#so even if it’s not amazing i’m enjoying writing it (although somewhat shamefully) and at least there’s that

[theoldworldsrunnerup]

Currently at 3,700 words. I feel kind of proud of myself for writing so much within a few days but I’m a little embarrassed that I’m so passionate about the subject matter lol

[daggerzine]

The Simon Provencher interview (by Tom Murphy)

Simon Provencher is perhaps best known for his frenetic and creative guitar work for the post-punk band VICTIME out of Québec. But on March 26, 2021 the musician released his debut EP Mesures via Michel Records. It is six tracks of free jazz collages that bear favorable comparison to the avant-garde compositions of Anthony Braxton as Provencher makes creative and playful use of clarinet, electric guitar, percussion and processing to convey a strong sense of mood and place while making one very aware of aspects of the environment around us we often tune out. In pairing aspects of exploratory jazz and musique concrète, Provencher has given us an album that is both soothing and keeps us grounded in the present. The composer and musician recently answered some questions we presented to him via email about the nature of his music, its inspirations and methods of crafting its elegantly evocative passages.

 Dagger Zine (Tom Murphy): Mesures will probably hit some people's ears as akin to a free jazz or spontaneous composition type of record. How did you approach putting together these songs and experimenting with sound compared with maybe how you do with VICTIME?

Simon Provencher: People wouldn’t be wrong in these assumptions at all. Mesures is a record that was written very quickly. I decided to trust my first instincts for much of the record. With VICTIME, our approach has always been more iterative. By that I mean that we’ll loop “embryonic” parts over and over again, slowly changing elements, morphing the composition until we found ourselves happy with how everything sounded together. I’m still very much into this way of writing, but Mesures was a much more immediate affair.

For me, inspiration almost always comes from timbre, usually through loads of guitar pedals. In this case though, I wanted to see what sounds and textures I could get out of the electric guitar without using any external effects or even amplification. Timbre was still my main concern, but in a more subtle way I guess. I slightly detuned the strings and experimented with resonances, chord shapes, finger placement, fingernails, etc. I also “prepared” the guitar: I jammed objects between the strings and tied sewing thread to the strings (if you pinch the thread with slightly wet fingers and slide them around, you get eerie, reverse-like effects).

Enough about me though, another big change was that this record was made remotely with two new collaborators, Elyze Venne-Deshaies (clarinet) and Olivier Fairfield (percussion). Both of them had “carte blanche” (pardon my french) to do whatever they wanted. I can’t speak much to their personal approach to improvisation, but both of them are seasoned veterans and delivered absolutely amazing performances.

 D: Some people might think of any kind of music declared experimental is a barrier to its acceptance but your album seems to me very accessible as a form of pure expression. Do you have a sense of why your songs seem so open and, as one reviewer put it, welcoming?

 S: I don’t quite know actually. I do agree that the songs have a certain softness to them that was certainly somewhat intentional. When I did the initial guitar parts, I did set out to make something conventionally “beautiful”, or at least “not harsh”. I don’t really have the vocabulary to describe what happened there, but the resonances, repetitions and patterns definitely implied a soft mood from the get go.

I guess this foundation inspired Elyze and Olivier to also play with softer tones, to approach the music with warmth and subtlety in mind. They really “got” the vibe of the music without me ever telling them anything about my intentions. A “shift” of some kind happened when the clarinet parts were added to the drums and guitars. I felt like the mood of the pieces almost completely changed (in a positive way, of course). I think there’s something to the linearity of Elyze and Olivier’s playing, in contrast with the repetitive, hypnotic guitars that gives the music a sense of wandering aimlessness which I really love.

On the audio engineering side, I did intentionally mix the songs with a certain softness in mind. We added some warm tape saturation to some of the sounds and carved out a lot of higher frequencies. On the songs with feedback and noise, Simon Labelle, who mastered the record, made it so that when the clarinets get louder, the high-frequency content ducks out of the way a little bit. This nifty little trick does help out a lot with making the noisy songs more warm and inviting too.

