Ottawa Tonite.com : Section Title

Opportunity comes knocking at the oddest hours.
One Monday evening, for instance, I was making my way home from work on the 95, thinking about how to make some money as a writer, when a Facebook push notification came through on my iPhone.
Nathan Medema has sent you a message.

Nathan Medema, formerly of J'envoie, contemplative at The Manx.

Nathan and I sat next to each other in Chemistry class in high school, where we would talk about music (he introduced me to the Pixies), take careful note of the often memorable things our teacher would say (I still have them all written down somewhere), and occasionally learn some chemistry. I lost track of him over the years, until this last summer, when I attended a performance by Kingdom Shore at the now-defunct Sounds Unlikely record store.
What interested me in Kingdom Shore (a project driven by cellis Mark Molnar), besides finding out from the website that Nathan was involved, was the cinematic quality of the sample music. The clip from Stray Bullets Singing conjured up a scene of a car chase on a winding mountain road; I was intensely curious as to how the percussive strings and complex arrangement would translate to a live performance.
I was not to be disappointed. In the small, hot, dark venue, where we were offered earplugs at the door (the decibel meter on my iPhone—yes, I’m that kind of nerd—showed the performance going over 90 dB at several instances), a full string ensemble, backed by an array of electronic synthesizer and sampling equipment, saturated the air with a thick, intricate tapestry of layered sound. People were enjoying it on many levels, from the girl huddled on the floor next to me, hair shrouding her face, staring at her shoes, to the gentlemen in shorts, polo shirts, horn-rimmed glasses, and fedoras, with their arms folded, peering intently at the musicians. I made a game out of trying to guess who was actually appreciating the performance, and who was just trying to look like they were.
After it was over, I found Nathan and we exchanged contact information.
So, as my bus pulled away from Hurdman Station, I opened Nathan’s message, entitled simply “Hack for hire?” He was looking for someone to write a blurb to accompany the vinyl-only release of an EP from his former project, J’envoie. Payment would be an advance copy of the album. I agreed, and he sent me a digital copy of the music to review.

J'envoie—La vitesse des chats sauvages

It took me about a week of listening to this rich, unique album to craft something that I thought would do it justice. La vitesse des chats sauvages is a profound yet accessible musical offering that defies genre classification; it is at once jazz and classical, electronic and experimental. My first impression was, again, that of incidental film music, appropriate to an Audrey Hepburn suspense film (think Charade, or Wait Until Dark). Other people who overheard the music compared it to The Mars Volta and Trent Reznor. It is both stimulating to listen to and subtle enough to be ambient. Most surprisingly of all, despite being so non-traditional, not one person I let hear samples from the album disliked it at all.
When it came time to pick up my copy of the album, Nathan suggested we meet at the Manx. It may surprise you, but I’d never been to the Manx before, having spent a decade living under a rock.
Nathan was waiting for me at the bar, holding a shopping bag with the EP in it. As there were no tables free, we stayed at the bar. I pulled out my notebook and ordered a Mill Street Tankhouse Ale; he ordered a chickpea burger.
After some idle conversation about day jobs, dating and not dating, and the often surprising connections between people in Ottawa, I asked him about his involvement with J’envoie. His time with the project had ended about two years ago, just after they had recorded their first, self-titled album. After it was finished, they still had leftover album-quality tracks, so Nathan continued to play, and helped mix the EP, which the band mastered, remastered, and had pressed themselves. After the second EP was done, he left J’envoie. The entirety of the album was recorded on site in their rehearsal space, a gritty former fire hall on rue Leduc in Hull that had found recent use as a propmaking workshop for a local theatre company.
Reflecting on the album, Nathan said simply that he’s happy with it, and excited for people to hear it. It’s hard to picture Nathan as being “happy and excited” when he’s speaking about music, or performing live; his intellectual intensity makes him look very serious at times, but there are moments when he breaks into a broad grin and laughs (for instance, when I mentioned that Kingdom Shore reminded me of the work of Harry Partch). The rest of the time, behind his glasses, you can tell he’s constantly observing, thinking, and making notes on everything.
I asked about Kingdom Shore and their involvement with the Mayfair Theatre, where they had performed live music to go with the Phantom of the Opera last fall. Even though the Mayfair’s Music Director, Mike Dubue, had never seen Kingdom Shore perform live, he commissioned them to provide the score, and that set in motion a period of intense rehearsals, where everything was scored in terms of cues. Nathan was very clear about the exacting nature of doing a live film score: “It’s not like a concert; you’re on all the time. If you’re off, it’s obvious to people.” Although the process was strenuous, Nathan didn’t rule out the possibility of doing it again; he acknowledged that it was more rewarding than another project where he was asked by a film director to reproduce another musician’s work for a score.
Nathan described If Then Do, another project of his, as a “weird journey,” where he applies the concepts of post-rock (specifically the Simon Reynolds definition of post-rock, which had me scrambling for my references) to electronic music, running keyboards through effects pedals and then shifting things around on the computer (a second-generation MacBook Pro). It’s a very studio-oriented process.
“So,” I asked, “It’s like, a deconstruction of techno?” Nathan nodded.
“Yes,” he said, “but done poorly. It’s more like music that references contemporary techno, but fails at making it. I want to reconcile the more immediate physical effect of music with the dance floor, out on the dance floor, with sound research.” I made a note to check it out later.
Somewhere around the third pint, with the chickpea burger eaten and the dishes cleared away, we came up from the deep philosophical aspects of music to something more familiar: musical influences and recommendations. Since we’d already broached the subject of Harry Partch (with a brief foray into John Cage’s opinion on vocals in music), Nathan recommended Micachu (who also cites Partch as an influence), from the UK. He’s also (for all you CANCON folk out there) a fan of Bruce McDonald films, Thrush Hermit, and, although not exactly a fan, tells briefly of a Tegan and Sara concert that he went to with a friend who knew them.
“They said I was good-looking,” he said, flashing his characteristic smile. I laughed.
Whether or not you think Nathan is good-looking, his music is worth listening to. While you wait for your vinyl copy of La vitesse des chats sauvages to arrive, I recommend Harry Partch’s Barstow (the first classical recording to feature the f-bomb) and Micachu’s Golden Phone, off of her 2009 album Jewellery.

Tags: J'envoie, Kingdom Shore, Sounds Unlikely

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 6:11 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.