elsiane’s blog

On Thursday, September 6th, we get to indulge our love of film by playing at the Drake Hotel in Toronto. The Drake Hotel is the official headquarters for the Toronto International Film Festival, and we’re excited to be part of their programming for TIFF for our first show in Toronto. We’re in good company, with Vancouver’s Circlesquare sharing the stage that evening. We go on at 9PM, and it’s only $5 at the door. Capacity is only 150 so it will be an intimate first meeting with all of our friends in Toronto.

1150 Queen St, Toronto

http://www.thedrakehotel.ca/tiff.asp

Back in Montreal, we’ll be playing our first show at home after taking the summer off to write new music and relax. You’ll find us at the Tree stage at Osheaga festival on Sunday, September 9th at 9pm. This will be the first outdoor festival that we play at, and we’re looking forward to playing outside in nature and seeing you all again.
www.osheaga.com

“I’ve never dug deeply into jazz as a genre. My dad is a trombone player who plays jazz, as well as in orchestras. I remember listening to him play at a very young age but any influences aren’t really conscious. We never listened to free jazz around the house; it was more along the lines of Miles Davis. Vocally I never dug deep into jazz history despite what people may hear in my voice, I guess I still have a lot to discover. I’m more interested in discovering older stuff these days than discovering new bands.” – Elsieanne.

“As a drummer you need a certain amount of technical ability to play jazz, you have to understand music as a language. I studied a lot of jazz rudiments on my own to make myself more ambidextrous as a drummer but I was never really into music theory. I just wanted to be part of a band and to play something that had emotion and that comes from the heart. I wanted to learn at least a little bit of jazz technique so I’d have more of a vocabulary and ability to play different patterns and make things interesting but really music needs to come from the heart to satisfy me. The music we do has a lot of rhythmic patterns – half jazz, half rock – but they’re always in support of the melody and emotion in a song. We like big, epic, lush orchestration.” – Stephane.

Elsiane are fans of Cinematic Orchestra’s evocative lushness and highly recommend checking them out at this year’s Montreal Jazz Festival. “I played their records so much that I destroyed them!” says Stephane.

“Jazz is such a different musical language, I’ve never really explored in depth. I like music that has jazz influences more then pure jazz. So when I discovered Portishead it was like entering into a new musical world for me. It was such a rich mixture, very jazzy but also bluesy, and orchestral. It was very melancholic, dark, dramatic and epic all at the same time. I love music that comes from a dark place. I also love Massive Attack, it’s funny how I’ve discovered other artists through them…like Led Zeppelin! Or, for instance, I discovered Portishead before I discovered Billy Holiday and only later realized that she had influenced them. The same is true of Herbie Hancock, who I discovered through Hooverphonic. In many ways I’ve come to get to know not only jazz but also rock bands like Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd through acid jazz .” – Elsieanne.

“As a drummer you have to look at jazz as a pretty incredible sort of music because there’s so much involved. We listen to jazz in so many other contexts than the traditional one, and a lot of the music I’ve listened to over the years comes from and is influenced by jazz – from rock to acid jazz. As a drummer I love listening to what Buddy Rich did. I love stuff like Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew, which is like the earliest acid jazz really. I like Coltrane too, but I was never really a jazz fanatic.

Especially in terms of rhythm, jazz was just so out there that we’re still catching up. For instance Squarepusher, so many people hear his beats and go on about how new and amazing it is but if you listen to it, to the beats and rhythms, and then listen to Buddy Rich… He was playing that super sped up drum & bass, that you’d think would be physically impossible to play, and he was doing it back before synthesizers and drum machines. You take a traditional jazz beat and speed it up and all of a sudden you’ve got drum & bass, I was so inspired by that whole movement when it came out.” – Stephane.

“We’re accidental jazz!” – Elsiane.

Elsiane are fans of Amon Tobin’s muscular depth and artful melancholy and highly recommend checking him out at this year’s Montreal Jazz Festival.

Don’t miss elsiane show on July 3rd @ Club Soda, 11pm. Visit www.montrealjazzfest.com for more details.

Sometimes I feel when I’m singing that I’m not myself…that it isn’t coming out of my body. I’m someone else. It’s like being possessed and suddenly it’s over. Where was I during that song? - Elsieanne

MTAF came up with the idea for the painting that is on the album cover, the painting of the contortionist, after hearing Elsieanne’s voice. They said it was as if a human being was contorting. I’ve been friends with Jason of MTAF since I was a kid. They did all the visuals for our show. There are a lot of animated drawings that are hand drawn, appropriated nature films, and a video of a contortionist doing a routine she choreographed for the song. There were no computer effects in the video; it was all done very organically. The whole aesthetic is very organic and shaped by human hands. Conceptually it all relates to our music very well, the notion of working with the organic, from painting to the sounds of strings. All these aspects have just naturally grown together, feeding off each other. - Stephane