Passion Bel Canon – a self confessed alternative folk trio sprinkled with a dash of electro. Formed late 2013 they’ve since made waves throughout the UK, 2014 saw them establish a foot hold in the highly competitive new music scene, play multiple gigs in some of London’s most prestigious new music venues and were also featured on the BBC‘s ‘new artist’ section. 2015 sees them ramp up their presence and showcase a bunch of new tracks, most recently with the awesome ‘Land of Hope’. Headlining @ ILLUSTRATED 2015 we grabbed some of their time in-between rehearsals …
Passion Bel Canon is an unusual name, where did it come from ?
Lauren was looking in a music theory dictionary and saw Pachebel’s Canon in D Major, the classic wedding song, and thought about a play on those words. She never thought about how difficult it was going to be to spell!
You write all your own songs, when composing a new piece what inspires you and where do you begin ?!
Everything and anything. Lyrically, a song can be inspired by something seen or experienced. For instance, ‘Last Dance’ was inspired from a visit to the Wellcome Museum in Euston and its exhibition on Death whilst Stranger is the cathartic break-up song. In terms of composition, all three of us listen to a lot of music and go to a lot of gigs which constantly influences our own songs.
You’ve recently produced a soundtrack to Markus Schroder’s film ‘The Ritual’, how has PBC gone about bridging the gap between music and visual art ?
This was a completely new experience for us and very exciting! In January, we spent the weekend in the studio projecting Markus’ film and improvising alongside it. When playing in a band, you want to think of a song structure in terms of verse and chorus but when composing a film soundtrack you have to think of how to augment the film without distracting the audience. The visual storytelling is the priority and you are enhancing it, so often the more minimal the better. You just have to think of John William’s iconic Jaws soundtrack. Two notes and that’s all you need to make a shark the most terrifying creature on Earth.
Is it true to say PBC has developed its own unique electro-flected alt-folk brand … can you elaborate on the genre a little ?
Ha! It can be so hard to describe yourself to promoters sometimes. The electro-flecked comes from the use of synths and Kaoss pad whilst Will’s acoustic guitar and Jamie’s tribal drums is the alt- folk part! Ultimately, the three of us are inspired by a variety of music genres which gets mashed together in the rehearsal room to create our songs.
In one of your promotional photographs you’re pictured covered in paint whats all that about !?
The photos are taken by the brilliant Fred Tschepp. We spent the day in the woods posing for promotional shots. At the end of the day, we put our least favourite clothes on and decided to chuck Holi Paint at each other after looking at the joyous images of the Holi festival last year. The funny thing was we decided to go for a Sunday Roast after the shoot in the local pub. I don’t think the landlord was too impressed when we walked in covered head to toe in paint.
What can we expect to see from you guys at ILLUSTRATED 2015 ?
We are about to launch a crowdfunding campaign with PledgeMusic to raise funds towards our debut EP. We will playing these songs as well as the song written especially for the film ‘The Ritual’. We are really looking forward to playing alongside some fantastic artists for ILLUSTRATED 2015. See you there!
Check out more from Passion Bel Canon here, and see them live @ ILLUSTRATED 2015 – GET YOUR TIX!!
