The bounciness of Xavier Cafeïne (or simply Cafeïne) on his album New Love was brought to Australia just recently with The Strums. The two outfits toured, partied and played to rooms that partied out into the night. The Montreal musician took some time out to answer a few questions about his time down here.
Mainly because it is faster for me and that I don’t rely on someone’s responsibility for a bass track. For example, I was building guitar tracks and we realised (my guitarist Gus and I) that the bass interfered with the guitars, so I just picked up the bass right away and the problem was solved. It is also a blast for me to play every instrument on my records. Doesn’t mean I will never use the help of my fellow musician in the future
How did you attempt to transfer performing the show live? Many songs seem quite dense in instrumentation.
First, I hire the best musicians I can find. Then arrange the set so that the less arrangements are left behind, but it s inevitable that it would need an extra musician or two. We also use sequencers for the tracks that have more than two synth lines, but the live show is pretty close to the album. I just dance harder!
From the research that I’ve seen, this is your first album in English. Do you find working with particular languages difficult? Is one language easier to compose music with over another?
French is harder to get a good sloppy rock n’ roll attitude, so French would be the hard one here, actually.
There is also a lot of ‘hooky-ness’ on New Love. Especially with tracks “Electric”. How do you come up with those particular melodies (or hooks)?
I don’t really know how, it is a question of what music you like, and what music you want to play. But I just improvise vocals on the music and that s how it turns out.
There is obviously a theme of love and relationships throughout your album, but it seems to be a more ‘fun’ type of love listening to the lyrics and the feelings of the songs. Why did you want to explore love in this way (if it was the way you intended)?
Love is a subject that needs no introduction. It is life, God and death. It will be my only subject until I die.
How have your travels here in Australia gone so far?
Australia is my favourite place to tour. Especially with the nice fellows in The Strums, whom we met throughout Asho at (music management label) Footstomp Music. Every gig is better and better both Cafeïne and The Strums has to get better every show cause we want to impress the other band. All in good fun though. It is nothing like a sport competition, it is party competition, and it makes us grow very quickly!
What will be happening after the tour? More touring?
I have to write some stuff for my next album. Produce one or two albums, hopefully produce The Strums! And yeah… Touring as much as possible.
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Cafeïne’s New Love is out now.
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