Essaie pas

Tracklist:

1) Les Aphides
2) Futur Parlé
3) Complet Brouillé
4) Les agents des stups
5) Substance M
6) New Path

Essaie Pas always seek out fresh challenges. Emerging from Montreal’s sprawling electronic scene, the duo - Marie Davidson and Pierre Guerineau – feel completely free to express themselves, to sketch out hitherto unmapped musical regions.

“Essaie Pas has always been about exploring new territories” explains Pierre. “From the very first tapes, to the last one. We don’t want to do the same thing over and over again, – we just need to keep it exciting and to challenge ourselves. Take those experiences, open new boxes and see what happens.”

Forthcoming album ‘New Path’ takes this one step further. The duo’s fifth album to date – and second on powerhouse label DFA Records –is loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly, a classic of dystopian science fiction.

“I read the book a long time ago, maybe 15 years ago, and it had a strong impression on me,” explains Pierre. “In our previous work we always looked to music as inspiration in our lives, but this time we felt the desire to try something different, that’s not based on ourselves but on someone else’s universe. It was going to be more conceptual, more political.”

‘New Path’ touches on personal ground, on addiction, loss, and the lingering strength of identity within late capitalism’s mass media paranoia. It pins down the central character’s destructive addiction, using this as a metaphor to explore the dichotomous rupture between our inner lives and our social environment, one that is often fed and soothed by drug abuse, social media, or any kind of dependence.

“I think it touches us on many levels,” Pierre continues. “We can talk about drug addiction issues, we can talk about the mass surveillance world we live in, but there’s also the experience of loss, of grief. I was surprised by how the book felt so modern and accurate to the time we live in right now. Dick’s visions of surveillance are the reality of social control today.”

It’s a record that continually ties itself in knots, a puzzle that is outwardly beguiling while the solutions remain inherently allusive. As Pierre points out, it’s even present in the title. “I like the fact that it sounds optimistic, but in the book it’s actually an illusion,” he explains. “This new path is actually going nowhere.”

But it’s a challenge met with humour, picking up on the wry elements of Philip K. Dick’s own writing – witness the subtle wit of songs such as ‘Complet Brouillé’, ‘Les Agents Des Stups’ or as in ‘Futur Parlé’s tripped-out lyrics, offsetting intense themes with something a little more playful. 

The conceptual nature of ‘New Path’ belies the subtle personal shifts within the band. A husband and wife duo, Essaie Pas thrive on freedom, on parting to focus on outside projects in Montreal and Berlin before returning renewed, flushed with fresh inspiration.

“Both personally and for Essaie Pas it’s good that both of us have separate projects,” he explains. “Marie has been constantly touring solo for the last year. On my side I’ve been producing other people’s music (Bernardino Femminielli, Pelada or Sleazy to name a few). Collaborating in the studio with talented people with unique aesthetics and different creative processes is always refreshing as an artist.”

The complexity of the project mirrors the complexities within Essaie Pas’ career to date – forever unpredictable, their wiry, individual sound offers a tangled vision of tomorrow’s aesthetics. “I think this was the main challenge,” muses Pierre. “To adapt what we’ve been doing live thru the last 2 years, which before was always changing, and corner it, make it cohesive”.

Although the duo is continually reinventing themselves, exploring new concepts or addressing political issues, emotions stays the essential aspect of their work. This is cold music for cold times, yet beneath this lies a continual search for the humane.

As they conclude “Ultimately we hope we can reach out to people, in a compassionate way, this is what we aim for with this album."

Montreal-based electronic duo Essaie pas is comprised of Marie Davidson and Pierre Guerineau. Both are respected musicians in their own right - Marie having released two acclaimed solo records, with Pierre being best known for production work on underground Canadian musicians such as Dirty Beaches and Femminielli. Essaie pas was born on a hot summer night in 2010, releasing some ultra-limited singles which culminated in their debut LP, Nuit de noce (Teenage Menopause Records) in 2013. The mix of drawling guitars, français mumbles, and minimal electronics caught the ear of DFA Records, who booked the pair to open for Factory Floor on their first North American tour.

