southern records

le Fly Pan Am have been creating and mutating musically from their home base of Montreal, Canada since 1996. They have just released their third full-length record, N'Ecoutez Pas, on Constellation at the beginning of September and are touring around Europe in November so we shared a few words with Roger Tellier-Craig.

The cover of the new record reminds me a lot of the poster for Godard's "Deux Ou Trois Choses Que Je Sais d'Elle" (which features Pan Am bags at one point, as it happens)... Is this at all accurate an impression?

Well, Godard has been a huge influence on the way we've approached the medium of 'pop' music, mostly in the way he would take idioms or clichés and sabotage them so that something new and unusual would arise from them, something active and in a 'becoming' state. It gives you something that is familiar to hold on to but at the same time fragments your reference point so that you end up with pieces and residue that you inevitably have to piece together to make any sense; It doesn' t tell the audience what to think based on a predetermined set of rules but rather involves them in a 'creative' and non-passive way to make up their own translations, their own narration. His approach to doing things your own way instead of following a school of thought and manifesting a radical expression in the face of a monolithic culture definitely inspired us...

In the same breath as Godard, I would definitely speak of the importance for us of the situationists' use of 'détournement' i.e. reapropriating various forms of products, publicity, urban spaces, etc and decontextualising them from their original use. Regarding the 'N'écoutez pas' cover, every bit comes from other musician's covers all smashed up and reorganised in a way that doesn't respect their origin but still manifests it. This process of stealing/reapropriating is very important to me sice it is somewhat an act of violence on Icons/Idols/products that culture accumulates and deifies to a point that intimidates individuals from exploring their full potential as human beings. It sedates us. For me, it is a way of reclaiming culture for ourselves, using it as we see fit and distorting it to fit what we are.

In the same way that Godard moved through different political and stylistic periods, each of your records have been quite particular. How would you describe each of your musical periods?

It's just a very natural evolution. For most of us in FPA, it was the very first time we where in a band when we started out so at first we were very naive and have since been discovering ourselves in the process and changing along the way. Also, it's always been very important to keep things alive and make sure that we always surprise ourselves, that we never repeat what we've done. For exemple, we just played a show recently with material that we composed in a week and a bit with Alexandre St-Onge and Dominique from Les Georges Leningrad. We'll probably never do a show like this again even if it worked out really well, though we'll definitely include what we learned from it in our upcoming tour.

I love the new record but because of my linear one-track mind I imagined a more direct continuation and extension of the last record so the new record was not what I was expecting in a way.... How do you see the development of le Fly Pan Am. Is it a reaction to anything (besides itself) ? And where do you think you are going?

I think we started off as a fairly pretentious and stiff outfit who naively thought we would change the world (!!!) and we've learned to open up in the past years in seeing other bands play and seeing how they approached 'entertainment'. When we started out, I think it's safe to say that some of us wanted the band to be Thee most ugly, boring and frustrating rock group possible by using very simple structures and repeating them ad nauseam and fragmenting/stuttering the trance appeal with gaps and noises and whatever ever. Lotsa fun! We wanted to make records that had little or no appeal, disfunctional products, waste...We realised the futility of such an enterprise so we moved on...We realised it was OK OK to have fun in this absurd world, that we didn't need to be cynical fuckers. The instrumental shit was also a dead-end, we had done that so we had to move on to the next level. Hello vocals. I listen to so much vocal music that it was getting silly to not incorporate this element in our sound.

You all seem to have other bands and "solo projects". Do these end up feeding ideas into le Fly Pan Am?

I think that when you explore things in a another band, you come back to your main gig (and vice-versa) affected by that experience and this inevitably ends up feeding into the actuality of the group.

Have you ever or would you ever make films to accompany your music or do you enjoy the disconnection between sound and image?

I personally have no initial interest in combining our music to film, maybe that comes from having done time in GY!BE for so long, but I'm not opposed to it either if a really interesting opportunity would arise.

How did the collaborations on the new record come about? And the addition of vocals?

We've always collaborated with outsiders on all our records. I've always loved the idea of asking people to colour our music with their sound; it's like adding accidental spices to your recipe. We like what they do on their own and we're curious to hear what they would do in conjonction with us. We never know what the actual piece will sound like until they are done with it.

Any recommendations for Quebecois YeYe? How important is pop music to you?

I am not very familiar with Québécois stuff apart from the first records by Robert Charlebois, Louise Forestier, L'infonie (which were more way-out) or even Les Sinners. The shit I'm more in tune with is Gainsbourg, 60's France Gall, Jacques Dutronc, Françoise Hardy, Brigitte Fontaine and also the 60's Tropicalias Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, Tom Ze and Os Mutantes.

Pop music is very important to us since it's a format that may at first glance seem inofensive since we hear it everywhere but I think it can be used as a launchpad for perversion much in the same way the situationists used every day products and advertisements in a distorted way. I like the idea of infiltrating popular culture like a virus.

Is there a complacency to repetitive (and i mean that in a non-derogatory way) instrumental music? Do you feel a need to interrupt the mental state that it can induce?

It used to be very important for us to interrupt any form of complacency related to the reception of our 'products'. We wanted to stimulate a dialogue between the listener and the records, create frustrations so that the listeners wouldn't just be passively consuming the new trend. But this stuff is all so compicated. We were sooooooooooo serious...These days, we've come down from our ivory towers and we're more interested in making music that we really like, music that aches to come out. I guess we're not as intellectual as we used to be and definitely learning to connect more and more with the emotional side of things.

How would you describe your non-band related life in Montreal? Do you have "day jobs"?

Some people in the band work at an independant café/restaurant/venue called Casa del Popolo/La Salla Rossa which is owned by Mauro from GY!BE. One of the guitarists works in a record store and our drummer works as a busboy in a bar...I've done music here and there for theater and dance but mostly divide my time between all the bands I'm involved with.

How do you relate the song titles with the music?

When I'm the one writing lyrics to a song, the title is intended to implicitely state what the whole lyrics are about, like a summary of the piece. On past records, the titles were used to describe the interventions on the music, or intentions behind them. Of course all of this was lost on most listeners 'cause of our use of french. But the titles were actually way more connected to the music itself then they are now.

If i were to come to Montreal where would i find a good quality independent doughnut?

This one's the hardest! I haven't really asked around yet but surely will let you know once I do.

Have you ever actually played a cover of 'Ruckzuck' (early Kraftwerk)?

No, we've never actually played a cover of anything. We're too lazy!

Thanks Roger!

Fly Pan Am's latest album N'Ecoutez Pas is out now on Constellation CD and vinyl.