Amourous Feelings
Cinéma L’Amour Goes Loopy for Montreal
Cinéma L’Amour, the iconic Montreal strip club, does not exactly conjure up images of a two-person indie band, but for Dorian Scheidt and Chris Kavanagh it was the perfect metaphor.
Moving to Montreal from Calgary to further their musical aspirations, childhood friends Scheidt and Kavanagh needed to adjust to the cultural mecca they were going to learn to call home.
The dingy yet ornate century-old theatre-turned-strip club seemed like an appropriate choice of namesake for their project, given the dramatic shift they were undergoing themselves—not to mention it was only a block and a half from their rehearsal space.
“We were in a different place, we were somewhere that was so far removed from the cultural norms of where we grew up. [Cinéma L’Amour] is a symbol more than a specific place, it is an icon for this different world we are in, trying to keep exploring.”
Back in Calgary, Scheidt and Kavanagh had just worked through the sixth big lineup change to their band.
“We had been through an indie pop orchestra with eight members, including a member who played tambourine and slide whistle and [wore] cowboy boots,” Kavanagh said. “We even played as a grind band that was known for its copious amounts of nudity and incoherent vocals.”
Once in Montreal, Scheidt and Kavanagh moved into a loft in the Mile End with the intention of finding new members, but according to Scheidt, things didn’t go exactly as planned.
“We never started jamming with anybody else. It became just the two of us that kept playing together,” he said. “It was easier to organize jams, easier to collaborate and work out complex parts and rhythms and to bounce ideas off of each other.”
Having to downsize forced Scheidt and Kavanagh to branch out from their staple instruments—guitar and drums respectively—towards incorporating loop stations and keyboards.
Though still primarily a dance between drums and guitars, the digital elements transformed what would be singular grooves into entrancing loops of ricocheting guitars.
It’s an effective, yet jointly exhaustive dichotomy between a rather raw, lo-fi garage aesthetic à la The Libertines and one that is more polished.
The fluctuations in rhythm and tempo keep Kavanagh tempered on drums, though the rolling toms and dynamic range of his cymbal hits show the originality he can bring to his backing role. Scheidt’s layered guitars and bright tenor voice are looped and panned, doubled and delayed into a stew of rounds and harmonies.
The musical buildups may be geared towards live listening, but their routine transitions and layered loops require very precise performances.
“There’s not very much room for error,” conceded Scheidt. “The way we compose our material is very much designed for live performance. Everything we do is live off the floor in the room at the time. There is no prerecorded stuff at all.”
But even if the performance is a hit, a saturated music scene like in Montreal is a tumultuous one, filled with plenty of off-nights.
“There is a lot of competition on any given night,” admitted Kavanagh, which often makes it hard for upstarts and emerging out-of-town acts to consistently draw good crowds.
However, Scheidt views the uncertainty as license to try harder.
“It is difficult, but I think being in an environment where the competition is that stiff really lights a fire under your ass,” he said resolutely.
“Montreal is special because it is paying so much attention to what is going on around. Living here and making music here, you feel like people are listening and it matters what you do, and you can really go somewhere with it.”
Cinéma L’Amour (w/ Astral Gunk & Try Harder) / Sept. 21 / Brasserie Beaubien (73 Beaubien St. E.) / $10.00 at door / 10:00 p.m. “more info”
