After a strong EP on Parage Music a few months back, Montreal producer Olivier Borzeix, also known as Bowly and OJPB, is making quite an impression on this new release for True Romance.
On these two tracks, the French native goes back to the basics of house and disco rhythms without trying to sound like some sort of tribute to a long lost era. E-Lane 2 Troy is a powerful statement, incredibly well arranged with the bare essence you want from a solid dance groove. On the flipside, Fountains has a darker feel with touches of soul, funk, and jazz, along the way. Once again, we wanted to know more about the music from the man himself.
Can you give us your perspective on the making and the sound of this new EP coming out on True Romance ?
@ShareyBowly: These two tracks are the result of two really different processes. E-Lane 2 Troy is basically the idea of an edit I had that turned out to be a track in its own right. This happens very often with me. I basically find a couple of loops in one track I like (or I don’t, which very often pushes me to edit it to keep what I like in the piece). I start working them out and I start having ideas of what to add and really often I end up with something so far removed from the original that it’s neither an edit nor a remix. This is very similar to what I did for Bare Edit (Steppin’ Out) on Parages Music. In this case it happened very fast, the result is a live take done muting and un-muting tracks on both the mixer and the MPC while playing around with a couple of effects feedback loops that created that shimmery background landscape.
The approach on Fountains was very different. It’s another classic process for me, I read something about a technique I have never tried or try to explore a piece of equipment I feel I haven’t gotten deep enough with and is under-used and I end up with a track. In this case it was the Emu Emax HD sampler. The other difference is that this piece took a couple of week of work for me to be happy with. A lot of it is sampled but there are no loops or musical phrases. Everything there was played by myself.
How do you feel living in Montreal and it’s musical community has influenced the tracks you’ve been creating lately ?
@ShareyBowly: I’m not sure to what extent living here directly influences me stylistically, there are a lot of great producers in Montreal but I would have a hard time finding a genre that would define the city right now (probably because I’m too close to it). Furthermore, I got to say, that for better or worse I’ve been mostly flying solo when it comes to making music in the last while. Though on a macro level, I think the laidback life we experience here, the general open-mindedness and real support of the community is a real booster for creativity and trying harder to define a voice of your own.
Also Its pretty clear a lot of promoters in and outside of clubs have been doing a great job in bringing great both out of town and local DJs together and building really beautiful nights where you get to experience the full potential of the music I like. And THIS is a probably the biggest influences of all.
Tell us a bit more about the music and it’s filiation with some of your older material ?
@ShareyBowly: I’m almost always doing the same thing, which is trying to refine what I do and try to focus on defining my own voice/style. The thing is that I’m interested in so many styles/genre that it’s hard for me to say “Oh no, I won’t try that! Where does this fit in with what I’ve been doing so far?”. Technically talking I’m getting more and more into sampling and keeping on trying to use equipment that I feel I haven’t explored deep enough, trying to give myself guidelines, like game rules to try and discover new things. I’m still composing and shaping stuff mostly without a computer but I have started using Ableton a bit more as a midi sequencer again after leaving it aside for a while. Trying to get the best of both worlds I guess.
Any upcoming releases you want to share with us ?
@ShareyBowly: E-Lane 2 Troy has just been released. Next up I have another solo record out on Parages Music (my second for them) featuring a fantastic remix by D’Marc Cantu and then a split with my good friend Jonattan Levingstone on the same label. After that I have an EP programmed for late 2016 early 2017 on Bar À Vinyle (a new label started out by the Bleury – Bar À Vinyle club in Montreal). We are talking about a second release on True Romance as well.
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