 D: Listening through the album I found it resonated with the albums of Anthony Braxton and Ornette Coleman. The former of which never considered his music part of jazz though he is often associated with that form of music and the latter who expanded the range, dynamics and tonal choices of jazz. Were you inspired by in any way by those forms of abstract yet emotionally expressive music? How might you describe its impact on what you've done?

S: I totally was! I discovered Anthony Braxton through Québec jazz guitar great René Lussier. I’ve been a fan of Le Trésor de la Langue for a while and I got into his back catalog last year: his collaborations with Fred Frith, EAI stuff and more, some of which was released on “Les Disques Victo”. “Victo” stands for Victoriaville, a small city between Quebec and Montreal, where there’s a great contemporary music festival named FIMAV. Shamefully, I haven’t actually been to FIMAV yet, but I’ve loved finding recordings of some amazing concerts, a favourite being Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey’s 1987 Moment Précieux. I was amazed to find out about this rich local history of musical experimentation and improvisation. This record was very much inspired by the whole FIMAV sound.

Coleman is another great point of reference. His records and those of his collaborators, Don Cherry being another big one, all are major inspirations. As a guitar player, I especially got into James “Blood” Ulmer’s career. I really admire his approach to guitar and the immediacy and expressiveness of his music.

 I’m probably paraphrasing it all wrong, but Don Cherry said of Ornette Coleman’s “harmolodic” approach that instead of improvising from chords, like in bebop, you’d start with melodies and improvise to create new forms, harmonies, rhythms to try and reach a certain “brilliance” as he calls it. You’d try to make the music transcend. In harmolodic theory, melody, rhythm and harmony are treated as equals, no solos, no lead and accompaniment dichotomy, no strict timing, scale or tonality.

This is both quite simple but also quite hard to actually grasp in a musical setting, and I’m far from mastering any of it, nor is it necessarily something I strive for, but it is an inspiring way to conceive improvised music for sure.

 D: The first half of the album you make great use of what sounds like atonal melodies yet they perfectly convey the mood and lend a sense of texture. What informed employing those sounds in the songwriting?

S: I’ve always written music without much regard for tonality, key, etc. My musical background is still very much anchored in No Wave and noise music, where skronky chords and weird, unstable melodies are the norm rather than the exception. When playing, I really don’t think much about it, I follow what sounds good to me in the moment.

Looking back on the recorded music though, I feel like there is a lot of nuance to be found in atonality and imperfection. Detuned chords ringing out have such complex and interesting decaying resonances, you can almost hear the frequencies battling each other. These interactions between notes and lines that fall just short of resolving are part of the magic and intrigue of abstract music. In the case of Mesures, I think there’s something special with how some of the atonal, out of tune textures and weird synths clash beautifully with the in-tune clarinet parts, making either one “pop out” depending on where you focus your attention.

 D: The second half or at least the second three songs on the album use processed drones and what some might call noise underneath or in the background, although very much a presence in the mix, of the clarinets? What do you feel this almost contrast in sounds conveyed that say a more conventional arrangement might not?

The second half of the record is basically a rearrangement of the first three songs. There’s four clarinet parts in there! On the first side, they fade in and out of focus, but on side B, everything is there all at once.

This is basically the result of me simply “soloing” the clarinet takes in my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation, the software used to arrange and mix the music). When I heard the four clarinets at once, I really fell in love with the sound.

 So I knew I wanted this to be the focal point of the rearrangement, and I knew I wanted to add something. I just happened to be working with feedback that week, so it kind of fell in place. Feedback manipulation was a technical interest first, I had gotten a new guitar pedal called a Feedback Looper, which sends some of your output signal back into the input of a series of pedals. This creates self-oscillating and rich, detailed noises that are somewhat interactive and malleable. By turning some knobs and flicking some switches on ordinary guitar pedals, you end up with an infinite amount of possible glitches and shrieking high frequency tones.

