Interview: Light Conductor
It took years but we stuck with it and now we feel the satisfaction of finishing what we intended to, while also feeling the excitement of what we can do next.
Light Conductor, the Montréal psych-ambient synth-drone supergroup that consists of Stephen Ramsay (Young Galaxy) and The Besnard Lakes duo Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, return with their latest album Sequence Three, the sublime conclusion of a trilogy that began back in 2019. Gavin Brown caught up with Stephen to get an insight into Sequence Three and the world of Light Conductor.
E&D: Your new album Sequence Three has just come out. How excited are you to be back with this new music?
Stephen: We’re happy to have a new album out – it’s been a little longer than we intended between records, but we generally aren’t too calculating about when we make music. When we have time between our many other projects, we set aside a few days and the majority of an album generally comes from that block of time.
E&D: How has the new material been received so far?
Stephen: I don’t know! So far we’ve only put up a couple of songs on streaming services and announced the album through our social media platforms. All of that tends to be pretty opaque in terms of gaging people’s excitement. I think we’ll have a better idea once we play some live shows, which we’re planning now for later in the year.
E&D: What has been the biggest influence on the sound and outlook of the album?
Stephen: The biggest influence is always the set up of our instruments and gear that we use. The making of the records are very process based, and less compositional. We tend to set up so the three of us have a lot of different instruments sequenced and chained together. We kind of have stations that work within, with a few different sounds being made simultaneously, and we kind of tweak as we go, bringing sound in and out. What you hear on the record is very true to how we record. It’s quite “live” and always improvised. We do minimal editing and overdubbing afterwards. We enjoy the immediacy and commitment that this process entails, for sure.
E&D: What equipment did you use while you were making this album and how did its creation go?
Stephen: We tend to favour analog synths for Light Conductor in general, because that’s where we started and we like to twiddle knobs and get in there with manipulating the sounds. I think analog synths are very fun to use with 2 or more people. The Light Conductor first record was just us using my old Sequential Circuits Prophet 600, because it was my first analog synth and we were eager to try out midi sequencing and that kind of thing. Everything we were doing was very naive. We’re more experienced now, so on the new album we use the Roland Juno-60, Oberheim SEM-Pro, the Sequential Circuits Prophet VS and Prophet 5, an Arp Odyssey, and we always use Jace’s old Roland CR-5000 CompuRhythm drum machine. Olga plays bass and Monotron, and there’s just a little smidge of guitar in there too!
E&D: Your soundscapes are very vast and hypnotic, is this what you always want to achieve with the music of Light Conductor?
Stephen: Yes. We are all fans of music that evokes world building on some level. We like to think of our music as soundtracking the exploration of alien worlds, where there are 3 suns and the sky is purple or something, haha.
E&D: Did you also want your music to be as slow burning as possible and keep on building and building?
Stephen: The process of making our songs usually involves between 20 minutes and an hour of jamming and improvising initially, so I think there’s a natural trajectory of wanting things to evolve and build as we go. It can’t stay static forever, though we aren’t afraid of repetition and achieving a kind of hypnotic state. It’s something we can feel when we play, so we hope that it translates to the listener easily, as a result.
E&D: The album concludes the trilogy, how has the experience of making all three sequences?
Stephen: Well we set out to make a trilogy, that was maybe the only thing we calculated from the beginning with Light Conductor. We’re happy we followed through, it took years but we stuck with it and now we feel the satisfaction of finishing what we intended to, while also feeling the excitement of what we can do next.
E&D: Will there be a fourth instalment or will your next album take a different approach?
Stephen: I think whatever we do next will be its own thing. I expect some changes to the approach next time – we have some ideas, but we’re not going to reveal them just yet! We feel good about the groundwork we have laid down, let’s just say. There are a lot of directions we can go with this now.
E&D: Are all three sequences intended to be played back to back?
Stephen: Well you better have a good three hours to kill if you do! Haha. I haven’t done it personally – but it’s a good suggestion. I’d like to hear if there is a clear trajectory that makes sense when you play them back to back. Better yet, try playing them in sequence with your favourite three hour movie, to see if they line up! Maybe start with Seven Samurai by Kurosawa? Or The Godfather, pt II!
E&D: What is your favourite music or movie trilogy?
Stephen: Hmmm… I’m going to go with Bowie’s Berlin years, Low, Heroes and Lodger… or maybe Fleetwood Mac’s Buckingham/Nicks trilogy, Fleetwood Mac, Rumours and Tusk! Movies? Let’s go with The Dollars trilogy with Clint Eastwood, The Godfather trilogy… or maybe the first three Star Wars… you can’t go wrong there.
E&D: Do you feel that your music has a cinematic quality?
Stephen: Yes, we would love to score films – we think our music would be perfect for that! Especially something like a Blade Runner type film. Or Dune. Something epic and futuristic. And dystopian haha.
E&D: What are your favourite ever film scores?
Stephen: Morricone was the master. The music he did for Spaghetti Westerns is godlike. Mica Levi is a genius as well. Under The Skin is maybe my favourite soundtrack of all time. Anything by Johann Johannsson as well, RIP.
E&D: What are the most inspiring ambient albums for you?
Stephen: I love The KLF’s Chill Out album – an absolutely timeless masterpiece, released in the early 90s. You have to say Brian Eno’s Music For Airports, don’t you? It’s really the benchmark by which all ambient records are measured. Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Vol II is also such an influential album to this day. Laurie Spiegel’s The Expanding Universe too. This album was a big influence on Light Conductor, I would say.
E&D: What are your favourite albums of the year so far?
Stephen: Maxime Denuc’s Club Imperiale is a wonderful ambient record, made entirely with a midi controlled pipe organ. I really like this unknown Swedish band Boy With Apple, they have a record called Navigation – it’s very catchy and shoegazey, and that just hits me in the sweet spot.
E&D: Have you got live shows planned once Sequence Three is released?
Stephen: We’re planning some local shows in Montreal for October – hopefully we will be able to tour more later this year or early next.
E&D: Does your music take on a different form in a live setting?
Stephen: We can’t bring all the old, fragile analog gear so we bring digital versions of a lot of the stuff. The key is to keep the stage set up small as possible, but we want to retain some of that ability to improvise. We might use backing tracks, but more to establish the drone or to have a little rhythm track going. The rest we play and sequence live, as much as we can.
E&D: Can you tell us what your other musical projects have planned for the future?
Stephen: I’m busy with about 5 other projects. My primary band Young Galaxy is writing again, I have a band called Total Fucking Darkness that is releasing an album early next year, and a kind of techno project called Plumbing that is playing Pop Montreal later this month.
E&D: Has there ever been talk of a joint Besnard Lakes and Light Conductor tour?
Stephen: No. Jace and Olga would never allow it. Because they know that Light Conductor would BLOW Besnards off the stage haha!
E&D: Who are your favourite ever artists from Canada?
Stephen: Neil Young, Slow, JK & Co, The Band, Leonard Cohen, Light Conductor!
