Régine talks to BBC News Hour

Arcade Fire's ever-amazing Régine Chassagne talks to BBC News Hour about Haiti and the incredible work Partners In Health do in the extremely poor country.

[MP3] Régine Chassagne - talks about Haiti and Partners In Health

www.StandWithHaiti.org/Haiti

Somewhere in my heart, it's the end of the world

Régine Chassagne writes in today's the Guardian about Haiti. I can't find the words to describe how disheartened I feel having just minutes ago read it so I'll let the article speak well and truly for itself.

I let out a cry, as if I'd heard everybody I loved had died
In a moving response to the earthquake, a Haitian singer demands that her homeland isn't once again abandoned by the west

Régine Chassagne
The Observer, Sunday 17 January 2010

Somewhere in my heart, it's the end of the world.

These days, nothing is funny. I am mourning people I know. People I don't know. People who are still trapped under rubble and won't be rescued in time. I can't help it.

Everybody I talk to says the same thing: time has stopped.

Simultaneously, time is at work. Sneakily passing through the cracks, taking the lives of survivors away, one by one.

Diaspora overloads the satellites. Calling families, friends of families, family friends. Did you know about George et Mireille? Have you heard about Alix, Michaelle etc, etc? But I know that my personal anguish is small compared to the overwhelming reality of what is going on down there.

When it happened I was at home in Montreal, safe and cosy, surfing the internet, half randomly, like millions of westerners. Breaking news: 7.0 earthquake hits Haiti near Port-au-Prince.

Such emotion came over me. My breath stopped. My heart sank and went straight into panic mode. I knew right away that the whole city is in no way built to resist this kind of assault and that this meant that thousands were under rubble. I saw it straight away.

I ran downstairs and turned on the television. It was true. Tears came rushing right to my eyes and I let out a cry, as if I had just heard that everybody I love had died. The reality, unfortunately, is much worse. Although everything around me is peaceful, I have been in an internal state of emergency for days. My house is quiet, but I forget to eat (food is tasteless). I forget to sleep. I'm on the phone, on email, non-stop. I'm nearly not moving, but my pulse is still fast. I forget who I talked to and who I told what. I leave the house without my bag, my keys. I cannot rest.

I grew up with parents who escaped during the brutal years of the Papa Doc regime. My grandfather was taken by the Tonton Macoutes and it was 10 years before my father finally learnt he had been killed. My mother and her sister returned home from the market to find their cousins and friends murdered. She found herself on her knees in front of the Dominican embassy begging for her life in broken Spanish. Growing up, I absorbed those stories, heard a new version every year; adults around the dinner table speaking in creole about poor Haiti.

When I was growing up, we never had the money to return. Even if we had, my mother never could go back. Until she died, she would have nightmares about people coming to "take her away". My mum passed away before she could meet my future husband, or see our band perform and start to have success, and though I have dreamed of her dancing to my music, I know she would have been very worried to hear that I was travelling to Haiti for the first time last year.

It is strange that I was introduced to my country by a white doctor from Florida called Paul Farmer who speaks perfect Creole and knows how to pronounce my name right. He is the co-founder of an organisation titled Partners in Health (Zanmi Lasante in Creole). There are several charity organisations that are doing good work in Haiti – Fonkoze is a great micro-lending organisation – but in terms of thorough medical care, follow-up and combining of parallel necessary services (education, sanitation, training, water, agriculture), there is none that I could ­recommend more than Partners in Health. It takes its work for the Haitian people very seriously and, indeed, most of the staff on the ground are Haitian. PIH has been serving the poorest of the poor for more than 20 years with a ­curriculum that really astounded me, given the limited resources available in the area.

Visiting its facilities, I was overwhelmed by, and impressed with, the high-level, top-quality services provided in areas where people own next to nothing and were never given the opportunity to learn how to sign their own name. I was delightfully shocked to see the radically positive impact it has had in the communities it serves. Of course, during my visit, I saw some clinics and hospitals that were at different stages than others, but through it all, I could clearly see that PIH staff are very resourceful and set the bar extremely high for themselves. I know that, right now, they are using their full ­capacities to save as many lives as possible.

So in these critical times where death comes every minute, I urge you to donate to Partners in Health (www.pih.org) and be as generous as you can. I know from having talked to some staff that they are on the ground right now, setting up and managing field hospitals as well as receiving the injured at their clinics in the surrounding areas.

I realise that by the time you read this it will be Sunday. The cries will have died out and few miracles will remain possible. But the suffering survivors should not be abandoned and should be treated with the best care countries like ours can offer.

Many Haitians expect to be let down. History shows they are right to feel that way. Haitians know that they have been wronged many, many times. What we are seeing on the news right now is more than a natural disaster. This earthquake has torn away the veil and revealed the crushing poverty that has been allowed by the west's centuries of disregard. That we must respond with a substantial emergency effort is beyond argument, but in the aftermath, Haiti must be rebuilt.

Ultimately, we need to treat Haiti with compassion and respect and make sure that the country gets back on its feet once and for all. Haiti's independence from France more than two centuries ago should be thought of as one of the most remarkable tales of ­freedom; instead, she was brought to her knees by the French and forced to pay a debt for the value of the lost colony (including the value of the slaves: the equivalent of $21bn by current calculations). We cannot ­overestimate the strength and resilience of the brave people living in this country whose ancestors had to buy their own bodies back.

The west has funded truly corrupt governments in the past.

Right now, in Haiti, there is a democratically elected government.

Impossibly weak, but standing.

This is the moment where we need to show our best support and solidarity.

Since Haiti shook and crumbled, I feel as if something has collapsed over my head, too. Miles away, somehow, I'm trapped in this nightmare. My heart is crushed. I've been thinking about nothing else.

Time has stopped – but time is of the essence.

So I've been sitting here at my computer, food in the fridge, hot water in the tap, a nice comfy bed waiting for me at some point… but…

Somewhere in my heart, it's the end of the world.

Régine Chassagne is a member of the rock band Arcade Fire

The Guardian | I let out a cry, as if I'd heard everybody I loved had died

Plea for help from Win & Régine of Arcade Fire

Win & Régine on behalf of Arcade Fire just put up this plea for help on the front page of ArcadeFire.com.

Friends,

Haiti needs your help in her darkest hour.

We just got off the phone with our friends at Partners in Health (Zanmi Lasanté).

Most of the medical infrastructure in Port-au-Prince is down.

Since Partners in Health’s clinics are in situated the surrounding areas and haven’t been damaged, they are mobilizing their resources towards the capital, setting-up field hospitals to treat the injured on the ground.

Also, Paul Farmer (the founder of PIH) is at the UN and has access to the best information on where to direct the money… so for the moment

if you want to help, we suggest sending funds to:

www.pih.org
+ http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti



Volunteer Request
If you work in the medical sector, or know someone who does:
Surgical/trauma experience only | Stand With Haiti | Partners In Health

Canadian residents with Roger and Fido cell phones can text HELP to 1291. 5 $ will be directed to Partners In Health’s Haiti emergency fund.

Please be generous as time is of the essence.

love,
Win and Regine

p.s.
these photos convey some of what is going on:
+ www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/earthquake_in_haiti.html

——————————————————————————————————————————————

Chers amis,

Haïti a besoin de vous. L’heure est grave.