I don’t know if my ears got accustomed to it or what, but I’ve come to really enjoy the sound of this process. I also really love the tactile aspect of it, it feels kind of like an unpredictable modular synthesizer. When I had recorded the feedback improvisation, which I did in one single take, I thought this sparse, harsh rearrangement was a nice contrast with the more warm, conventional first three songs. At that point, the record felt complete.

 D: The final three songs also remind me of Philip Glass in his soundtrack work wherein he mixes the playful and flowing with the dissonant. How would you say these sounds complement each other in your own music?

S: Especially on this release, while there are a lot of sounds that are contrasting with each other, I also feel like there is a sense of shared directionality. The song Et quart is a good example of this. The high feedback notes start out in almost complete opposition to the meandering low clarinet lines, but, as the song progresses, the sounds somehow seem to merge with each other and they end up flowing in the same direction for the song’s climax.

 D: What are some other artists operating now that you find interesting and/or inspirational and resonant with what you're doing?

There’s way too many to name them all, but I’ll try! I think there’s a very interesting local-ish scene around me. I admire the work of N NAO, either her solo releases or her collaborations with Joni Void. Sarah Pagé does mind-bending music with harp and effects; I’ve had the pleasure of catching her live in Ottawa just before the pandemic started last year. Kara-Lys Coverdale is also a major inspiration, so is Kee Avil, whose live show and guitar playing blew me away.

I also need to shout out my friend (and bandmate) Mathieu A. Seulement, whose end-year list allowed me to catch up on a lot of fantastic new music, including, but not limited to Ana Roxane’s Because of a Flower, Jasmine Guffond’s Microphone Permission, Caterina Barbieri’s Ecstatic Computation and, last but not least, Holly Herndon’s magnificent Proto.

  **the three Simon photos were taken by Charlotte Savoie

www.simonprovencher.bandcamp.com 

[jincherie]

Timid Mini Scenario | Sweets

Companion piece to Timid, set in the 2 months before they got the call about the cafe. Pairing: Jimin x Reader Genre: fluff, Hybrid!AU Words: not drabble length (2.8k+) Warnings: none Notes: As promised, one of the ‘drabbles’ I’m doing to fill in a little more of Jimin and the MC’s time together in Timid before the cafe is fixed and all that follows. Apparently I don’t know what a drabble is because this is entirely too long. I am writing another one that will come after this sometime soon (titled Uno, probably the same length).

Jimin accidentally eats all of your favourite cookies in the middle of the night and spends the entirety of the next day trying to keep it a secret.

Masterlist || Original oneshot. Timid | Companion short. Uno

The air was cool against the skin that was exposed where he lay in the bed, slowly causing him to wake more and more until he was blinking blearily, the dark ceiling greeting his sleepy eyes. The room was still cast in shadows, and it couldn’t have been any later than 1 or so in the morning. Why was he awake? Jimin sat up slowly, rubbing his face and yawning noticing his mouth was quite dry. He had no idea why he was awake, but since he was he may as well go and get a glass of water.

Coordinating his tired limbs to remove from the blanket was harder than he’d thought, and he would have fallen on his face had his arm not shot out to grip the bed post. He let out a soft breath, feeling his tail twitch behind him. He stood slowly, adjusting the waistband of his pants around his tail to a more comfortable position as he did so.

He had better luck navigating his way to the kitchen in the dark, eyes having eventually adjusted. If his silly human owne—housemate could do it in the dark, with her significantly weaker eyesight, then he could too. He tried to push the fact that he’d nearly thought of the woman as his owner from his mind and instead focused on reaching the kitchen and getting some water. He didn’t want to trip and wake her up, because then he’d probably have to explain why he was awake at such an ungodly hour and he didn’t even know why himself.

The kitchen was obviously a wider space than the hallway, so he had much less difficulty moving about in the dark. He still turned the light on in case, though. He was still half asleep and couldn’t account for his coordination skills right now.

