I Heart the Music: Your Online Source for Live Music Reviews and Interviews in Toronto!

With tons of new releases set to explode onto the music scene this spring, it is hard to decipher what is listen-worthy and what is not. One way that artists are giving fans (and critics) a taste of what is to come is by sampling tracks off their future releases during their live shows. The Russian Futurists aka Matthew Adam Hart appear to be doing exactly that; showcasing a few songs off thier highly anticipated album The Weight’s On The Wheels during both CMW and SXSW. Matthew caught up with us right before he was set to take the stage during CMW.

iheartthemusic: So, you’re from just outside Toronto, and you’ve been doing shows all over Europe and the UK, does playing CMW feel like “coming home”?

Matthew: Well, we havent played now for a while. Our last real show was in Tokyo and that was a year and a half ago, so it feels great to be playing again and building up again. When you go away for a while, it’s not like you just jump right back to where you were in terms of popularity. We’re having to re-build our status in Toronto. It’s not like the old Toronto where we used to play every couple of weeks; it’s new, and it’s good and it’s humbling and you have to be good and work hard to succeed. We’re trying to do that.

iheartthemusic: Do have a venue or spot in Toronto where you like to play best?

Matthew: I really love the Mod Club in terms of sound. But we always seem to do really well in Victoria B.C for some reason. We always do really great shows there and the fans are so supportive. It’s the small shows that I think they’re really appreciative of.

iheartthemusic: I wanted to talk a little bit about your name. “Russian Futurism” was an artistic movement in early 20th-century Russia that dismissed the traditional, old, static forms of art in favour of those more representative of dynamic, forward-looking, urban, modern life. The parallels between this concept and your music cannot be a mere coincidence, can it?

Matt: Actually yeah! (laughs) My brother took a Russian History class in University, and we used to talk about shit he was learning, and I just really liked the sound of it. It’s funny cause now I get asked questions about the significance behind the name all the time, and I’ve had to do a little reverse engineering and be like, “Yeah, there are definitely parallels”. But originally it was just a name – it was like calling yourself “The Corvettes” – but I liked how it sounded phonetically.

iheartthemusic: How hard is it to pick a name?

Matt: Really hard

iheartthemusic: I mean, I spend at least ten minutes in the produce section of the grocery store trying to decide between red or yellow peppers! I can’t imagine trying to choose a name for my musical baby.

Matt: I say it’s at least as hard as being a doctor (laughs). No, but it’s hard to pick something you’ll like forever. You call yourself something really dated like when it was all “The Vines”, “The Shins”, “The Strokes”, “The this and that” – that seemed to be a real trend. Instead, I wanted to pick something that people would really remember. I’m glad I didn’t put any thought into it at all, it just kind of stuck.

iheartthemusic: In the beginning, The Russian Futurists was all you. It was your baby, a creation that you have developed from scratch. Recently that has changed, and you have added some band members – especially for the live shows. Other than in the literal sense, how has The Russian Futurists changed; how has it affected your sound?

Matt: I still write and record everything myself. It has changed in the sense that, for a lot of years I didn’t like playing live – at all. I was pretty reluctant and got really anxious, and didn’t want to be up there. I was just like, “let’s get this shit over with”. Now that I’ve got a live band that I’m really excited about, it’s cool being up there. It’s like in hockey: you play better in front of a goalie you trust, and it’s the same with the live band now. I really trust them and they’re really excited about it. It’s just a good bunch of new energy in the band, and it’s totally made me more into playing live, for sure.

iheartthemusic: First and foremost you’re a hip-hop fan, so who’s your favourite hip-hop producer? Premier?

Matt: Yeah! I mean I love Premier. Right now I love Alchemist, he’s like, my dude now. There’s so many. I really like early Rakim production, early Hieroglyphics stuff, Souls of Mischief…I mean I’m a really big east coast hip-hop fan, so lots of Premier, even early Mob Deep. I grew up doing that kinda music, makin’ beats like that. My first music gear was a sampler, and still, most of my songs are built around samples.

iheartthemusic: Do you have any plans to make an album more fully grounded in hip-hop?

Matt: You’re definitely not gonna get me to spit a verse (laughs)

iheartthemusic: That was my next question! How come you sing and don’t spit rhymes?

Matt: I do a little bit, but it’s with my little brother. He’s got a few different hip-hop crews, always centred around a theme. Like he’s got one about having the best gadgets, like cell phones and shit, and they’re called “The Mad Gadgets”. We just did a track together about fishing, and ONLY about fishing. So we do hip-hop, but it’s not about a big concept, but something really specific. It’s just-for-fun, but I do the beats for those guys.

iheartthemusic: Back to electro. A far as my knowledge goes, electro is a very studio-specific genre in terms of the heavy production involved, the layering techniques etc. It’s music meant for the album. Are there any aspects of your recordings that don’t carry over into the live performance?