Nous venons de parler au téléphone à nos amis de Partners In Health (Zanmi Lasanté).

La plupart des infrastructures médicales de Port-au-Prince sont non-opérationelles.
Comme les cliniques de Zanmi Lasanté sont situées dans les régions environnantes et qu’elles n’ont pas été endommagées, une partie du personnel a été mobilisé pour la mise en place d’un hopital de camp à Port-au-Prince.

D’autre part, ces mêmes cliniques ont commencé à recevoir les survivants blessés qui ont réussi à s’échapper de la capitale.

Partners In Health et leur branche haïtienne Zanmi Lasanté ont grandement besoin de vos dons immédiats en argent, ainsi que d’une grande quantité de matériel médical.

Paul Farmer (le fondateur de Partners In Health) travaille présentement avec l’ONU. Il a ainsi un accès crucial aux informations de première ligne en tout ce qui concerne la coordination des efforts sur le terrain.

Si vous voulez aider une organisation intègre et formidable qui se démène pour Haïti depuis plus de 20 ans, nous vous suggérons d’envoyer vos dons à:

www.pih.org
+ http://www.standwithhaiti.org/haiti



Si vous êtes du domaine médical, ou connaissez quelqu’un qui l’est:
How you can help: volunteer and donate supplies | Stand With Haiti | Partners In Health

Nous savons qu’ils sont tout particulièrement à la recherche de personnel médical francophone.

Les résidents canadiens abonnés à Rogers et Fido peuvent envoyer le message texte AIDE à 1291. 5 $ seront acheminés au fond d’urgence pour Haïti de Partners In Health.

Nous vous encourageons à être aussi généreux que vous le pouvez. À ce stade-ci, chaque minute compte.

Sincèrement,
Régine et Win

p.s. ces photos nous montrent une fraction de l’ampleur de la catastrophe
+ www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/earthquake_in_haiti.html

The Box score to be released with the DVD?

Extract from an interview Ain't It Cool News (Beaks) did with Richard Kelly.

Beaks: Were any of these jettisoned scenes scored?

Kelly: Yes. It's funny: Win and Regine loved the chase, but it kept going in and out of the movie. So they were finally like, "You know what? We're going to score it anyway." Just in case there's ever a longer version of the movie, they scored the whole thing.
[Kelly and I now go into a spoiler-heavy discussion of a cue from the end of the film. Basically, I thought a certain piece of music ended abruptly (not in a bad way), and wondered if there was more to that scene. Kelly said there wasn't.]

Beaks: That's interesting. Obviously, I love their score.

Kelly: The band pretty much had final say over how their score was edited. And I was more than comfortable allowing them that. When I cut their score in, Win had a few notes, and Regine had a few notes, but I was more than fine with their notes because they understood the story so well. It was the easiest collaboration. They actually helped keep me sane and emotionally grounded throughout the whole process. They were an extra set of eyes. The saw twelve or fourteen cuts of the movie, and they were constantly there to give me thoughts about the cut. They were really helpful.

Beaks: But if they had final say on how the music was cut, doesn't that mean they had some say on how the actual film was cut?

Kelly: That was something I promised them. I said, "Don't worry. I know you're signing contracts here, but, as a filmmaker, I promise you that you're going to be happy with how the score is cut. And if you're not, let me know." I trusted them with that. And at the end of the day, we were on the same page. We maybe had a short little debate here or there, but I trusted them. It's their music. They understand how to deliver, and they understand story. It was a very specific collaboration with people I have so much respect for as artists. This was not a traditional composer-for-hire situation. It was something where they invested a lot of their time and energy into creating this specific kind of music. They were really proud of it. And they just wanted to make sure that it was used and edited properly - and I don't blame them.

Beaks: So are they film buffs?

Kelly: Mm-hm.

Beaks: Could you, like, reference a cue from a specific Hitchcock film and know they'd pick up on it?

Kelly: When I met Win backstage after their show in September of 2007, before we'd started shooting, I handed him a script and a CD of Bernard Herrmann's VERTIGO. I was like, "If you get a chance, try to read it." I didn't expect to hear back from him; I figured it was just a long shot. But he called me the next day and said, "Regine and I read the script, and we had a really strong emotional connection to it. We think this could be really cool. Keep in touch." So when I wrapped, I sent them the rough cut. I don't think I sent them the three-hour rough cut, because... (Laughs) and that was really an assembly. I shouldn't say "rough cut".

Beaks: It was your "chaos draft".

Kelly: It was the "Talking Fox cut". The "Chaos Reigns assembly". (Laughs) But I think I sent them the two-hour, twenty-five-minute cut. Then they did twelve demos, and they were like, "If you don't like the demos, tell us you don't like them now because we're not going to keep going." And the demos were fantastic; they were so on the money. And then it was just about getting to the finish line, and making sure they were protected. At the end of the day, it was something everyone was happy with.
This was not a regular composer-for-hire job. This was a massive collaboration with an additional artist that had a significant amount of power - which I helped facilitate. They had creative control.

Beaks: Without you giving up control of the film?

Kelly: Right. Normally, when you sign a deal with a studio, they can use the score to sell vacuum cleaners with CGI cartoon characters and dead people; they can score a theme-park ride with it. We wanted to make sure that was not the case ever with their music. I was more than happy to give them as much creative control as possible.

And the score will get released at some point. Right now, they have a new album coming out, so their record label doesn't want to be throwing something else into the marketplace. I think they're going to put the score out in conjunction with the Blu-ray/DVD release, but I'm not sure. That's why I did the prequel music-video thing on YouAreTheExperiment.com. I just wanted to get the music out there, and give people a little taste of it. But they really want people to discover the music as part of the theatrical experience. There's something exciting about having to go to the theater to hear the score, as opposed to just having it on iTunes. You'll be able to get it on iTunes later on. That's actually a really cool philosophy that I agree with them on.

Because the music score business has become such a boutique thing. I don't know of any studio or record label right now that's excited about releasing a film score. The expense of releasing it doesn't even balance out with the income. It's sad, because I love film scores. I have them on my iPod. It's some of my favorite music. I wish there were more people who felt that way.

Beaks: So did they use 70s instrumentation?

Kelly: Yes. The score was recorded over four days in Toronto. It was two days of strings, a day of brass, and a day of percussion. It was recorded at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in downtown Toronto, and all of the musicians were obviously classically trained. But there was a specific style that they were going for: they wanted it to sound very vintage and raw; they wanted the strings to sound rough around the edges. And they didn't want everything to sound all glossy and... computer smoothed-out.

Beaks: They didn't want Pro Tools.

Kelly: Right. They wanted it to sound like a vintage 1970s score. And a lot of the additional instruments that were used were very specific to the 1970s. They used a lot of Mellotron and stuff like that.

Beaks: If I were to place the score anywhere in Herrmann's oeuvre, I'd say it's definitely reflective of his 1970s collaborations with Scorsese and De Palma.

Kelly: Yes. Definitely.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/42994

Richard Kelly talks about working with Win, Régine & Owen

So it seems it's definitely Merge Records, Arcade Fire's record label, that don't want the score out there just yet now that the new Arcade Fire album is only a few months away. Unfortunate but can't say I blame them since they are such a relatively small record label and certainly rely on good sales for the new album from Arcade Fire.

Do They Know It's Hallowe'en?

