Tellier-Craig still prefers the studio to the stage, and his post-Fly Pan Am work has been marked by an emphasis on electroacoustic composition, the use of modular synthesizers, and techniques of sampling and signal processing that intentionally mislead and obscure, leading us straight into the uncanny valley. And that punk amateurism still pervades his work today, even if the aesthetic has shifted. In our conversation, he describes diligently practicing scales for hours every day.
When Fly Pan Am began, he didn’t even know how to play guitar, and a year and a half later he’d been drafted into Godspeed after the departure of Mike Moya. Tellier-Craig had been more interested in visual art and collage, so approaching music as a studio practice allowed him to apply this same aesthetic to sound. As for so many others, Eno demonstrated a path forward towards music as a studio art. He had already been an obsessive music fan, but at the time couldn’t play any instruments. The discovery of Brian Eno’s On Land (1982) was an important turning point for Tellier-Craig. And that’s what I take away from his Instagram photos he enjoys bursting the bubble of escapism while still being able to enjoy the films. While he admits that when he was younger he was more interested in art house cinema, especially auteur directors such as Godard and Tarkovsky, he has since come to find the value in even the lowliest B-movies, contributing to a growing interest in sci-fi and horror. His interest in pop art and Hollywood is the source of one such tension. Studio vs Performance, Solo vs Collaboration, Improvisation vs Composition, French vs English. Throughout our conversation, various binaries are established only to be ignored and overcome. Tellier-Craig has been interested in hyperreality since long before the pandemic, and, like Apollinaire, he finds the coexistence of contradiction to be creatively generative. Apollinaire recognized and celebrated that work’s ability to maintain an irresolution and coexistence of contradiction. Unsurprising that such an intermedial spectacle would require the coinage of a new word. The word surreal was first coined in French by the poet Apollinaire in 1917, to describe the Parade, a production which included libretto by Jean Cocteau, music by Erik Satie, and designs by Picasso. These days we often hear talk of how our lives have become hyperreal, but in fact both prefixes, sur- and hyper-, mean the same thing, an experience beyond or above normal reality.
How else to describe the experience of a Zoom call, looking directly into dozens of faces at once? Or how to explain that my favorite streamed performance of 2020 was a quartet within the video game Animal Crossing? The term surreal has been victim of a gradual definitional banalization it’s become little more than a synonym for weird or strange. The contradiction, between the mundane normalcy of being at home and the ongoing severity of the situation, leads to these moments of recognition in which the ground seems to drop out from under us, like a waking hypnic jerk. This idea comes up multiple times throughout our conversation, a feeling exacerbated by the hyperreality of the ongoing pandemic. A favorite saying of his is “La réalité qui bascule dans le néant,” he explains, the moment when reality breaks down. Tellier-Craig loves these kinds of moments. These photos that are jarring, even surreal, because they make the artifice of the medium plain to see.
Produced and mixed in Montreal, March 2021ĭuring the summer of 2020, Roger Tellier-Craig created an Instagram account consisting solely of behind-the-scenes photos of movie creature effects. Supporting the podcast on Patreon grants access to vocal-free versions of the episodes, as well as other benefits for higher tiers of support, including custom made mixes, soundscapes, collages, and other custom projects. I’m very grateful for any support, which will help ensure future episodes. You can support Sound Propositions on Patreon if you are so inclined, or send a one-time donation via PayPal. Sound Propositions should be available wherever you get your podcasts, so please keep an eye out and subscribe (and rate and review, it helps others who might be interested find us). Tellier-Craig discusses his fascination with music as a studio art, the unexpected creative opportunities presented by quarantine, and the hyperreality of our present in which our fragile sense of reality seems poised to collapse at any moment. In 2019, Fly Pan Am released C’est ça, their first record in 15 years, but their 2020 tour plans were derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic. This episode features a wide-ranging conversation with Montreal’s Roger Tellier-Craig, known for his work with Fly Pan Am, Godspeed, Le Révélateur and others.