Please To Meet Me: Lesser Evil

Photo by Ebru Yildiz

Introduce yourself... (Where are you from, what band do you play in etc..)

Christophe : From small town Sherbrooke.  I’ve been studying music ( sax and jazz piano) in college until I dove into the synth world, I could never go back to school in music after that. I’ve been playing and composing in bands as early as 2005, with Organ Mood, Chocolat, feu doux, and collaborated with artists like Jimmy Hunt, Warren C. Spicer and many more.   

Ariane: I’m from the same town as Christo (as our bio mentions, we were next door neighbors as kids!). Arrived in Mtl when I was 17 to become an artist and sorta did (lol). Not too keen on elaborating on my past projects, not that they are not interesting, but I like to preserve Lesser Evil from all of that noise. It actually gives me the shivers that everybody can google anybody nowadays. Mystery keeps the romance alive y’all.

Why do you play music?

C: Very unclear ! Music started to have a lot of power over me at the end of high school. I figured it would be something important in my life, enough to pursue it.  Then, years later I realized that a lot of its power was a vector for identity and defining friendships.  The bonds it creates between people, I believe it has a fundamental role in connecting humans, their affinities and experiences, like no other art is able to.  It is still very mysterious to me why that’s my life now, but I’m glad.

A: Music has always been my refuge, where I connect with things greater than myself. When I was 3 or 4, I came across the sustain pedal of my piano and I was mindblown. I’d put a dictionary on it, play all the notes and then bury my head in the soundboard. I could spend hours in there, as if I had discovered something otherworldly. To this day, I think I am still chasing this omnipotent feeling that I felt as a kid. 

What was a major influence on you as an Artist/Band?

C: The music that had the strongest effect on me before my teenage years was dance music.  Not like fancy and cool dance music.  Just regular “this is the rhythm of the night” kinda dance normcore mix.  Of course that didn’t stick for long but I still feel that it’s in me somewhere. For sure, during my college years, listening to Coltrane’s period after 1961 was the biggest driving force in my approach to a lot of things, and still is today.  It is indescribable, spiritual and reaching for something alien and free.

A: My Dad had a huge vinyl collection and we would spin them all the time, even in the 90s. So I guess my greatest influences came from those vinyls which I now own. A lot of oldies (Everly Brothers, Roger Miller, Kingston Trio), a lot of the great songwriters (Dylan, Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon), tons of classical and a few oddities like Tom Waits and Keith Jarrett. 

What’s a favorite book or film?

C: In a very short period of time I discovered Birth, Under The Skin by Jonathan Glazer, and Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Lobster, Killing Of A Sacred Deer.  All of that plus Force Majeure and the Square by Ruben Östlund.  I had like a season of great cinema and it stuck with me.  I still think about these a lot. 

A: I’m a 19th century geek, so I gotta answer Dostoyevsky. I’ve read almost all of his books and Crime and Punishment is astounding. I still remember the rhythm of certain passages; oh the inner monologues! If you’ve never dared reading Russian literature, you are missing out on something grand.

Do you prefer the recording process or performing live?

C : In the recording process, at least there is a true chance of touching something foreing and unknown that truly sounds like something you want to put into existence.  Maybe it is because I consider myself “a recording artist”, but while composing, I’m always afraid that awesome events will be lost and vanish forever if not recorded. 

A: The recording process is what haunts me and keeps me awake, where I feel absolutely free and pertinent. The stage is crazily thrilling and I enjoy it a lot, especially nowadays, but it comes with a lot of backlash* and it sometimes messes with my equilibrium. 

*literally, you should see how hard we headbang

What would be a dream collaboration?

C : I’d love to spend some time with Kaija Saariaho, Geoff Barrow or Johnny Greenwood, but it doesn’t sound very realistic.  Kaija, I know she’s probably really not in our world of recordings and “popular music” but I wish her world could collide with ours in some way. In a more “possible realm” I’d say Slim Twig or Angel Olsen.  It almost actually happened and so I’m like, maybe it will actually happen someday.

A: A lot of dead old guys (Bowie, Lou Reed, Vangelis, Cohen, Harold Budd) and tons of rad progressive gals: Sarah Davachi, Jessy Lanza, Mica Levi, Tirzah, Eartheater, PJ Harvey, Beth Gibbons and Rosalia.

