totalement Sublime‘s Marc-Antoine Barbier (guitar), Theirry Malépart (keys), Tony Bélisle (keys), Philippe Gauthier-Boudreau (drums) and La Sécurité‘s Félix Bélisle (vocals) with Foreign Diplomats‘ and Frais Dispo‘s Charles Primeau (bass) as a touring member — exploded into the local and provincial scenes. The album was a critical and commercial success with the album topping Independent Radio Charts across Québec while receiving widespread critical applause. In 2019, the Montréal-based outfit landed Association Québécoise de l’industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la video (ADISQ) Félix Award nominations for Alternative Album of the Year and Indie Rock Album of the year, with a Félix Award win for Indie Rock Album of the Year. 

Over the course of 2019, the French Canadian outfit supported their full-length debut with a relentless touring schedule across the province. And through this tour, the band quickly developed a reputation for a must-see live show that they’ve since brought across the global festival circuit, including stops at Reeperbahn, MaMA, FIMPRO, SXSW, Le Printemps de Bourges and Wide Days. 

2021’s Choses Sauvages II saw the French Canadian outfit boldly pushing their sound more towards electronic dance music and nu-disco influences like L’Imperatrice and Lindstrøm while still drawing from their love of funk, Bowie and Bee Gees. They also managed to further establish their approach with pairs rigorous and meticulous songwriting with a rebellious spirit.

The Montréal-based outfit’s highly-anticipated third album, Choses Sauvages III is slated for a Spring 2025 release through Audiogram. The album’s first official single “Incendie au paradis” is a decidedly New Wave/post punk song anchored around a propulsive bass line, a guitar-driven melody paired with squiggling synth arpeggios and a subtly vocodored vocal harmony. Seemingly drawing from Heroes and Low-era Bowie and Pleasure Principle-era Gary Numan, “Incendie au paradis” depicts artificial intelligence as angels that can transform and improve our daily lives. But while addressing the technology advance’s promises and benefits, it raises concerns with an uneasy trepidation.

“I wanted to highlight the need to think about the ethical and moral implications and the still unknown limits of these new technologies, and the influence they have on our lives,” Choses Sauvages’ Félix Bélisle explains.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Diamond Day Shares Brooding and Shimmering “Tina”

Montréal-based duo Diamond Day features two highly acclaimed musicians and recording artists in their own right:

  • Vermont-born Béatrix Méthé was raised with the traditional music of rural Québec. Her family moved to Canada when she was baby, and she grew up acquiring Lanaudiere’s regional repertoire from her father, the founder of legendary folk-trad group Le Rêve du Diable. Her mother, a singer-songwriter and fine arts graduate versed in early digital media, inspired Méthé’s own aesthetic. After spending some time venturing deeper into visual art, Béthé moved to Montréal to study filmmaking, but wound up discovering indie and psychedelic folk music along the way. She cut her studies short in 2015 to pursue music full-time, fronting acclaimed outfit Rosier, whose unique fusion of Québécois folk and indie rock garnered multiple nominations and awards — and lead them to tour across 15 countries with stops at SXSW, NPR’s Mountain Stage and the BBC. 

  • Western Canada-born Quinn Bachand grew up in a home where art was omnipresent and the family’s 40-year-old record collection was on an omnipresent loop. As the son of a luthier, Bachand began playing guitars handmade by his father and was touring internationally by the time he turned 12. After graduating from Berklee College of Music back in 2019 on a presidential scholarship, the Western Canadian-born multi-instrumentalist spent time in the Grammy-nominated band Kittel & Co. His involvement in the US folk scene prompted collaborations with a number of like-minded artists, including Chris Thile. In 2019, Bachand began collaborating with Méthé and Rosier, quickly establishing himself as an influential, genre-bending producer.

That initial successful collaboration with Rosier lead to the duo’s forthcoming full-length debut as Diamond Day, Connect the Dots. Released earlier this year, the album saw the duo establishing a sound that weaved elements of folk, indie rock, electronica, shoegaze and dream pop into a unique take on alt-pop.

