Interludes & Wee Songs.
I know 2020 was a year that everything changed for everybody. I won’t relay my experiences here beyond that of what led me in the musical sound direction of what became Interludes & Wee Songs. I spent the early part of the first Quebec shutdown cleaning up my past discography. Remastering, rejigging, and, as my wife likes to call it, George Lucasing my previous body of work that I’d created over the last 23 years or so. That led to me finally finishing up an EP that had been sitting around on various hard drives and laptops for years and putting it out into the world. I used Bandcamp and, truthfully, was saddened to see what little reach it made. I hadn’t realized just how much music consumption had been swallowed up by the streaming giants, and, well, how much harder it had become to get music to people.
After that release I wasn’t very interested in making much new music. I felt like I was finished. That was autumn of 2020. Over the winter I made some mixtapes of songs that, when put together in a certain way back to back with other songs, really captured the feels and moods I had tried to create with the North Country EP (and previously, the Wyoming EP). I called them North Country Radio. I found myself making little pieces of music to connect certain mixes. This was a mixtape not only in the style of my youth but as well as the modern hip-hop style of mixtape. Some little snippets grew into interludes and even little songs. I found myself interested in making things again. It wasn’t quite what I would classify as music or songs, but it was something.
Sounds of decay, space inside delay, whispers fading in, radio signals fading out: static and nature, the outside world passing by, things I was hearing over and over slowly washing through me.
When Quebec went into the first and second lockdowns I found myself delivering flowers for the flower shop my wife owns. Bars were shuttered (and even during the brief in-between time that they were opened it was at a reduced capacity with no dancing which meant no DJ which meant I was out of work). College radio was my soundtrack. Mostly CKUT (occasionally CISM) was almost always on while I learned to navigate this strange and lovely island called Montreal. I started hearing music that resembled what was going on inside my head. I was also continuously hearing government messages about COVID-19 which I wanted to capture. Hourly reminders and updates and reassurances about “these strange times”.
Anyway, I hadn’t really thought about releasing these interludes and wee songs when I began making them. After using my DJ brain to connect them with one another and making interludes that connected interludes something started to show itself. And, well, here is the third part of that.