by SCOTT C

Like so many of the ambitious and creative musical projects that Montreal has to offer, you may not have heard about the Moondata LABproject sessions that have been happening at O Patro Vys since 2003. The event assembles musicians, DJs and visual artists who collaborate in impromptu performances that lay waste to traditional musical boundaries and focus on inspired building. Past sessions have included contributions from Montreal originals like Alexis O’Hara, Patrick Watson, Jon Asencio (Ark of Infinity), Erik Hove (Soundclash), Sarah Neufeld (Arcade Fire) and Mathieu Charbonneau (Torngat), some of whom you might see at the launch party for the new CD Satellite: LABprojects 2003-2005. The disc features 14 tracks recorded with spontaneity intact from several of the LABproject sessions over two years. Moondata will also share the release party with collaborator P-Love, who’s dropping his first full-length LP All Up In Your Mind on Montreal’s Bully Records. The Mirror spoke to both P-Love and LABprojects founder Matt Lederman right here in Montreal.

Mirror: Do you think a night like this is a microcosm of what Montreal is all about, and what makes this city so great?

Matt Lederman: Definitely. A friend of mine who’s a promoter from Toronto came in one night and had his mind blown. He thought it was amazing, but he said it would never work in Toronto. Montreal musicians always seem ready to share, and everybody I’ve worked with is really open and ready to collaborate and have fun. Without that spirit, this whole thing would never work.

M: How does it work?

ML: A lot of musicians will sort of cling to the idea of their own songs, so I ask people not to bring their own stuff, but to bring a musical idea that you’re willing to share with everyone, and we’ll see what happens with it. Some people come with loose grooves, while others come with fully thought-out melodies and chords, and may end up using something from the sessions in their own work. There’s never a fear of ideas being stolen. If a certain group really works, you’ll see those musicians collaborating on each other’s records and individual projects.

M: So there are nights where everything comes together, and then others where everything goes completely wrong?

ML: I’ve never experienced a night going completely wrong. I may have felt that way during a show, though (laughs). There’s one show in particular where it was very tense on stage. It wasn’t animosity...

M: Kind of like, where is this going?

ML: Yeah, exactly. It just so happened that the audience was also very small, so I was thinking, “There’s nobody here, and I don’t know where this music is going...” When the night was over, some of my friends who were there said it was the best night yet, so go figure.

Back to the roots

M: You’ve contributed to the LABproject sessions, but have people been surprised to find out just how musical P-Love is on this new LP?

P-Love: I think if I had put this out three or four years ago, it would have been more of a shock to people, because up to that point I had been doing DJ battles and Tableturns and only a few people knew I played trumpet at McGill. With stuff I’ve done with Sixtoo and Moondata, I’ve been able to show people that DJing is a small part of the bigger picture that goes way back to when I was six years old and started taking piano lessons.

M: So you’re very comfortable being called “classically trained.”

PL: Oh yeah. I’d totally be fronting if I wasn’t. The first musical training I had was piano and trumpet, so it didn’t make any sense to try and get away from that. The music got a lot easier to make once I came to terms with the fact that I wasn’t a hip hop producer (laughs).

M: Did you ever feel like it was a requirement to go from battle DJ and turntablist to hip hop production?

PL: Yeah! That’s exactly what I felt, and why it was hard to make this album. When I hooked up with Kilo-C in Vancouver years ago, he was kind of like a DJ mentor to me. He put it in my head that producing a hip hop record was the culmination of your DJ career. I came to my own crossroads though, and that included not only hip hop, but jazz and classical as well.

At Main Hall on Saturday, Sept. 24, 9:30 p.m., $8

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