Led through rainy streets and cold, dank corridors (fittingly enough, like a movie), I entered a cozy room. Tucked away in the bowels of a concrete behemoth of a building, I met up with Vancouverites Motion Soundtrack in their rehearsal space to chat about, amongst other things, their latest album, The Bridge, which was released in November 2003.

A band fairly young in their duration (about three years), they drew their lilting name from a casual morning-time conversation about… well, motion soundtracks. Drummer Niko Friesen explains, “It happened over breakfast one day. Me and Marc [guitarist Wild] were at breakfast and he kept referring to all these original motion picture soundtracks, until someone made the joke that we should call our band that. And immediately me and Marc both went, ‘Well, if we took the “original” out of that, it wouldn’t be bad.’ And we called Chad [vocalist/guitarist Horton] and he thought about it for a day, and he said, ‘Well, if we take the “picture” out, that wouldn’t be bad,’ and then it was… it stuck.” Everyone, including the band and its fans, tends to agree that the name sounds somehow very right for the music, a soaring landscape of textures and stories. Horton elaborates, “…movement is such a big part of music… it’s kind of like the soundtrack of movement.”

The four members of the band, Friesen, Horton and Wild and bassist Kevin Cooper, had known each other from various bands and projects over the years, but it all came to a head when they comprised the backup band for Vancouver songstress Lily Frost. Friesen explains, “We’ve all played together in a few different situations and Lily Frost was one of them. But it was definitely a thing of, you know, from those situations, us sort of realizing that there was a connection beyond just the hired player, where we all were digging the same music and it came together in that way.” Adds Wild, “…definitely a catalyst was us coming together in Lily Frost. I think all of us were definitely into the idea of being a band, the concept of a band, and really felt a strong connection in that regard.”

So how did they finally take initiative and start up their own project with their common interests? “I think it kind of stemmed from the fact that we’d have Lily Frost practices and we’d sometimes, some of us get there early, and that’s when we started sort of building our connection. Because Lily was late or something, so we’d just get together, Chad, Marc, Niko and I, and just jam,” says Cooper. According to Horton, “The thing is, we rehearsed in the management office, so she would be upstairs talking to her manager and we’d be downstairs sort of waiting for her to do the stuff we didn’t want to do at the time. We got to play with her instruments and have fun.”

Motion Soundtrack feels that their 2003 win in local radio station XFM’s Last Band Standing competition gave them a bit of a leg up with new fans. “I would say if anything, it exposes fans to new music, more than new music to fans. Because people, for some reason a contest, I feel, if you hear a ‘contest winner’, you think, ‘oh all right, let’s listen to this.’ … Let’s hear it, oh who was the Last Banding Standing in Vancouver?” says Horton. Wild elaborates further, “…it gives a level of certification, a way of looking… of giving the public to perceive us, to hold us in a different regard. It allowed us to move the way that we’re moving right now. It definitely was a beginning point for another level of development.”

Friesen goes on to explain the sequence of events that followed their win. “I was going to say specifically the reason it was so beneficial to us is a lot of coincidences that didn’t just have to do with XFM. One of the prizes was winning a demo at Greenhouse with Todd [Kerns] and Jay [Evjen]. And they were just at the same time, total coincidence, starting this new company. Their investor, the money, business side of the company had heard us at a total separate show, and they mentioned us as the first band they’d like to work with. And that combined with us all of a sudden having this free demo with them, they came back to us and said, ‘Instead of a demo, let’s do an album.’ And that album ended up being the album that got us signed up with Nettwerk Management, and now it’s just this whole other level.” Cooper adds in that, “for a young band, it can really get them hyped up on themselves and just prove that, okay, well this is gonna happen.”

Not everything was roses from the win, however. The band had to deal with a bit of backlash from rock radio fans who felt that Motion Soundtrack didn’t properly fit the contest’s ‘ideals.’ This is bound to happen just about anywhere, and they took it in stride. “We were doing something that is not normally played on CFOX or XFM very much. You know, it’s a little bit out of the box for them. So us winning definitely took a lot of people by surprise in both a positive and a negative way, I think,” says Friesen.

