Montag’s Phase 3

Single is out on March 27th!
Musique: Montag
Paroles: Pierre Lapointe
Basse et quelques éléments de production: Dominic Vanchesteing
Batterie: Guillaume Éthier
Guitare: Philippe Roberge

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New mixtape!
Download here.


Ilustración vectorial para la revista Binocular. Marzo, México. 2012
Vectorial Illustration for Binocular Magazine. March, Mexico 2012.
Online version here.

········ In the words of Antoine Bédard:
The second single of PHASES is here. The music direction I had assigned for this second single was “heavier psychépop”… whatever that means! I meant something a little heavier sounding than the first single (which had no music style restriction). And I was imagining something a little trippy as well.
It all started with a sample taken from an old library music. I remember recording that sample ages ago at my friend Simon’s place (Simon goes under the name James Bay and he made a remix of New Designrecently. When I came accross the sample again a few weeks ago, I thought: “hmm that’s sweet little sound, I should probably use it sometime”. Well, the time had come. I built the song around it. I wanted the beat to be a little heavier too… But the sound of the song changed significantly once Graham Van Pelt of Miracle Fortress got involved in the process. I wanted to work with someone else on the mix to make sure that the production wouldn’t sound the same as the previous single. Graham was really generous of his time and added new layers of sound – inlcuding a new layer of rythm and the really sharp and bouncy bass synth lines – that made the song a lot less lo-fi in the end.
I remember being with him in the studio and everything he was doing to the track I liked immediately. Probably because I felt like the song was evolving and that it was growing in someone else’s hands, which was thrilling. Now when I listen to the track, I kind of miss its lo-fi sound a little bit. But on the other hand, the collaboration with Graham was so smooth that I’m also really happy with what we did together. It’s the way it is with Phases I guess… There’s no way of having a lot of perspective because of the little time there is to make the songs. There’s very little room for readjustments. It’s the challenge of letting the songs out before they can mature, before exploring different options in terms of production… It could be seen as a mistake but it’s the way I wanted Phases to exist: allowing imperfection and making some spontaneous collaboration happen, so that Phases would not only be a personal project but more of an open project, involving different creators.
And to come back to the song, here’s a few words about the title…
TRIP THE LIGHT FANTASTIC = to dance. Really? A very surprising expression for us, ESL of this world (I’m sure you’ll all agree). I simply love those words together. They sound like some kind of spell and they definitely make a good title for a song that I wanted a little “trippier”.
Lastly, what’s great about TRIP THE LIGHT FANTASTIC is that – despite its cleaner sound than on the demo I originally did – it is still very much danceable (not something very usual with Montag) when listened to very LOUD.
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[Text taken from montag's website]
A few instagram shots from my last trip to Cologne, Germany.













Un buen mixtape de los chicos de Creo Taller. Para descargar da click a la imagen.

NEW DESIGN is the first of twelve releases that will make up PHASES, a singles project with a new song released in each month in 2012.
When it was official that Carpark Records and I were going to go ahead with PHASES, I had tons of demo tracks to chose from for the first single. But I opted for a brand new composition instead and wrote NEW DESIGN in a few days last November. I knew each PHASES single would have a different sound but I willingly didn’t assign any style restrictions for “Phase 1″. As my first original Montag song to be released in years, a bit of freedom only seemed fair!
NEW DESIGN started with a bass line and a simple beat assembled in my computer. No real instruments or anything, all “canned” sounds. Everything was built from that foundation… This kind of starting point might seem unsurprising to some but in my case, it was not “the usual way”. Montag tracks are very often written from looped samples (synths chords most of the time). For the lyrics, I liked the idea of using the word “new” because the whole experience of writing the song felt that way: new – new project, new context, new everything. Because the song was not destined for an album I felt really different about it. The song had to stand on its own. And it was all written really spontaneously, with this newly felt enthusiasm that Dominic Vanchesteing had somehow injected in me. I was excited about writing Montag music for the first time in a long while. The result is a very “Montag sounding” track with an extra dose of sugar: it has the fastest bpm ever: 151! It has to mean something…
Text taken from www.montag.ca
Cover design by Curious Flux / www.curiousflux.com
[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/34412948" iframe="true" /]






A few shots from my first time in Gent, Belgium.
Unas cuantas fotos de mi primera vez en Gante, Bélgica.
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Algunas fotos de esta bella ciudad / Some photos from this beautiful city.



Para cerrar el 2011 tuve la oportunidad de participar con un cartel para la Segunda Bienal de Fotografía del Estudio 3.14 en Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mx.
Fue una exposición colectiva en la que varios artistas/diseñadores tapatíos intervinieron algunas de las fotografías ganadoras y no ganadoras de esta bienal.
Para ver el cartel completo da click aquí.
Gracias Luis Rocca por la invitación.