“Being lucky is hard work,” declares Marc Francis, “The most prolific moments are always the hardest.”
taperecorder / de Gaspé by Jose Enrique Montes Hernandez
Considering the fact that he has been home a total of five days in the past two and a half months, this assertion can’t be doubted. Yet Francis, and the dreamy-dirty electro-indie-pop he makes as taperecorder, has carved out a remarkable career by banking on his luck. This particular phase of it is, in his mind, the riskiest yet.
Despite having previously been the songwriter, producer and general driving force behind house music collective Intergalactic Faerie Funk and folktronic outfit mossyrock, “I am basically starting over from scratch,” he avows. taperecorder is the first musical endeavor that Francis has taken on entirely alone. “[mossyrock was] starting to sell out shows and everything was going really well. When all that ended, I felt like I was back where I was 5 years ago. I still do have all those touring contacts […] that has been a huge help.”
taperecorder began as a side project that Francis would tinker with between his duties in mossyrock. His search for a musical identity is very much evidenced in his trilogy of “box” EPs: the tech house of 2007’s juicebox EP; 2008’s pensive, foggy boombox EP and the rowdy brunch crunk of last year’s lunchbox EP. But it is with just ramble & think of ghosts, taperecorder’s first full-length album, that Francis has fully fleshed out the project’s sound: somewhere between lovely and lascivious, combining fluttery melodies with what has been described as “baby-making basslines” and Francis’ signature beats. The blend of energies on ghosts is far-ranging; bouncing between the sprightly “Cold Spring”, the intense, churning “Evergreen” and the delicate “Meet Me in Montauk,” a composition initially intended for mossyrock but shelved until, somehow, ghosts called out for it. “It fit perfectly, feeling-wise,” Francis states with satisfaction.
He characterizes the record as eight songs about love, loss and loneliness: “It’s about being in a dark place in my life, and coming out of it.” That process of emergence was chronicled by Francis in taperecorder’s upcoming LP, the devil is a busy man, completed in tandem with ghosts and considered to be its companion piece. Most of devil’s nine tracks were conceived during the six weeks Francis spent in Berlin at the start of 2009; they emphasize the electronic end of his production and favor a sense of mischief over ghosts’ introspection and acoustic leanings. However, friends and followers won’t be privy to its narrative for some time yet: “I feel like sitting on it for awhile and letting people digest [ghosts,]” Francis explains with an enigmatic smile.
Francis is releasing just ramble & think of ghosts through Galactique Recordings, the label he founded in 2003 and now runs with Corey Martin, known in local music circles as Toboggan. Martin, along with Bethany Spiers (who contributed the vocals on the album) will be sharing the stage with Francis at ghosts’ Montreal release party on June 30th.
It seemed natural to Francis to launch ghosts in Montreal, despite contentedly residing in Brooklyn for the past six years. His visits are frequent enough to qualify him as an honorary Montrealer; he bases himself in the Mile End, collaborates on shows with friends and zips around the city on his skateboard. His current séjour comes on the heels of a six-week European tour, the first leg of which took him to Iceland as the Eyjafjallajokull volcano wreaked havoc over the continent. Charmed as always, the only effect the eruption had on Francis’ travels was a two-hour flight delay. Scotland, Germany and Denmark followed, as well as a week in the southern UK with a troupe of Scottish writers and musicians billed as the Golden Hour. Francis, himself of Scottish descent, quickly found his place in the group and thrived in the vagabond romanticism of an artists’ caravan. “All of it was amazing; so many personalities in a big Sprinter. We could all relate [to each other,] even though we were each doing something different,” he recalls. “I had to take a moment every night to explain to the audience what I was doing,” he adds with a grin. “I guess I was the dark horse of the group, making my squelchy sounds.”
taperecorder – Gatineau by Nomaglive
Another medium of expression is writing. Francis has always kept detailed journals of his travels, and blogs regularly about his adventures – both musical and non-musical. “It’s nice to have a record of those times, to go back and get a sense of where I was,” he says. His tales are distinctly Kerouac-esque in their spirit and execution; Francis is a rambler by nature and relishes finding beauty in the everyday. “Those moments when [people] are thinking things, or looking out the window of a ferry at the small village and contemplating, or the old man asking for an Americano and the young boy replying kindly to him. Something about those little human moments,” he remarks, “I am like a junkie for them.“
After his annual summertime cross-country trek (July finds him returning to Vancouver Island’s Soundwave festival for a fifth consecutive year,) Francis is toying with the idea of further touring to close the year. Nevertheless, he is inclined to leave his turns up to instinct, and cites a balance between fate and careful planning as the reason he’s still on the road after almost fifteen years of music-making. That, and his lasting love affair with wandering. “It is completely unsustainable… and dangerous… and killing me,” Francis observes, “But more beautifully than the rest of the world. And I want to feel every second of this for the rest of my life.”
taperecorder’s just ramble & think of ghosts record launch, with special guests Bethany Spiers (the Feverfew) and Toboggan, will be held at Jupiter Room, 3874 Saint-Laurent, on Wednesday, June 30th, 10:00PM. $5 or pay-what-you-can.
just ramble & think of ghosts is available for purchase online (12” vinyl, CD or digital download) here.
Article by Jessica Mailas / Pics by Jose “Muy Caliente” Enrique Montes
