Fly Pan Am

Today I have something to share with you that I'm very proud of. Fly Pan Am have agreed to an interview. They have revealed some things about their music and their relationship with the post-rock community.

Fly Pan Am

Fly Pan Am belong to the most famous Post-Rock bands at all. The band was founded in 1996 in Montreal, Quebec by Jonathan Parant (guitar), Roger Tellier-Craig (guitar), Felix Morel (drums) and Jean-Sebastian Truchy (bass). In 2002 Eric Gingras (guitar, percussion) joined the group. Within the band scene of Montréal a lively exchange is maintained. For example there is a connection to Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Godspeed You guitarist Roger Tellier-Graig was a member of both bands until 2003, when he left Godspeed You to dedicate himself completely to Fly Pan Am.

Unlike many other post-rock bands, Fly Pan Am's music also lives from its lyrics. These are, as usual in the French-Canadian music scene, often written in French.

After releasing their third album in 2004, the group took a creative break in 2004, which was also used by the band members to work on their other music projects.

The current album "C'est ça" which has been released in 2019, has been well received by post-rock fans around the globe. Fly Pan Am were supposed to play at this year's DUNK! Festival - just like Of The Vine and Pray For Sound.

Fly Pan Am - The Interview

Anne: Hi! Thank you very much for taking the time for this interview! How is the situation in Montréal? Are you there at the moment?

Jonathan: From where I live I experience a situation of a city under a pandemic. I did not know what a pandemic was until now. I still do not know what it is clearly but there is definitely something that is going on and operates upon us. Montréal is like other cities struggling with the same scenario. From time to time, it brings me a sort of lucidity of what universal means but also a sort of haunted logic of the world completely lost. A simple paste made of ingredients like genuine fear and survival hopes that open me to some extreme understanding of the now.

JS: Yes, we're all in Montréal. The situation was probably the same as anywhere else in bigger cities. Closed stores and restaurants, social distancing, etc. But the province has reopened and the city is also slowly reopening.

"We are working on a score for a dance piece"

Fly Pan Am - "C'est ça" (LP, 2019)

Anne: Under other circumstances, you'd be on tour right now. How are you spending your time instead of that? Are you working on new pieces?

Roger: We are working on a record of our score for Animals of Distinction's dance piece, Frontera¹. We were already planning on doing this once we came back from our European tour, so this just means we have more time to work on it. I've personally been busy working on a solo project focused on guitar, or more like post-guitar. You could say this is kind of a continuation of the stuff I started exploring with our last LP, "C'est ça". It's basically sampled and hyper-processed guitar, kind of like if Christian Zanési had made a record with Robin Guthrie.

JS: Apart from working on the FPA record, I've also been trying to work on a new record for Avec le soleil sortant de sa bouche and my next solo record. But because my six-year-old son is with me (and my partner who is now working from home), working on music has been difficult. That said, it's been great to have all this time with my son, a thing that doesn't happen that much usually.

"We are currently working on our projects"

Jonathan: I am also working on a new project called Actors Artificial. It's another rock band where I am the main composer but where other members bring their own composition. I research and explore a multitude of different feedback sounds possibility triggered by many different devices from my guitar in real-time. The project is based on the concept of a radical outside. In other words, it is a generative input process that must need a generative output process.

Anne: You are a centerpiece of the Montréal music scene. I've heard a lot about it. It must be very inclusive. A huge pulsating and colorful spectrum of creativity. Tell me more about it. What differs Montréal from other music locations?

Roger: It's hard for me to say what differs from the other communities since I only really know this one. Also, I'm not sure I can even properly talk about the scene here nowadays, as I have been a bit more withdrawn in the past few years. It has certainly changed a whole lot since I first got involved with it in the late '90s. I think what initially helped the Montréal scene foster was just how cheap it was living here, I think this encouraged a lot of folks to move here, and then as the scene slowly started evolving Montréal started attracting even more creative folks.

"Montréal is a city for creative individuals"

Fly Pan Am - "N'écoutez pas" (LP, 2004)

JS: Yes, as Roger points out, the social-economical aspect of MTL plays a lot in it. And I guess we could call ourselves a university town having four of them here (two francophones and two anglophones) which means that we do have a lot of students, from all over the world, who can benefit of a cheaper way of life and spend more time creating within an evolving art/music community.

Anne: You took a creative break from 2004 to 2019. What happened during this time? What projects have you been working on?

Roger: We actually stopped right at the end of our last European tour, way back in December 2004. For my part, I got heavily involved in electronic music, mostly with my project Le Révélateur, with Sabrina Ratté who did all the visuals. We released a bunch of records on labels like Root Strata, Dekorder, NNA Tapes, and Gneiss Things. I also went back to school the same year Fly Pan Am started working on new material in 2016. I studied electroacoustic composition at the Conservatoire de Musique de Montréal for three years. The Berlin label Second Editions just released this music on CD back in February under the title "Études".

