Tag: Simone Records

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Emmanuel Alias is a French-born, Montreal-based singer/songwriter multi-instrumentalist, composer, producer, dilettante and polymath whose musical career has managed to go through about four different paths before he started his eponymous psych rock project ALIAS. After spending 9 years studying jazz at the Darius Milhaud Conservatory in Aix-en-Provence, France, Alias relocated to Quebec in 2014. Landing at job at XS Music, Alias worked with Jean-Phi Gonclaves on composing music for HBO’s Big Little Lies and Sharp Objects, ICI Télé’s Une autre histoire, Hubert et Fanny and Cerebrum et Mon fils, Mariloup Wolfe’s feature film Jouliks and for a number of Cirque du Soleil productions.

Since 2017, Alias hs also worked for Musique Nomade, where he produced multidisciplinary Oji-Crie’ and Mi’gmaq artist Anachnid‘s DREAMWEAVER, which was nominated for an Association québécoise de l’industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la video (ADISQ) Award and long-listed for the Polaris Prize. The French-born, Montreal-based artist also produced singles by Q-052, Annie Sama, Chances, iskwē and Beyries‘ “Out of Touch,” off her recent album Encounter. Additionally, he’s the musical and stage director of Anachnid concerts — and he’s accompanied Beyries on stage a few times.

Simultaneously, the French-born, Montreal-based singer/songwriter, composer and producer has a had host of different projects to accommodate his need and desire to explore different genres releasing punk, hip-hop and ambient material under different monikers — until settling on his latest, eponymous project Alias, a psych rock inspired project that finds him crafting songs centered around wild, hallucinogenic stories that include the personification of dogs, dementia, the Wild West, killers, loneliness, space exploration. The whole affair sounds as though it could have been released decades ago — and as though it were released yesterday.

Alias’ debut EP It’s Not Funny So Stop Smilin’ was released last week through Simone Records. The EP’s latest single “Why Don’t You Wanna Dance” is a trippy and modern take on classic psych rock and glam rock featuring fuzzy power chords, soaring organ, twinkling synth arpeggios and a chugging, motorik groove paired with an age old tale of rejection, humiliation and paranoia that should feel familiar to the outcasts and weirdos amongst us.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montreal Pysch Rock Supergroup Releases a Trippy Visual for Lysergic Debut Single

Deriving their name from a song by French songwriter Jacques Dutronc, written to mock the pricks swarming his flowerbeds, Hippie Hourrah is a new Montreal-based psych rock project seemingly inspired by that song’s spirit, featuring three of the city’s most accomplished musicians — Les Marinellis’ Cédric Marinelli, Elephant Stone’s Miles Dupire-Gagnon and Elephant Stone’s, Anemone’s and The Besnard Lakes’ Gabriel Lambert.

“Fantôme” is the band’s debut single — and the first single off the band’s forthcoming full-length debut, slated for a June 2021 through Simone Records. Centered around a hypnotic groove featuring shimmering sitar, gently buzzing synths, wah wah pedaled guitar and propulsive polyrhythm, the song possesses the sort of hazily lysergic air and mind expanding vibes that will remind listeners of the late 60s.

Directed by Joey Desjardins, the recently released, gorgeous video for “Fantôme” follows a woman, who through meditation opens her third eye, revealing the mysteries of the universe. “When I met Cédric Marinelli, he showed me the medal hanging from his neck” Joey Desjardins recalls. “It had a sun with an eye in the center of it. Cedric told me that each member of the band wears one, and they really enjoy this type of occult imagery. I really like these kinds of esoteric knick-knacks, which is reflected in the tone of the video. Since I loved the song and had wanted to create a psychedelic ghost tale for a while, there was a click. Gabriel Favreau (the animator and editor of the video) and I were really on the same page, which allowed us to quickly construct this spectral, hallucinatory journey.”