Unstoppable

Dancer-cum-producer
Lunice lets loose

ON TO THE NEXT THING: Lunice

by ERIN MACLEOD

When Lunice Fermin Pierre II says, “There’s been a lot of stuff this year,” he’s not kidding. “I’ve been in so many random things,” he laughs, describing a Rona-sponsored corporate dance tour across Canada that led to a performance at Just for Laughs, and how one of his online YouTube dance videos was featured, leading to potential offers of work on U.K. music videos and free clothes.

But this is all “so on the side,” he says, since he’s now putting energy into music. After all, 2008 was the year Lunice connected with Mofomatronix and got involved in Montreal’s successful, New Yorker-approved, Megasoid-fuelled Turbo Crunk parties after his very first shot at performing his own work—big, bassy stuff with a melodic, sweetly melancholic touch that’s quite unique among the new crop of producers whose dancefloor bangers are alternately labelled as street bass, lazer bass or wonky.

The 20-year-old Concordia Intermedia/Cyberarts student has been at it for a while. “I started out with graffiti, then b-boying, going to competitions.” A former member of 701 squad breakdancing crew, Lunice started dancing in his early teens. Then, at around 16, the proficient beatboxer got the idea to try some music.

“Music only came up one day when I was with a friend and we were thinking about what we were going to do later on. And I thought, when I get around 20 or so, I’m going to get some equipment and start making music, just for fun. I first tried in 2004. I made one or two beats and thought, nah, too complicated. So I stopped until 2006, and then I started to get the hang of it and it was so fun. There’s no way I’m stopping now.”

It’s a good thing, given the attention Lunice has been getting. Having started his MySpace “for fun,” he’s linked with folks not only in Montreal but across Canada, the U.S. and the U.K.—he’s got a collaborative EP, entitled Paper Spray, with Baltimore’s Al Ripken Jr., due for release in January on Glasgow’s upstart Codeine Drums label. There are plans for stateside dates with Turbo Crunk and a potential Japan trip.

As people get more and more curious, this prolific Montrealer just keeps cranking out the tunes. He’s got piles of music up on his MySpace, a lot of which he refers to as his “old stuff.” For Lunice, this means tunes from a few months ago—he’s committed to keeping it fresh. “I’m always on to some other thing.”