"We continued making music during our break"

Jonathan: I was involved with another rock band called Feu Thérèse shortly after our indefinite hiatus. We put out two records on Constellation Records. After that, I co-formed K.A.N.T.N.A.G.A.N.O. a sound and mixed media-oriented project. But I mainly become involved in sound conceptions for theatre and dance over the last 15 years for many different directors and choreographers and I am still working on such a project because as always, I am interested in live performance.

JS: I took the time to raise my first two sons who are now adults, I studied in Literature Studies and Buddhism, co-founded the now-defunct Los Discos Enfantasmes label, worked on solo music (which has been released on Root Strata, Digitalis, Tranquility Tapes, Sic Sic tapes, La Cohu and others), founded Avec le soleil sortant de sa bouche and was also an active member of various other bands and projects.

Anne: Wow! That sounds like a whole bunch of creative projects! It must be exciting, getting back together and working on new music together after such a long time. Would you say that it is different this second time around? When did you decide that there will be a reunion? What induced you to do it?

"We were excited about the work we were doing individually"

Roger: Yes, it was definitely exciting. What actually drove us to want to work together again after all this time was the fact that we were excited about the work that we were all doing individually. It just felt like we had all evolved so much since we had last worked together that it felt like we needed to sit down and take the time to see just what it was we could now make as a band, taking things where we left them back in 2004. "C'est ça" in a sense was the record we wanted to make when we did "N'écoutez pas", but we just didn't have the technical knowledge to do so at the time. Getting back together felt necessary like we hadn't finished what we started.

Roger: In 2014 both me and JS released some new music; Root Strata put out the Révélateur LP "Extreme Events", and Constellation released Avec le Soleil Sortant de sa Bouche's first LP, "Zubberdust!". It had been ten years since "N'écoutez pas" had been released, so it felt to me like this was a time to reflect on everything that we'd accomplished since then. We had kept in touch over the years, following each other's work and it just felt like it was time to explore the potential of working all together again. This feeling stayed with me for a while and at some point in 2015, we started talking about the possibility of working together again.

"We've always kept in touch"

Fly Pan Am - "Fly Pan Am" (LP, 1999)

JS: As Roger says we've always kept in touch, following each other's projects, etc. but I would emphasize the fact that we were all "fans" of each other's solo work and seeing/hearing what each other could do on their own really made us think of what we could now do together after years of individually crafting each other' sounds and techniques. FPA was, at least for me, always the result of the meeting point of four different approaches and sounds. Of course these overlap but we thrive just as much or maybe even more at times through the incorporation of our different approaches and inspirations.

Anne: Is that the story behind your current album "C'est ça"?

Roger: When we did "N'écoutez pas" back in 2004 it was a super ambitious move on our part; we were all self-taught musicians, we barely knew how to use our computers, I had never written a "song" nor had I ever really sung before, and here we were, trying to make this weird electroacoustic shoegaze pop record (laughs). I'm still really happy with it, and I love just how messy it is in some parts, but the record wasn't as "futuristic" as what we wanted to make, and that kind of stayed with me for a long time.

"We needed to make the record we were unable to make in 2004"

So when we started considering the possibility of making another record together it was clear to me that we need to make the record we were unable to make at the time. "C'est ça" is the result of that. These records are very closely linked, even if there are 15 years between them. The title "C'est ça" means "this is it," and it's a direct reference to the end of "N'écoutez pas" where JS' kids ask the question, "what is Fly Pan Am?". I guess in a sense this record is our answer to that question.

Anne: Your music sounds like a collection of all fascinating noises of the world. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Roger: We all have interests that connect us and this is what initially drew us to work together, but as we progressed we started being interested in the idea of "difference," these different sensibilities that we each have and that we don't always understand, and it just felt like there was much more to gain from opening up to these differences in order to push our music to places that might make us uncomfortable sometimes. We've always been interested in contrast and the kind of mind-warping qualities that arise from using things that shouldn't work together.

"We want to create things that we don't understand"

This to me is where things come alive because what comes out of that is not already understood as a clear aesthetic, it hasn't already crystallized into a school of thought or a trope; rather it ends up manifesting itself in this state of "becoming." It is not "understood" because there is no map, no reference for it.

It's funny to read some of the reviews out there, some of the people complain that we don't know how to write music because our songs just keep going into different parts that don't make sense to them; this is exactly what we strive for, we are not interested in what might seem logical to most people, as this idea of "logic" is just based on a habit or clearly defined ways of making music. In a sense, this means that a lot of people are just interested in the familiar, they basically want what they already know, they want a rehash of stuff they already understand but with a different shade or color. We basically want to create things that we don't understand.

Jonathan: Noise in sound is, in my opinion, an immense territory of conceptual theory. It is the field I am the most interested in. Like Roger mentioned, about the state of "becoming" and his unmappable reality, I feel like most of the time, noise is unwanted for that same matter. But for me, I think that when we decide to share our differences, our sensibility and our alterity, which can also be noise, especially if do not always understand it, in a rock music aesthetic, not only I agree absolutely with Roger about the gain of opening up, but also I think it can unfold some structures of randomness as opposed to a systematic structure in our music. A sort of phenomenology of listening chaotic information.

