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Spies, Lies and Open Skies
I recently had the opportunity to speak at length to Jace Lasek of the Besnard Lakes. Our conversation touched on a number of different topics like spy stories, life on the prairie, the new record The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night and Numbers Stations, these are unlicensed radio stations that deliver broadcasts that most say are ways of various governments to communicate with their operatives out in the field. For more info on these stations go to www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_stations
What is the region in Saskatchewan where the actual Besnard Lake resides in like?
“It’s basically ten hours straight north of the Canada/America border. What the cool thing is about where Besnard Lake is located is that once you get about four or five hours north it turns back into the Canadian Shield Memorial Forest and while the lower part of Saskatchewan is really just dry prairie land and they grow a lot of wheat there, I come from a farming town there called Regina, it goes from very flat and dry to this massive fir tree filled forest. You can actually see this line between the two.”
It sounds very beautiful.
“Once you get up there, there is like only one fishing village in the area. And when you get out in the canoe on the actual Besnard Lake itself, it is just this massive lake with a whole series of islands and when you go ashore on one of those islands, you feel like you are the only person there. There are no planes flying overhead, no man-made sounds. The only thing that you hear are the loons flying by.”
It also sounds very reviving.
“People ask me about Besnard a lot, if going up there is musically inspirational and I’ve always said yes but I’ve stopped taking my guitar there because I never touch it. I’ve never written a song at Besnard Lake in my entire life, but I think about music all the time when I’m there. It seems like when I get there playing music is counterproductive.”
Did the success of Are The Dark Horse create any pressure on the creation of the new album?
“Yes for sure it did, not so much with Olga (Goreas) as she was the one that kind of actually brought me down from having anxiety about it. She calmed me down. We never had any expectations for Dark Horse at all and when it did really well we were really stoked by that but then when we started on the new record I didn’t really know how to approach it. I wanted to make it the way we made the last two records, which was for ourselves without thinking or feeling that anyone was listening to it. We always created our records in a bubble like in a cocoon without any outside influences. It took some time for me to get over that feeling that people had expectations. When we were making it I kept saying to Olga “What are we doing, what is this?” I think the fact I kept looking over to Olga and saying, “What are we doing?” was a good thing because it meant we weren’t creating for anyone but ourselves.”
She’s your rock.
“LOL Yeah totally.”
Numbers Stations have a lot of fascinating stories attached to them, where did your interest come from? Was it The Conet Project that was an introduction?
“It was The Conet Project. My friend Dave, my studio partner, he’s always collecting really strange music, he’s a very avant-garde record collector and he showed up in the studio one day right after we made Volume 1, which is our first record and is very hard to get.”
I have a copy.
“There have been a few interviews I’ve had where people refer to Dark Horse as our first record and I have to tell them about Volume 1. Anyway, right after we did Volume 1, Dave comes into the studio with this Conet Project thing, you know Volume 1 started the whole spy thing, there is a spy story arc that runs over all three records and if you listen to all three records you will hear the story, it’s a very loose story but something is happening there. And when I heard the Conet Project stuff I thought, holy fuck this is very scary stuff. There is an urgency to it and sometimes you hear children speak it and sometimes it’s weird mechanical sounds.”
It is creepy.
“It is really creepy and Besnard Lakes kind of has that creepy tension and sort of release. A lot of people compare us to Beauty and the Beast.”
I’ve always liked the juxtaposition of happy music and sad lyrics like the Pernice Brothers song called Chicken Wire, which has this beautiful melody and lyrically it’s about a woman who locks herself in her garage with the motor of her car running.
“Yeah I like that. That’s one of the cool things we do, that’s one of the things that draws us into music, playing with that idea of dark and light. And the Conet Project was one of those things that we felt added to the record. We wanted to keep the record even in a slight way, experimental. Because we have those long ambient build-ups and this shit is perfect to throw into an ambient haze. On Dark Horse we threw a whole bunch of samples of the Conet Project on there and then before we put the record out we were like, shit are we actually allowed to do this? So we actually re-recorded everything and made our own versions, so we had a lot of fun actually inventing our own Numbers Stations broadcasts.”
Who owns the copyright on those recordings anyway?
“I was kind of bummed out when I heard the band Wilco were being sued for using some of those recording and I though how can they be in the position to sue for copyright ownership when nobody claimed ownership for the original broadcasts? You can’t really own something that is recorded off radio. So then I started thinking maybe it’s bullshit and it doesn’t really exist. I’ve been talking about this and basing the whole story of the three records on this person receiving transmissions from the radio and you know what, fuck it, I’m going to go out and buy a short wave radio and make sure I hear them for myself. So I bought the radio, went on the Internet and found a site that helps you to find these broadcasts and heard them for myself. When I heard my first Numbers Station, it sent shivers down my spine. It was the scariest coolest revelation I think I’ve ever had.”
