Young Galaxy‘s “Shapeshifting” is inflective wide expansive dance music. The sounds whirl with romantic cascading guitars, bells and synths.  They’ve recently re-released their album “Shapeshifting” along with a remix album, “Versus”, with artists including Austra, Handsome Furs, Junior Boys and more.  I got a chance to chat to Stephen Ramsay from Young Galaxy about nomadic travels, genre-less music and Fauvist art.

EM: How was it working with producer Dan Lissvik?  I heard you guys collaborated via Skype. It’s amazing that with technology you can work with people you’ve never met.

Dan has a particular style. He comes from more of a dance music and a production based background so he doesn’t come from traditional band aesthetics. This meant that the music ended up being a lot more production based.  We always liked productions that feel like that they’re fully encompassing, very rich, things that we even call modern psychedelic productions.  You think of Jimi Hendrix when you think of psychedelic but I think electronic and dance music is even more the domain of psychedelic experimental music than guitar-based music these days.  By going in that direction we would be able to capture a more modern and unusual sound to the music. It was good timing since he wanted to produce with other bands. This allowed us to use a completely different palate and this turned the sound inside out for us. We moved around away from a live guitar band in a room based sound to something more experimental and electronic based.

EM: Influences?  Your music seems less typically guitar/drum heavy.

The modern listener has a broad palette of listening tastes. We were really mining specific parts of our influences when making music. It sounded quite heavily influenced by bands in the 80s and 90s we liked.  We wanted to go more experiment electronic music, dance music, things that weren’t necessary synonymous with the sound of our band. We wanted to show different sides. We aren’t trained musicians or come from some crazy third generation of classically trained pianist. We’re all just fans of music who had found their way into music by our love of music. To us, an honest reflection of music we make to also have it reflect all the different styles of music we like. A lot of modern bands will and should sound like this, music that jumps around style to style.  Look at your ipod- there’s everything from early punk rock to fifties to weird experimental piano music to noise music. It expands all generations of recording output. Band are sounding less and less genre based. We never wanted to be a genre band. When we started out, people had this idea of us being a shoe gazing band. We thought this is weird, this isn’t what we’re after or a band we want trying to be. Now everyone calls us a dream pop band.  It’s not like you can escape the pigeonhole.  But when you think of a band like radio head. You don’t think oh yeah they’re a genre band or they’re a modern band. They’re just radio head. That’s all you have to say. People know what you’re talking about. That’s what we’re after. It’s not about “oh it’s about they play guitars or an electronic band.”  It’s very much of their time. Hopefully, we’ll have a career that reflects that too.

EM: I read somewhere your mother’s a painter and you really like the Fauvists. How does that relate to your music? What would your music look like if it was art?

When we started making music we made landscape painting, something that depicts a large of land and particular mood, whether it’s stormy or calm. It was something easy to understand, a literal depiction of a scene. We were mimicking what we were seeing musically in a way.  Now we’re experienced there’s a thirst to break new ground. We’re getting more expressionistic or abstract. It’s getting more like Pollack or the fauvists. They were characterized often by the use of weird colours to depict the very typical like portrait painting. They would use very strange colours or abstract colours within a portrait, using strange shades of green or yellow, or pink.  It was a more grotesque and strange take on a fairly archetypical kind of thing. We’re slowly deconstructing this more literal kind of music we were making traditionally. If there was a storm we wanted to depict we would literally try to do a storm.  We might do it now in a less direct way.  We’re going to very abstract places, trying to go from this realistic literal thing to something more abstract that requires the listener to infer from it from what they want. The more abstract the art the more open it is project their own interpretation on to it.

EM: What neighbourhood do you identify with?

I identify less and less with any neighbourhood. We increasingly lead a more nomadic existence of a band. We’re in a middle of three months of touring. Right now I’m standing in front of Catherine’s mother’s house, I’m five mins away from the ocean. I grew up on West Vancouver Island so  I have a strong pull to the ocean. We were actually talking about how crazily expensive to live in Vancouver that we won’t ever live here but we’re from here. It’s been seven years of living in Montreal. We have a baby. Montreal is more of a place we’re from. But we’re still foreigners there. It’s still a French place.  We’re English; we kind of sit outside.  We just went to Sweden, we were hanging out with Dan. It’s really beautiful.  It’s a bit like Canada because it’s more efficiently run, a lot more sane in some ways and the coffee is really good. You accept your fate of musician as nomadic, you’re less particular of what a neighbourhood represents to you. It’s more about the people you’re with and the quality of the time you spent.

Currently, I’m on tour with my family, my girlfriend and my child. That’s my home. That’s where I find all of my comforts. The rest of it, I find rewarding moving through the world place to place. You feel your agency. When I’m moving through the world I have control over my own agency. That time in general to travel that way is invaluable.

EM: Where did the idea for the music video “Phantoms” come from?

One of our guitar keyboard players, Matthew Shapiro made that video with his friend Luke McCutcheon. Luke McCutcheon, the cinematographer, saw a Spanish film- it depicts two people in ghostlike outfits crossing the landscape in the fog. We liked the idea of the song “Phantoms,” with the ghosts. The ghost make absurd and slightly mysterious figures in the video. The green flame idea was done with meth sulphide, a ingredient that makes crystal meth, which isn’t easy to find apparently. (laughs)  Luke was looking for it at a few stores and people looked at him funny – “We don’t have that here.” He eventually found it somewhere. When you add it to flame, it’s a chemical so it turns it bright green. That was the mad genius of vision and we got a fog machine. We got this strange journey that doesn’t have a beginning or end. Perhaps, you could it call it a metaphor for life.  It’s two ghosts in a purgatory like from “Waiting for Godot.”

EM: Top of your playlist?

England band Factory Floor-  ”Two Different Ways”

Portishead- “Change the Tear”

Minimal electronic based stuff. Last War on Drugs record.  It’s a great road record. It’s groovy. Suede ambience

I bought my dad a copy of David Bowie’s “Low” on vinyl. Which is a classic but listening to vinyl sounds amazing.

The new Cass Mccomb’s record “Humour Risk.” He’s an underated guy. I r eally like him

Baxter Dury’s album, “Happy Soup.” He’s Ian Dury’s son, who was a famous punk musician in England.

EM: Describe your on stage aesthetic?

I like weird jackets on stage. Expensive futuristic foot wear but it can’t be too ridiculous. It has to have a modernity to it. I live in a pair of jeans. I believe in buying expenisve jeans you can wear everyday. They pay for themselves in 365 days a year. I ‘m also a t-shirt guy. I used to be a real slogan t shirt guy but I’m getting away as I grow older. I like things that say weird things on them or strange images or abstract shapes that don’t explain too much. I’m trying to put something like that into our merch.  We’ve gone from putting the words young galaxies on our tshirts to “yg.”  The people might not know necessarily what it meant but they might ask you if they like the shirt. The shirt does its job anyway which is to promote the band.

EM: Future projects?

The record is coming up. January late, we will start making a record. Catherine and I have been writing for Dan Lissvick for another artist called Hannah.  She’s a Swedish pop singer. We’re working on her debut record. That’s really fun because we’re writing  in more of the pop style for her. So we’re  kind of like, so ok if I was to write a song for Beyonce what would that sound like. That’s kind of the head space we’re using. So, that’s been really fun.  We’re going to do more touring mostly out east like Toronto, maybe New york and we’re going to try going somewhere South West this year. We’re keeping the band going. We’re busy and in the good place. There’s a lot chemistry, it’s a good time to concentrate on the band.

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For more about the band, visit: http://younggalaxy.com/