Oh yes, it's that time of the year again when I traditionally post this video. Happy Halloween y'all!

The song was released back in October 2005 to benefit UNICEF (and to poke fun at the patronizing attitude of "Do They Know It’s Christmas?"). The band called themselves North American Hallowe'en Prevention Initiative which consisted of an impressive list of artists:

Win Butler & Régine Chassagne (Arcade Fire)
Beck
Feist
Devendra Banhart
Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth)
Roky Erickson
Peaches
Dntel
Syd Butler (Les Savy Fav)
David Cross
Elvira, Mistress of the Dark
Karen O of Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Jenny Lewis & Blake Sennett (Rilo Kiley)
Dan Boeckner & Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade)
Steve Jocz of Sum 41
Nick Diamonds and J’aime Tambeur (Islands)

You Are The Experiment

Last night Warner Bros. launched the website You Are The Experiment where you can listen to score music by Win Butler, Régine Chassagne and Owen Pallett. Works really well I think. Here are some mp3s from those videos - www.megaupload.com/?d=HQS57DAT

Clip from The Box

Possibly some of Win, Régine and Owen Pallett's score music in that clip. I'm so torn about whether to go see this movie or not. Nothing really appeals to me about it except hearing the score in its right context.

Richard Kelly reveals The Box score will be released

Richard Kelly used his twitter to deny rumours the score by Win Butler, Régine Chassagne and Owen Pallett won't be released. This is what director of The Box tweeted.

I want to clarify a few things about THE BOX score by Win Butler, Regine Chassagne and @OwenPallett...

The band is hard at work recording the new Arcade Fire album.

They will release the score at some point, when it does not conflict with their album release schedule for their record label.

We all hope that their fans will discover the score the old-fashioned way: sitting in a dark movie theater on 11/6/09.

Until then, you can hear a sample of the score at www.thebox-movie.com - more information forthcoming:)

So even though I'm somewhat disappointed it won't be released in the coming weeks it's comforting to know it will at least be released sometime in the future.

First taste of The Box score!

Win Butler, Régine Cassagne and Owen Pallett have made the score for Richard Kelly's new movie The Box. Last night the official website was launched and playing in the background is a piece of music taken off that score. It sounds incredible! My mind is racing through all sorts haunting landscapes. So, head over to http://thebox-movie.warnerbros.com and listen to the music and check out the pretty cool website. Then when your mind has been blown you download the song here.

[MP3] Win Butler, Régine Chassagne and Owen Pallett - The Box (Website Theme)

UPDATE: As if needed, here's confirmation it's indeed their score music.

RT @owenpallett: Website for "The Box" is up here: http://thebox-movie.warnerbros.com and there's a Mellotron and an orchestra and Regine's angelic singing.

Will & Régine

En rolig och lite konstig intervju med Will och Régine från 2007.

Del 1 av 2:


Del 2 av 2:

Allt med dem känns så genuint. Det finns aldrig ett förprogrammerat svar eller sätt att agera. Älskar hur Régine blir helt till sig när Will talar om för intervjuaren att de ska se M.I.A. senare. Genuint.

Richard Kelly om musiken till The Box

Richard Kelly berättar ingående om The Box för Mr. Beaks på den nästan alltid intressanta sidan Ain't It Cool News. Här är ett utdrag från deras samtal som handlar om musiken till filmen som ju Win och Régine från Arcade Fire tillsammans med Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy) har gjort.

Kelly: Yeah. But I spent a long time really working on the story, and hopefully turning it into something that is thought provoking. I guess I can show you the trailer. (Pulls out a laptop.) The music in the film was done by Win Butler, Regine Chassagne and Owen Pallett.

Beaks: That's the whole Arcade Fire collaboration we've been hearing about.

Kelly: Right. And Owen is a part of Final Fantasy, but he collaborates with Arcade Fire quite a bit. Marcus Dravs engineered the score with them. He did their last two albums and just did Coldplay's new album.

Beaks: That's a bit of a coup.

Kelly: It was a long, long courtship to get them to do it. The score from the trailer is not them. It's sort of trailer score, you know?

Beaks: And this is the score that will be on the final trailer?

Kelly: Yes, I believe so. Just so you know that, when you hear the score, it's not Win and Regine. You've probably heard the trailer score before. But in a weird way, when you're trying to broadly market a film... I don't question the science of it. Because they do have it down to a science. But the score that [Win, Regine and Owen] did is very Bernard Herrmann. It's very lush. They did eighty minutes of score.

Beaks: Really? Depending on the run time of the movie, that's a lot. Did you let them score long passages of the film?

Kelly: There's a sequence in the library with no dialogue for four minutes that's all music. It's a very score-heavy film. And there's pop songs in it, too. We have Eric Clapton, Grateful Dead, Wilson Pickett, Scott Walker and The Marshall Tucker Band. It's Virginia 1976, so I wanted to have that Southern Rock flavor.

http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41449

Det är alltså INTE deras musik som är med på trailern som kommer släppas snart.

Söndagsnotiser

• Richard Kelly, regissören till The Box, skrev detta i sin blogg.
  
  Win Butler, Regine Chassagne (of Arcade Fire) and Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy, frequent collaborator with Arcade Fire) recorded more than 80 minutes of score for the film.
  www.richard-kelly.net

• Nästa söndag den 12:e april klockan 10:00 kommer ARTE att sända hela spelningen med Arcade Fire från Rock en Seine 2007. Så om någon av er får in den kanalen kan ju tacka er lyckliga stjärna. Förhoppningsvis och troligtvis dyker den upp på det stora vida nätet någonstans så man inte blir utan. Kommer såklart lägga upp den på ArcadeFireTube i så fall. ARTE la upp den här lilla previewen från spelningen.
  
  PURIFY MYYY MIIIND!! Ska kanske tillägga att detta är hela spelningen, tidigare har ju ett 10-tal låtar visats som ni kan njuta av här. Den kommande sändningen kommer innehålla allt detta godis:
  

  01. Keep The Car Running
  02. No Cars Go
  03. Haiti
  04. Laika
  05. Black Mirror
  06. Intervention
  07. (Antichrist Television Blues)
  08. Neon Bible
  09. Age Of Consent
  10. Windowsill
  11. The Well And The Lighthouse
  12. Ocean Of Noise
  13. Tunnels
  14. Power Out
  15. Rebellion
  16. Wake Up

  Det lät väl inte så tokigt va!

Win & Régine besöker PIH på Haiti

Saxat från Partners In Healths nyhetsbrev för november 2008.

From the Desk of Naomi Rosenberg,
former assistant to Paul Farmer

Dear Friends,

I remember when I first saw the rock band Arcade Fire perform four years ago in Philadelphia after the release of Funeral, which would go on to sell over 500,000 copies worldwide. It was a gray fall as the country prepared for the November 2004 presidential election and received daily news of death and devastation in Iraq. Leaving the concert I remember two college students walking out in front of me and one turned to the other to say “they make me feel like maybe, just maybe, everything will be alright.”

Flash forward … Last week we had the privilege of hosting Régine Chassagne and Win Butler – the wife and husband leaders of Arcade Fire – at Zanmi Lasante (ZL, PIH’s partner organization in Haiti). The band has a long-standing interest in Haiti. Régine’s family comes from the island and Win has been known to decorate his guitar with the Haitian proverb “sak vide pa kanpe”—”an empty sack cannot stand up”—as a reminder of the crushing poverty that afflicts Haiti.