Matt: Well, there’s just some stuff you cannot reproduce. It’s a lot of samples and stuff like that, and even if you have a band to reproduce it all, I’m not crazy about seeing people reproduce everything. We still use backing tracks and samples cause you kind of need to, and I don’t want to totally abandon that. You just need to resign yourself to the fact that you’re not going to create something live exactly like it is on the record. Once you get over that, it’s fine.

iheartthemusic: Well, you have been doing this for a long time now! I mean, you’ve gone from producing in your bedroom to the studio; from just recording to being thrown into the whirlwind of the music industry – with all international touring, the notoriety etc. What’s that transition been like for you?

Matt: I’ve been doing this for 10 years now! And I got lucky that my first record was picked up in Europe, and was over there right away. So, we were really lucky and didn’t really have to ‘pay our dues’ by driving out to like, Saskatoon. We got to go over to Spain pretty early on and do a lot of tours in Europe. It’s kind of been gradual. I take it for granted now because back then, it’s just the way it was for us, and I thought every band did it like that. (Our success) wasn’t out of nowhere, I really like that it’s built slowly as opposed to being really popular for two years and then no-one gives a shit about you after that.

iheartthemusic: Can artists separate the desire to make art from the desire to make it big?

Matt: Yeah, I think so. I’m always 10 steps ahead of what’s happening. It’s never like “this year my goal is to play here”, but you do have loose goals. Basically you just gotta check your email everyday and you get some weird shit, some cool opportunities, and just hope that they keep coming.

interviewed by Brittany Smith

photography provided by Aaron Alleyne

If the name 84.85 isn’t familiar to you, don’t be mad.  These two dudes are seemingly flying right under most people’s radar.  While most take the express lane to success, Jay and Cass are taking their time with things, allowing themselves to work out every kink as they hone their craft and make sure you lose your minds when you do finally hear them.  But don’t call them electro-rap – these two are straight hip-hop heads who just have the need to make you dance.  While that may be too much for hip-hop fans to take in, don’t worry about it – the dirty basslines and faster-than-usual tempo shouldn’t stop you from giving props where props are due.

iheartthemusic sat down for a less-than-typical interview.  This wasn’t a Q & A; it was a conversation between a few people over a couple of drinks to get a better sense of where they come from.  So while some questions remain, you get a better insight into who they are and what they want you to feel when you’re ripping up on the dance floor with your hands in the air.

iheartthemusic: You guys have found that balance between doing shows frequently, but just enough to build an anticipation to your next show.  Few peeps can really boast that.

Jay: Well, everyone thinks playing more shows equals success, but what we realized is when Cass moved back to Ottawa and we started to get booked more, playing twice a month or whenever he’d come back [to Toronto], half our fans and friends would come to each of them.  They know we’re playing again.  So for the past 4 or 5 months, we’ve played one show [a month].  One show and make an event out of it.  Make sure it gets press, make sure we have a photographer there, and make sure that at each of those shows is a huge event.  I don’t want to play the Social, Wrongbar and the Drake every week.  Maybe as a DJ, yeah.  But for us – one show a month and make it fucking crazy.

iheartthemusic: Your last few shows have gone really well for you guys.  When I saw you at the Boat, I showed up for the last 2 songs, but it was nuts!

Cass: Well that’s the best part.  For the last few months, we changed our sets to have “40 and a Fistfight” first, because everyone shuts up – especially with the “Billie Jean” sample at the beginning.  Then we tear it back down after and build all the way back up.

iheartthemusic: The other thing too is that you guys have so many choruses that are just so catchy, and you end up getting people to sing along to words they didn’t even know before they showed up that night.

Cass: When we started working together, 90% of the music we made was chorus-less because I thought I didn’t know how to write a chorus.

Jay: And I wouldn’t let him.  I’d be like “Ok, let’s do like a 4 bar instrumental thing, we don’t need choruses.”

Cass: I just always thought choruses were really hard to write, but they’re not.

iheartthemusic: And it’s funny to hear how those choruses have made their way around – I remember when TMDP had their CD release party, they started with a sample of “40 and a Fistfight’s” chorus.

Jay: Funny story about that is we gave them the acapella, and we never got a remix from them, they just started using it in their live show.  So, when they played Circa for the NOW Sounds of Toronto show, Barletta was there because Mansion was playing that night as well, and he saw what happened when TMDP played it.  I got a call at 2 in the morning from Barletta saying, “I NEED the stems from 40 and a Fistfight.”  Days later, he sent us 2 remixes. We get played a ton in Toronto, but it’s not us, it’s Barletta’s edit.

