![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.stylusmagazine.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/alamode.jpg\")
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by Chris Bryson<\/b><\/p>\n
Dominique Lemoine\u2019s <\/span>\u00c0 La Mode is a vibrant melding of indie, synth, and dream pop, old and new, that tows the tradition of light and dark dichotomy. Where brightness and optimism share space within a melancholic embrace, and does so seamlessly, blending styles for a bold, beaming, open and endearing emotional escape.<\/span>Since its inception, Lemoine says that \u00c0 La Mode \u201chas gone through a lot of changes,\u201d with \u201cfour or five configurations\u201d in the mix. The band started five years ago where Lemoine says they played a few shows but stopped for whatever reason at the time. She then \u201cdecided to record some songs kind of for posterity,\u201d in case she wanted to hear her songs when she was older. \u201cAnd then that ended up leading to some interest,\u201d says Lemoine. \u201cSo I was like maybe I should play some live shows, so I got a new band together. And then we played together for about a year. And then after about a year we had a good amount of songs arranged so we decided to record. And that was the band that did <\/span>Perfection Salad <\/span><\/i>which came out in the fall.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Lemoine says that when she found that \u201cmost of the people in the band couldn\u2019t tour because of their job, their families, or where they lived,\u201d she \u201cput together a new band for the tour.\u201d The new band at this point, Lemoine explains, \u201cwas more like hired musicians for the most part,\u201d she then realized that what she needed was collaboration.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI wanted people a little more invested in the music,\u201d says Lemoine. \u201cIt\u2019s nice to play with professional musicians for sure but I prefer the collaborative, people putting the energy in to try to think of ideas together.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The band has now been pared down to a duo, with Lemoine doing synth, production, preprogrammed elements, and arranging electronic beats, and Ava Glendinning (who\u2019s also played with Bicycle Face, Eagle Lake Owls, and Hearing Trees) on electric guitar, along with vocal harmonies in the mix.<\/span><\/p>\n When Lemoine was young she discovered and fell in love with pop music. \u201cWhen I was younger I got very obsessed with music kind of overnight,\u201d says Lemoine. \u201cI think music is pretty powerful, so I think it probably shaped me as a person and also as my taste at the time. I think that I just fell in love with pop so hard, that I just never really fell out of love with it. I definitely don\u2019t premeditate the genre or anything like that I just kind of do what I like.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u00c0 La Mode\u2019s songs are sung in both French and English, which, at least to this listener, who only understands the latter, gives the sense of an added layer of depth and emotion to the sound. Talking about the inclusion of both languages, Lemoine says \u201cI guess I just worry that people at my shows, our shows, will not understand what I\u2019m saying a lot of the time. So hopefully the emotion can still come through because music is also a language. It\u2019s nice to be able to be involved in both the Francophone and Anglophone communities. Because those communities exist in Winnipeg and they\u2019re kind of separate right now. Hopefully they\u2019ll kind of meld more over time. But it\u2019s nice to be able to experience both.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n With transitioning to being a duo, Lemoine also intends to transition her sound towards being fully electronic, but with a twist. \u201cOnce we have enough songs and we\u2019re happy with the arrangement I would actually like to record them myself using a 4-track. So it would be running the electronic stuff onto one track, and then tracking the vocals and guitar and synth, and then getting it mixed from there,\u201d says Lemoine. \u201cBut I would love to record it on tape. I think that would suit the sound. Because we use a lot of 80\u2019s synth sounds, like sampled synths.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Taking the unconventional route of recording to tape will give <\/span>\u00c0 La Mode\u2019s sound an idiosyncratic effect. \u201cIt would give it a warmer and more lo-fi sound. And I also just want to be able to do it myself,\u201d says Lemoine. \u201cAnother thing that\u2019s cool about recording to tape is that you kind of have to get it on your first take so you perform it differently because it\u2019s like, I\u2019ve got to go for it and you probably perform with more abandon because you\u2019ve just got to go for it fully. So you\u2019ve got to be super prepared, and then you have to kind of be in it when you\u2019re playing, which is great.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In discussing dichotomies in her own music and music in general, Lemoine says, \u201cI sort of want to make music that\u2019s darker. I think a lot of the brightness comes from sort of being afraid of delving into the darkness of things too much even when that\u2019s what originally wants to come out. I always sort of want to add a little bit of humor or brightness because I\u2019m sort of anxious about that. And I actually would like to explore that a bit more and be okay with it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n a-lamode.bandcamp.com\/album\/perfection-salad<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Chris Bryson Dominique Lemoine\u2019s \u00c0 La Mode is a vibrant melding of indie, synth, and dream pop, old and new, that tows the tradition of light and dark dichotomy. Where brightness and optimism share space within a melancholic embrace, and does so seamlessly, blending styles for a bold, beaming, open and endearing emotional escape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}