He located a glass easily and filled it up, the cool liquid doing wonders for his dry mouth. He could feel his ears and tail moving happily. He finished the glass quickly and filled it up halfway, downing that in no time as well. Having gotten what he came for, he was about turn and leave when he sniffed out of habit and a the most appealing, delectable smell touched his senses. He froze in place, sniffing once more. That smelt amazing. He could feel his mouth beginning to water slightly. What was that?

He followed his nose to the pantry, sniffing once more to be sure it was in there before opening the doors as quietly as he could. They let out a tiny squeak in protest, but Jimin knew that you slept like the dead and although the sound of him crashing into a wall might have woken you, the tiniest squeak from a door on the other side of the house wasn’t going to.

Eyes searching the cupboard for the source of that delicious smell, they quickly located a box to the left on the very top shelf. His gasped softly. The cookies you had brought home yesterday! The ones you’d claimed to be your absolute favourite. How had he not smelt them before? Surely he would have noticed an aroma as appealing as this.

The longer he stood there taking in their scent, the more he longed for them. Surely it couldn’t hurt just to have a few? He knew you wouldn’t mind, you’d said everything here was his as much as it was yours. You actually encouraged him to take some things without asking every time, like when you’d made popcorn for a movie you were both watching and he kept asking each time before he took another handful. The thought made him smile. He was pretty sure you would support anything that made him happy, and these cookies… he was certain that even a couple of these cookies would make him very happy.

And so he decided, as he reached and brought the box down from the shelf, he was going to have a few, and then he was going to go to bed.

The box opened easily, and so did the plastic packet within. It wasn’t long before the first cookie was in his grasp and on its way to his eagerly awaiting mouth. The second the cookie hit his tastebuds he nearly cried. It was delicious, he’d never tasted anything like it. Usually he would take his time and nibble and savour his food, but he couldn’t help himself this time as he continued eating and the cookie disappeared within seconds. Licking the remaining crumbs from his lips, he reached for another one. Just a couple, then he would go to bed.

What felt like only a couple of cookies later he looked down and, to his absolute horror, found the box completely empty. He couldn’t believe his eyes. How had this happened?! He’d only had a few…

Directing his gaze down at his shirt he found it absolutely covered with the evidence of him scarfing down all the cookies, crumbs littering the chest area and collar of his t-shirt. A swipe of his tongue over his lips and a brush of his finger against his cheek found his face to be in a similar state. He felt ashamed. What had happened to his self control? They were just so delicious, he thought he’d been moderating how many he had, but in reality he’d just been scarfing them down without even realising. He was a mess.

Suddenly he realised the gravity of his situation. He’d just eaten the entire (and only) box of your favourite cookies! In the middle of the night no less! How was he supposed to explain this to you? Sure, he knew you’d be okay with him having a couple of the cookies, but all of them? At once? When you hadn’t even had a chance to have any yourself? He didn’t want to think about how you could possibly react to this.

A small part of him knew he was being irrational, knew that you truly wouldn’t mind that he’d had them all, but Jimin felt like he was in the middle of a crisis. He did not want to jeopardise how you felt about him in any way. What if you hated him after this? No, he took that back. He didn’t think you were capable of hate. What if you really dislikes him after this?

Panicking, he did the only thing he could think of and shoved the box and all the incriminating evidence deep, deep, deep into the kitchen bin, throwing some other things on top for good measure. He was going to bed, and he was going to sleep, and tomorrow he would absolutely not mention that he ate the entire box of your favourite cookies in the middle of the night.

.  .  . .  .  .

When you awoke the next morning, it was feeling refreshed. You hadn’t had a night’s sleep that good and restful in a long time. Stretching your limbs languidly, you let out a happy, satisfied sigh and slipped out of the bed. The floor was cool beneath your feet and you were thankful you wore socks as you made your way out of the bedroom into the kitchen.

