Glaciers in Westboro
Cormac Rea
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Martin : " Jazz : the attitude, if not the notes. "
photo: Peter W.
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Vancouver's Arctic invokes the Great White North
Capturing the feeling of the Arctic region in music would be quite the task for any band. It's no surprise then that Arctic - the band created by Marcus Martin, native of the Northwest Territories - divides listeners. Often pegged as everything from Radiohead to Yes, Arctic's mixture of lush prog rock, brooding folk, and electro ambient has claimed one of Westfest's 2009 headlining sets."It kind of goes all over the board," says Martin. "Sometimes it's just the idea of how a song is approached or delivered in a particular genre that we use. In the songwriting process, sometimes we'll sit down and talk about what we're listening to, like, for example, Tool. Sometimes Tool gets to some kind of ambient space and the drums really carry a lot of the song and the instruments are almost treatments on top of it. So, I kind of go 'ok, I'm looking for that vibe here' and then we'll go off on something more electronica."
Conceived as an alternative to traditional band structure, Martin's Arctic project was initially a solo project, involving a boomerang audio recording device that allowed him to loop his guitar work and other instrumentation. Now including Kristen Starcher as bassist, backing singer and keyboardist, and Todd Biffard on drums, Arctic has taken a more collaborative, at times improvisational, feel. So, is Arctic just Northern canuck Jazz?
"I think we cite some of it as jazz but jazz is no longer about chord movement, it's about where the music is going," adds Martin. "Jazz has gone around.
You can even look at some progressive hip-hop and see it as jazz, because they take the style, bits and pieces of things, and fuse it together to come out with something totally crazy. That's jazz: the attitude, if not the notes."At times, Arctic's morphing structures and genre splitting has created intriguing bookings. During a recent appearance in Winnipeg, the band found themselves in unfamiliar climes.
"The promoter came up to us when we came in and said there had been a change, with a few bands added to the bill at the last minute," recalls Martin. "He said 'they're like punk.' Well, they weren't like punk, they were punk - full-on. The whole crowd is full of punks and we're sitting in the van outside watching all the punkers in Winnipeg roll in, thinking 'not sure if this is going to go over well.' But, by the end, all the girl punkers got up and started dancing! It was really nice, there was no 'you're this and you're that' type thing."
Arctic
@ Westfest
(Richmond Rd. at Golden)
June 12, 7-7:45 p.m.
Info: @
www.westfest.ca
www.projectarctic.com