Since they often seem to follow major political events, was the new album attached to one?
“LOL Not really. I think with our records we consciously try to stay away from preaching about specific things. I think if our records have any specific message, it’s that there is trouble brewing, that there is something happening and it doesn’t seem to be very good.”
I think in this day and age people don’t question authority enough.
“No they don’t. Of all the old bands I used to listen to like Fugazi and Minor Threat, they did question authority.”
Ian MacKaye questioned everything.
“Yeah something that is microcosmic with us is he went about attempting to change the music industry, like no tee-shirts, not a lot of merch, five bucks at the door, all ages gigs, we are not going to tour in a bus and use a van instead, those bands spent all this time trying to open things up for other bands and to go out and do it just for the music. Say fuck you to the establishment. And now it seems those things have seemed to just go out with the tide. I was thinking about it the other day and I pulled out all my old Fugazi stuff and thought it was so amazing and they were such a great band and started thinking about what they meant to us and to that generation, that it was a lot more than just music. It’s a hard road to go down and you have to stick to your guns and there aren’t a lot of people doing that anymore. All that work that was done is getting washed away. It’s really quite sad.”
I guess we just have to be happy that there are no Fugazi songs on car commercials.
“LOL, Yeah that would be really shitty but we know that they would never allow that to happen, which is really cool. You know that they will never sell their music on a car commercial and our music loving experience will always be the same. That’s very commendable.”
Can you talk a little bit about the band’s writing process?
“Usually what happens is I’ll go into the studio with Olga, we don’t do any rehearsing ever and we start putting ideas down. We’ll slowly build arrangements. Sometimes it can be just one portion of a song and we’ll build it up and complete it but at either end it will be empty. I’ve always been really enamored by the way Brian Wilson did Good Vibrations where he recorded the verse in one studio and the chorus in a different studio and the whole texture of the song changes between these two portions.”
The man is a genius.
“Yeah, if you had the luxury to be able to do that, which we kind of do because we have our own studio and can record in different parts of the studio or at different parts of the day or week. There are choruses that we’ve recorded and built up and finished and then we say OK now there has to be a song here. We might put that song away and not go back to it for a week or two. Because when we record that other part the microphones change, the environment changes, so everything sounds a little bit different. After that gets put together and all the arrangements are sort of down we get Kevin to come in and he redoes all the drums and makes them sound good because I’m a shitty drummer and then Rich (White) can come in and put in all the guitar parts because again I’m a keen guitar player but nothing to what Rich is.”
Can you talk a little bit about how the Mark Ruffalo directed Sympathy For Delicious film project came to the band?
“Mark told me he was lying in bed with a fever and he had a laptop on his chest going through iTunes and he was listening to a bunch of Montreal music and iTunes in their infinite wisdom recommended he listen to us. So he started to listen to a bunch of our songs and when he got better thought maybe these guys could score the film. His supervisor contacted us and we were totally floored. We always thought our music was very filmic and scoring for films sounded like so much fun. Mark said he wanted us to score the film and gave us free reign to do whatever we wanted and that he totally trusted us and in the end if he didn’t like anything, then changes could be made at that time.”
That sounds amazing.
“It was really cool for a first experience and it could have gone horrible wrong where the director didn’t like any of it but he really loved what we did and he was an absolute sweetheart. He came up and visited us and we went through the film together and he added some really beautiful and subtle musical touches.”
What is it about Canadian musicians that lead to such a collaborative atmosphere?
“I don’t know. It’s maybe even not so much a Canada thing as it’s a Montreal thing. We lived in Vancouver and even though people loved to help each other there, here in Montreal the spirit is even more pronounced. It’s hard to explain.”
Is there something in the water?
“People here love helping out, love being able to walk into the studio and put their stamp on someone else’s music. There is no jealousy, which is really cool. It’s really strange and hard to put your finger on but I’m using it to the greatest advantage and it’s a lot of fun.”
Any plans to tour the new album in Australia?
“Yes actually, I was just emailing my booking agent and we are getting the ball rolling on it and it’s going to happen this time.”
A club tour?
“Yeah. There is a lot of interest for us to come out so I think it’s going to happen. I want to go over there while it’s winter here. I want to do Australia Besnard style.”
If you do make it, let me know and I will tell you where the nice lakes are.
“Yes, please do and make sure to look us up after the show and we will have a drink.”
That’s one invitation I will make sure to take advantage of. The band’s fantastic new album, The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night is out now in Australia on Inertia.
Rob Hudson
www.thebesnardlakes.com
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