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I’ve written about two of the album’s singles:

  • “Noisemaker,” a song built around tape-saturated organ echo, fluttering synths, blown out beats, a sinuous bass line and lush, painterly sheogazer-like guitar textures paired with Méthé’s gorgeous vocals. The result — to my ears at least — reminded me of a mix of Beach House and Souvlaki-era Slowdive with a subtle amount of glitchiness.

  • “Fiction Feel,” a breezy, summertime dream of a song built around a glitch pop soundscape featuring vintage tape recordings, glistening synths and a shuffling organ drum machine before quickly morphing into a lush New Wave/post-punk anthem that brings Cocteau Twins and Violens to mind. 

Connect The Dots’ latest single, album closer “Tina,” is a slow-burning and brooding, Beach House and Pavo Pavo-like ballad featuring strummed acoustic guitar, twinkling keys, skittering tape saturated beats serving as a dreamily uneasy bed for Méthé’s gorgeous and expressive delivery. Arguably one of the most personal songs on the entire album, “Tina” tells a story about schizophrenia and anosognosia, a neurological condition in which the patient is unaware of their neurological deficit or psychiatric condition. it’s often associated with mental illness, dementia and structural brain lesion, as seen in right hemisphere stroke patients. As the band’s Quinn Bachard explains, “The song is super personal. It’s about my family, schizophrenia and denial.”

Directed by Robert Desroches, the accompanying video for “Tina” features the band’s Béatrix Méthé in a candy colored room playing keyboard with a DIY set up made of various bric-a-brac. As the song progresses, the videos’ protagonist goes through a deeply hallucinogenic experience.

“Robert had a strong vision for this one,” Méthé says of the video. “He saw something that was dark and luminous at the same time. As if one fueled the other. He pictured a colorful implosion cutting through the softness of the song, in this spooky retro-futuristic setting à la Severance.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Super Plage Teams Up with Virginie B and Nectar Palace on a Disco-Tinged Cover of “Nos corps”

Jules Henry is a Montréal-based singer/songwriter, electronic music producer and creative mastermind behind the acclaimed recording project Super Plage. 

Earlier this year, he released “Ton chien,” the first bit of new material since the release of Henry’s fourth Super Plage album, last year’s Magie à minuit. “Ton chien” is a flirty bop anchored around a breezy and summery production featuring glistening synths and skittering beats as a lush bed for Henry and Parsian artist Sainte Nicole to trade ethereal and dreamily delivers verses. It’s the sort of song that’s perfect for hanging out in the park — or the beach — with the pretty someone, who’s got your heart skipping beats.

Henry’s latest single, which sees him collaborating with longtime collaborator Virginie B and Nectar Palace on a cover and remaining of Jimmy Hunt‘s 2013 hit “Nos corps,” which amassed over three million streams — just on Spotify alone. While the original is disco-tinged yet atmospheric New Wave-like bop that reminds me a little bit of Blondie-meets-Soft to the Touch-era Jef Barbara, the Super Plage retains some of the original’s chill dance vibes but while pairing it with a propulsive Giorgio Moroder-meets-Robyn-like disco groove and some squiggling funk guitar.

Sonically seeming like a synthesis of Jef Barbara’s “Wild Boys,” 80s pop and disco, the Super Plage cover of “Nos corps” continues a run of summery, hook-driven feel good bops. Play this one in the club and dance your worries and cares away for a bit.

Directed by Virginie B, the accompanying video follows the collaborators on a road trip to the shore for frolicking and hanging out. Because what’s summer without a road trip, right?

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Montréal’s Wizaard Returns with Languid and Trippy “OMG (son style me désole)”

Montréal-based psych pop outfit Wizaard — currently, Marie Hèléne Coutu and Jean-Nicholas Doss — quickly became mainstays of the French Canadian city’s psych, Anglophone and bilingual music scenes with the release of their first two albums, 2016’s Starfish Buffet and 2019’s Supernatural Mystics while going through a series of lineup changes.