Cass: It’s super hard, too.  When I first heard it, I was like “holy fuck.”  Barletta’s actually a really supportive person in this scene.

iheartthemusic: Absolutely, and I think everyone in Toronto is very supportive of each other – going to each other’s shows and showing a lot of respect to one another.

Cass: That’s the thing – when people talk shit about Toronto, I get really pissed off.  The music scene here is unbelievable.  It’s unbelievable to see how supportive everyone is.  Everyone wants to help; everyone wants to throw in two cents.

Jay: But you’ve gotta be putting it down, though.

Cass: That’s true.  Especially these days where anyone can go on their computer and bang something out.

Jay: When we first started making music in Ottawa, and I moved back to Toronto, neither of us really knew what we were doing.  We had tracks but we didn’t know whether they were that good yet, but they weren’t ready.

Cass: They were recorded so badly.

Jay: People were really nice to me about it, but no one was willing to put us on.  To this day, we’re not really known for the highest quality audio out there; we’re known for putting on a pretty good live show.

Cass: That’s really the science that we’re messing with right now – how do we capture our live show and put it on a record?

iheartthemusic: Speaking of the scene in Toronto, it’s always good to see some collaborative efforts amongst local artists, and I heard that you’ve done a couple of verses on some TapeDeckBros. tracks.

Cass: Well me and the TapeDeck guys are working on something right now, and I think we’re gonna start with 1 track, but I was telling Ash that when I come back to Toronto, I’m gonna try and spend more time with him and work on more stuff.  It’s cool collaborating with other people.  It can be hard to work with anyone but Jay sometimes, because my entire experience of making music has been with Jay.  He knows how to get good shit out of me.

Jay: But it’s important to work with other people.  I support that 100%, just as Cass supports me doing remixes for other artists.  I mean, I love those TapeDeck guys.

Cass: I’m really impressed with their work ethic.  They came out the gate hard, and they’re throwing down as hard as they can.  That’s what it’s about.

ihearthemusic: Listening to your tracks, there are definitely a lot of influences that come through.

Cass: I think it’s important to pay respects to where you came from, and I know where I came from.  I know what I grew up listening to.  Two artists that have stayed with me since I was around 14 are Jay-Z and Mos Def. You’ve got a very talented commercial side and a very talented artistic side, and my goal is to be somewhere between them.  But your influences always change because we’re always listening to different music.  Last year, I listened to so much hard electronic music.

Jay: That’s a funny thing for us too, because we were both hip-hop kids growing up, and other things just snuck in.  I was listening to the same stuff Cass was listening to, but then got into jazz, funk and soul through hip-hop samples.  Cass also had a sister who was really big into punk, and so Cass might’ve gotten a bit of a punk influence through that.  But at the end of the day, we were just two hip-hop kids and that’s all we really listened to.  When we started doing dance music and listening to dance music, we realized “wait, what happened to the hip-hop?”  So when you hear songs where we slow it down a bit, it’s because we’re still a hip-hop act.

Cass: We can still make people dance at 90 BPM; it doesn’t have to be at 130.  And don’t get me wrong; I love the fast stuff – like Bass Live, for example.  I don’t even have to rap on that.  People lose their minds when that comes on, but it’s nice to slow it down, and it’s nice to add different dynamics to the set because you want to give people different sides to your music.

Jay: It was a couple of months ago that we realized that a lot of the stuff we’re making now isn’t really electro.  All the old stuff like “40 and a Fistfight,” “Breathe,” and “Don’t Worry” were all distorted bass lines and what not.  Now the stuff we’re making involve big drums, samples and that sort of thing.  I slowly stopped doing electro remixes because I realized that that wasn’t what I was about – I’m a hip-hop producer who’s doing dance music.

iheartthemusic: If you go back and listen to “Planet Rock” by Afrika Bambaataa and the Soul Sonic Force, that’s an entirely different sound, but it’s still classified as hip-hop.

Jay: Exactly, and those are the roots of hip-hop.  I was reading an interview with Egyptian Lover, and they asked him “how does it feel to be the pioneer of electro?”  His response basically described that as much as he appreciated being considered the pioneer of the genre, that’s not what he set out to do.  He was making rap music in Detroit in the 80’s, and that’s the sound that came from that.  They weren’t making a different genre; to them, it was rap music.  That’s kind of what it’s about for us.

Cass: We’re at the point where people are trying to call us ‘electro-rap.’  Really?  This is hip-hop!  There’s a DJ and an MC, and yeah, some of it’s fast, but it’s still hip-hop to us.

iheartthemusic: So with this new lane that you guys are making for yourselves, is there an album coming?

