Where were we, again?

>> Jazz Pharmacy's new album Amnesia hasn't forgotten what it means to be original

by SCOTT C

Situated behind the dreary backside of the Molson Centre, right on one of the most depressing strips of St-Antoine you've ever seen, lies the headquarters of Jazz Pharmacy. Tucked away beyond the hustle of rush-hour traffic and Molson Centre mayhem lies the studio where the terms "ambient-funk-hop," "drugstore funk" and plain old "flunk," have become part of a daily musical occurrence that's been going on for years. The four-man team of Phil Clarke (keys, vocals), Eddy Cola (drums), Dave Bennet (sound design, guitar) and Fraser Nash (bass) have been slaving away for longer than you can imagine in order to release their new album Amnesia, a frantic yet polished drive into their own unanswered musical questions. With their own studio acting as the seed for this now-finished product, I talked to Eddy and Phil about the trials and tribulations of giving birth.



The absent-minded perfectionist:

Phil Clarke

Mirror: I thought the new record was supposed to come out with the turn of the millennium. That would make Amnesia about a year late, so what the hell took you so long?

Phil Clarke: Well, we recorded our first EP on an eight-channel mixer with one compressor and a couple of mics. Then we decided to do a "serious" recording and ended up at Mastercut. We recorded there, and when we were half done we'd already spent a lot of money.

M: Is that when you first started thinking about getting your own studio setup?

PC: We thought it would be better if we found the money to make the investment on our own gear, and that's what we did. We bought some better mics and a 24-channel mixer, and then a little later on we got really lucky in that we came into a whole lot of studio gear for next to nothing.

M: That's pretty lucky, all right.

PC: It was a blessing, but the fact that we always had new gear that we were learning how to use properly, combined with my constant feeling that we could sound a lot better, made things take a while. It took three or four months just to set it up, then five or six to figure everything out and get used to music software and recording using the computer. We basically learned to be engineers over the last year.

M: All right, so that explains the delay.

PC: You don't even know how many times our computer crashed, too. A lot of work was lost. We were originally going to start the album with the sound of our computer crashing (laughs) because when it crashes it creates these soundbytes. We had about 15 minutes of crash soundbytes to play with.

M: But is that so far off from the sound designs that Dave Bennet has woven so neatly into the fabric of your record?

PC: Well, it's more machine-like and just harsh, so we wound up not using those sounds at all. There might be a snippet of it somewhere.

M: What was it like mixing half the album at Electric Lady Studios in New York?

PC: Well, when we went down there, D'Angelo's album Voodoo had just come out, and having been blown away by that record [also recorded and mixed at Electric Lady] it was really exciting. I'm a Hendrix groupie too, so I'm walking through there thinking about how they gutted a nightclub here so Hendrix could hang out with friends and party and play. It's like, "Hendrix walked down these stairs..." The bathroom is still the same as it was in the '70s, the way he decorated it. It's immediately psychedelic and I don't think the Jimmy Hendrix vibe has diminished at all.

M: What about recording equipment and gear?

PC: Oh, man! Right away I was like, "Did he use any of this gear? Is our signal passing through the same circuits as he did?" (laughs) But there's almost no gear left that he actually used, save for a few mic stands. It's all been replaced. The place is beautiful, though. We mixed in the small room called the "Purple Room," but we went down the main staircase to the big performance room and that's where I really freaked out. There was this big piano that was slightly out of tune that they used for a few tracks on D'Angelo's album. I think anyone who went there would be inspired, the same way some freaks get inspiration from being in Graceland or seeing John Lennon's white piano. If I had the budget I'd do a lot of work there (laughs).

M: I think that every band secretly or openly emulates some other musical inspiration. What's the case with the music of Jazz Pharmacy?

PC: In the beginning, a lot of people said I sounded like one of the singers from Steely Dan.

M: Donald Fagan!

PC: Yeah. And when we would do funk covers people said we sounded like Jamiroquai, which I could sort of see. I mean, I do sound like a white guy singing soul music (laughs).

M: Because that's what you are! (laughs)

PC: But if I ever tried to imitate anybody it was definitely Stevie Wonder, and I pretty much realized early on that you have to get past imitation and just let everything come together and sound like yourself, so I've been working on that.

M: Do you think Stevie Wonder has made a decent album since Hotter Than July?

PC: He's had at least one good song on every album after that. At least.



The dreaded voice of logic: Eddy Cola

M: Anybody who knows Jazz Pharmacy as a group will know that you are definitely the most practical and business-minded in the band. That being the case, what's the next logical step for you guys now that Amnesia is finally finished?

EC: It's now time to turn the record into a crazy live show that we can tour and push the record with.

M: Why should people come to see you live?

EC: Because we rock. No, we've never been able to put down on record what we do live, and believe me, we've tried. In this case we didn't want to. I think we have a good live show and it's just getting better and better. We've become more of a unit now that there's four of us contributing to the band, and we've been concentrating and focusing on making a real kick-ass show.

M: I see you've had yet another bass player shift.

EC: Yep. Around the middle of the album, our previous bassist Sandy Mamane made up his mind to go back to school, something we weren't expecting at all. But good or bad, the decision was his.

M: Is he studying music?

EC: Yeah, he's studying jazz and bass and stuff. He'd really taken an interest in harmony and piano over the year, took a little turn and went that route. So the first person who came to everyone's mind as a replacement was Fraser Nash, because he was there at the beginning.

M: He was your original bass player?

EC: Yep. So over the months we had lots of talks and dinners and meetings, hanging out, and came to an agreement and an understanding between the four of us what would work and how it could work. We're continuing to make things happen that way, finding out what everyone's needs, wants and limits are.

M: Does calling the album Amnesia have anything to do with the amount of spliff you guys went through while recording this thing?

EC: (laughs) Partially. Sometimes in the studio you don't even remember what's going on, what day it is, if it's day or night, sunny or cloudy. We have no windows here so it's like we're just lost in our own little world. We're also trying to start over again, as a new unit.

M: What about courting the majors and the world of video, which you guys have just experienced for the first time?

EC: My approach has always been to try and build our own infrastructure, so as to create a living for ourselves. Something that will allow us to continue making music for and by ourselves. I'm definitely into the idea of being on a major label and all the good things that it can give us, though. But I guess that doing it on our own has taught us to be independent, as well as the downsides. We're not as naïve as a young band going in and won't be as easily swayed to just sign anything. I hope our foundation is strong enough that even if there are no deals, we can still keep going, touring and making records.

M: So is your video in heavy rotation?

EC: The video for "Born Leader" is in active rotation, which is a little less than heavy.

M: So have you made the shift to image consciousness, now that you're on TV?

EC: Not at all. The video was great. We had a really great director in Lewis Cohen who worked with a concept that Phil came up with originally. It's on MusiquePlus right now. Some people have seen it on the air but I haven't seen it yet.

CD launch with guests Inhabitant and Scott C at Cabaret on Friday, Feb. 2, 9pm, $10