We journeyed to central Haiti to visit ZL’s newest sites in St. Marc and Petite Rivière de l’Artibonite. We only recently started working in these hospitals, and the scene was devastating. Almost all of the patients in the inpatient ward were dying – literally wasting away from HIV and tuberculosis.


Régine (left) and Win (center) during an impromptu musical break in Haiti

Nothing I had witnessed in previous visits to ZL hospitals had prepared me for this. When I started working for PIH three years ago, the patients at our older, more established sites (such as Cange) were being treated for kidney disease, heart trouble, cancer, broken bones. Thanks to tireless and unwavering community-based care, these wards were no longer filled with people wasting away at the end stages of HIV and TB. ZL is now working to establish the same model of programs and services at these new sites.
Touched by the scene in St. Marc, Win and Régine brought out a guitar and began playing an incredibly moving set of songs right in the ward—”A Change Is Gonna Come,” which brought tears to many eyes, a rousing version of “La Bamba” followed by “Let It Be” at the request of a dying patient. It is difficult to find the words to express the way music can cross boundaries and lift a saddened soul.


School children gather to hear Win and Régine play.

Later that week, during a visit to the hospital in Cange, Win and Régine played for kids in the pediatric inpatient ward. Anthony, a small boy sick with both a serious case of malnutrition and HIV, had been completely inconsolable, lethargic and unresponsive, according to his nurses. But upon hearing Win and Régine’s music, Anthony propped himself up to sit and started clapping along. It was one of the most touching moments of the week.


Patients in a hospital ward react to Win and Régine's music.

During their visit, we also toured a new hospital, saw villages devastated by last September’s deadly hurricanes, visited a farm that produces vegetables and materials for the therapeutic foods we use to treat malnourished patients, and visited the homes of several patients and their accompagnateurs.

Since the release of their second album and a tour in which they donated $1 from every ticket to PIH, Arcade Fire has become not just fans of PIH but also one of the biggest supporters for our work in Haiti. Their presence and their spirit brought comfort and energy to everyone who was able to meet them.

“There is no profession that cannot be used to help the poor,” as Paul Farmer has said in lectures around the country. With the support of Arcade Fire and our other supporters from all walks of life around the world raising their voices with ours, committing to the dignity of others, helping to treat every patient in the ward, and fighting policy arguments in Washington, DC, and abroad—maybe, just maybe, everything will be alright.

– Naomi Rosenberg
Medical student and former assistant to Paul Farmer

Kan inte pusha nog nu såklart för att stödja Partners In Health och deras enorma jobb de gör på Haiti som är ett av jordens absolut fattigaste och otursförföljda länder. Varenda krona är värdefull i deras kamp för att få Haiti på fötter. Skänk pengar genom att följa den här länken: Donera till Partners In Health. Längst ner finns ett alternativ för att välja precis hur mycket eller lite man vill och kan donera.

Richard Kelly vloggar om The Box

Konfirmerar det som diverse intervjuer med honom redan sagt att Régine, Win och Owen verkligen har gjort soundtracket till The Box.

Richard Kelly pratar äntligen om samarbetet med Arcade Fire

Finns mycket och glädja sig åt i denna intervju! Joel blir mycket nöjd och glad.

Arcade Fire Score 'Donnie Darko' Director's New Movie
'I just have always felt that their stuff was really cinematic,' director Richard Kelly says of band.

By Eric Ditzian

What do you do if your first film became an unlikely cult hit and your follow-up was eviscerated by critics and ignored by audiences? Well, you adapt a "Twilight Zone"-style story into a suspense-driven morality tale and enlist possibly the most well-respected indie rockers in the world to record the score.

At least that's the approach being taken by "Donnie Darko" and "Southland Tales" writer/director Richard Kelly, who recruited the Arcade Fire to record 80 minutes of original music for his upcoming feature, "The Box," staring Cameron Diaz and Frank Langella. In an exclusive interview, Kelly walked MTV News through the origins, outcome and motivations behind the collaboration.

From the start, the director had only one choice in mind to score the movie. "They're just, like, my favorite band, period," he said. "I saw the Neon Bible tour. I went to, like, four shows. And I just have always felt that their stuff was really cinematic." At the Hollywood Bowl show in September 2007, Kelly went backstage and handed a copy of the "Box" script to songwriter/vocalist Win Butler.

"He read it pretty quickly and gave me a call back to say that they were really intrigued," Kelly said. "He and [singer] Régine [Chassagne] were interested in potentially doing some music for it."

What was it about the script that convinced the band — which, at the time, was finishing off five years of constant touring and recording — to take on the project? Kelly believes the band responded in a personal way to certain themes in the story. "They're really political," he said. "And I think with 'The Box,' it's a morality tale, and it takes place in 1976, but conceptually, there's a real message to the film in terms of what it has to say about the nuclear family, and about greed, or about what everyone is willing to do to achieve a certain level of happiness in their life."

Kelly adapted the script from a '70s-era short story by "Twilight Zone" vet Richard Matheson. The film follows Diaz as one-half of a miserable suburban couple (James Marsden plays her husband) who are approached by a mysterious stranger (Langella) with a creepy proposition: press the button on this box and you'll receive $1 million, but someone on the planet will die as a consequence.

After Arcade Fire signed on, Kelly, Butler, Régine and violinist Owen Pallet, along with engineer Marcus Jobs (who'd worked on both of the band's albums) met up in a Toronto studio and, for the entirely live recordings, they assembled a full orchestra, including strings, brass and a Mellotron, as well Régine's vocal elements. "It was really amazing to see them work," Kelly said. "They're really dedicated artists."

The band's focus was on a Russian style of composition, explained Kelly, with "the strings being really raw and emotional. I think they were able to create a score that feels like it's from another era."

He added, "It's kind of like ['Psycho' composer] Bernard Hermann on acid, what they did. It's very lush, and kind of a very bombastic, emotional score — and kind of Hitchcock. It feels like a score from the 1970s."

Of his reluctance to discuss the collaboration until now, the director admitted, "It's like when there's something really cool happening, you get nervous." But now the film is completed and plans are being worked out to release the score as a separate soundtrack. "I put that in Win's court," Kelly explained, "because it's his music, and I just feel really blessed that they were willing to score the film, so it'll be out there. It'll be a big release, I'm sure."

Kelly can only hope for the same for the film itself. After the triumph of indie darling and Jake Gyllenhaal launching pad "Donnie Darko," the director frittered away much of his Hollywood cred with alternate-reality head-scratcher and box-office bomb "Southland Tales," staring The Rock. Both films, incidentally, had killer soundtracks. With "Box," Kelly has promised to deliver a commercially viable movie — with yet more kick-ass tunes — that maintains a genetic link with the trippy sci-fi suspense of "Darko."

