by RUPERT BOTTENBERG

Montreal's Freeworm, aka Vincent Letellier, made his mark with his last CD Vegetation = Fuel, which showcased his digital cut-ups of organic environmental sounds, be they found in nature or buskers at your local metro stop. Excepting a track or two and despite its tree-huggin' title Solar Power, Freeworm's new follow-up is anything but that. There's hip hop in there, a spaghetti western track, spacey funk rock, folky bits, psychedelic jangles, nods to Motown and James Last and more. What gives? The Mirror dug up the 'worm for some answers.

Mirror: With the exception of "No Hands," which is classic Freeworm, this isn't the record I expected. It's not so much a change as an expansion, but I have to ask, what happened?

Vincent Letellier: There was a certain set of rules that guided all the tracks on Vegetation = Fuel, rules I'd made up for myself, to have fewer choices. Then I did documentary music after that, and remixes for other people. So I used the same set of rules five or six times. At one point, I'd lent that sound out so much that it wasn't mine anymore. So I had to break free, break all my own rules and do a bunch of different things. I had my own little language, I broke it open, and now this is the anything-goes album.

M: Do you have a new set of rules for yourself now?

VL: No. I think that's why the album's so anything-goes. No language, music or technical barriers. I did the same type of overdubs and cutting up that I did on Vegetation = Fuel, but I also tried writing a song, giving it to an arranger for an orchestra and recording that. The classic way of doing it. I tried all the different techniques to find my way around. I never had the time to unify the sound - I did the whole album without taking a break - but that's really cool, I think.

M: Some of it is very '60s, with a Motown or Beach Boys or even James Last sound. You're perceived as an electronic musician, but these new tracks go back to a classic, pre-electronic approach to making music.

VL: After doing so much soundscape stuff, having melody lines too stretched out to be recognizable, I wanted to have a change from the typical ambient thing with a lot of layers. This time I wanted to do stuff that I could walk down the street singing to myself.

M: The hip hop track that I like best is the one I can't understand. It's "Chidazi," the one in the Malawian language Chichewa, with MC Chichwemwe Miller. What's his deal?

VL: He came into the live shows for Vegetation = Fuel, about halfway through. That's when the show really started to pick up. Before, it was just me playing keyboards, not knowing how a live show works. This is his first recording, but he was a monster on stage. His mother is Malawian, that's where he was born, but his father is German, so he never knew if he was white or black. He has white shame and black anger at the same time, so he's a really colourful character - a borderline split personality, but now he's more focused. It's what makes him want to do so many sounds with his voice and work with all languages. The way I work is to always have a maximum of colours, and he's a maximum of colours on two feet.

Freeworm launches Solar Power with a live set at MEG, with Gordon Field, Toires, DJ Cheb I Sabbah, Irina Mikhailova and Trevor Walker at SAT tonight, Thursday, Oct. 23, 9pm, $25

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