Cooper Chimes in that, “Controversy sells records…”

The conversation turns to the recording process. As mentioned, the guys won recording time with Kerns and Evjen at Greenhouse Studios. A lot of things changed significantly between this recording experience, as opposed to their previous disc, Nine Days Wonder. “I think the biggest thing that I noticed was the pre-production. I mean, each of us have very open minds to how it should or should not sound, we just do our thing. You know we don’t necessarily put a lot of limits on ourselves, and as a result, we fall in love with what we’re doing and that’s what drives us to keep playing. And so trimming the fat off a song is not something that we’re necessarily all willing to do right away. And they came in, and you know with Todd Kerns’ experience just out there on the road and cutting his teeth with the Age Of Electric and Static In Stereo, and Jay Evjen, who has been working in the studio for a long time. He’s seen a lot of bands, you know, he’s recorded popular bands like Travis or Sloan or whatever just in the studio. He sees their song structure, and they came in and they did cut the fat off some of our songs,” says Horton. “We quickly saw what they were up to, you know. We were like, okay, yeah, we want to make a radio-friendly record as well. ‘Cause we could be masturbatory pop-rock, or we could be pop-rock that everyone can listen to, so that’s what we went for.” When asked what would have been different had they not worked with the JMP Productions team (Kerns’ and Evjen’s company), Horton adds, “It would have been just a little bit more music than you needed, I think.”

Giving props to JMP, Wild continues, “If we didn’t have a chance to work with them specific to being in Vancouver and being independent, we wouldn’t have been able to make the record in the amount of time that we did, at the final level of quality that’s it’s come to… Their company does give local, young acts, who can’t finance a record in Greenhouse Studios… they give the opportunity to go into that studio, which is a world-class studio… and really get a recording that’s at the level of any major label artist on a radio format level.” They also felt the producers listened to what they had to say, and didn’t do anything to misrepresent them on their recording, which is always a big fear for a band going into a studio with a new producer. “When we work with producers… it’s like adding an extra member to the band. And we have to agree at the end of the day about where we’re heading and where we’re going, and Todd and Jay were quite open to where we were coming from,” says Wild. The band also learned from Kerns and Evjen a lot more about arranging music concisely, which is something they feel they can add to their “chest of skills” while writing.

Having won Last Band Standing, Motion Soundtrack was suddenly faced with the daunting task of coming up with enough material for an album in an extremely short span of time. Within two weeks, they had written an entire record, and even had enough material to be able to scrap one of the songs they’d penned before this time. Being under such a stringent deadline initially left them wondering if they should even record at all right then. “I was really confident from the beginning, personally. You know I think everyone was to greater or lesser degrees. That under pressure, this band really works well. We have the drive, we have the focus, we have the space here where we could just get together… It really was a great experience where we had to get it done, and I think that we knew that we could, and as a result, some of the songs were more collaborative than we’d ever done before… where literally a song would start from nothing, no idea, the four of us and then two hours later, there it is,” says Friesen.

Pressure is nothing new to them, as Horton explains, “…the first record, it was under the gun. We had seven days of pre-pro… and we wrote five of [the songs] I think in the last week while we were doing pre-production. We weren’t sure if we were gonna be able to pull that one off either.” Having the intense recording experience well behind them, they look forward to spending time with these songs, and writing new ones as they come around, rather than in a mad dash at the last minute. They went into the studio again the day after I interviewed them to casually record three new songs. “I think we’re really enjoying the aspect of being in a position where we can be very creative and put out a lot of material that is not essential to some specific due date. We’re really just enjoying each other’s company and exploring the new craft of writing songs,” says Wild.

One major change in recording The Bridge was that the time spent in the studio was quite a bit longer than for Nine Days Wonder. They used the extra time to their advantage by recording parts over and over, and layering different instruments to create a highly-textured sound to make them more in line with current rock radio. Friesen touches on the benefits of working at Greenhouse. “… we had a chance to [layer the parts] and Todd and Jay really knew how to do that and had it set up to do it really fast.” He also claims that his drum parts on the current record took him less time than on Nine Days Wonder, so it all depends on what was needed to make the songs perfect.

Back to the topic of guitars, Wild says, “We did a lot of trying to find the right sounds, and experimenting with it, so that added to it too and there’s lots of guitars to choose from, you know, it’s not like you have one drum kit and you just rip through all the songs. But with the guitars, you’re choosing different flavours and tones, like a painter with different paints to colour the picture a certain way…” Wild continues to say that, based on the budget and time, each record has been worked to the best of the environment’s ability. “Every record that we’ve made so far, and I assume every record we’ll make in the future, is always going to be imbued with an enormous amount of quality.”