Cass: I think the problem with us is that I feel very ambitious about an album, but I think it’s better for us to go on singles until we make the album we want to make.  I want to make something epic.  An album is meant to be your masterpiece.  It should be mind blowing, and it should be meant to be heard front to back.

Jay: We’re putting out an EP that we’ll be selling at shows starting July 17^th, but I totally agree with what Cass says.  We come from an era of albums, even though the market right now is very single-focused.  Right now, everything we’re doing is for our live show – that’s our bread and butter.  Every track we make is to contribute to the illest live show we can put on.  We’re all about paying dues.  Hip-hop was started as a live art.  There weren’t records cut when hip-hop was started.  That’s where we’re at right now.  We’re only known for our live set – that’s how we come up.  So, by the time an album comes out, we’ve already done as many shows as possible and we know how to rock it – I don’t think a lot of artists have that these days.

IF you’re still not convinced, don’t hesitate to check the 84.85 as they tear up Wrongbar this Friday, July 17^th, AND as an added bonus to the weekend, Jay will be doing a special DJ set as his alter ego, Lucy ‘Lo, spinning some real deep house at Sneaky Dee’s on Saturday, July 18th. You’re guaranteed to see iheartthemusic at both of those shows, so come holla on the dance floor.

Photos by Patricio Estebar and Amy Young.

The first ever Peace Dot Love music festival took place during NXNE at the Koolhaus. It was a musical tribute to Dylan Ellis and Oliver Martin who were gunned down in a parked car in June 2008, a horrible crime that has yet to be solved. The fest was put on by 102.1 the Edge, D.O. It! (an organization formed to raise funds for youth violence prevention groups), LOVE and Peacebuilders International in partnership with NXNE (as well as some other sponsors, including iheartthemusic).

It began with DJ duo TMDP. Despite their early start time they had the crowd that was there grooving to their tunes. It wasn’t a large crowd, but that didn’t seem to affect the tunes coming off the turntables as these consummate professionals performed with the same energy as when iheartthemusic witnessed them spin to an at-capacity Circa crew. (If you missed them you can see them at the TIME Festival at Sound Academy on July 25.)

Stereos were met with a plethora of pre-pubescent screams from the throngs of teenyboppers who rushed the stage. Personally I thought it sounded like watered down radio dribble with too much auto-tune. However, I also think the latest album from Black Eyed Peas had too much auto-tune and Stereo’s song “Summer Girl” was number one on iTunes so they mustn’t be doing much wrong (but I’d be hard pressed to pick out what they were doing exceptionally right). In any case, the PG-13 prepubescent portion of the Koolhaus seemed to dig it as they screamed and sang along to every song, including “She Only Likes Me When I’m Drunk” (love the title). Perhaps it’s just a matter of taste… or lack thereof.

Feeling Stereo-ed out, I popped through the rabbit hole into the side room where I discovered a polar bear playing bass, an Elton John-looking lead singer and a percussion apparatus that resembled a mix between Dick Van Dyke’s instrumental outfit in Mary Poppins and a medieval torture contraption. The band sounded like a lot of fun… unfortunately no one was able to tell me who they were (if you’re reading this and you know the answer, let us know).

True to form Down With Webster gave a high-octane performance. This large ensemble band is an amalgamation of high energy electro with large doses of rap and rock. One of the highlights was the when the drummer had a fun video game soundtrack solo (the low light was when one of the silly members threw beer on our photographer, not cool dude!). Even when they experienced some technical difficulties they kept the crowd entertained by busting out a freestyle. And they were entertaining, I even spotted some parents grooving to their tunes.

Simultaneously We Are the Take had a work out on the stage next door. These boys played so hard they were quite literally dripping with sweat. The passion in playing engaged the crowd who seemed fully immersed (or should I say “taken in”) by the band. These guys always put on a good show and are clearly garnering a devout fan following.

Dragonette was nothing less than awesome. iheartthemusic had the pleasure of speaking to the husband and wife team before the show and learned that they were truly there to support the cause, which they spoke very well of [stay tuned for that interview, we talked music, fashion and spilling sauce on sneakers in Japan... apparently a no-no as it takes a while for the smell to go away]. Their performance was dynamic and a highlight for many of the festival goers. One word: awesome!

Closing out the night was USS (Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker). Phew, if you weren’t tired already you would have been by just watching these two guys fly around stage, doing handstands and bouncing with the crowd. Lots of energy and a wonderful way to end a wonderful festival. With so many great performances I look forward to see how they top this next year.

Written by Emer Schlosser

Photography by Carl Heindl

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