In the liner notes to the 1963 release of Missa Luba, a record performed by a young Congolese boys choir who go by the name of Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin, none other than legendary author and historian Studs Terkel wrote "These young virtuosi feel so patently free."
After chatting with Katie Lee from Braids and hearing her describe both the gravitational pull of this album and the process that she and the rest of her Braids bandmates enlist in creating their sound, it was clear that Missa Luba could be a metaphor for the bands empirical and pure approach to music.
I chatted with Katie and discussed Missa Luba and the value of living outside ones comfort zone as well as the long but ulimately rewarding process that went into Native Speaker. Listen to the full audio interview here or the edited transcription below.
20110206 Braids SoundItResounds by thesounditresounds
Sound It Resounds: So Katie thanks for joining me today, really appreciate you taking the time as I'm sure you guys have a crazy schedule coming up. Tell us about the album we're gonna talk about today.
Katie Lee: So the album I decided to pick is called Missa Luba and it's sung by (excuse my french – laughs) Les Petits Troubadours du Roi Baudoin, it was arranged by Pere Guido Haazen who is a priest from Belgium and it was recorded in 1958. They had taken traditional Congolese songs and turned them into Latin mass church songs and sung by a Congolese choir with I believe about 30 or 40 boys from the town of Kamina. So yeah it was a bit of a find; I did not grow up with this album at all. A friend of mine had it in his record collection, the cover looked amazing so I decided to put it on and to my surprise it was really really beautiful.
S.I.R: So when did you actually discover this record
K: I discovered this about 2 years ago. My friend is a huge record collector and the packaging of this album is really beautiful with a great screen print and nice booklet inside the album so I was curious as to what the sound was. After listening to it only once, I kept on thinking about it but I never took the time to listen to it again but then I moved in with the friend who owns the album so I just ended up playing it everyday.
S.I.R: It's amazing how vinyl has this serendipitous quality that you don't get with CD's a lot of time. You were saying how you stumbled upon it at a friends place while flipping through their records and you were struck by the design and package. That doesn't happen too often with CD's
K: Definitely, definitely agree. It's funny you know because they say don't judge a book by its cover but this one is a totally opposite example of that.
SIR: But you can often do that with vinyl and I think that's one of the great things about going through peoples record collections . There's a whole process and a bit of religion of going through a vinyl stack to see what kind of pops out and exactly for that reason because of the album cover a lot of times.
K: I did some research on the album afterwards and I came across a lot of famous artists who have referenced it including the Clash who referred to it in the song 'Car Jamming' on the album Combat Rock.
SIR: Has it influenced you musically or as a person?
K: Both I'd say. The harmonies in this choir are absolutely amazing and the way it's arranged is so beautiful. Each section ebbs and flows into each other. I think a lot of the music and the parts we tend to write flow into each other and there is not one distinct part; the entire sound as a whole is what makes the song itself. And Missa Luba does that beautifully with just pure voice, no electronics and it's super minimal and I can really appreciate music that uses just voice and drums to make something that sounds big.
Taylor in the band has lately been having trouble finding inspirational music and he's been kinda in a bit of a slump. I showed him this album and he said this is the first time in like months that has made him feel good inside.
SIR: It's really important, especially living in a very indie-centric world of listening, and sometimes that can become a bit of an aural ghetto, but sometimes you just need to listen to something outside of your comfort zone.
K: Yeah exactly. You know I think definitely the last couple of years we've been involved in that indie community and sound but I haven't come across an album like this in awhile that has made me feel like I want to make music.
SIR: I'd like to talk a little bit about Native Speaker. Can you talk about where and how the album was recorded?
K: So Native Speaker took about 2 ½ years to write starting in Calgary. 'Glass Dears' and 'Lemonade' were written in Calgary before moving to Montreal. This was also a time when we realized we wanted to write music as a collective and not just have one person write the songs. And moving to a new city (Montreal) was extremely difficult with not knowing anyone so we really grew as individuals. I think a lot of the songs translate that growth and that struggle. We went back to Calgary during a summer to track the drums in Taylor's parents garage and we thought we'd be done tracking everything that summer but we ended up just doing the drums. We came back to Montreal and while we were attending classes at university and at night we would go to our jam space and start recording all the other parts.
SIR: What did you record the album on?
K: In Logic (Apple music recording software)
SIR: The process of writing has evolved so much for bands and artists above and beyond coming up with song ideas using traditional guitar and piano and I listen to Native Speaker and i'm really struck by how you guys use loops and textures. Are the songs born out of a more traditional methodology or does it evolve from something as simple as a loop or sound or texture. Or both?
K: Usually someone comes up with an idea whether that's lyrical or a riff or an environmental soundscape on a loop and then we jam from that and someone will add something to it and something big will usually come out of that and then we'll strip it down. I guess that's where the songwriting happens when we start editing it down. Rarely do we come in with a full song in our heads.
SIR: So what's in store for Braids next. I'm guessing you guys are going on tour.
K: Next couple of months we are touring North America with Baths and Starslinger for the first couple of weeks and then touring with Toro Y Moi, back in Montreal for a couple of weeks. Then hopefully we'll playing Europe and the festival route in the spring. We're also trying to write while touring so hopefully we can have another album done by end of the year.
SIR: Katie thanks so much for taking out time to sit and talk with us.
K: Yeah thank you so much
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For more information on Braids check out the following online destinations:
Braids on MySpace
Kanine Records (US label)
Flemish Eye (Canadian label)
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