 The origin story of -Demain est une autre nuit- begins when the band returned from their first European tour to find that they had lost both their studio space and apartment. La Brique, their studio, practice space and renowned underground music institution, had fallen victim to the city’s rapid gentrification and closed permanently. Conflicts with their wacky landlord had also left them without an apartment, leading them to return to Montreal’s winter without many prospects. They lucked into a temporary practice space during the off-hours at the offices of Le Filles Electriques, an independent interdisciplinary festival producer. This space soon became Pierre’s new studio, and Marie’s new home. The many corridors of the empty industrial building also provided a way for Marie to work out in the frigid Montreal winter nights, running “everywhere possible, listening to techno, acid, and italo disco, being mutually inspired by the space and the sounds.” About eight months later, Demain est une autre nuit (“tomorrow is another night”) was born. “This environment influenced our music,” says Pierre, “The sounds are more clear and open, the production has more depth, on a full frequency range.” Their living conditions on tour were another major influence, “Staying at different people’s places around the world for a whole year accentuates the feeling of being a stranger wherever you go, even in your own town, but also creates a feeling of being part of an international community, opposed to a scene that exists only in one city.” 

Essaie pas’ music can not be tied to a specific genre It is a document of the encounter of two human beings mutually experimenting with music and sounds, and eventually falling in love while doing so. They are constantly pushing the boundaries of their comfort zone with new methods and technique, aiming to communicate that which is unspeakable.Their musical language is vibrant and varied - comparisons range from Film Soundtracks, Electronic Body Music, Disco, and Techno, with sensually-delivered lyrics exploring the themes of fantasies, obsessions, and the feeling of “The Void”. Marie explains, “The title comes from a joke we made when going to bed one morning, talking about our plans for the next evening.” Pierre adds, “Night is a place of freedom, a place where fantasies and obsessions are not tied by moral constraints. It’s also a time where the feeling of loneliness is stronger and when emotions and memories arise, whether you are facing it or running away from it. I think the tension and sense of urgency on the record comes from that dichotomy.”

Facing The Music is an excellent demonstration of this dichotomy - its throbbing electronic percussion and sawmill synths racing towards a seemingly-inevitable climax, only to disintegrate in an instant. Similar in tone, Retox begins with an air-raid siren that explodes into electronic pulses and spiralling handclaps, with Pierre’s solemnly spoken vocals countering Marie’s sensual cadence. Lead single Le port du masque is a frenetic ode to obsession, about a man being obsessed with the ghost of an impossible relationship. Pierre explains - “I already had some of the lyrics and the idea of a woman’s mantra but months later, while I was jamming a motorik beat with a TR-505 through a delay pedal, I found the perfect foundation for it.” The band’s first composition, Carcajou appears here for the third time in an entirely different incarnation - Marie’s vocals alternately yearn and taunt, diving into and out of layers of drum machines and analog synthesizers. Closing track La Chute is the band at their most Angelo Badalamenti, with mournful organ and wheezing gasps giving way to what sounds like gentle applause, but in actuality is the last frames being fed through a film projector.

1. Demain est une autre nuit
2. Depassee
3. Retox
4. Carcajou 3
5. Le port du masque est de rigeur
6. Facing The Music
7. Lights Out
8. La chute

Tracklist:
1) Earth (8:58)
2) Corps Étranger (6:08)
3) Earth (Passarani HiNRG Mix) (8:49)

Montreal duo Essaie pas return to DFA with a 12-inch that picks up where their 2018 album New Path left off. "Earth" is a blistering ride through the rave, an amalgamation of techno and trance. The galloping bassline is the backbone of the song, and Marie Davidson’s vocals climb to new heights against synth stabs. "Corps Étranger," with its stuttering percussion, is a slow burner in comparison. For the remix of "Earth," Marco Passarani of Tiger & Woods (Running Back, Numbers) doubles down on the Italo disco angle and doesn’t shy away from the more anthemic moments of the original, managing to rework it into something akin to a celebration of this "shithole" we call Earth.