Preview
MONTAG
Friday, April 8
MacEwan Ballroom (U of C)
Music has the ability to alter a person’s mood. Hearing a certain song can take you back to a specific moment in time, stir up primal emotions or comfort you. It’s like taking psychotropic drugs minus the nasty side-effects.
Antoine Bédard knows all about the therapeutic powers of music. The Montreal-based artist has been composing retro-style electro-pop under the alias Montag since his debut release Are you a Friend? in 2002. In Bédard’s mind, that record was the manifestation of the "north pole" of his personality – analytical, technical and, well, kind of geeky.
Compared to musical heavyweights Air and Stereolab, Montag has many music scribes tying Bédard to a second wave of electronic artists – musicians who are more interested in getting to the emotional core of digital music than laying down beats.
His latest record, Alone, not alone, is a slight departure from his debut and Bédard admits that he wasn’t in the best frame of mind when first setting out to make it. He was depressed at the prospect of working on another solo record and feared he was becoming too isolated. To lift his spirits, he began experimenting with warmer acoustic sounds.
"The whole album was an effort to feel more confident or more optimistic about the future," he says. "Maybe bringing up some memories and trying to accept them and move on."
Alone, not alone mirrors Bédard’s emotional evolution and the title of the album describes his creative process. He had finished recording half the album as a solo instrumental project (Alone) before deciding to pull himself out of his funk and collaborating with friends and strangers (not alone). The result is an album that is both intimate and inviting – almost as if Bédard is playing for one listener at a time rather than a faceless audience.
A classically trained violinist, Bédard recruited fellow musicians by putting up posters around the Montreal music conservatory. He had an idea to create a sound bank of various instruments (flute, bassoon, clarinet and harp), record scales and notes and then chop and paste them together in his home studio.
For the first time, Bédard had to think about his music in the third person and share ideas with other people. He ended up learning about himself and his music in the process, which had a positive effect on his disposition. As work on the album progressed and improved, so did his mood.
"It was adding human presence to the music," Bédard says. "I think every instrument had a role in that because every instrument is distinct…. You can still feel the breath in the flute or the air in different wind instruments."
After laying down the instrumental tracks of his digital mini-symphonies, Bédard couldn’t help thinking that something was missing. At the last minute, he started writing lyrics and called on friend Amy Millan (Stars, Broken Social Scene) to sing on the album.
The French-speaking Bédard ended up writing the lyrics entirely in English, his second language. He says by treating the voice as just another instrument, he was able to add lyrics to his songs very naturally.
"I was listening to the music and the words just came out immediately. Each sound was just like a word. I was dictated the words by my music," he says. "I was just listening to the music; even the rhythm was all very spontaneous."
Bédard will be playing with Stars and Apostle of Hustle as part of the Exclaim! 13th anniversary Cross-Canada Series, and in some ways the tour has allowed him to come full circle. He will be performing solo during the series and admits that the thought of being alone again causes him a great deal of anxiety. However, Bédard hasn’t forgotten why he wrote the album in the first place and he knows that the audience will be there to help keep him company.
"I felt like connecting with people," he says simply. "Not people in general but people as separate individuals. When I was writing the songs – it felt like I was singing to the person next to me." |
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