by Shanell Dupras
After the great success of Les Jupes’ Modern Myths, their new EP is bound to be exciting! Stylus sat down with Michael Falk (guitar/vocals) and David Schellenberg (bass) over some hot noodles and chopstick lessons to talk about the upcoming EP, their endless touring, and a brand new member.
Stylus: Tell me a bit about Negative Space.
David Schellenberg: We did the EP in March I believe, with Cam Loeppky and Rusty Matyas (of Imaginary Cities). It was just over a weekend. We did the bulk of it in about three days, and then we just did some…
Michael Falk: Overdubs and edits.
Stylus: So it’s ready to go then?
MF: It is ready to go… We’re getting design work.
Stylus: What kind of plans do you have for cover art?
MF: We don’t have a set idea yet. We’ve asked permission from someone to use art of theirs, hopefully they say yes… It’s still a little up in the air.
Stylus: When you think of your new EP, what colour comes to mind? How does this vary from Modern Myths?
DS: I see some really nice bright colours. I see some pink hues and some yellow hues… I guess Modern Myths would be a very nice dark purple.
MF: [The EP] is like a ray of sunshine.
DS: With very dark subject matter and really nice sounding songs…
Stylus: What kind of subject matter?
MF: “Save Your Friends” [is about] …
DS: How we lost literally all of our friends and potentially loved ones to play rock and roll music.
MF: It’s about what you sacrifice to chase something and missing the life you had and getting really tired. Coming home at the end of a long day and being utterly exhausted and kind of questioning what the heck you’re doing.
DS: Getting frustrated with the in and outs of people in a band. That’s a recurring theme.
MF: “Hold Me Down” is kind of framed in the struggles of a small town and people who think or act differently…
DS: It all just sounds like pink and purple hues to me. All very happy go lucky… [and] “Contract Killers;” a song that you wrote like how long ago?
MF: Like 2005? It was just a dark song, but playful. Trying to take a little window into the world of mafia hit men because I like that kind of stuff…
Stylus: I’ve read that you’ve been touring endlessly. Is this an exaggeration?
MF: For almost two years we travelled somewhere almost every month… Something important was happening every month for two years…
DS: I did the math. We played in seven countries in the last two years…
Stylus: What kind of cultural differences did you experience?
MF: That drive from Northern Germany to Milan. It’s not really cultural experiences, it’s just chaos… So leaving Germany, crossing over into Switzerland, driving through the Alps. [We drove through a] major crazy snowstorm, like stupid blizzard.
DS: I’ve never seen anything like it here.
MF: Not speaking the language, and getting lost twice… Traffic once you get to Milan is… Italians are crazy! At the end of that we got into Milan and we needed directions. So we stopped at this brand new, crazy posh hotel. It was like out of a crazy architecture magazine… Having been in a van and stinking, and driving through the Alps in the snow storm… And coming out the other side and walking into this hotel to ask to use the phone to call your friend and get directions to her place!
DS: I’d say when we were in France; that was the weirdest cultural experience… You’d see 14-year-old boys wearing Gucci shirts and smoking cigarettes. I was so confused!
MF: In Cannes, it’s not like a farmers market, but a little market in the middle of the town on Sundays. So you have all these 75-year-old, rich southern France, Mediterranean women rummaging through piles of designer clothes that are brought in off some discount truck or something. Weird crazy make up, like once you’ve lost your mind a little bit, the kind of make up you’d do…
Stylus: Asking about influences is kind of boring… so to reword it – and I don’t mean this offensively – is there anyone you feel you sound alot like, or are ripping off?
MF: I don’t know. We’re definitely influenced by a bunch of stuff…
DS: Smashing Pumpkins.
MF: There are a few Smashing Pumpkins moments that happen…
DS: We don’t really agree on any music… [but] we listen to Kanye West…
MF: Kanye and Tegan and Sara are probably the two biggest band influences, which we don’t actually sound anything like.
DS: Well we went into the studio we had all these drum ideas from listening to Kanye West. It’s not so much songwriting, but how everything moves and how everything sounds. So yeah, I guess Kanye West… I think all of Les Jupes could sing you front to back the entire [album] My Twisted Dark Fantasy.
Stylus: How did you guys recruit your new keyboard player Adam Fuhr?
MF: I recorded his old band years ago, and I hadn’t seen his new band but David had.
DS: I was raving about Adam’s band Yes We Mystic, which he played guitar in. I knew that he could play, and that he had a bunch of years of piano under his belt. So when Mike was going to record them, I said “Mike I don’t care if this record needs piano, make this kid play piano for you because he’s going to be good.” And so he did…
Stylus: With the release of your EP, what are your plans for the fall and winter?
MF: We’re going to go all over the place. West Canadian tour, we’ve got some shows in Europe getting lined up. We’ve got some shows in the states getting lined up.
Come catch Les Jupes as they release Negative Space at the West End Cultural Centre on September 20.