Describe a favorite album.

C: Lately I’ve been listening to Activity’s “Unmask Whoever” a lot, they are on tour with SUUNS right now.  I love how the post punk poet delivery can meet a more sophisticated approach to production and composition.  Not be afraid of being fancy and “produced” in a very non-purist way.  They just do it well to, I mean, you don’t have to invent anything if you do it better than anyone, but they do have a very alien sounding record that I love.   

A: The Idiot - Iggy Pop. It’ll always be one of my go-tos. It is gloominess wearing dance shoes. It is animalistic bass lines smothered in liquid metal vocals. Just dim the lights and drop the needle on that baby. Bowie and Iggy for prez. 

What's your favorite local haunt?

C : Plaza St-Hubert.  There are a lot of places on the strip that I love.  It's been renovated but there is still the 24h diner Le Roi Du Smoked Meat with the very vibe I miss from the older Montreal, and even if Zoo Bizarre ( a venue which looked like a BDSM dungeon, I worked there for a while as a soundguy ) is now a Tiki Bar, I still enjoy going from time to time.  Reminds me of good times with friends and artists working the bar.  The shows there were really on the cutting edge of where I was at the time musically speaking. 

A: Used to be Snack N’ Blues (where is Coco now?!). Now I really like the Beaubien strip between St-Laurent and St-Denis. Had many epic evenings at Brasserie Beaubien, Bruno Sports Bar, NDQ… I even like the Il Bazzali place, the chef sings opera and it's slightly creepy. 

What's your strangest experience while performing live?

C :  Oh my god, we had a crazy moment playing Le Quai Des Brumes last spring.  The crowd was great and the show was really happening and then, we got to a climax in the song “Heights”, and in that precise moment, some pitch shifting effect I got going on the live drums got super crazy loud for some reason, not loud enough for the people to realize something wrong was happening in front of house, but loud enough to make us on stage loose our shit, as if we were having an astral out of body experience ! I stayed confused for a while, even after the show.

A: I have a few, but the most hardcore one includes vomit and 300 four year old kids. I’ll let you imagine the rest… 

What are some of your favorite aspects of being a musician in Montreal?

C : Montreal is a very forgiving city, in the sense that there are enough opportunities and venues and interested people to really experiment without having to pay insane rent and work 2 jobs. And the most important : The people I know here are not transactional.  Some cities I can feel the people are just networking and trying to get forward in every situation.  But in Montreal, at least for the musicians around me, it is much more relaxed and sincere. I think it is a very sweet spot on the international music scene for that. 

A: The collaborations and the level of talent. Some of my favorite musicians live here and we’ve been incredibly lucky to collaborate and/or share a stage with some of them. I don’t know if it's because of affordable housing, Winter angst, diversity or the aura of this town, but it is filled with rad peeps.

Has the current COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine influenced your creative process?

C : Not really.  We used to disconnect and isolate for the periods we were working on music so this thing just got us more moments to do that than we used to. 

A: Ya, it definitely gave me the headspace to finish writing the album and I must admit I love  indulging in some deep introspective me-time. Wouldn’t want to go through it again though. It exacerbated way too many things in our society.

If you weren’t playing music in Montreal where would you be ?

C : I’d say New York, cause I love the place. More and more.  But the pressure there really makes you want to capitalize on everything in your life, even relationships.  And it is quite insane and alienating.  Austin might be a better place, I know some of the sweetest peeps there, but musically, I’m very much “of the north” and I’m not sure where that would lead me if not in Montreal. 

A: In nature somewhere. Ideally in another country and surrounded by mountains or something mighty.  

Any sage advice for young musicians?

C : Don’t spread thin ( lol ).  Don’t rush to finish an album in a given deadline.  If your album is good, it’s going to be around forever, just take the time so it’s worth its place in the world.  We often say that we are the worst judge of our own work, but that’s bullshit.  Take a month off, listen back to it, you’ll be a great judge.  When you perform live, there must be some danger involved.  You have to put yourself in danger.  Don’t rehearse things you already know. 

A: Just do your own thing. The thing that haunts you and that is inside you, that is what is interesting. Hone that, it might take years and will probably be all over the place at times, but it’ll eventually become something irregular and true.

Lesser Evil’s independently released “SUBTERRANEAN” is out today!

Buy it from their Bandcamp page here.