Late-night Club Soda series Les nuits serves up potent range of left-field offerings and is where the festival lets its hair down.
Les nuits series at Club Soda is where the festival really lets its hair down
It used to be nicknamed the DJ series. And there are still a few clubleaning acts on the bill. But look closer at the Montreal International Jazz Festival’s cool late-night Club Soda series Les nuits, and you’ll notice it’s casting a wider net these days.
“I think you have to evolve with time,” said the fest’s director of programming, Laurent Saulnier. “What’s true 10 years ago isn’t anymore. Ten years ago, we were betting a lot on what we called electrojazz. Today, you say electro- jazz and everyone looks at you with a blank stare.
“I compare this series to the Metropolis series (Les rythmes), where we allow ourselves to branch out from jazz and the ramifications of jazz.”
Les nuits offers a potent range of left-field offerings: from the old-school Montreal alt-pop of Gogh Van Go (which kicked things off Thursday) to the jangly indie psych-rock of Georgia’s Of Montreal (Wednesday) and the adventurous intelligence of D.C. rapper Oddisee (July 4), via British Latin-jazz-soul maestro Quantic (Sunday) and Toronto’s funky jazz jam trio Badbadnotgood (July 5).
The Gazette touched base with four notable artists playing the series: Hercules and Love Affair (Friday)
American DJ Andy Butler struck a perfect balance of danceability and audacity on Hercules and Love Affair’s self-titled 2008 debut, featuring the neo-disco single Blind, with guest vocalist Antony Hegarty.
Butler’s project recently returned with a thumping third album, The Feast of the Broken Heart. Mixing classic club sounds with sophisticated songwriting, it’s an invigorating listen that stands out on today’s electronic music landscape.
“My teenage years were spent in warehouses in Colorado,” Butler said, by way of explaining his esthetic. “My first experiences (with dance music) were hearing hardcore, breakbeat and drumand-bass in raves. I fell in love with trance, and the repetitive, chugging San Francisco sound, followed by Chicago DJs like Derrick Carter and Mark Farina — my musical education was given to me by these older gay men.”
The new album finds Butler, who recently moved from Vienna to London, reaching out to European vocalists who provide a range of introspective drama. “I was excited to bring back drum machines,” he said, “using disco overtones while maintaining some amount of soul, and making emotional music. The house influence came a few months in. It became an ‘underground tracks meets pop structures’ kind of thing.” Cody ChesnuTT (Saturday)
The reclusive Atlanta soul singer shot to attention via the sprawling genius of his 2002 double album The Headphone Masterpiece. His visibility skyrocketed that year when the Roots covered his infectious song The Seed (updated as The Seed 2.0) on their album Phrenology, featuring ChesnuTT himself on vocals.
But rather than capitalize on the spotlight, ChesnuTT disappeared for the rest of the decade, resurfacing in 2012 with Landing on a Hundred, an eclectic buffet of searing retro soul in the spirit of the greats of the ’70s.
“One thing about soul music is that people can tell if you’re being real or not,” ChesnuTT said. “You don’t have to say, ‘I’m being real.’ People can tell. The most important thing is personal sincerity.
“I just write what I feel. I’m trying to tap into things that move me, all the greats I listened to as a child and loved as an adult. The feeling you get when you listen to records by Curtis (Mayfield), Stevie (Wonder) or Bill Withers. When you listen to those records, they seem to find a place in your spirit that makes you feel as if you know exactly what they’re going through, or they know what you’re going through at that real, sincere, human level.”
Latyrx (Tuesday)
If you thought ChesnuTT had been gone a while, this Bay Area rap duo allowed 16 years to pass between their 1997 debut The Album and its 2013 followup, The Second Album.
Part of the Solesides collective — which included DJ Shadow and Blackalicious, and revolved around the record label Quannum Projects — Latyrx mixes classic rap attitude and political engagement in a way that was as rare then as it is today.
“We were fortunate enough to come out of the era of Public Enemy, Ice Cube and KRSOne,” said rapper Lyrics Born. “One of the things we did in the past that we can tap into — there wasn’t a whole lot of social commentary in hip hop. There just wasn’t a lot of inquiry.”
Another aspect of Latyrx is an obsessive focus on lyrical gymnastics, which shines in the live setting.
“We’re both very technical with stage stuff,” said rhyme partner Lateef. “We’re incredibly technical and precise. I remember when we first started doing shows again, we had to rehearse for a long time just to get down the routines we had in the past. It’s extremely difficult.”
Betty Bonifassi (July 6)
Finding fame via her participation in the Triplettes de Belleville soundtrack (which landed her onstage at the 2004 Oscars), France-born Montrealer Bonifassi became a local party maven, belting out African-American spirituals with Champion et ses G-Strings in 2004 and dark electro with her duo Beast in 2008.
Recent years have found the power-piped vocalist further exploring black music history.
Her upcoming album, Tribute to Slave Songs, reinterprets recordings from the 1920s by American folk music archivist Alan Lomax. Collaborators Jean-François Lemieux, Alex MacMahon and Benjamin Vigneault help bring the music into the new millennium with touches of African rhythms and electro.
Reworking the vocal lines involved a certain amount of ingenuity, Bonifassi explained. “I had to synthesize the texts, and find the hooks, as you say in English,” she said. “Their hooks were repeated for 14 hours, to take away the pain of their bodies. It was like meditation.”
The songs don’t lack for rousing themes, within which Bonifassi searched for lyrics that resonated with her own experience.
“Often, the stories revolve around liberty — someone thinking of their fiancé, who they’ve been separated from,” she said. “I picked the songs that grooved the most, that were most enjoyable to sing and that I identified with.
“For me, racism is finished; what endures is the beauty (of this music). I’m bringing the images created by these people out of the mud to make people dance to the beauty. It’s the greatest thing.”
The Montreal International Jazz Festival’s Les nuits series takes place nightly at 11 at Club Soda, 1225 St-Laurent Blvd. For tickets and more information, visit montrealjazzfest.com.