Anne: Some of your tracks come with lyrics, some don't. How do you decide if a song needs words?

"A lot of thought and experimentation goes into making our records"

Fly Pan Am - "Sédatifs en fréquences et sillons" (EP, 2000)

Roger: I guess that depends on who is singing. JS doesn't sing lyrics in any of his projects, so if he is the singer on an FPA track chances are there won't be any lyrics. I always have lyrics if I sing, and Jonathan has vocals only on the track "Discreet Channelling," for which he also wrote lyrics.

Jonathan: In my mind, when I use words as I sing/talk is to create a simple abstraction of dual occultism between the voice and the words. Between the sound and the meaning.

Anne: Are you making a plan, before recording a new record? Or is it more like a big jam session? Just "Go with the flow" and sometimes the album will be finished?

"We wanted to have a song that is a studio production"

Roger: Oh yes, a lot of thought and experimentation goes into making our records, especially the last one. "C'est ça" is basically the result of about two years and a half's worth of work. All the songs except "One Hit Wonder" were composed prior to going into the studio, and following that there were a few months of post-production work we did separately in our own personal home studios. The reason "One Hit Wonder" was composed separately was that we wanted the track to be a studio-based composition, in the spirit of some of This Heat or Faust's studio-based experiments, while at the same time taking cues from techno producers like Chain Reaction, Porter Ricks, or Vladislav Delay, so this track had to be made using a computer. We learned to play the track live based on the record version.

JS: Because we play with tropes because we want to create music involving many influences, rehashing them, making unlikely choices and pairing, playing with structures so that we can surprise the listeners and first and foremost ourselves, we need to sit down, think and experiment. We're not interested in making a bunch of noise just for the sake of making noise or something weird. We tend to be nerds about what has been done musically before us and we get excited at the possibility of creatively working with everything that art, nature, and life has to offer us.

Anne: What helps you with being creative?

"I need creativity to 'make sense' out of this insane world"

Roger: I guess for me I draw inspiration from other music, from movies, from ideas that haunt me incessantly which I then use to write lyrics and find titles. Being creative for me is something I need in order to "make sense" out of this insane world we live in. It is almost a religious act, as it keeps me sane and focused and has no grounding in "reality." I have a strong work ethic, in the sense that even on days where I don't feel like working I will force myself to do it. I am motivated by the idea that every moment I spend working on music helps me understand more about the process of creation, but also life in general, as I find there are many parallels between the two.

JS: I draw inspiration from music, movies, literature studies/philosophy, and art in general. For the past few years, I have been inspired by questions regarding the place of one's self in the world and nature, in one's own mind, the relationship that this self may have with us, others, with living and none living beings/things, questioning/observing the perception, interpretation, and expectation that we have every second of every day in relation with everything we may or may not perceive. I try to think about music and composition in the same way. Questioning the reasons behind our choices, our familiarity with tropes, and the reason we may or may not abide by them and the reception of information through our senses that are influenced by our culture and self-experience.

Jonathan: I do not have much to add besides that I often feel inspiration in the exceptional dedication of what we call reality.

"Our name comes from a film we like"

Fly Pan Am "Ceux qui inventent n'ont jamais vécu (?)" (LP,2002)

Anne: JS, your kids asked this questions at the end of the song "Le faux pas aimer vous souhaite d'être follement ami" - we talked about it briefly earlier. Now I'd like to ask it, too. What does your band name mean? Why did you decide to name your band after a former airline?

Roger: The name comes from a slogan on a poster we saw in a movie by the Serbian film director Dušan Makavejev, called "W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism." This slogan had a kind of kitsch "pop art" sensibility to it that made sense to us, as well as being a very subtle reference to this movie we really liked, so we kept it.

Anne: Which artists have influenced your way of making music the most?

Roger: For my part I would have to say the early "post-rock" bands like Main, Seefeel and Disco Inferno, back when "post-rock" was more about using technology to push rock music tropes into nether zones than what it eventually became, as well as bands like Faust and This Heat, and people like Jim O'Rourke and the work he did specifically in the '90s with Gastr Del Sol, as well as his solo output from that time.

"We want to be part of DUNK! 2021"

JS: I always find this question hard to answer but I'll answer it using people/groups that were pillars (for me) of new areas in music that inspired me and continue to do so. Meaning, I could cite many other artists but I'll go with these: The Beatles, John Cage, Crossed Out, and Union of Uranus. From these artists, I can easily branch out and find huge inspirations from individuals or groups in all matters of life, orientation, culture, and religion that work with discreet sounds/silence to incredible orchestrations to ritualistic incantations all the way to full-on harsh noise and follow their example and try to see and question how sound and intentions can manifest, grow, transform and be shaped into something hopefully deemed worth experiencing.

Anne: It's too bad, that DUNK! Festival 2020 couldn't take place due to Corona Crisis. Will I meet you there next year?

Roger: Hopefully yes! We would definitely want to take part in this next year if it's possible.