Another band has emerged from the thriving Montreal music scene.
Blue Hawaii, composed of producer Alex “Agor” Cowan, and singer-songwriter Raphaelle “Raph” Standell-Presto, is signed to Arbutus Records, home to critically-acclaimed Canadian acts like Doldrums and Grimes. The duo creates delicately textured pop blended with a minimal techno soundscape.
Their debut album, Untogether, was released in February, but the group first met in Montreal in 2010.
“We met at this venue I was running in Montreal three years ago, and we decided that we just kind of want to make jams together, so we ended up doing it,” Cowan said.
The Blooming Summer EP soon followed.
“We came back from this trip and we used guitars and synths and made it pretty quickly, like in a month or two.”
The EP has a sound less rooted in electronics, and Cowan described it as “a lot more based on intuition.”
This year, the group released their debut album, Untogether, which Cowan described as “definitely a bit colder” and “quite a bit more detailed and thoughtful.”
The group’s creative process was also different on Untogether, with the two members working on the album in separate sessions.
“For whatever reason it just seemed like it was the right thing to work on it separately and so we did, like even when we were in the same city. We took alternating nights in the studio to work on it and look at what the other person had done the next day or a couple days later . . . it resulted in this broken sound.”
Cowan described his production on the album as being influenced by artists such as Aphex Twin and Burial.
The band has been supporting electro-pop group Purity Ring on their latest tour.
“We know them personally, they’re friends of ours, the musical styles mesh pretty well,” Cowan said of the group.
When asked about what to expect at the show, Cowan said the band approaches their music differently in a live setting.
“It’s the same songs but they’re totally recomposed live,” Cowan said.
“The recordings exist like really differently than our live set. I mean when we play live we do this thing where we start with a couple of songs off the album and play them in a more traditional fashion and just kind of work towards a state where it gets to be like . . . dance music. The club thing is definitely a direction we want to go.”
Blue Hawaii plays Ritual Nightclub with Canadian indie outfit Purity Ring on April 2.
