Graham Van Pelt is the creative genius behind Miracle Fortress, a critically acclaimed (and Polaris Prize-nominated) rock project. Over the past few months, he has been tearing across the country piecing together live gigs in support of his latest album, Five Roses. On the home front, he runs Montreal’s Friendship Cove, a small studio that traffics in big sounds.

Fast Forward: You’ve said that a lot of the sounds in your music arise from experimentation. How do you put yourself into a mindset where noise can become music?

Van Pelt: I don’t really have to put myself in that mindset. Most of the music I listen to is based on sounds more than some kind of complete package. I do like a lot of bands that come up with very final, totally awesome songs that have great parts, like Daft Punk or Kanye West or something. But most of the music that actually ends up influencing me is stuff that I’ve heard that I like the sound of or I’ve liked what it does to you when you’re listening to it. Not necessarily in a liberal understanding of the lyrics and the composition type way, but something that messes with you when you’re listening to it. I guess when I’m experimenting in the studio, that’s what I’m ultimately looking for. When I find something that I like, that’s what I use.

Do you tend to try everything and see what sounds good, or do you have sounds and textures in your head that you want to try to reproduce?

I really get to know how things in my arsenal sound. If I feel like a certain frequency range in the mix needs to be filled in, I generally know what I can get that sound from… I definitely get a lot of my ideas while doing other things: I don’t necessarily just sit down at a blank canvas and start plugging things in. That does happen a lot, but usually something pops into my head at some other part of the day, when I’m out for a walk or in the bathtub or something.

Tell me about the transition between studio recordings and playing in a live atmosphere.

We take it all apart and try to distill the most important parts. The recordings are sort of impossible to recreate because of the way the instruments are treated and the number of instruments happening at once. It’s not something that a band can do unless you want to go the route of those 12-piece, bombastic, over-the-top bands. But I think we’re getting better at finding the root of things and being able to use volume to our advantage, as opposed to density.

Do you find it difficult to ensure that nothing gets lost in translation?

Well, lots of stuff does, but it’s all about figuring out what needs to be kept and what needs to be reworked and what the best parts of the songs are. Most of the time we end up coming pretty close, but a lot of the time we end up basically doing a cover version. There’s only so much that’s possible without having a hundred instruments on stage.

When you’re preparing songs for the next album, will you take the live orchestration into account?

Yeah, I’ve thought about that. Ultimately I doubt that it will ever cross my mind while I’m making a recording. I want the recordings to sound the best that they can — I don’t want to constrain them to any kind of configuration. The way the band is working, as far as coming up with slightly different versions that are maybe more entertaining live than the record versions, I think that’s working well enough and the musicians in the band are good enough that I can still be free to compose music however I want without worrying about my job.

Where do you see yourself fitting into the music community five, 10, or 15 years from now? Do you feel like you can maintain a sustainable lifestyle being part of a local Montreal-based artisan community?

It seems as though lots of people here are doing it. I don’t think it’s necessarily that difficult, if you plan well. Everything is changing, though. The contracts I’m a part of right now are pretty short-term, as far as I’m concerned. They’re set up so that I’m going to be free to make a choice about what I want to do in a couple of years. I’ll be able to assess whatever the models are and think about how I want to keep getting my music out there. That thing Radiohead did blew me away. If that sort of thing takes hold and people aren’t afraid to just copy them and do it themselves, that could be a really interesting way to keep things going. I think the revenues you take from that will be just as much as if they had a big label behind them.

Is the self-releasing scheme something you’re striving towards?

That would be great, if I could ever figure out a way to self-release that I preferred over having somebody do it for me. I am a pretty bad administrator — I’m not very adept at making the right phone calls and that kind of thing. But if the Internet keeps getting bigger and better and people really start turning to it to get music straight from the artist, I think that would be a great way to keep things going.

You work out of Friendship Cove, a home studio in Montreal. Do you see yourself as a producer-engineer as well as an artist?

Yeah, as long as it’s for bands that I like. I’ve tried hiring myself to any kind of band that walks in the door, and I really hate it. If it’s not music that I enjoy or appreciate or respect, it’s as depressing as any other day job to me. It’s not like I get a sense of satisfaction just from spinning the knobs and pushing up the faders. I’m not just like some gear-head guy. I really love producing music that I like... I think it’ll probably stay that way, unless I get really broke.