The first thing you noticed was that Jimin wasn’t up yet, which was a little strange. He was usually up before you. You shrugged it off, however. Perhaps he was just enjoying an extra hour or so of sleep.

The second thing you noticed was that the bin was slightly overflowing. You stared at it a second. Huh. Well, you reasoned, you hadn’t exactly taken it out in a while, so it wasn’t really surprising. You’d have to take it out today.

Starting to hum a little, you went about the usual routine, turning the kettle on and moving to the pantry to retrieve the cereal. To you surprise, in your usual sweep of the pantry’s contents, you noticed that the box of cookies you’d left for Jimin was gone. You’d brought back two boxes of your all-time favourite cookies for the both of you to enjoy yesterday, and had shamefully already eaten the box you’d bought for yourself. You just couldn’t control yourself around those cookies, there was something about them that just removed all your inhibitions and turned you into a literal cookie monster. You hadn’t realised that Jimin had already eaten his. You made a note to ask him what he thought of them later, and if he wanted you to get more the next time you were out.

Still in a good mood, you continued making breakfast for both you and the cute hybrid currently staying with you. It was about half an hour before he finally emerged from his room down the hall, by which time you’d managed to have cereal and pancakes, along with some coffee, for both of you.

“Good morning!” you beamed at him, leaning against the bench.

Jimin returned the smile, before his gaze fell to the open pantry doors behind you and he shot ramrod straight. He quickly moved over and shut them, letting out a laugh that sounded more nervous than anything. His ears twitched restlessly. “Hahaha, silly! Don’t leave the doors open or you’ll accidentally walk into them sometime!”

You raised a brow, noticing the odd lilt to his usually melodic voice that accompanied his somewhat strange behaviour, but simply let it go. You smiled at him. “That’s true.” You laughed. “Thanks for looking out for me Jiminie!”

He grinned brightly at the sound of your laughter, cheeks colouring pink in happiness. He moved away from the pantry, taking his place at the table and giving you a happy look as you joined him.

“Thank you for making breakfast again.” He said, somewhat bashfully, before digging in.

“You’re welcome.” You smiled, starting to eat your own breakfast. You ate in amicable silence for a while before your thoughts wandered and you grew curious as to whether Jimin had as good a sleep last night as you did.

“How did you sleep last night, Jiminie?” you asked with a small smile, fully expecting him to flash one in return.

Instead the hybrid jumped, nearly choking on his food. You watched in worry as he coughed a little before soothing his throat with the drink next to his plate. “Uh, I, uh… It was good. Yeah, good.”

You watched as he pointedly avoided your eyes and focused on the food before him. He was acting weird, definitely, but you wondered why. You decided to ease over it for now, pretending like you hadn’t noticed his odd behaviour. You’d find out why he was acting strange later.

“That’s good,” you said, returning to your own meal and moving your gaze so he felt less pressured. “I slept really well too! I woke up feeling so good this morning. I haven’t slept that well in a long time.”

Jimin hummed, offering you a brief smile before stuffing his mouth with food. You wondered what could possibly be up with him.

.  .  .  .

The day had finally come to an end, and with it— your patience. You needed to know why Jimin was acting so strange. The whole day he’d been really weird. He’d nearly shrieked when you went to take out the trash, offering hurriedly to do it himself and not even waiting for an answer before quickly taking the bag from your hands and dashing off out the front door.

Around lunch time you’d been mumbling to yourself about making some cookies, since you felt like baking something. He’d picked up on your words from the other side of the house with his incredible hearing and come running to tell you cookies were overrated and you should be thinking more about making cakes and cupcakes. He had then proceeded to make a hasty escape, with the excuse that he had yet to make his bed.

Another time you’d gone to get your cup noodles out of the pantry for a snack and at the sound of your footsteps in the kitchen he’d come racing in. He’d hastily assured you that he’d make the noodles for both of you this time and proceeded to gently kick you out of your own kitchen. You’d moved to the loungeroom in shock. What was making him act so strange?

