Not many bands welcome you into a vast world of discovery quite like Crack Cloud. The Calgary punk collective, led by drummer and vocalist Zach Choy, melds politically charged post-punk with a wide range of unexpected genres creating a frenzied stew that is all their own. After two strong EPs, last year’s Pain Olympics — a favorite over here at Ears to Feed — fully cemented the band as one of the most exciting creative forces out of North America.
Outside of Crack Cloud, each of the seven members (for now) find the time to work on their own projects. On February 5, multi-instrumentalist Daniel Robertson will be releasing his debut album under the name Peace Chord, via Unheard of Hope. The eponymous debut features seven gorgeous ambient-influenced tracks that take their time to enter your consciousness with Robertson’s hushed vocals and piano gently guiding you along like the slightest breeze course-correcting a boat on a body of water with no tide.
Ears to Feed has the premiere of the brand new Peace Chord video “Memo” that was directed in stop motion animation by Robertson. According to Robertson, the song was written after a period in Berlin “amongst a polyphony of past lives in the memorials and the chapels” he visited, and after viewing some of the “paintings of saints” he “envisioned those who have passed from my life.”
Following is “Empty in This House,” the second music video that Robertson directed and animated for this project. The video spawned from Robertson gluing moss, which he found around his neighborhood, to wood boards. “The character came to life amidst the objects I had around me; LED finger lights, glass fishing floats from my grandparents, an old oscilloscope, plasticine, and my grandfather’s old camera lenses,” he said in a press release. “Everything in this video was handmade, from the puppet’s face to the snowy meadow.”
We caught up with Robertson to discuss the new album, animating his own music videos and Crack Cloud’s future.
I just got the chance to listen to your new project Peace Chord. How did it all come together?
I just had a lot of songs that I had been writing on my own for sometime. Even before Crack Cloud I had always sort of been writing piano and voice music. At a certain point, my friend left his tape reel to reel at our house. I just started recording everything I had written on to that. That was basically how those songs came to be.
Rich with Tin Angel had always been keeping tabs on the music I had been writing on my own. Once I had that collection of songs I showed it to him and he was excited and supportive.
So it wasn’t a surprise; it was more of an on-going conversation with Tin Angel?
Totally, yeah. Same with everyone in Crack Cloud. We’re always just showing each other different things that we’re working on. Be it visual or musical. Whether those things ever see the light of day anywhere else is another conversation. But that’s part of the process, I think.
Was your attraction to more ambient textures something you feel you had to keep separate from Crack Cloud?
I think in the studio with Crack Cloud it’s kind of open to suggestions. I don’t think about it too consciously. It’s a pretty open concept. Whenever there’s a sense of something resonating with the track we’re working on, it works. There’s just elements that grew [with Crack Cloud] that I would have never anticipated.
I feel like 2020 was a year where a lot of my friends who generally listen to more aggressive forms of music like hardcore and black metal took the plunge and gave themselves over to ambient music. What is it about Ambient music that is so welcoming for self-reflection and meditation?
I think that the space of creating that kind of music is very different from playing with a full band. It’s sort of slow and layering and you’re creating a space to sort of sit in. Versus starting a song and ending a song and trying to achieve something in that period in time, you’re making something as short or as long as you feel like sitting in it.
I totally resonate with that this past year. I’ve always loved more ambient music and have been obsessed with synthesizers and sound design. But also a lot of what I listen to is punk or black metal or hardcore. Whatever it is.
With Crack Cloud, we’ve been touring a lot. Up until now, no one is touring in the world. But our shows were always high energy and aggressive. It’s funny, kind of like what you were saying, with Pain Olympics, the Crack Cloud album, we made it in this apocalyptic mindset before 2020 was such an apocalyptic year and we didn’t know that. When it came out we were like, “Okay, we’ve been in this mindset already.” I did find it really cathartic to put to music a lot of the things I have been writing for a long time.
You and many members of Crack Cloud work outreach or in harm-reduction work in overdose prevention sites. Does this kind of work inform the community you have created with Crack Cloud?
