>>PREVIEW
THE HYLOZOISTS
Friday, September 22
Liberty Lounge (MRC)
The first instrument that Paul Aucoin learned how to play was the recorder. That may not sound too intimidating, considering Aucoin, who started a band of powerful multi-instrumentalists called The Hylozoists has made a career as a musician. But then most of us elementary school woodwinds graduates don’t go on to learn the piano, violin, xylophone, glockenspiel, drums and ukulele.
About 25 years ago, Halifax, Nova Scotia was a hotbed of youth music programs. While things have declined slightly since, Aucoin remembers it fondly.
"It had the biggest string program in North America," he says, going on to describe the various orchestras and ensembles that young performers could participate in.
"The reason I play vibraphone is because (Halifax) actually had a full percussion ensemble program, so I started playing percussion in Grade 6 and you got to take a whack at everything."
This experience led Aucoin to his current role in a number of projects, not the least of which is The Hylozoists. Taking the name from a group of philosophers who believed that all matter is living, Aucoin initiated the project back in 2001 by recording the album La Nouvelle Gauche on his own. Shortly after that, Aucoin began an intense commitment recording and performing with Canada’s psychedelic twangsmen, The Sadies – that forced him to put his then solo project on hold.
Five years later, the focus is back on The Hylozoists. Comfortably fluctuating between seven and 13 members, they deliver their "music of mostly instruments" to the masses. The latest effort, La Fin du Monde, is an understated journey through pop music’s possibilities, juxtaposing jazzy sounds with spaghetti western arrangements and rock melodies. The fact that they are primarily an instrumental band does put The Hylozoists in intimate company in Canada’s music roster, even more so considering that, as Aucoin points out, many of the artists in this style, such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Belle Orchestre, are motivated more by atmosphere than melody.
"I certainly feel that the music of The Hylozoists isn’t as original as everybody would give it credit for. I think it’s more so that a lot of people don’t listen to the music that perhaps I do, that I’ve always wanted to get close to."
It is true that Ennio Morricone, Bernard Herrman and many other composers and artists from the 1960s and 1970s are not necessarily popular music these days, if they ever were. While Aucoin may incorporate that music, his modesty doesn’t disguise the fact that The Hylozoists create beautiful songs that are completely theirs.
"It just so happens, that since not everybody does a lot of digging to find the music they might like, they don’t realize that it’s there, which so often happens in music," he says. "If a kid hears Tom Waits, they might not know that Captain Beefheart paved a lot of the way for (Waits’s) growly, weird stuff well before him. For the most part, only very lucky people get to be credited with coming up with something that nobody else has done, otherwise it’s a lot of building on the shoulders of giants."
Considering that The Hylozoists are not only adept at making music, but making it as inexpensively as possible, Aucoin appreciates the evolution of technology almost as much as the art itself.
"When I was a kid, I dreamed about walking around with a computer and a laptop," he says, describing how he did the rough mixes for bandmate Wayne Petti’s solo album through the speakers in the van, en route to Halifax. "That’s everything I dreamed of.
"You couldn’t pull a two-inch tape machine into the basement of Dalhousie (University) without spending a lot of money, contacting a lot of people. Whereas I can get the key to the practice space from my old percussion prof, sneak in, record a bunch of music and be gone without anybody noticing that I was recording. So that is, hands down, the coolest thing that has ever happened. That, and being able to send people MP3s. I like that." |
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