Kendall Hooper: Where are you at the moment?

Olga Goreas: Where am I? I’m in Montreal

Oh you’re at home?

Yes I’m at home in beautiful Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Very nice. Are you getting some time off at the moment or are you guys working on new material, what are you up to?

At the moment actually we’re basically preparing for the tour coming up. Jase is recording in the studio which he owns and has got himself basically in there till the end of the year aside from us leaving to go on tour. But we haven’t really started working on any new material yet. We do have a few things that are on the go right now in terms of other projects. We did a film score, we did an interactive website score, so there’s a lot of things to keep people occupied in the Besnard Lakes world.

It’s the first time I’ve heard of someone doing a score specifically for a website, how did that come about?

It was really just kind of out the blue, an old friend of Jason’s from out of high school had just called him up and said do you mind working on this website, the NSB is sponsoring it and would you guys be interested in doing it and basically he told us what the general idea behind it was and we didn’t really know exactly what it was but we thought, you know, ok this sounds cool to us. He just basically told us it was about, a ghost town in the Northwest Territories, a place that had pretty much just disappeared from the map and we thought it seemed pretty interesting. We didn’t really have anything to go by apart from that idea so we set ourselves to the task of coming up with some music and we also used a couple of songs from our previous albums. It was fun and it was great but it’s not a typical Besnard Lakes song in terms of being a big orchestrated epic kind of song, it’s more of an ambient kind of soundscape feel to it. We’re really happy with the results and it’s a really amazing website. Have you seen it?

No I haven’t I just read about it about an hour ago and I haven’t had a chance to sit down and look through it yet but I’m definitely going to after this chat.

It’s really heart warming; it’s quite touching actually.

Were you able to see any material when you were working on it or was it just the feeling of it and you worked off that?

Yeah that’s basically all it was, like we hadn’t been sent any visuals or what they were planning on doing. It just came more together after the fact. It’s kind of weird thinking back, even when we’ve been working on a film score it’s really not the way that we’ve done it. Even when you’re working on a film score you’re provided with something. In this instance, no we didn’t really have anything at all. I guess it ended up paying off dividends because it worked really well, it accompanies the piece really well, overall it’s quite slick and it’s really emotional as well that’s the thing. It’s quite an amazing experience.

Well your music’s always been so cinematic in it’s nature and I don’t imagine that Sympathy for the Delicious was the first time that you have put your music to an image outside of your own music videos, have you done work before in that genre?

Uhm, well I guess not really. We’ve had maybe a couple of things where our music has been used in TV shows and stuff like that but nothing like where we were really commissioned specifically to do something like that so that was a first time. Basically like recording an album, you’re coming up with a half hour-forty minutes worth of music. It isn’t exactly the same, obviously there is a bit of a difference. At least in our minds in recording an album and doing a film score. It’s fun though, I love it. I’m almost starting to like it as much as recording records so it’s definitely going to be there for us and I think we’re going to want to go down that road as often as we can.

It was all happening around the same time as Roaring Night, was there any bleed into either project where the music you were working on for Roaring Night influenced the film or the music you were working on for the film influenced the album?

It all did happen sort of one after the other but we started work on Roaring Night before we did the film score for Sympathy For Delicious but then we mixed the album after that and then finalised the film score so I suppose there was a little bit of back and forth but at the same time we still keep the projects somewhat separated because it’s like a Besnard Lakes album isn’t really like a Besnard Lake film score. One of them being it is just music when we write a film score, there is kind of a more stripped down approach we take to doing film scores, we try to keep it as minimal as possible where as our albums we can really layer things on there so there is a different MO behind it.

It’s now been a year since the album came out and we’re finally seeing you down in Australia for the first time, are you looking forward to finally getting down to this part of the world?

I am so excited, honestly I just can’t wait. I’ve always wanted to come to Australia. It’s kinda, actually, almost there maybe something personal behind it because my parents are both first generation Greek-Canadians and when I was told the story of when my dad came to Australia there has always been an element of well, you know, we almost ended up in Australia because it was kind of the thing to do at the time. Basically which place are you going to get to faster, at that particular time it was Canada. So I kind of feel like there is a parallel universe happening for me with Australia. In a weird kind of way. I don’t think about it all the time but I have thought about it once or twice. I might have ended up in Australia; I might have been an Australian gal.

You might come down and meet your doppelganger when you arrive.

I wouldn’t be surprised

You’re of course playing Golden Plains Festival and you’ve had a couple of interviews before this one. Have you heard a bit about the festival?

I’ve heard a few things about it but I guess I’m going to find out what exactly it entails. I’m looking forward to it. I love the fact that we’re coming there to play the festival.

We can’t wait to see you down here, I’m unfortunately going to miss you because I’ll be over in Texas where I caught you last year where you were performing mainly Roaring Nights stuff over there. Will you be going back to throwing in some earlier material when you come down here, as you haven’t been here before?

Oh absolutely, we’re going to be doing a cross section of songs. It might be a little more heavily off Roaring Night but we’ve definitely got many tunes from Dark Horse and maybe a couple of older ones as well. Definitely going to keep everyone happy.

That’s good to hear. You hear a lot about the Montreal music scene, what is the music scene there like, is it a hard one to get heard in?

I don’t think it’s a hard one to get heard in. I don’t know how it works really. Even after having been here for 10 years it’s still a bit like huh, you know? It’s interesting because there are lot of bands coming out of here and there is a lot of cross-pollination as well but there is also the Anglo scene, the Franco scene. I think what it is about Montreal that makes it very attractive, is that you can have that bohemian lifestyle here, you can live quite cheaply. Rents for apartments are a lot cheaper than any other big cities in North America and it’s just conducive to being able to maximise creative times. Going out and seeing bands play and just being able to be involved in it all. I guess it’s just easier than a lot of places and that’s what makes it kind of special and it’s just a great city on it’s own too. It’s the only place in Canada that really feels like an older, historical place. It feels culturally significant for some reason.

One band that you’ve been known to work with in the past, they recently reformed and that’s Godspeed You Black Emperor and they often said that they wouldn’t get back together. Was there any surprise in the Montreal community that they got back together?

I was a little bit surprised, but I’m so happy that they did and I’m sure that it will be something to not be missed.

Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today and everyone down here is in for a treat when you finally make it down. What took you so long anyway?

I don’t know man, it was supposed to happen before but it called got messed up for some reason. It’s happening now though so we’re happy.

As they say better late than never.

Exactly.