"I'm really excited for people to hear what they've come up with," said Kelly of the Arcade Fire soundtrack. The same is undoubtedly true for his latest film, which hits theaters late in 2009.

http://www.mtv.com/movies/news/articles/1603205/story.jhtml

Radiointervju med Win

Win ställde här om veckan upp för en intervju med college-radiostationen KCSUFM. Han pratar bl.a. om möjligheten att rösta tidigt i det nyss avslutade valet, situationen på Haiti och hur arbetet med nya albumet fortgår. En riktigt bra intervju. Win låter som alltid väldigt engagerad och framför sina synpunkter bra, synd bara att intervjuaren får avbryta honom på slutet då de får ont om tid.
Régine och Win befinner sig just nu på Haiti för att se hur de pengar de samlat in under turnén används. En dollar/euro av varje biljett under hela turnén gick som ni säkert kommer ihåg till Partners In Health som jobbar oförtrutet på Haiti, ett av världens fattigaste länder som ju drabbades enormt hårt av orkanen Hannah med helt katastrofala följder. Kan i sammanhanget vara intressant att veta att de samlade in 500,000 dollar (nästan 4 miljoner svenska kronor) åt dem. Vilket i ett så extremt fattigt land betyder mer än vi kan förstå. Fantastiskt!

Donera till Partners In Health

Intressant intervju

En intervju från 2004 men den är så pass lång och samtidigt hela tiden intressant att jag tycker den är värd att läsas fortfarande. Det märks verkligen att detta är innan de blivit bombarderade med samma frågor sjuttioelvatusen gånger.

Arcade Fire
Win Butler and Regine Chassagne
August 10, 2004
Locale: Café Amandine, corner of St. Urbain/St. Viateur, home to the finest and most frugal eggs benedict in Montreal

It seems to me that you disappeared for a whole year to make this record. I remember hearing a version of “Wake Up” a year ago this week. Almost every day of every week whenever I’d bump into one of you, you’d always say, “We’re still recording!” Was it really that intense?
W: When we first went into the studio, we just wanted to record two songs—“Wake Up” and “Power Out”—while [his brother] Will [Butler] was in town, to put out on a single. We just did three sessions, three days, and we didn’t do anything else for a long time. We didn’t really start again until the winter, because we didn’t really have a band at that point. We taught [Wolf Parade drummer ]Arlen [Thompson] the song the day before we rehearsed it. Regine played drums on “Power Out,” but that didn’t end up working out. It wasn’t like we went in to make a record. Then we started playing with [producer/drummer] Howard [Bilerman] right after that, so we had to get to be able to play again.

Was it important to take a lot of time recording? A lot of people’s first record they want to do as quickly as possible, or as cheaply as possible.
W: We weren’t actually in the studio that much. The thing about this time was that we had to work around our schedules. Everyone was working, and I was still in school, and the studio was booked a lot. We were second priority fitting in whenever there were holes. There were five days when Howard went away and Silver Mt. Zion was on the road, and we got the keys and we were in there for 24 hours a day pretty much. It wasn’t a situation where we were a band for a long time before, touring the songs. We were trying to figure out how to play together and arrange the songs.

Would you still be recording if Merge hadn’t given you a deadline? You were still recording and remixing right down to the wire.
W: I wish we had more time and money. I think we did pretty good with what we had. Maybe we’ll have more time next time. But I don’t want to take more time, I just want to have more time in a row. We could have done the whole thing in a month if it was a solid month.

The more I listen to it, there are no wasted notes. Everything is very constructed and deliberate and layered. I can’t imagine going back and thinking of what you would change. It sounds fully realised.
W: I don’t want to ever mix a record again.

You’d rather hand it over?
W: Yeah. This was a weird situation because since we did a lot of recording when Howard was gone, we’re not good at labelling what track was what. It would have been impossible for a third party to come in, because it was so unprofessional. Like halfway through the tambourine track, Regine’s vocals might come in. We’d try to jam so much into the tracks we had. The mixing/mastering period was so hard. I hate it. You lose a lot of perspective. “Haiti,” which has turned out to be one of my favourite songs on the record, almost didn’t make it on there. We were so depressed with the way it sounded. We were so overloaded from working and thought it was such a piece of crap. Every day we were tormenting ourselves. Regine and I worked on it for five days, doing a completely different mix, stripped it down and got rid of everything. Then Richard [Reed Parry] and Tim [Kingsbury] came back after being away a while and said, ‘No, this is crap.’ So we went back to square one and redid it. It turns out that I like it a lot and I listen to it a lot. It was the same thing with “No Cars Go” from the EP.
R: We almost didn’t put it out. It was such a mess.
W: It sucked so bad. I just assumed that it wasn’t usable. When we were in Maine [where the EP was recorded] listening to it, we just thought, ‘Oh god, this sucks.’ After working on it for a while, I went back to it after assuming that it wasn’t going to be on the record, and I thought, ‘Well, it’s not worse than anything else.’ (laughs)

A song like “Haiti” was one of my immediate favourites, because it wasn’t one I’d seen you play live, as opposed to everything else here. But even the sound of it is very different than the rest of the album, different textures and instrumentation.
R: We were scared of that one too.
W: We did a demo of that on the computer, just to flesh it out. We had these two organs at my house and threw up a room mic and me and Richard just did some stuff on the fly. We ended up really liking it. And there was a percussion track we really liked too. We ended up using this electronic kick, the organs and this percussion track from the total rough mix as the backbone of the real song.
R: It was one of my favourite things. I had to go to work, teaching arts and crafts to kids at the school just over there. And I came back, and they had recorded this.

But you added vocals later.
W: That took fucking forever. That song didn’t have a vocal melody.
R: We had the words.
W: But we didn’t know how it was going to sound. Because the sound was so bizarre, the way it was recorded, it was really important to find the right vocal sound. We kept recording vocals, and the song would sound worse. It was better as an instrumental. We had to try and find a sound that would sit in the mix and actually make the song better.

I don’t know if you went through various sequences, but it’s paced perfectly. “Tunnels” opens beautifully, and “In the Backseat” is an ideal closer. It feels like a full narrative, and there even seems to consciously be two sides of a vinyl record.
W: There definitely is a side A and B. It’ll be nice to hear it on vinyl, because I think there’s a natural flow to the two sides, and that was intentional. But it was a pressure thing. We had to submit the artwork three weeks before we were done. We had to decide the order without having final mixes. We didn’t even know if “Haiti” was going to make it on the record.

Yet it bleeds well into “Lies.”
W: That was intentional. We knew it would sound good going into the other one.

Were these songs always intended to be a group? Because I know you have a stockpile of other songs I’ve seen live.
W: There were a couple of others that didn’t really work out or complement the others.
R: We did all the songs we chose to do. But it’s not like these songs were born to be together.

What’s your song stockpile up to?
W: We’ve been handicapped for the past six months. We’ve written a few things, but not much. We were so prolific for the first couple of years.
R: Then all the recording, and organization, and touring…

What was that period like? Were you writing a couple of songs a day?
W: Yeah, for a while there. I think we’re getting back into it again now. You have to slow down at a certain point, too. It’s a lot better with a song like ‘Rebellion’ that we came up with while we were recording, and without labouring over it too much. Fresh stuff is better in that way.

