Nov. 04, 2009 - Issue #733: Broke
Champion & His G-Strings
The end of the world: At least, that's how Champion & his G-Strings play it
He filled the five-year space between Chill'Em All and Resistance with a live CD/DVD and a remix album. Before going into writing isolation, he sent an entire album's worth of recordings to the trash when it became clear that he was just creating a duplicate of his successful debut.
"Imagine, like, you have a boyfriend, and he's just a jock, and not interesting, not talking to you anymore. Is it going to be hard to let him go and just walk out on him? It can be hard, but not so much, because he's a jock," Morin explains from his Montréal home. "It's the same things with these songs. I had songs that I liked on the previous album, but it was just the same thing. I wasn't going anywhere else, just working in the same footprint as Chill'em All."
After giving up a lucrative career as a film and commercial composer, Morin wants to avoid the formulaic approach to his music writing. It's something of a moral imperative.
"You have to put yourself at risk and trying to evolve and put yourself in unknown shoes," he says. "For me, that is what art is, or that's how I like to use art."
His approach is also consciously uncomplicated. Music is meant to be shared, and each gig is played like it is the band's last night on Earth.
"The first expression of music, when you look at a child, a kid won't record a song, he won't compose a song, he will play music," Morin says. "The first act, the first musical act is to play, and most of the time, play it for you. Or you see a kid making a drawing and the first thing he does is goes to you and says, 'Look, look, I did this! It's a tree!' He doesn't keep it for himself."
Champion's marriage between a simple 808 and a bank of guitars brings into sharp relief the similarities between dance and jam-band music. This music gets bums out of seats, so it's hardly surprising that Champion & his G-Strings want to capture the energy of the group's live show on a studio album, and for Morin, that meant amping up the rock 'n' roll, with more distortion. But it started isolated, away from the prods and pulls of others.
"Most of the time, I'll start with the guitar, and just trying to remember the pleasure of playing the guitar: putting your hands on that piece of wood, and let the strings sing to you, and let this instrument be itself, and let you enjoy the act of playing the guitar," he says. "Music is a vibe. I see music as playing with time and space. You have time and space dancing together, and that's life." V
Wed, Nov 11 (8 pm)
Champion & his G-Strings
Starlite Room, $17.50
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