Popping up on The Bridge are a couple of older tunes. "What Have You Done?", which made an appearance on the Nine Days Wonder demo, was brought out from the vault because of its simplicity and likeability. Horton describes it as a bit of an emo tune - more about how you play it than what you play - and the song was completely altered musically from it’s earlier version. Most strikingly, the song is weaved through with a violin part played by Vancouver Symphony Orchestra member Mark Ferris. "Enjoy The Show" was also rerecorded for The Bridge, from the final version of the Nine Days Wonder disc. Says Friesen, “That was the producer’s choice… That was the song that got us into the Last Band Standing and so they said, ‘Well we want to record it, have it on the album just in case,’ you know, ‘cause they already knew that it suited certain radio formats.” Horton adds, “It was almost like a safe bet… It’s interesting though, ‘cause it strokes people differently, some people like it more on the first record, some people like it more on the second record...”

An absolute plethora of things have influenced and shaped the sound that we now hear from Motion Soundtrack. Horton finds himself taking inspiration from the great John Lennon. “Sometimes in a song if I’m a little lost for an idea, I sort of remember him… You know, not that he’s with me or anything like that, not to be too much like that…. I like to think of myself as an individual as well. But I draw from that if I need to and… I draw a lot from [my bandmates] actually musically ‘cause the only band that I’ve been in, these guys have been in it. I’ve never been in a band without these guys except for the beginning and there were just some floaters that came in.”

Friesen cites the band members’ collective education in jazz, classical, and life as a big force for them. “I think one of the biggest skills we’ve developed is forgetting our education in a way. I mean, it comes in handy definitely when, like when we played opening for the Stereophonics and we found out that they were doing an acoustic set and we had to do an acoustic set to accommodate that. And we basically had one week to figure out how to do a set of music acoustically, which we’d never done ever before as this band with these songs. And we weren’t sure how that was gonna go, and it went off great… and the pulling recordings off in a small amount of time, it really helps. But I think what’s most important is when we’re writing, and arranging, forgetting the schooling, because then we’re not intellectualizing it which, often, schooled musicians who start an original band, it sounds like they’re schooled. And I think we’ve done a really good job of avoiding that, really just getting down to the root of why we all fell in love with music in the first place, and not, thinking about technique or theory, or any of that stuff when we’re in Motion Soundtrack. It’s always just what makes me smile, what makes me happy, and when we’re all smiling and happy at the same time, then we know it’s good, we know it’s good music.”

Horton discusses how their various styles come together, “Niko was starting out playing really heavy metal in the beginning… and Kevin’s played a lot of real 60’s pop… and Marc’s really funkified you know, like Jimmy Page, and likes John Frusciante, and just really can move music that way. And I’ve been always kind of a jingle-jangle and I love the 80’s pop sensibility… none of us let anyone take over with what they have. It’s almost like everything comes together, leave that at the door. You know, like who are each of us, who are we all together, the sum of the parts are that much bigger.”

“It seems to be all for the benefit of the songs,” Cooper finishes. “One of the dangers of getting all schooled is that you go to college or university, you learn all these scales and chords and notes and then you come out, and you’re always playing all these scales and chords and notes all the time… look at me, look what I can do!”

Horton continues, “… at the end of the day, it is about the songs. You’re absolutely right. ‘Cause if the song sucks, then we suck. You know, according to the crowd, and we don’t want that to be the case.” That brings on a conversation amongst Wild and Horton…

Wild: Otherwise, there’d be enormous drum solos, and …

Horton : Guitar solos…

Wild : …lots of guitar solos, just like…

Horton : Rhythm guitar solos! Just rhythm!

Wild : Yeah!

Horton : That’d be hilarious.

Wild : Big bass solo… you know, that kind of stuff. And that just sounds like... you know, who wants to watch that?

Horton : Motion solos. Again, nothing masturbatory.

Nerves showed up in Friesen the day of their CD release show at Richards. “[Current manager Shauna Gold] heard the CD and Terry McBride heard the CD and they loved it and they said, ‘We’re really interested in working with you, we just have to see you live.’ I don’t know about these guys, I was really nervous about it, you know, playing the show. And the place was pretty full, and Todd Kerns was playing that night, and it was a big event and it was really fun and Shauna was there, you know, to check it out and see what went down, and right after we played, she came backstage and said, ‘Okay, I’m in, you guys are great.’ …It’s not so often that you have that kind of deciding factor. You know that this person with their skills and knowledge and connections can make all the difference in your career as a band, and she’s there, deciding, right now, while you’re playing, that’s pretty hard.”

