by Sheldon Birnie
Reform Party have been called “one of Saskatoon’s hardest working bands” before. Hailing from such a thriving musical community, Reform Party have put themselves on a mission “to give new music a punch in the nose.” This Saturday, they’ll be doing just that here in Winnipeg, debuting their new EP Perpetual Motion of Modern Man. Stylus caught up with Enver, bass player of Reform Party, for a quick chat last week.
Stylus: You guys are from Saskatoon. Word is you guys have been in a bunch of bands before this one. Can you tell me a little bit about how Reform Party got started?
Enver: This one came about when we started jamming, the four of us. Our leader singer, Christian, had an album release party. He’s been an independent artist for years under the moniker Jay the Aquanaut. A hip-hop MC. We ended up being his backing band for a CD release party that he had last year in March. From there, we just continued playing together, then writing some original songs. With my background I just brought some punk riffs to the table. Our guitarist Levy, who I played with in another band, we just play well together. So that’s how we came up with the first few songs.
Stylus: And those are the songs that made up your EP?
Enver: Yeah. That would be the three songs that were on the EP. Those are some of the earliest songs we came up with. Just the ones that we felt worked really well. So we went into the studio with our really good friend and cranked them out just to introduce the world to our band. We have a new EP coming out at the beginning of this tour. We’re going to be touring our six song EP, our official debut.
Stylus: Can you talk a little about that record? What went into this new EP?
Enver: Over the course of the months after released the first EP, what we call our Digital 3P. We hung out a lot, wrote new songs, and picked six that we felt worked really well together. It’s called Perpetual Motion of the Modern Man. And, yeah, it’s a great collection of songs. We’re really excited to play it out. We recorded it in Saskatoon. The format for getting it out to the world is a little bit different. We’re going to have it online as a free download. But at our shows, we’re going to sell the album artwork for it in the form of a two-sided poster with a digital download code on it.
Stylus: That’s cool. I’ve seen that a few times now. Interesting way of getting the music and art out there. Where are you taking this on tour?
Enver: We start in Winnipeg at the Frame Arts Building [June 9th] with Viridians and Grand Beach. Then our next show is in Toronto at the legendary Horseshoe Tavern for their new music Tuesday night there. Then Montréal the next night. Then we’re going to hang out during the week of NXNE. We’re actually on stand-by right now, so we’re going to be hanging around. If we get a call, we get a call. [laughs]. If not, well, we have Ottawa and Kitchener later in the week. Then we’ll roll back. Just a quick one.
Stylus: Saskatoon’s got a pretty cool music scene these days. Where do you guys fit in there?
Enver: I love going to shows. All of us guys really love checking out new bands in the city. Saskatoon’s music scene is really supportive. It’s not that tight knit. There’s lots of different styles of music, and it seems like everyone is going to check out each other’s bands. The Broadway scene, so-to-speak. Amigo’s always has really good shows from week to week. We’re all about eclectic bills with Reform Party. We’ve played with psyche bands, we’ve played with dance groups. Fuzzy indie rock bands. It’s a really, really good time to be playing music in Saskatoon.
Check out Reform Party when they hit Winnipeg this weekend alongside Viridians and new comers to the scene Grand Beach.