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Who: LAL Forest
What: artist Q&A interview
Where: Casbah - 306 King St. West, Hamilton
When: Thursday July 30th

LAL Forest is three musicians, writers, and a force of great ideas. LAL is a vibe. In the musical sense, this vibe that crosses through soul, hip-hop, international, soul, old school house and techno,

For 10 years bassist Ian de Souza, vocalist Rose Kazi and synth/laptop technician Nick Murray have been perfecting this vibe and playing in places all over the world like India, Goa, Cuba & Pakistan. Their 3^rd album "Deportation" was released in 2008 and is currently on their first national tour to support the record. Although the album was primarily the effort of the three LAL members, you can hear appearances from almost 20 other musicians, including a couple dancers contributing recorded footsteps as percussion.

With so many people contributing to the LAL sound, what's the creative process?
Ian - It's not like the collaboration happened in one room all at the same time. The music was written and we basically grabbed ideas, through the process, of what we'd like to hear on it. Then we just acted on it and got people come in and play.

Rose - some of it was sending files to Bryden, who is the trumpet player and also plays French horn. We just sent him the files and he wrote something against what we did and we loved it. And most of the musicians that we asked were friends or people we've known for a while and trusted. It was really easy. They just laid something down one time. We'd just go back and edit it, but most of the time we didn't edit they're contributions.

How does your live show compare to that record? It would be hard to recreate it having so many different contributors on the album.
Rose - Our live show is completely different. The live show is just the three of us. Some of it is elements and ideas from the musicians that we've worked with.

Ian - there's an element of improvisation involved in it. We never really ever do anything twice the same way, which is kind of interesting for a band that's considered and "electronica" band. There's a huge percentage of what we do live that is improvisational.

Why do you feel it's important to have substance in your music and strong subject matter?
Rose - I think so. It's the reason why I make music. It's important to me to attach and attack issues of social injustice.  It always has been. That doesn't mean I won't do other stuff that's more fun and more for a drinking crowd. I work at a book store part time and apart of the activist scene, so it's a part of who I am. I get really bored with songs about love.

What political groups are you involved in? How are you involved?
Rose - I'm not a hard core activist. We've linked with "No One's Illegal" which is a group that works with migrated, newly migrated and non-status people. We've connected with them across the country. We connect with indigenous community groups, queer community groups, groups that are marginalized to a certain extent. It's a part of who I am as well being Bangladeshi Canadian. It's something you're constantly aware of, so it's important for us to connect with other groups. Whenever we go to a city, we make a point of trying to connect to some of these groups. Maybe it's to do fund raisers or just to connect and see what's happening.

 

Thursday July 30th
LAL Forest
www.myspace.com/lalforest
w/ Lee Reed

Casbah
306 King St. W, Hamilton
9pm - $8 - 19+

 

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