The final straw had been when you’d asked him at dinner if anything had happened that had made him act so differently. The poor hybrid had jumped, squeaked, and gone bright pink in the face before promptly ignoring your question and blurting, “You look really beautiful today!”

Not only had he completely avoided the question, but it had taken you an entire hour to recover from your flustered state at his comment. The time for answers was now, and you were going to get them.

“Jiminie~,” you cooed at the hybrid taking a seat on the couch next to you. He looked to you, a small smile on his face. You lifted the blanket, gesturing for him to come closer. He did, smiling shyly as he shuffled over and nestled into your side. He’d opened up a lot lately but still got a little shy at the prospect of cuddling with you.

You smiled at him, looping your arms around him and pulling him close, before pressing play on the movie. You had him right where you wanted him.

“Jiminie~” you cooed again, tightening your hold. He stiffened, seeming to sense that the situation was about to take a turn he wouldn’t like. You lifted a hand to begin gently petting his ear, arms still firm in their grip. “I know something is up with you~. Please tell me what it is~”

He seemed to be torn between succumbing to your petting and remaining in complete control of his actions. “y/n—“ he whined, straining lightly in your hold, the slightest rumbling bunny purr in his throat. “I’m- there’s nothing—“

“Don’t fib, Jiminie.” You crooned, fingers moving against his side. He jerked, a sudden giggle escaping him before he gasped. You continued. “Tell me what’s wrong, please~.”

He opened his mouth, a stray giggle escaping before he attempted once more to deny it. “T-There’s nothing—“

“That’s it! Jiminie, tell me what’s up and I’ll stop! Oherwise…” you left your sentence hanging and instead demonstrated with your hands, beginning to tickle him relentlessly. He shrieked, letting out uncontrollable giggles, writhing in your arms. You were a master tickler, he hadn’t stood a chance.

In just a matter of seconds he shrieked once more, “Ok-kay—pfhaha— fine I’ll tell y-you! y/n, p-please—!”

You withdrew your hands, staring at him and waiting expectantly. He had his eyes closed, and was leaning back against the couch, breathing heavily as he recovered from your sudden attack. He bit his lip after a while, seeming slightly distraught. He opened his eyes and glanced at you briefly before averting his eyes.

It was a couple of moments before he spoke again. He seemed to be deliberating on what to say and how to say it. “I…”

You waited, holding your breath. He closed his eyes and spoke in one big rush. “IgotupforsomewaterlastnightandateallyourfavouritecookiesI’msosorry!”

You blinked. “….What?” you asked.

Jimin glanced at you before looking away again, heaving a sigh. “I got up last night to get a glass of water, and I saw your cookies… the box of your favourite ones… in the cupboard… and I ate some…. I ate them all, the whole box… I’m so sorry y/n!!”

You blinked at him. Was he talking about the box of cookies… that you left for him? Specifically for him? Was this… why he was upset?

Jimin looked seriously distraught and you honestly wanted to facepalm. This soft, squishy idiot.

“Jimin, you know… those were your cookies? I bought a box for each of us and I already ate mine. That box was yours.” You said, looking at him and genuinely trying not to laugh.

The bunny hybrid froze, eyes finding yours. You watched as he processed your words, and consequently realised that he had been stressing about nothing. His face went pink, and he stared at you a couple seconds more, before turning and burying his face in your shoulder with an embarrassed groan. “Oh my god.” He mumbled into your shoulder. “Oh my god.”

You laughed and patted his back. “There there Bun, it happens to the best of us.” He groaned from your shoulder, pulling back to lean against the couch and cover his face in embarrassment.

“I can’t believe this.” he whined. “I’m an idiot bun.”

You giggled at his words, pulling him close again and kissing his head. “Yeah, you are, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

The pink blush on his cheeks didn’t leave for the rest of the movie, and neither did the small, happy grin.