Ever since I’ve known you, since the first time I saw the band, you’ve always been very demanding of yourselves, of your performances. It’s not something you take lightly: the show, the way a record turns out. Are you happy with the record? Are you happy with your shows lately?
R: Oh no! I’m never content. For me, I’m always at square zero trying to get to square one. [food arrives] For me, I haven’t achieved anything yet. This is a start.
W: I think the record is an improvement over the EP. Some people might say the EP is better, but that’s a load of crap. The singing on this is a lot better, for both of us. I definitely think there’s progress, and that’s what keeps me moving. We’re figuring some things out. I don’t know if it ever feels like ‘Oh, sweet, we’ve done something really awesome.’ The only time I felt really free was when Will was around and I wasn’t playing instruments all the time and I could actually think about doing other things. I feel in a rut having to perform while holding a piece of crap and trying to make the song stay together.
R: Me too! I get so angry at my keyboards. I always told myself that I never wanted to play keyboards in a rock band—that would suck! If there’s a girl in a band, she’s always playing tambourine and a keyboard, it’s so annoying. But I end up doing that anyway and I get angry.
W: The guitar’s bad too, Regine.

At least you get to walk around [with a guitar].
R: It’s like I’m sitting at a desk, it’s really annoying.
W: At least you get to sing without holding an instrument once in a while, that’s more than I do.

How often have you been playing drums now on stage?
R: There are two or three songs now I play on stage.
W: There’s a bit more on the record.

When did that start?
R: I believe it was…
W: When we didn’t have a drummer!
R: I think it was end of last summer, exactly a year ago.

When did the dress code enter the band?
R: Oh, dress code is annoying.
W: It’s in flux.
R: I’m tired of wearing the same thing all the time.

Do you, though?
W: No, you don’t.
R: I change my socks.
W: Oh, everything’s annoying, Regine! Dress code, annoying. Playing keyboards, annoying.
R: Oh, what do you want? No, I love playing keyboards. I just want to dance too. That’s my problem.

Did you always want the presentation of the show to be theatrical?
R: For me, I don’t think about theatrical. For me, it’s not something that I put on. It’s not much of a game or a character. It comes out theatrical, but I don’t think of that way.

Maybe just compared to every other band.
W: Maybe. The clothes we wear is more for us than the audience. It’s important for me to put on clothes that I’m not already wearing. It puts you in a different mode. There’s a difference between playing a show and walking down the street. You have to appreciate your audience, which makes it different from playing in your living room. What we’re actually wearing is abritrary, and it will change. It’s more for our own headspace, to make it special. Also, I was a teenager during the grunge thing, which was a reaction to hair metal and glamourous crap, and everyone wore whatever they felt like. I think it would have been unusual in the 60s to see a band not wearing some kind of stage clothes. Maybe I’m wrong. Jimi Hendrix wore really weird, exaggerated clothes.

He’d also wear that on the street, though.
W: That’s true. He lived the part.

A friend of mine looked at a picture of Modest Mouse the other day and said, ‘How come these guys always look like they’re coming over to fix your plumbing?’ But I was remembering some early shows where you were quite demanding of the audience. Very intense, where you’d almost be staring down the audience. I’ve noticed that happening less since the band has had a more solid line-up. Is that because you feel more comfortable with what’s happening on-stage?
W: I don’t know. (long pause)

Do you expect certain things from your audience?
W: The audience has a lot of power as to how the show goes, almost as much power as the band. It’s impossible for a band to make something be there that isn’t willingly given by the audience. It’s annoying when bands are always saying, ‘Come on, people, dance! Come on! Dance!’ I wouldn’t say we’re expecting people to do something they’re not comfortable with or that they’re not naturally going to do, but I think we do appreciate that the audience has a lot of power, and we’re not going to pretend like they’re not there. We’re sharing something with them and performing for them. There’s some confrontation in that naturally.

Speaking of discussions with the audience, I though that the artwork in the album looks like a contract, that you all signed. It looks like this is something you’re promising the audience. Why did you do that?
R: I wanted to do that. It’s more personal.
W: For a while we were going to make t-shirts with Tim’s home address on them. (laughs)

Why?
W: I don’t know, it’s just really personal information! The whole t-shirt would just be his address.

Not ‘Arcade Fire,’ not even ‘Tim Kingsbury’…
W: Nope!
R: Also, this makes it seem like real people, who signed here.
W: Me and Will’s signature is quite similar. The last name is almost identical. Whenever we get a rental car and have to initial things it looks exactly the same.

The way the band sounds now—is that the way you always envisioned it, or does it have a lot to do with the people who ended up playing in the band? Everyone has very distinct personalities.
W: ‘Wake Up’ was written in reaction to the band breaking up. We wanted to do something that was louder than anything we’d done before, very bombastic. We wanted the first song we played after we started playing again to be very bombastic. At least, I did. It was written as an opening song. Some of the heavier stuff, like ‘Laika,’ came from me being sick of playing acoustic guitars…
R: And xylophones.
W: It will probably swing the other way eventually, because you get sick of playing loud rock music after a while.
R: It’s a phase.

What did you think would happen in March, 2003 [when the band appeared to break up on stage, at their EP release party]? Many people thought the band would be over.
R: We were a bit depressed, but we’ve never really known what’s going to happen with the band.

Wasn’t there one show after that with just the two of you?
W: Yeah, but it wasn’t supposed to be. That’s actually when we met Wolf Parade, that was their first show. We showed up and none of the drummers showed up, and we figured we’d play anyway. It was really depressing.
R: We got our friend Josh just to play kick on one song.
W: There weren’t many people there and we just thought, ‘what has this come to?’ But we’re just going to keep going. Not playing is never really an option. It always swings back and forth between being hopeful and being hopeless. We never know what’s going on. The one bright spot of that show was meeting Wolf Parade, because we really liked them.

How long have you known Richard [Reed Parry]?
W: He morphed into playing in the band. When we got back from that summer [he had recorded the EP], we had played together a lot and become friends. He played upright bass and some other stuff at the CD release. There was a while when he was considering learning drums for us.

I wanted to ask a bit about the very beginning. Was that you and some friends in Texas, or Maine?
W: Me and my best friend Josh. I was in school in New York and was really depressed. I didn’t have many close friends and didn’t know what I was doing. I was going to this really expensive liberal arts school and taking all these classes, but I spent all day skipping class and writing songs on a four-track. That’s all I did. I thought, what the hell am I doing? It popped into my head one day that I should play in a band with my best friend Justin, who was my best friend from boarding school. We were really close and he influenced me a lot. He had this mythical friend Josh, who was even taller than me and a really talented songwriter. I thought the three of us should be in a band. So I went to a pay phone, called Justin and told him, ‘You guys are moving to Maine this summer. My parents won’t be there and we’re going to start a band.’ From that moment on, I committed to playing music in a band. It was really clear all of the sudden that it was what I wanted to do.

That was well before you moved here.
W: After that I was in Boston for a year and then I moved here in 1999. I’ve been following that trajectory ever since.

You followed Josh here. Was he ever in a performing incarnation of the band?
W: Yeah, for about a year in Montreal. Then he left. Regine didn’t know what to do in the band at first, because there were three guitar players playing all the time and there wasn’t space to do anything. But we knew she had to play and we knew we had to play together but it wasn’t really clear. As that fell apart and Regine and I started writing more, there was a sound of the two or our styles coming together that became realised more. It was real, it wasn’t hypothetical.
R: At first it was really clashing, but then we started being influenced by each other and knew what the other one was going to do, learning to adjust to each other. It was very intense, because we were falling in love at the same time.

Did Josh not want to continue with the band, or did he not like Montreal anymore?
W: It was kind of weird, but Josh had this intuition that he needed to do something else. It’s not like we broke up or anything. He just felt inspired to do something else. He’s getting married this October and I’m his best man. We’re still very close. He did all the animation on the website.

