Qwaarn started life in 2004, at the initiative of drummer François Bernatchez, being initially a musical formation proposed for a musical epic entirely in progressive rock, an interplanetary voyage lived through Qwaarn, the story's main character.
Qwaarn is also a "group in progress" whose members are fluid, appearing according to the musical needs of the piece they are working on. Several of them are active in other groups or are working on solo projects. The varied backgrounds and the fluidity of the musicians also enriches the sound and musical landscape of this group with its unusual way of operating.
Surrounded from the start by Martin Bleau on the guitar and Daniel Bernatchez (brother of François) on the keyboard, the trio rapidly put together its first album, "The Word Of Qwaarn", which appeared at the end of 2004. They were joined for the taping by Stéphane D. (Mélia, Sens.) on bass and Mathieu Lessard (Dagmahr) who supplied vocals.
I got in touch with the band and Francois answered my questions.
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Our Qwaarn
biography answers most questions
about your past so let’s bypass this.Qwaarn has a fluid
membership.In which order bands and projects is the Qwaarn members
involved in?
For now,all others present
musicians are only involved in personal projects.As nobody is a
professional musician,friends are our main contributors.
Why are you making this
kind of music and what makes it so fascinating to you ?
When I was a Kid,many
years ago,I was fascinating by live bands performing all
together,playing
strange music and riffs (to my ears ).I did not known what they were
doing:the One was not always at the right or same place ,it was
uncomfortable but it was intriguing !That’s how I discovered prog
music:all those long pieces with big and large strings and cosmic
voices !
For sure,over the time,I
found the difference between 4 4 ,5 4 ,13 8 and all those time
signature.
Over to yours
albums. Please tell us more about your first album The Word of Qwaarn
from 2004.
This was for most
of us our first time recording in a professional studio !
As I am the initiator of
the band,I invited few friends and my brother to collaborate .It took
about a year to complete the 8 pieces.We started from piece no 1 and
as all the album is a continuous story,we followed with piece no 2
and so on.As we are all big fans of Genesis, we asked Paul Whitehead
to design the Dc illustration.He did a great job !
Please tell us more
about your second album Aberrations from 2007.
Aberrations is still a
concept album,and the story continues with the main personage
:Qwaarn.
We composed all
songs without our singer ( Mathieu Lessard
) who returned performing with his own group Dagmahr. Didier Berthuis
was interested to join and has not only the capacity to sing but has
interest in arranging all the compositions.
That what
he did, adding some horn here and there ,doubling strings and so
on.He was very involved in the group .We have learned all the
modification and recorded it.This album is under the Unicorn ‘s
label.We performed few shows that included both albums.
You are currently
working on a third album.What can we expect from this album ?
It ‘s still in our
head a concept album with stories about the
achievments of Qwaarn. `’My Achievments ‘ is the title of this
third album.It was planned for a 8 songs album but ended with an
extra song.The processus of creation was a lot longer than the two
previous albums.It took more than 3 years !The fact that our lead
singer left the group for his own project did not help ...But now
Claude Desrochers,a multi intrumentist and singer give us a hand to
complete all the vocals.We are now mixing and we the release of this
album in planned in 2011.
How is your
creative process from coming up with a theme/riff/idea to you get it
down onto an album ?
Each of our 3 albums
starts with the developpement of the story and after I write the text
for each song. In the beginning of the process,each player read the
story and contribute in the song by proposing some
riffs,ideas,ambiance,style…
Almost everything is
composed as a group,that means that we
record a first version,listen to it and then make modification etc.It
can take many versions to end to something that please to everybody !
Usually the basic riff is
in 4 4 ,we try it in 12 8,5 4,7 4 ,at different tempo,and find
something who follows well the text of the song and does not look at
what we already done !
We also have a bank of
good riffs that has been composed by the members.This is a long
process to go through ,I don’t really recommend it,but this is the
way we have beeing working since the beginning.
But in
the third album,I will say that we decided,for few songs, that this
member will be the leader and will have the final word to any
modification.
We
also liked this way,it was different and …faster !
Just to give those of
us who are unknown with your music a bit of reference point or
two:How would you describe your music ?
AH Ha:good question !
As we all have different
influences,some of our songs are more Genesis ,others Bowie…As the
members changed,each player bring his own experience.I made a tour on
internet ‘s critics and found name like:Caravan,Pink Floyd,Led
Zeppelin,Marillion,Pendragon,Camel,IQ…You know,we are trying to
play Neo prog. But as the creation goes,we never knows where it’s
gonna go !
What is your experience
with the music industry and the new internet music scene ?
As we do not count on
music to pay our bills,we did not really developed a strong presence
on the internet.
I think that the last
update on our site was…couple years ago…Sorry for the
technology.But you can find our music on CD BABY,on iTunes.We are
convinced that we should do more on this but
we are amateur musicians
that only decided to record what they loved to do and make few shows
for friends.
What is your plans for
this year and next year ?
There is only short
term goal:finish the album !...and wait for
the critics,we always having fun to read what they can see in our
music.
To wrap up this
interview, is there anything you want to add to this interview ?
Promoting prog music ,by
those years,might seemed more easy than it was 10 years ago… but
I’m not sure at all: there is a lot of new bands and as it is
easier to record music,I believe that it is really hard to stand out
of the crowd !
Thank you to Francois for this interview
Their PA profile is here and homepage's here
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Qwaarn
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