OLGA GOREAS & JACE LASEK OF THE BESNARD LAKES
Hi and thanks for taking the time out to speak with us at Musicology. Firstly congratulations on your latest record The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings. Five years has passed since your last release, what journeys has life taken you on during that time which in turn have found their way onto this album?
Olga - The time we had to make this album was definitely a little longer than the norm for us. Jace continued doing other production and engineering work and we started to work on new material around 2017-2018. We had a mutual break up with our old label Jagjaguwar and we started to wonder whether to continue as a band. Ultimately we knew that we had built our lives for this band so we soldiered on. Jace’s father died in 2019, of course Prince and Mark Hollis of Talk Talk also passed away in the interim. So we weren’t really thinking about the concept of the album being about death, but I suppose the concept presented itself to us. It was an intensely surreal and psychedelic experience for Jace when his dad died, and so that became the main idea for this album: equating the death experience as a psychedelic experience.
The double LP is one that tackles the most fundamental and deeply human constructs of ‘Near Death’, ‘Death’, ‘After Death and ‘Life’’. Huge, ambitious and incredibly personal concepts to interpret, disseminate and sonically reconstruct. Do you feel that this was an album that you could only have attempted to create at this stage in your life and musical career that until now would not have received the deft touch, maturity and composition that it required?
Olga - Yes, I would definitely think so. We couldn’t have written about something that hasn’t touched us both in this way. I think too we’ve matured in our approach to composing. This album has some of the most intricate arrangements we’ve ever done, like the strings in 'Raindrops' and the strings and horns in 'Our Heads, Our Hearts On Fire Again' and 'Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings'. During rehearsals in preparation for the upcoming live stream events (Feb. 5th, March 6th, and April 3rd) Jace and I look at each other kind of astonished at what we’re hearing! It’s hard to believe we actually made that.
Technically what instrumentation and equipment did you employee on the album that continues the quintessential Besnard Lakes signature sound but also pushed the sonic boundaries of what you are familiar with into new and previously unexplored territories?
Olga - Jace has this project called Welkom in de Blaak which is him playing on a Hammond B-3 organ through 4 Leslie speakers. He had a specially made pedal box to control the 4 speakers, as well as the speed at which the bass speakers and horns would rotate. He plays some drones on the album in 'Christmas Can Wait', 'The Dark Side of Paradise' and 'Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings'. It is an awesome sound! There are also just lots of weirder, warbly sounds on the album like in 'Blackstrap' and 'Feuds With Guns'. It’s almost as though the prettiness of the arrangements is being screwed with by the drones and warbles, haha. Now that I think of it, our first album 'Volume One' had lots of warbles on it, but none of the intricate arrangements.
The lead single 'Raindrops' is an exquisite track. Musically it strikes a delicate balance between angelic harmonies and gentle notes with deep guitar strokes and rolling bass lines. Was it intentional to sonically replicate the environmental conditions of a stormy setting and for it to pair with the lyrics and subject matter of the tune itself?
Olga - Well, we did include this on the “Near Death” side of the album, so I definitely think this song has an unsettling aura to it. Its part of the build-up to death, and it has many facets to it. There is also a sense of freeing one-self from the bonds of life in this song, at least I kind of think of it that way!
The video clip for 'Raindrops' is a psychedelic and hypnotic one. What was your process in story boarding the concept for this clip and visually marrying the psychological construct of the song into one cohesive piece?
Olga - We knew we wanted this to have a short film quality to it. We had as our template 'Mandy' by Panos Cosmatos. The woman dressed in red is almost like the innocent character, or like the Fool in Tarot, who possesses nothing, no judgements, no preconceptions. It’s a kind of a thought experiment: could we succeed in creating a utopia if we deprived our senses? Or will that create a wanderlust where ultimately temptation creeps in and we unravel into a dystopia? I love these sorts of dichotomies.
From the arthouse to animation, the clip for 'Feuds with Guns' by Jordan 'Dr. Cool' Minkoff. What was it about this type of medium that spoke to you and proved to be the ideal pairing for the track?
Olga - The visuals Dr. Cool created for this video were absolutely perfect in matching the tone of this song, which is somewhat whimsical but has the darker undercurrents through it as well. We didn’t really know what would be the best video idea for this song originally, but there was a really great animated video for “Necronomicon” off the last album (done by Nathaniel Larouche) and 'Feuds with Guns' as a song has a similar vibe to it. So we decided that it should be an animation for this as well.
Corri-Lynn Tetz was back at the helm for the album artwork. For this record, what artistic vision were you striving for that she encapsulated and ultimately expressed in her work?
Olga - We were going for something that looked other-worldly, but with very muted colours, almost like a more heavenly side of purgatory. Corri did a wonderful job in creating an amalgamation of the previous album covers. The inside cover is an illustration by our friend Todd Stewart, and that is a depiction of the more hellish side of purgatory. He also incorporated elements from our previous albums; the horse from 'Are the Dark Horse', the cannons from 'Are the Roaring Night', the house from 'Until in Excess UFO' and the orb from 'Coliseum Complex Museum'. Corri and Todd’s work are almost like mirror reflections of the album concept, or like the negatives versus the photo print.
Creatively how important was it departing ways with Jagjaguwar and signing with Fat Cat records to achieving your goal of producing an unfettered Besnard Lakes masterpiece?
Olga - I guess we might not have made this record, exactly as it is, had we not parted ways with Jagjaguwar. I think we were just able to make the album we wanted to make without deadlines and compromises.
Given the clarity that hindsight affords, can you pinpoint a few select moments, decisions, outcomes that have occurred during your career that have proved to be pivotal?
Olga - I don’t think any of this would exist if Jace and I didn’t move to Montreal in 2000. That’s a big one for sure. Otherwise, everything that has happened since has in its own ways helped us to get to this point, but none were as pivotal in my opinion.
Having worked with and performed with so many amazing artists and musicians over the years, have there been any words of wisdom spoken to you that really resonated with you and in turn altered the way you approach your work?
Jace - I was talking with an artist I was recording, Christian Ngabo (Dear Denizen), and I told him I was having trouble finishing songs. He said that no matter how he’d felt, at the end of the day he’d open his computer and just listen for 5 or 10 minutes to what he was working on. It wouldn’t always result in changes, but just hearing what he’d done helped him to move along and give some motivation. I’ve always remembered that and it’s been very useful for me.
Lastly, on a philosophical level, what does music give you that nothing else does?
Olga - I can be a bit of a head-in-the-clouds type of person but I really feel most grounded when I’m playing music. It really gives me a sense of normality and it’s the most therapeutic outlet for me.