Does he write all the ooo-ooo parts in the songs? That seems to be a trademark of all his co-writes.
W: (laughs) He wrote the bass line in “Power Out.”

The Cure-like one?
[they both sing it]

And the others are “Tunnels” and “Headlights”?
W: Yeah, he helped me write the vocal melody on that one. That’s about four years old.

So Regine, you were singing jazz and performing medieval music at the time?
R: I was doing medieval music and singing jazz. I quit the medieval band a year ago. I want to sing jazz still. I think there’s a lot of possibilities there. I don’t know. I’d like to do something different.

Did you have high school bands? Any rock bands?
R: No, this is my first rock band. Before I met Win, I was really not connected to the rock band world. I started meeting all these people in rock bands, and I thought, ‘What’s with all this rock band stuff?’ I wouldn’t ever have thought of it. I was mostly making music in my head. I had a piano in my house when I was six and I started playing. I took a couple of lessons but really, really didn’t like it, but I played the piano so much. The piano was my friend. In my neighbourhood there weren’t any friends my age. They were my sister’s age or younger, or way too old.

Were you learning songs by ear or by sheet music?
R: Oh no, no sheet music. I can read now, but I’m not the best reader. I would play everything I heard, whether it was a classical song on the radio or the Super Mario theme.
W: I’m lucky in a sense. It seems like people in your family must have missed that you were such an amazing musician, otherwise you might have been pushed into a total classical world.
R: [sings operatically]
W: Because you could totally do it, and they’d be idiots not to notice. You were picking up all these classical songs off the radio by ear, and if you’d done that in my family, my mom would have made you go to conservatory and really push it. You have such a natural thing. But luckily… untrained.

Did you always want to play music then?
R: I didn’t know any musicians around me. For me it was such a privilege to meet a musician, and I would grill them: ‘You play drums? You play music? Tell me everything!’ When I was young I would think that in the best world I would hang out with musicians. It was a very naïve way of thinking. I always took music very seriously, because it was not something that was obvious. I didn’t have a lot of CDs, so everything I heard was very important.

If not rock music, what were you listening to?
R: A mix of so much stuff. I listened to the Beatles a lot, jazz, classical. Every music that I don’t understand, I’m automatically interested, because I have to figure it out. That’s what happened when I was really young and I heard jazz. It was, ‘woah.’ I had to listen to it until I got it. My understanding of music is totally personal, because I remember those moments when I was listening to jazz and I had those little songs I would tape off the radio, like Charlie Parker. One day I heard the same song, but not Charlie Parker doing it, but I knew the changes and it all clicked. ‘This is the same song, but they’re just improvising over it!’

The floodgates opened!
R: Exactly.

When did you start playing in the medieval band, then?
R: In CEGEP [Quebec’s post-high school pre-university schools]. I was really interested in it, because it works on a completely different aethetic than any modern music, from the Renaissance up to today. It’s a completely different era.
W: I think a lot of people confuse Renassiance music and medieval music.
R: Yeah, it’s much weirder than that. [sings cartoonish version of Renaissance music]

Was that with people your own age?
R: People my own age. This girl wrote in the school paper, ‘Do you want to play in a medieval band?’ I thought it would be interesting, but I went and it was just a bunch of girls singing. I was about to quit, but we finally found some guys and it got a little better. Even then it was a bit, ech. Then we got more instruments and it got a bit more rock and I was happy.

You were playing what?
R: I learned to play recorder really well, by accident basically. (laughs)

Hmmm. Just like the drums, the piano…
R: We played this big show with my medieval band for New Year’s Eve, and I was playing recorder and everyone was dancing like crazy, almost like a rave. It never made any sense to me. For me, recorder was like in grade two, so boring.

So Win, before New York did you have high school bands?
W: I played in a band in high school with my best friend. Our shining moment was at rock assembly.

Rock assembly?!
W: Well, we had assembly once a week where high brow speakers would come. Once a year they’d do this rock assembly where they’d let student bands play for the other students. My friend Justin, it was his last year. I was in third year, he was in fourth. He was in love with this girl, our friend Hilary, and they dated for eight years after that. We played ‘Just Like Heaven’ by the Cure in rock assembly and it was amazing. That was the highlight of high school for me.

I’ve heard you talk about the Cure before, but I never noticed it in Arcade Fire until I heard the recorded version of “Power Out.”
W: I haven’t listened to them in a long time, but for a brief period in high school they were the band that got me into totally different kinds of music, it changed the kind of music I liked.

You both grew up in suburbs, yes?
Both: Yes.

Neighbourhood is a running theme of the record. How do you think your music relates to growing up in that experience, or does it at all? Is there something about the grand gesture of Arcade Fire songs that fits in there, in the same way Bruce Springsteen sang about getting out and dreaming of something bigger?
[uncomfortably long silence]

Maybe that’s a ridiculous question.
W: I think everyone tries to find some meaning in the situation they’re raised in. The music we make could only exist in a privilged kind of environment, but that doesn’t mean that the emotional experience or what you’re trying to find out about life isn’t profound or important. It’s kind of crazy that people in different social situations can have such a similar experience, but everyone’s just trying to understand their own experience.

Why do you think it exists from a privileged position?
W: Well, we own instruments, we have an apartment where we can play music in. It’s referential in a way that is an educated referentia. You know what I mean? It isn’t just folk music. There is a sense that it is part of a lifestyle, but it’s more complicated than that. I don’t know.
R: That made me think of something else. The audience for me, when I was playing with my medieval band, we had the weirdest gigs ever. Once we played in a mall, or people would hire us to play in front of a store, or in an old folks home. When we played, it was often just acoustic. We would show up and just play. I discovered a lot of things that don’t happen anymore, where you have bands that are so far away with a bunch of lights and it’s so loud. Sometimes we’d play in a restaurant no bigger than this. I would get so much out of that. We would play at parties and they would treat us like family. It was a really rich experience for me. That’s why every time, I really want to see the audience and who’s there. A lot of bands, sometimes you see people [on stage] and they look away: ‘where are you? You’re not in your living room! There are 400 people here to listen to you!’

Watching this band, which I have many times, I always enjoy watching people who’ve never seen you before. The first time I saw you was in Toronto, which I think was your first time there, with Jim Guthrie. Then the Nathan Lawr show at the Rivoli [their second Toronto show], or even last week at Chapel Hill: I always enjoy looking back at the audience, and it’s immediately moving them, they’re reacting very strongly right away. Mouth open, eyes wide open. Maybe it’s because the opening number is written for that purpose, as you were saying. What do you hear from people directly, what do they tell you after shows?
W: We’re in this mode right now, especially when we did the tour with the Unicorns, where people haven’t really heard of us before, especially in the States. That’s the performance mode we’re in. The last time we played in Toronto and Montreal, it was harder. We haven’t figured out how to play when people are familiar with your stuff and have expectations. I know this is a really limited time, but it’s a really great energy. I know it’s not going to be like that forever.

What did you learn from touring with the Unicorns last month?
W: We learned that we want to tour. And it’s hard to eat well.
R: Learn how to stay human after sitting in a car for seven hours, getting up, moving some amps, then ‘rrrrrawwwwr,’ then go to sleep.