Horton continues, “We’re walking out on stage, and at this point, I mean, we were all pretty much used to playing with each other we’ve played Richard’s, the venue wasn’t intimidating, I was feeling great about the night. For the first time, this guy’s [Niko] played like 500 shows, and for the first time, he taps me on the shoulder and goes, ‘Chad, I think I’m really nervous about this show.’ I’m like, ‘Don’t you dare tell me that now, I don’t fuckin’ need to hear that right now! Like, it’s okay man, we’re just friends playing music, all right…’ We get out there, and halfway through the first song I look back and he goes like … okay yeah … it’s all right, everything’s good.”

Particularly since their CD release party, the band has had some incredible support, crowded shows, and a big buzz. Cooper suggests that a strong internet presence has helped them a lot on that regard. A lot of fans, some of whom the band doesn’t know personally, will approach them and tell them about the shows they’ve heard about, sometimes before all of the band is even aware of it. Horton says, “People have to know that you’re playing before they can even decide whether they want to go or not and just constantly over the last three years, slowly building it. I’ve heard so many times people just getting online and hearing... other times it’s just word of mouth. I mean, I have people coming up to me and telling me I have a show coming up. Like, I should probably call the guys and ask ... ‘Are we really playing?’”

Motion Soundtrack recently played a show that they figured might turn out as a huge disaster. Friesen says, “…the last time we played the Railway as our headline show, I think we put up maybe four posters at the Railway, and we listed it on our website, and that’s all the promo we did. We totally dropped the ball on that show and we were pretty worried you know, ‘Oh no, how’s this gonna go, we didn’t do any promo,’ and the place was packed, and there was a lineup ‘til 12:30 in the morning.” This show even kept industry people waiting out in the queue to get in to see a band they’d only just heard about.

Cooper mentions that the band’s steadily-growing fan base is pleasantly intelligent, picking up on subtle changes to live songs and singing along while they play. They also seem to bring friends out to the shows, to keep the crowds getting bigger and expose the music to a wider audience.

Being that the band was very heavily hyped on the XFM radio station, which stopped broadcasting in late 2003, it lends credence to the potential for a big drop in support. The band doesn’t necessarily find this to be the case though. According to Friesen, Motion Soundtrack didn’t have the push from them long enough to really notice a big difference. They had gotten the promo they needed for the CD release party, and after that, Nettwerk Management picked them up, and they haven’t looked back. Wild adds that, had XFM not gone under, and they’d still be on the radio, things might be quite different, however. There’s just no way to know, and they’re happy with where they are regardless. Other media outlets that have helped in a big way are national music-related websites, like New Music Canada and CBC Radio’s ZeD site. These are large, searchable databases of media and information about bands, that link up to the band’s own websites. Lately, interviews such as this one have also been coming down the pipe to help spread the word.

The conversation turns to the Vancouver music scene. Cooper discusses his frustration with the lack of good-sized venues in Vancouver that host live music on a regular basis. “As far as bands and upstart labels and stuff goes, I think there’s a good wave coming, but there’s gonna have to be venues for these people to play ‘cause you know, it’s not that easy to get out on tour. But just looking at Toronto, they have on one street, on Queen Street they have on the same block, three venues that hold a minimum of three hundred people that live bands play in three, four nights a week. And we have nothing like that here, so… some people just want to listen to canned music all the time.”

Friesen continues, “…daytime culture. I think it’s just a matter of owners and people putting a bit more trust in that music can make them money in the long term. What I’ve seen in venues in Vancouver is people not seeing the payoff right away and then kinda pulling back and blaming it on the musicians, and then they get mad and then everything goes kinda haywire. And the venues that really work, that are live venues that make good money and are successful and have been doing it for a lot of years, invest in it. They think long term and they treat the musicians right and the musicians in turn treat them right.” He explains that venues like the Railway Club succeed because they carry on solid, respectful relationships with the bands that play there. “Part of the problem is bands and musicians that don’t know what to ask for. And so there’s a lot of undercutting that goes on where venues can just start booking bands that will accept really bad deals and get almost no money for a lot of work that they put in to it... the promotion of postering and filling the room. Some venues really get used to you doing all work, filling the room, doing all the advertising, and then playing the show, providing that service, the musical service, and then giving you just a percentage of what they get at the door is ridiculous… musicians can screw it up for other musicians.”

Horton concludes, “A music scene should never be an auction.”

Elsewhere

By Andy Scheffler
Video + stills : Andy Scheffler
Published : April 22, 2004.