Until next Saturday, the musical and professional showcase M for Montreal will bring life to performance halls, as admirers, members of the industry from some twenty countries and local musicians — almost a hundred to the poster — will enjoy! For the small Mothland team, it will also be an opportunity to celebrate, on November 18 at the Sala Rossa, five years of daring musical productions that have made the multifunctional box indispensable to the Quebec and even Canadian music scene. “We served as an incubator for a lot of artists from here,” says Marilyne Lacombe, musical director, among other functions.
“We started Mothland exactly five years ago,” says Philippe Larocque, who welcomes us to the company’s offices along with co-founders Marilyne Lacombe and Maxime Hébert. Actors in the shadows, their work is however recognized by music lovers: the Distorsion festival is them. Just like the Taverne Tour, which will be back in full force on February 9, 10 and 11, 2023. Mothland’s forces have also worked behind the scenes on the programming for Pop Montreal and the Festival de Musique Emergent en Abitibi-Témiscamingue.
“They don’t come to see us to ‘book’ a Hubert Lenoir concert! escapes Marilyne laughing, evoking by this example that the energies of Mothland (who has already organized a Lenoir concert, with Crabe) are focused on discovery. “Our initial motivation was really to work on presenting artists from left field, who have a more risky musical proposition. Those we didn’t see a lot on festival stages — and I think our efforts had a long-term impact” on the Quebec festival scene.
“We found that the festivals in Quebec did not take many risks in their programming, abounds Marilyne. However, if there is a place where the risk is allowed, it is in a festival, since the public is already there, at the rendezvous. We lit a few lights” in the middle, believe the founders of Mothland.
Born from the ashes of another psychedelic music festival – in the plural, since as Maxime points out, “in terms of genres, rock, punk, electro, we were too disparate to be a nested festival”, the Distorsion Psych Fest preceded the birth of Mothland. At the time, the members of the founding trio knew each other by sight, all gravitating to the parallel Montreal music scene, crossing paths more regularly at the Esco, each working there either behind the bar or behind the record players. “We came together around the idea of creating a subversive and psychedelic music festival worthy of our music scene,” summarizes Philippe Larocque.
The idea sprouted into a do-it-all agency for which the musicians themselves had neither the time nor the inclination nor the skills, such as tour planning. “Over the years, a community of musicians has grown up around our events, explains Marilyne, and we work with them repeatedly. We ended up offering them to represent them”, sometimes even to help them manage their careers in the twists and turns of the parallel scene.
Then the pandemic derailed their festival and touring plans — a golden opportunity to do what they had vowed they would never do: start a record label. As with the rest of their activities, says Marilyne, “we filled in the blanks. Over time, we took on other roles.
Maxime: “We worked with super good artists who couldn’t find label. Marilyne continues: “The vision DIY [do it yourself] : no one wants to do it, so we’re going to do it. The pandemic acted as an accelerator for the record company — we couldn’t announce any more concerts, so we invested our energy in producing albums. »
Mothland has since launched two dozen releases, including albums by Atsuko Chiba, Meggie Lennon, Hot Garbage and soon those by La Sécurité and N Nao, and is also developing projects by artists from English Canada (the rock quartet Toronto native Gloin) and from outside the country (Latvian musician Elizabete Balčus, American composer and guitarist Yonathan Gat, among others).
“We put a lot of energy into creating ties with the rest of Canada and the United States,” says Lacombe. The Quebec music industry is very centered on itself, and since outside of Montreal, it’s hard to be successful, we said to ourselves that we had to look elsewhere. Mothland even recently hired a representative in Toronto to develop the market.
The M for Mothland event takes place at Sala Rossa on November 18, starting at 9 p.m., featuring Priors, Absolutely Free, Crasher, Grim Streaker, Gloin and Anthony Piazza. The M for Montreal festival runs until November 19.