Black Atlass’s
R&B is poised to transform him from bedroom recording artist to star.
Black Atlass isn’t a household name yet, but considering how quickly music trends shift and new stars can emerge from the most unlikely of places, the teenage R&B producer/singer and his team have no choice but to be prepared for the eventuality.
The signs look extremely promising so far for 18-yearold Alex Fleming. He self-released his debut EP in January 2012 as a free download to little fanfare, but just a year later he’s preparing a move to Montreal from London, Ont., to advance his career, heading down to New York to work on a single with respected label Fool’s Gold (run by Montreal expat A-Trak) and will be playing his first headlining show here on Saturday.
Perhaps most importantly, the re-release of his EP, still free but now mastered, has been downloaded about 70,000 times since August.
“When I released (the EP), I knew I wanted to create a name for myself,” says Fleming, flanked by his DJ Scott Pilgrim (his real name, coincidentally shared with the comic book character) and co-manager Stefan Leacock at a table in Mile End café Olimpico. “I wanted to express my vision, to create this whole package. It had to be something that was timeless, and where I could endlessly grow. I envisioned myself doing this as a career, and that’s why I made the music in the first place.”
Fleming’s long-term planning is a must in an era when free, downloadable albums with no backers — in his case, done while still in high school — can thrust bedroom recording artists into the spotlight overnight. As such, he’s also spent considerable time cultivating his striking visual side, which so far has been centred on dark tones meant to build mystique around his budding persona. But when it comes to the music, the Black Atlass sound is already fully formed and distinctive.
The EP could loosely be considered part of a recent wave of darker, largely unromantic R&B, made famous by the Weeknd, a Toronto artist who rose from online anonymity to become a headlining act much in the way Fleming hopes to himself.
Although Fleming, who was born in Montreal and lived here until he was 7, will be working in real studios and with live musicians once he relocates here in April, the Black Atlass setup so far has remained pretty basic: laptop, piano, drum machine and synth.
“I was always pushed to take piano lessons and do music in school,” Fleming says. “At one point, that made me want to back away from playing music a bit and just listen. That’s when I started getting interested in rap, hip hop, R&B and older styles. That music inspired me to become a producer and to try it for myself.”
Fellow Montreal-via-Londoner Pilgrim, who performs onstage with Fleming, has been working with him for two years, and designed the EP’s artwork.
“Alex would send me a track, I’d make recommendations, and by the end of the day he’d have six different remixes of the same song ready,” Pilgrim says of their earliest collaborations. “He would crank them out in a few hours.”
A year, though, is not a lot of time, and Fleming has only a handful of shows under his belt, including two Montreal performances. He also has quite a few unreleased songs and is continuously working on new material, although he’s deliberately trying to keep his output concise.
“Now I’m drawing influences from lead vocalists, like Michael Jackson and Prince, since working at singing is the new part of the venture,” Fleming says of his new songs. “I’m listening and learning about vocalists now, in the same way I was discovering music a few years ago.”