The Montréal-based outfit supported both of those albums with shows and tours with Choses Sauvages, Men I Trust, JOVM mainstays Le Couleur and  Elephant Stone, and American outfit Twin Peaks. Adding to a growing profile, the trio’s remix of Spaceface‘s “Timeshare” has amassed over one-million Spotify streams.

The trio’s third album will be released by Lisbon Lux Records, and the album will be the first album of material written and sung primarily in French. The album reportedly will be “a delicious cocktail of madness, eclecticism and groove,” the band explains. 

Earlier this year, I wrote about “DVD vidéo,” a song anchored around a languid and lysergic groove that brings Tame Impala, L’imperatrice and Pavo Pavo to mind, paired with dreamily coquettish vocals and boom bap-like beats, The result is a song that evokes a remarkably pleasant psilocybin-induced trip. 

The album’s latest single “OMG (son style me désole),” translates into English as “OMG (I’m sorry about his style),” and is anchored around twinkling synth arpeggios, a wobbling bass line and dusty gated reverberated beats and incredibly catchy hooks serving as a lush and dreamy bed for coquettish and ethereal vocals. The result is a song that reminds me a bit of a hook-driven synthesis of JOVM mainstays MUNYA, Kainalu, and Pavo Pavo

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Super Plage Teams Up with Sainte Nicole on Breezy and Flirty “Ton chien”

Jules Henry is a Montréal-based singer/songwriter, electronic music producer and creative mastermind behind the acclaimed recording project Super Plage. 

“Ton chien,” is the first bit of new material since the release of Henry’s fourth Super Plage album, last year’s Magie à minuit. The new single, which features Parisian artist Sainte Nicole is a breezy and flirty bop centered around glistening synth arpeggios and skittering beats. The atmospheric and summery production serves as a lush bed for the two artist to trade dreamily ethereal delivered verses. It’s the sort of song that’s perfect for hanging out in the park with that pretty someone, who’s got your heart skipping beats.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montréal’s Perestroika Shares Dance Floor Friendly Bop “Midnight Twilight”

Founded by Shravan back in 2017, Montréal-based goth/synth pop outfit Perestroika was conceived as more than just a band; but as an act of audacious reinvention: The band’s founder fled the sweltering chaos of the American South for the Great North, and he envisioned Perestroika as a mystical assembly where sound met the ethereal.

Mickey Dagger, a former member of Omegas and Gustavo Rodriguez was the first band member to join. Their first release was a demo that saw the pair meshing elements of British post-punk, goth and synth pop, anchored by the Oberheim DMX drum machine and an ever-growing arsenal of synthesizers.

When the world ground to a halt because of the pandemic, the band’s sound — perhaps fittingly — delved deeper into the shadows. With the addition of Jonah Falco, the then-newly constituted trio released 2021’s Monolith EP, an effort that saw the band seemingly pairing the dystopian pulse of Kino, the decadent and swooning harmonies of Roxy Music and Giorgio Moroder‘s disco pulse with eerily delivered lyrics that thematically focused on existential questions and concerns.

Emerging from the bleak desperation of the pandemic, the Montréal-based outfit expanded to a quartet with the addition of Sebastien Page (drums). Their sound went through another evolution with the band drawing from New Order and Pet Shop Boys — and funk-inspired grooves.

The newly-constituted quartet’s latest single “Midnight Twilight” is a hook-driven bit of synth pop that’s seemingly a slick synthesis of Depeche Mode, Human League, early 80s New Order, Electronic and the like with disco and synth funk groove paired with punchily delivered vocals and reverb-gated drums. It’s a dance floor friendly bop that subtly and lovingly modernizes a familiar and beloved sound while tackling familiar themes.

Directed by Alan Hildebrandt, the accompanying video for “Midnight Twilight” features animation by Hildebrant and Studio del Scorpio and follows the band and a collection of “nightlife characters” in the midst of self-destructive narcissism and hedonism, as an escape from the bleakness of modern life. Feels familiar doesn’t it?