These words are part of the chorus of my song Before it Begins, a song about not giving up before even getting started.

I completed Before it Begins after being forced to stop singing for a month because I had developed a cyst in my throat from coughing when my neighbor’s apartment burnt down (everyone was OK thankfully and the firemen made it on time! ). When the cyst in my throat healed, I felt extra grateful for all the good things in my life and even added in a little guitar solo to the song.

This song has a very stripped production, it features me and my electro acoustic guitar performing in my apartment. When I completed recording it, I started to daydream about Neil Young’s beautiful performance of Tell Me Why Live At Massey Hall in 1971. I loved how that song was just him and his guitar. It is one of the reasons why I just wanted this song to be so stripped down.

Before it Begins is the last song on Corners and I wrote it as a bilingual song (part French and part English) symbolically as a reminder to not give up on pursuing my dreams while being stuck in my Montreal apartment in 2020.

LYRICS -GETTING BY-

Getting by
Getting by
Where have you been
Haven’t seen your face in a while
My friend can I still call you that
It’s been some time
Getting by
Getting by
Heard you were in a relationship
Did she tie you down 
Like a sunken ship
The bottle and the cap won’t fit
Did you try try try
And nothing would come of it
Getting by
We’re getting by
You always wanted a castle
Now you live in a cage
You always wanted to buy a diamond
Now a tattoo with one letter is sufficient
We’re getting by
We’re getting by
Now that you’re here
Will I ever see you again
Life has its ways
So farewell capitaine
Until the next time
We’re getting by
We’re getting by
Getting by

This song is written in freeform and has an epic/cinematic feeling. I wrote it one Thursday night after a long telephone conversation with my best friend. When we ended our call, I really felt the void of silence and darkness in my apartment. It was that feeling mixed with the topics of our conversation that made me think of David Lynch’s opening scene in Mulholland Drive and its long dark meandering road. I somehow felt overwhelmed with ideas and the lyrics and melody came to me in one giant wave. I think indirectly Prince’s song The Beautiful Ones mixed with Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig In The Sky had an influence on this song too. I listened to both those songs quite frequently at the start of the quarantine.

Isolation is the first release off my upcoming EP Corners. It’s a song that explores the unraveling mental state of being subject to loneliness in isolation.

When I wrote Isolation I was quite deep into Haruki Murakami’s IQ84 and at that same time decided to explore as much news as possible on how the coronavirus effected society. What I discovered was all quite alarming, thought provoking and heartbreaking. I also remember reading this one article where news reporters wrote about how difficult it was for people to date during this quarantine. When I finished reading that article the song idea for Isolation came to me. I think something about that article mixed with the Sci Fi love story within IQ84 and my own personal situation inspired Isolation.

Isolation’s video will premiere on my YouTube channel, Apple music and SoundCloud on November 20th.

Corners will drop on December 4th.

In a few words Corners is my first EP.  Its songs are a synthesis of loneliness, desire, happiness, loss, sadness and hope in 2020. In January 2020, my plan for the year was to write and release an album or a 6 song EP of my latest music. I felt I started off 2020 on the right foot and was performing new songs in local Montreal bars but then came the first COVID-19 quarantine…

I can’t say that I despise solitude. In order to create I am alone most of the time. In fact, before the quarantine lockdown, I used to dream about leaving Montreal to write music and possibly an anthology of short stories. This dream involved isolating myself somewhere along a Scandinavian archipelago to create something of genius (life dream). I thought first and foremost about escaping to Sweden because I have long admired the depth of late film director Ingmar Bergman and the way he was able to display the complexity of human emotion in his films. I somehow always think of both him and Nick Cave when I write anything that I am proud of. 

During the month of March I wrote the first song of the EP called Getting By. It was a little upbeat, a little sad and truly got me thinking about being in absence of things. March was also that same time where I started to record for some of the collaborations released this year that I wrote about in my other blog posts. However, come April 2020 and deepening myself into extreme periods of “non-social/ non-human contact” I began to look deeper into myself and thought that it would be interesting to write music about this “exploration”.  Now I wonder if I need to make that trip to Sweden as I see loneliness and seclusion differently after this personal experiment.

From April onward, I put my New Year’s plan of a full-length album into question because I wanted to write music that was entirely composed during the COVID-19 quarantine. I wanted to see what I could do in my apartment, how I could do it and in a sense push myself to places in my mind I could only go from spending what is possibly an “unhealthy” amount of time alone for me. I knew I had to make use of the instruments that I have in my apartment (guitar and keyboard) so I purchased a guitar pedal that I felt could help me better communicate musically a certain state in which I felt at times. The song Broken Dreams on Corners uses this pedal and has an organ like effect. 

So that is what Corners is. It is a sort of exploration while being isolated within the 4 corners of my apartment for reasons of quarantine and creation. Musically each song holds its unique atmosphere which is a representation of my state of mind. It also explains why the EP cover looks the way that it does as it visually conveys the emotional states/personas of myself writing each song. All images on the cover were also shot in my apartment by Alex Kasyan and I filmed myself for Isolation’s music video (YouTube November 20th) on my iPhone in my home studio.

There are 4 songs on Corners: Getting By, Isolation, Broken Dreams and Before it Begins. I chose 4 because there are four corners in the little room in my apartment that I like to call my home studio and the place in which I wrote, composed, recorded and dreamt up this EP. 

I worked once again with producers Zach Ezickson and Scott Jacoby at Eusonia studios but this time remotely via video call. Many thanks to Scott and Zach for helping me better communicate my vision and for embracing my at times eccentric writing style. 

The first release Isolation, will premiere on YouTube, Apple Music and Soundcloud on Friday November 20th.

Corners will be released on all platforms December 4th and a CD will be available for purchase on my recent Bandcamp page.

I look forward to having you hear this EP. 

littleuniverses