They definitely inform each other. It’s sort of delicate how to word things because in the past, speaking freely about our work and the music, it can kind of get conflated into “how we’re inspired by the struggles of people.” I feel like that can be quite exploitative and I don’t want to simplify it in that way. But I will say, that’s where we met and that is a source of commonality. We resonated with each other on those grounds before music and from there it forms a mutual understanding from which we can create.
Not just create. There’s so much more to being in a project with people especially when you live with them and tour with them all of the time. Being able to trust each other and understand each other and have a common empathy, was probably the most significant crossover in a sense because it was more of our character.
In terms of the music, I think everyone takes inspiration from so many different places. There is so much eb and flow to even work in that sphere. Just because there is a really high burnout rate. Different people are more [able to] have the energy and capacity for that at different times. But it’s always present in our work and in our thoughts.
It really resonated with me because I think a thing that gets lost when you talk about punk is that it is a genre based around empathy and connecting with your community.
I’m glad that that comes across. It can be kind of cliche to say that “the personal is the political,” but I think that we’ve really tried to approach being this microcosm and being a community even amongst ourselves because there is enough of us where it can be a thing. Trying to care for each other is as much of a statement and a necessity as anything. Everyone should strive for that. We’re not by any means perfect, at all (laughs). But that’s the goal and something we talk about a lot.
Likewise, I feel like each of our personal projects in a sense is part of that. For example, some other projects that are involved are Military Genius is Bryce (Cloghesy) who plays saxophone and guitar. It’s his industrial project which is so cool. Isabelle’s (Anderson) project is called Eve Adams. Mohammed (Sharar) is always working on cool projects. Right now, he’s working on VR design and 3D world building. And then we have the Crack Cloud songs we’ve been working on.
How many of you are living in the same house?
That sort of ebbs and flows as well. There are seven of us and four band members in the house right now.
To Americans, the Canadian music collective seems like such a utopian idea. Can you describe to me the decision making process when it comes to working with Crack Cloud?
It’s interesting that you say that as being like a foreign concept. By no means is there a real formula that works (laughs). It’s just very human ways of figuring things out. Arguing about it. Talking about it. And working on it over time with people. I will say that Crack Cloud is the brainchild of Zach (Choy). He and Mohammad (Sharar) created this vision for it. I would say a lot of the decision making comes down to them.
There aren’t any spoken rules around that. Everyone brings what they have to the table and the things that resonated with everyone are the things that bloom and people contribute to and grow. If anyone has a real strong passion towards one project, we all try to get behind it and make that happen.
Have you been able to keep motivated towards working on art while the world has been shut down?
Thankfully, the rabbit holes I tend to go down and waste time on are productive (laughs). I’ve been building a bunch of synthesizers and stuff. I’ll spend hours on YouTube, so I’m learning how to do that and then go and do that. Likewise with video stuff. I’ll spend hours on tutorials learning how to do things and then put them into practice.
I know what you mean. It can be hard to stay focused. I think I really love spending time by myself. That’s where I’m most productive. It does kind of suit my disposition.
That’s so cool! How has it been directing your own videos?
It’s good! It’s super different from anything I’ve done before. The next video I’m putting out is all stop motion animation. That’s really wonderful because you can put everything about filmmaking that you love into practice, but on your own in your bedroom. It’s all the same principles with lighting and whatever angles you want but there’s no actors. It’s just you doing tiny minute movements. I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s a different approach than the more large-scale productions that Crack Cloud has done. I just wanted to keep it more personal.
Is working on feature films away from your musical projects something you would like to do more of in the future?
I’m definitely feeling inspired by the animation side of things. The Quay Brothers, I’ve been seeing some of their work recently. I really love the ability to create a whole world — including the sound and the music — completely along in a sense. I could definitely see myself going down the animating rabbit hole.
With my collaborators in Crack Cloud, we talk about films all the time and imagining making them. Everything continues to grow, thankfully. So the opportunities for larger scale things feel like a potential.