Pas chic chic

“If this fog would lift but for a moment, this fog we live in and are lost in, we would see some strange sights … and hear some wonderful sounds, so many welcoming voices; such music!”
- Canadian proverb    

Pas chic chic is a bande à part, formed from the void like a Mayan egg in autumn 2005.  It was a nice autumn in Montreal.  The music was first rehearsed in the winter (cold). It sounds like the person you once were, suddenly remembered.

And so Pas Chic Chic originates from this bilingual island city that one finds in the Western part of Québec, Canada’s French speaking province.  It is there that the quintet recorded and self-released their first 7” vinyl single, Sur Les Écrans Statiques.  The band’s first effort was received favorably and the music, as some observed, is a form of fractured francophonie pop that brings to mind rhythms, melodies, and approaches associated with shoegaze, psychadelia and tropicalia.  Yet it is the individuals that compose Pas Chic Chic that best define the originality, energy, and identity of the band.
           
 Roger Tellier-Craig sings, plays guitars and keys. He has toured and recorded with Fly Pan Am, Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Set Fire To Flames. He's released electroacoustic music as Edgar Olivier Charles and composes contemporary dance scores. He is in Et Sans and DJs as Sundown,Sundown. He likes puns; but the ultimate pun is penultimate.

Marie-Douce sings and plays Farfisa, Maxi-Korg, and Mellotron. She is writing a thesis on death impulses and eroticism in Quebec cinema. With Roger, she started ‘nao identificado’ at Montreal's own Casa del Popolo. It is the night of the eternal unknowable.

Eric Gingras plays bass and has a baby daughter. He has been involved in various Montreal groups for the past 10 years, including Fly Pan Am, Cian Ethrie and Ghislain Poirier, among others. He also writes songs under his own name. It is more than likely that he could tell you whether or not the universe is a mirror.

Eric Fillion plays drums & percussions. He has played in hardcore bands Ire, The Black Hand and presently drums in Cobra Noir. Formerly a history and economics teacher at a private girl's school, he has left the halls of the academy last spring to devote himself fully to the harmony of the spheres.

Radwan Moumneh plays guitar and ace tone organ. He is also Pas Chic chic's sound engineer and tours in that capacity with Silver Mt. Zion when he is not behind the board at Hotel 2 Tango. He has played in various hardcore bands and is now the sole force behind Jerusalem In My Heart. He stands firmly on his side of a tainted glass through which sound forms.

Together, they committed themselves to making music and so these last winter months were spent within the familiar walls of Montreal’s Hotel 2 Tango.  Ecstatic Statique. 

www.paschicchic.com