In their element Montreal’s Movèzerbe embrace natural essentials to form new matter BOYZ IN DA WOODS: Movèzerbe

by MORGAN STEIKER “Quebec is small, you know,” explains Boogat from a park bench in the Plateau, his toddler son hanging from his shoulders. “So if you’re into hip hop, you know who raps.” The eight-man collective behind Dendrophile, one of the most revitalizing albums to come out of the province, already had a deep history of music separately before forming as Movèzerbe. “We all knew of each other but we were involved in our own projects for a long time. At some point, you wanna try something else, mix with other people and go different places. We knew we all had something in common, so we connected and that’s it.” The group consists of Les 2 Toms, Karim Ouellet, Accrophone, Boogat, AbidboX and KenLo, who all trade places between rhyming, beatmaking and playing live instruments. But when it came to putting all those forces under one roof to create an album, the key phrase was quite literally “under one roof.” “Everybody has their girlfriends, cell phones, different schedules and everything else. We quickly realized that the only way we’re gonna do an album is if we get away somewhere where nobody will have anything to do.” “We found a place in the Eastern Townships and went out there for a whole month in the middle of the winter,” adds KenLo. “We didn’t bring no texts or beats with us. We would wake up, jam in the morning, go for a walk in the woods and record in the evenings.” Musically, one of the most interesting things to come out of this project was the recording of natural elements. Songs like “Eau,” “Bois,” and “Papier” all sample their namesakes. “At some point, we decided that we had to do some roots music,” says KenLo. “Even if it wasn’t reggae, it had to be roots. Sampling paper or wood is something that most people would never do, so we said, ‘Let’s do it.’ Plus when you have eight people doing music together, you can’t really do anything stupid or bad because someone will have to say, ‘This is wack.’” “We’re just trying to blow up,” he adds with a smile, “like, physically blow up.” WITH KARMA ATCHYKAH AND K6A AT CLUB SODA ON FRIDAY, MAY 8, 8 P.M., $14, ALL AGES