In Their Own Words: The Montreal Sessions

It seems only fitting that I follow up the last post with another one about Montreal's music scenes. Hopefully you enjoyed the countdown (to skip to the top 5 MTL albums of the decade, go here), but the great thing about this city isn't necessarily the huge albums that spring to mind when you mention Montreal and music. Through the podcast each week, I'm lucky enough to work with dozens (hundreds now?) of emerging musicians who toil away in smaller clubs and bars. Some of them go on to be great bands. Some of them split almost as quickly as they formed. Others find local or niche success with rabid fans of a particular style, genre or sound. Even more go completely unrecognized - and not for lack of effort or talent. There are just a lot of music-makers in this city, and breaking through is sometimes a long and difficult process.

Enter In Their Own Words: The Montreal Sessions. It is a unique, in depth ten-part band profile series curated by local producer/engineer/audio ethnographer Martin Simon Greizis. The musicians featured share their experiences, inspirations, and aspirations in pursuit of their artistic vision. Over at Midnight Poutine we ran volume one of the series back in 2009 (see podcasts #103 - #112). I don't think I mentioned it on this site, but with volume two already 2 shows underway, I wanted to make sure word got out.

The best part about the series, and this is true of almost any profile Martin does, is the space he gives artists to express their thoughts on their musical practices and philosophies. It's clear the musicians feel incredibly at ease during the interviews and what comes out as a result is an honest and insightful account of creativity and artistic labour.

It's well worth a listen if you want to get a better sense of what's new, interesting, overlooked or misunderstood about music in Montreal.

The first episode of volume two is here
Subscribe to the whole series through this iTunes feed