Timber Timbre to present new album in Botanique

Set in a deeply sombre future, Timber Timbre's new album, the perceptive, enlightened Sincerely, Future Pollution explores pop with a torch in alliance with the ghosts of Prince and David Bowie.

Democratic state
The work of a trio, the latest album from Timber Timbre sees Taylor Kirk's singing respond to the instrumental inventiveness of Mathieu Charbonneau and Simon Trottier. "I've never been able to work that way until now," Kirk admits, sitting on a sofa in a luxury Brussels hotel. "While we were working on the album, I learned the art of compromise. Sincerely, Future Pollution is the result of real teamwork. Even though I kept control of the lyrics of all the songs, I now involve my collaborators in the creative process."

French touch
In the album's sleeve notes, the instrumental "Bleu Nuit" prompts a Francophile allusion to some of the pioneers of electronic music. One is unavoidably reminded of Jean-Michel Jarre, Air, and Sébastien Tellier. "I remember having seen Tellier onstage in Toronto when he was starting off. That was the first time in my life that I saw someone using a vocoder. It was crazy, totally amazing. I'm aware of the impact of French artists historically, but, honestly, I have always had the impression that I was light years away from all their stuff… At one point in my life, I was heavily into French electro. Unconsciously, I've kept the stigmata of that period."

RoboCop vs Blade Runner
Whereas in the past Timber Timbre's music was known for being quite spare, these days it includes synthesised ornamentation, as well as some embellishments contrived on the neck of an electric guitar. "If Sincerely, Future Pollution was a film, it would fit into the science-fiction category," Taylor Kirk observes. "I can definitely picture it somewhere between Blade Runner and RoboCop: two screenplays that take a critical and somewhat cynical approach to the same social issues as the album: media harassment, corporatism, gentrification, corruption, authoritarianism, unbridled globalisation, identity issues, and human violence."

Prince charming
A few months after the death of David Bowie, planet music learned that Prince had passed away. "We were in the middle of recording," recalls Taylor Kirk. "Shattered, completely stunned, I went to tell Simon the news. He was working on a track called 'Moment'. Immediately after, he played a guitar solo whose father was clearly Prince. And yet, he was an artist he didn't know that well – but there and then, without knowing it, he was following in his footsteps. It's a pretty incredible coincidence. If we had set out deliberately to pay a tribute to Prince on the album, we wouldn't have done it any better."

Sincerely, Future Pollution
Sincerely, Future Pollution, the fourth chapter in Timber Timbre's discography, was recorded in France, in a country house on the outskirts of Paris. It's new material definitely has roots in the France of Jean-Michel Jarre or of the duo Air. If you listen to "Skin Tone", for example, or "Bleu Nuit", one is inevitably reminded of the mournful beauty of The Virgin Suicides.

Leaving behind the carefully selected piano notes and the precision of its minimalist music, the Canadian group reinvents itself in the opulence of a soundtrack orchestrated with synthesised urges. In the shadows of the songs, one is aware also of the spirits of Prince and David Bowie.

"Before, the compositions reflected my own technical limits. I was trying to devise a simplified way of doing things so as to be able to transfer it to live performance," explains Taylor Kirk. "Over time and with the experience I have built up in the studio, I became aware of the importance of the arrangements."

A nightmare punctuated with radiant melodies (as in "Western Questions"), Sincerely, Future Pollution is a brooding contemplation of our society's future. "I extrapolate on the basis of my own bad feelings about the world. My songs are rooted in a reality that is distorted by my fears and my uncertainty about the future. We are currently going through a phase of regression. It is inevitable. We have to pass through that in order to advance towards a different kind of humanity."

> Timber Timbre. 08/04, 19.30, Botanique, Sint-Joost-ten-Node