Interview: Music non stop for The Besnard Lakes

Interview: Music non stop for The Besnard Lakes
An interview by
25 Mar 2010

"Even when we're not doing Besnard Lakes, I'm recording bands. My life is full of music 24 hours a day."

Jace Lasek is not so much living the Rock n' Roll lifestyle as simply getting through the Rock n'Roll grind. When he's not penning soaring anthems for The Besnard Lakes - and presumably discussing them over the dinner table with wife and chief band mate Olga Goreas - he's producing or engineering on albums for many of Canada's other best bands. The list of those that have been through the doors of Lasek's Breaking Glass Studio in Montreal reads like a who's who of Canada's music scene and documents much of the country's recent golden period. Holy Fuck, Patrick Watson, Sunset Rubdown, Unicorns and Wolf Parade have all used the space in the past while upcoming records by Wintersleep, Stars and Land Of Talk come with the studio's increasingly recognised seal of approval. The trouble therefore with The Besnard Lakes third album, released earlier this month, was when to actually find time to record it.

"As soon as we stopped touring there were pretty consistent calls to do engineering and production work," Jace tells Ragged Words on a rare day away from the office. "We had just been waiting for a time to open in our own studio! We wanted a three or four week block because (album number two The Besnard Lake Are The) Dark Horse was made over a series of weekends and we didn't want that this time. The studio is for hire though and it's part of our income so if someone books it, that's it. We found time in May of last year and thankfully nobody booked it. We went in and tracked it. The way we work, we don't rehearse - we use the studio as a major tool. Start with small sections and build it up from there."

The Besnard Lakes are past masters at the art of building things up rather grandly. The aforementioned The Besnard Lake Are The Dark Horse, the band's 2007 semi-breakthrough release, properly introduced their sound - an avalanche that collected the slow-core moods of Swervedriver and classic shoegaze noise of My Bloody Valentine as it hurtled towards your ears. Its successor, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night, isn't similar in just name alone. But while you won't find any three minute pop songs here, the sound does appear to be that much bigger and the soundscapes that little bit more epic. An approach planned over the dinner table?

"I don't know if we consciously set out out to make anything more epic. Over the last few years I've been producing a lot and developing techniques. We acquired a console and everything evolved naturally, There are more guitars certainly and we tried forcefully not look back on Dark Horse. We wanted to make it fresh and clean and new but still have our influences," Jace says.

Ah the console. As pre-release introductions go, boasting that you've recorded it on the actual equipment used in the making of Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti is certainly up there with the best of them. But that's exactly what was used this time around when Jace went searching for some new equipment and bagged himself - here's one for all you electric nerds out there - a vintage 1968 Neve germanium mixing console. Having initially thought the history behind it was "just a bunch of voodoo and bullshit", he says the heavyweight equipment became far more than just wires.

"We were looking for a large consul. A lot of studios are going digital and downsizing and us being kind of stupid, we thought it'd be a good idea. We were looking in a pretty small market - not a lot of people want them or have space the space to keep them but a guy emailed out of the blue. He had gotten wind of the studio and said we should check it out and then told us the history. It was exactly what we wanted. Exactly. It took a week to get it up and running but it's had such a pay off. It has a characteristic sound that you can't get from modern equipment and I immediately noticed a change in the texture of the sound. At the time we had just thought if nobody buys it, they're going to take it apart and sell it as pieces. We couldn't let that happen so I suppose we saved it from destruction."

 
Sometime between scouring North America for vintage equipment, beating local bands who want to produced back with a stick and recording an album, Jace also found time for The Besnard Lakes to score their first film and appear on Swervedriver main man Adam Franklin's next solo record. The former - soundtracking Mark Ruffalo's Sundance Award winning directorial debut Sympathy For Delicious - was "an amazing experience" and one they'd happily repeat again ("give them our card!" was the message to all you film directors out there). The latter too was quite an experience. We assume teaming up with Franklin was like working with a hero? 
 
"Definitely. He had said nice things about us in the press and he was living in New Jersey, so he'd come to our New York shows. It was cool enough just to hang out and at one point we played a show in Montreal together and got to play a couple of Swerevdriver songs - 'Duel' and 'Rave Down'. That was one of the greatest experiences I've ever had. Seeing him with his jazz master and the strange tunings. Seeing him do that... So A few months ago, he said would we like to add some stuff to the song. We got the mix back last month too and it sounds great." 

The band hit the UK this week - their first visit in nearly three years - and are being greeted by a slew of positive album reviews (although our imminent judgement might dampen that a little...). May it soon then be time to scale down on the studio work and make The Besnard Lakes more of a full time job?

"We're always hoping reach wider audience but it's dangerous to expect too much. The recording industry is very strange and there's always an X factor in making you successful. Everything will be a surprise though."

The Besnard Lakes on tour (the band are due back in the summer and Dublin/Brighton dates are in the pipeline for August):

March 25 Liverpool, Academy 7pm, £8
March 26 Bristol, Arnolfini w/Tunng 7pm, Sold Out
March 27 Leeds, Cockpit 7pm, £8
March 28 Glasgow, Captains Rest w/Wolf People 8pm, £8
March 29 Manchester, Dulcimer w/Wolf People 7.30pm, £9
March 30 Birmingham, Hare & Hounds w/Wolf People 7.30pm, £8
March 31 London, Cargo w/Wolf People 7.30pm, £12, Sold Out

April 20 London, Sonic Cathedral @ Legion 7pm, £8 **NEW DATE** 

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