What has it been like watching that band get so big?
W: Being in the States with them was cool. I think they divide audience a lot of times. I think it’s great, seeing what they’ve built for themselves down there just on the power of their personalities and their music. They’ve put a lot of thought into it.

You knew them when they were playing to nobody here.
W: They’ve come a long way. They’re a great band and play really well together. I think they’ll be around for a long time. They’re writing really great songs now too. They’re like a real band.

Like a real band?!
W: No, they’re a real band. Not all bands are real bands. A lot of bands are the idea of a band.

Going back a bit again, can you tell me about recording the EP in Maine? Was that a living/working arrangment and how long were you there?
W: Two months. We were, anyway, everyone else was there for a month.

That was a combination of Montreal people and high school friends?
W: Mostly Montreal people. There were some people on the island you played some of the orchestral instruments. But it was mostly Brendan [Reed, also Win’s roommate at the time], Dane [Mills] and Myles [Broscoe]. And Richard.

How many people were living there?
R: Me, you, Will, Brendan, Dane, Myles, Richard, Gregg [Davenport]. That’s it.

Was it an idyllic thing or was it intense being in closed quarters?
W: It was a little segregated. Even before we went, stuff was a bit stressed. I don’t know, man. Being in a band is hard. I don’t know how to do it yet. It’s hard to keep it together.
R: It’s hard to get everyone on the same page about what we’re doing and why we do it. Everyone has to have the same motivation.
W: You have to be united, but at the same time everyone has to be coming from a different place creatively or it will be really stale. It’s impossible to balance. You just have to balance it for as long as you can. Almost no bands stay together unless, like, huge sums of money come into play. It is possible. It does happen. But I’d say that the overwhelming number of bands break up unless some giant sum of money brings the Pixies back together to tour! (both laugh)

The ones that do stay together that long are like family and understand each other intrinsically. And family is a big influence on the lyrics. Is everyone’s family very supportive?
W: My family is very supportive.
R: My family is strange.

When did all the funerals begin, that play into the lyrical theme of the record?
R: There was Nancy my grandma, my mom—but that was before. Alvino, your grandpa.
W: Alvino was huge on a musical level. For me, he was very inspirational.

Did you know him well? How often would you see him?
W: I got to know him really well over the last five years or so. I spent a lot of time with him. He was so sharp, so there mentally. I’d ask him a lot of questions.
R: He was 95. I would speak to him on the phone, and there was no difference between him and any 20 year old. He was cooler than anyone I knew.
W: At the wedding he stood up and gave his speech and had everyone in stitches. He got the biggest reception. Great comedic timing.

Did he hear the Arcade Fire?
W: I don’t think he would have liked it. He doesn’t like jazz combos! (laughs)

And the Arcade Fire are a jazz combo?
W: No, but he played in the big band era, so I think he thought the combo thing was a bit of a rip off. So the rock’n’roll thing was even a bigger ripoff of jazz combos, and where the hell we are now is some post-modern monstrosity of the copy of the copy. I think he could have appreciated aspects of it. We played ‘In the Backseat’ for my extended family at the funeral one night, and they all really liked it. It was just piano, guitar, Will was there and my mom played harp. There are certain songs that we can play for our families that aren’t too weird.

Is that a hard song to play? Do you have to remove yourself from the lyrics?
R: It’s always a very intense song. That’s why I’m saying that we do looks theatrical, but it’s certainly not a Broadway show.

When you write lyrics, do you think in French or English first? There are some French lyrics on the record.
R: I’m sort of overwhelmed by English these days, because I speak it all day all the time. I’m kind of going crazy. I’m sure I’ll go into a rebellion stage soon and speak only French.
W: English works really well with rock music because of the rhythm of it, the accent is always on the first syllable. ‘Hey! You! Get offa my cloud!’
R: With French it’s always on the second.
(they both do exaggerated imitations of French singing)
W: That works better with cabaret than rock music.
R: I find it more difficult to include French in rock music. I’m trying to find a way that I’ll be okay with, that I personally will think sounds good.

The songs on the album that have French aren’t really rock songs.
R: No.
W: We’re conscious of the rhythmic aspects of it when we put it together. You can do it, and sometimes a song works that needs an accent on the second syllable.
R: Sometimes we’ll try it in both languages and it works better in French.
W: What French is amazing for is if the structure is a bit more free, like Jacques Brel style. Then it’s almost like the vocals are a drum, at least to me.
R: Know what? I listened to Jacques Brel recently, and realised how much it’s been ingrained in me and yet I’d completely forgot about it because it was all on records at my parents. All that orchestration. It was everything I liked, beautiful arrangements.

I love the sounds of the strings on this record. Even though I’m sure it’s only two or three strings multi-tracked, it sounds huge.
W: It’s two tracks of four strings.
R: Oh! (gasps) That day was one of the best days of my life, having all these strings in my house, in my living room. Because I played drums on that track, I knew when and how it was going to speed up, so I was conducting them all. I was in wonderland! I couldn’t have been happier. It was like my birthday times 1100. So fun, like a big party.

Finally, how did it feel last week in North Carolina [at Mergefest]?
W: There was one point after we played [on opening night, at Local 506] when they were doing Merge karaoke. [Win and Regine did Magnetic Fields’ “I Was Born on a Train”; Richard did a Lambchop song with Merge’s Christina Rentz.] A bunch of people who work there were singing a Neutral Milk Hotel song. I was so happy to be a part of what they’re doing. Can you imagine going to a Columbia records party, and having the entire staff drunk and giving it and singing the stuff in their catalogue? They were so into it.
R: You know they love their music so much.

I know that Merge was a goal for you for a while, or at least one of the labels that you really wanted to work with. I remember you giving the EP to the Essex Green when they were in town. Why did you want to work with them so much?
R: When I met the Merge people, they were really down to earth and looked at you in the eye. They were really, really nice.
W: I just don’t really like indie rock very much. The one time I was actually forced to listen to college radio for a long time, I was working in a store, and the Magnetic Fields and Neutral Milk Hotel were two of the only things I actually thought were real and had a lot of weight to them as records. A lot of times, people who record themselves and do the indie rock thing doesn’t really reach me, but that stuff really did. Both [Magnetic Fields’] 69 Love Songs and the Neutral Milk Hotel stuff was all done themselves, and it sounds as good as anything.
-end-

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1 år sedan Cirkus! Tidsmaskin?

Idag är det på dagen ett år sedan Arcade Fire spelade på Cirkus. Känns som det var minst 3-4 år sedan! Mycket har sannerligen hänt sedan dess men den bestående känslan såhär 12 månader senare är densamma som direkt efter. Jag kan inte riktigt sätta ord på den underbara känslan men om ni någon gång har väntat väldigt länge på något/någon som ni älskar otroligt starkt och intensivt så tror jag ni förstår hur det känns när mötet väl sker och det blir bättre än man någonsin vågat hoppas på. Den 23:e mars 2007 kommer för alltid vara en magisk kväll för min del. En kväll jag aldrig kommer vara ens i närheten av att glömma.

Jag får fortfarande ståpäls när Régine böjer sig ner och dansar runt 2:02 in i klippet nedan och vi håller ögonkontakt där med varandra i några sekunder. Min överlägset intensivaste konsertupplevelse någonsin! Jag önskar jag kunde visa er en bild av det sprudlande lyckliga ansiktet och de gnistrande ögonen. Tidsmaskin någon?