by Victoria King
Local act Viridians release their debut full-length album at the Lo Pub on April 12th. We sat down with Neil Exell and Joseph Péloquin-Hopfner of Viridians at Carlos & Murphy’s and ended up with a hankering for their sweet new music. And nachos.
Neil Exell: Homemade goods. Can’t beat that. Everything’s factory now.
Joseph Péloquin-Hopfner: Yep, that’s true.
Stylus: Could that be applied to your music as well? Homemade goods?
NE: Our music is 100 per cent homemade . . . through instruments made mostly in factories. That’s our approach.
JPH: Yeah. “Home-composed,” I ‘spose you could say.
Stylus: Makes it sound like a recipe, eh?
JPH: That’s a pretty good analogy actually. Every song is a different type of meal. There are several different, definitely “heavy carb” meals in our songs . . .
NE: Yeah, and we know how to achieve the desired result. Like, “Awe this isn’t sticking together, and we need some more egg,” and we know that egg part for us, and we know how to make that little ambiance happen.
JPH: Yeah, our kitchen is kind of special. We don’t really know what the end result is going to be. Sometimes it’s an omelette but we didn’t know it was going to be an omelette and other times it’s like some type of . . . delicate dessert that’s very precise, and baked . . . Yes. And we didn’t know, but it turns out pretty good.
NE: Always.
Stylus: And in an omelette, you can put in so many things.
JPH: That’s true . . .
NE: I can’t say “equally necessary,” but my consumption of food and my consumption of music probably match one another on a daily basis.
JPH: Like you consume about 2000 calories of music per day?
NE: Yeah, at least. And I feel like I start my mornings in a similar way, where I need to consume some sort of breakfast but I also have a music breakfast. Like what am I gonna listen to when I walk to the bus, or as I get dressed? Makes a big difference to your day.
JPH: Your ears gotta eat too.
Stylus: What do you pair together, food and music wise?
NE: I mean, it depends on the dining experience more than the food, I think. So if we’re having, barbecued meats . . . you’re definitely thinking more of a thrash metal vibe, something that’s meaty and heavy but still playful and pretty silly as an end result. But then maybe you’re dining on some nice ravioli with a spinach mix and some red wine vinaigrette, then you’re going to go for something really light, a little bit of ambient music.
JPH: And then sometimes you gotta go for a glass of wine and some Sigur Ros. After a long day at work, or long week . . . And to go back to that high carb thing, sometimes you just gotta go back for that second bowl of pasta, you know – some heavy music can definitely be consumed more than once, if there’s not too much cheese on it but just enough sauce and enough pasta.
NE: Totally. That’s like Isis. Like, when you haven’t eaten for six hours and you think, ‘I need the biggest bowl of pasta I can get,” that’s Isis: I need a nine-minute epic that just never ends, and gets bigger. Perpetually.
[SERVER WALKS BY WITH A BIG PLATE OF NACHOS]
NE: As we watch the Nachos go by . . . what are the nachos?
JPH: Hardcore, man, for sure . . .
NE: I was thinking almost like, sludgy metal, because the cheese is dripping and it’s like, something that’s gooey . . . but also gets on your fingers and makes you feel greasy and dirty in the best possible way. That’s how I feel when I’m listening to sludge metal: like I’m getting greasy doing this but in all the right ways.
JPH: And you start salivating just thinking about it, before even pressing play . . .
Stylus: What should people eat as they’re listening to the new album (Again, Dangerous Visions)?
JPH: Man, there’s definitely some nacho parts in the album . . .
NE: I’m leaning more towards a breakfast vibe . . . Maybe like a breakfast sandwich, because you have all of these meal pieces reappropriated into a lunch item, but put for breakfast. Right? Cause you’ve got your bagel, which is a breakfast staple, and your egg, which is a breakfast staple, but then you’ve got some salad components and maybe your meat as well.
JPH: You’re talkin’ a brunch. Like, it can count for a breakfast and a lunch at the same time, and it’ll get you all the way to supper.
NE: I think that undeniably we have some meat and potatoes, where it’s heavy and thick, but then we also have a lot of light stuff that goes around it, which would be like fruit that goes around your breakfast. We’ve got those strawberries that sit at the side of the plate, and you pick at them every once and a while.
JPH: Yeah, and we’ve got the filler too – a little bit of onion, a little bit of green pepper, and there’s a little bit of milk from time to time.
NE: And the last track definitely ends with a bit of whipped cream. [Laughs] It’s very gratuitous, borderline masturbatory on our part in writing it. It was like, “Yeah, yeah, let’s do that. Let’s do it one more time, but twice as slow.” That would definitely be like your “treat.”
JPH: I think breakfast is a really good describer. The core of it, the bagel, takes a lot of prep and specific ingredients, and you need to take time till it’s supreme. But when you bake it, it smells so good.
Viridians are currently hitting the road hard in support of Again, Dangerous Visions. They’ll be back in Winnipeg to serve up tasty portions of tunes for hungry listeners in June.