Back to school with Vitaminsforyou
Vitaminsforyou plays with art-jazz outfit Maylee and Pegwee Power at Supermarket Friday Nov. 13. - photo Carl Heindl
Ever feel like you’re at the club but watching the Nature channel, what with all the tribe-like dancing, alcoholic rituals, and pre-mating pick-up lines? Imagine how Bryce Kushnier a.k.a Vitaminsforyou feels: The bedroom electronic producer happened to be studying anthropology the early part of this decade as he was testing his creations in the clubs of his home city of Winnipeg.
His grad studies in Montreal took him to looking at the artists behind the scene – though a group seemingly removed from the western dance floor – with a thesis on post-WW2 Japanese nationality and electronic music.
“I was exploring what it meant to be Japanese and creating electronic music,” he says from his now-hometown of Toronto. “Like what did it mean to be German for Kraftwerk to make electronic music and what did it mean for Pierre Schaeffer working in France developing his cut-and-paste ideas…”
Kushnier realizes music history can get a little weighty.
“It’s a lot less complicated than what I’m making it out to be,” he laughs. “But basically the music was an echo of what was happening in Japanese culture at the time, the quick recovery necessary for Japan after WW2 and the way they were able to latch onto European and North American Ideals, but make them a gazillion times better.”
Like many creatives around the world – including Kushnier – the Japanese struggled with the art of emulation.
“In Japanese understanding, the only way to truly be something is to actually be it, i.e. the only way you can play black southern blues music is to be a black southern blues person. So they really try to emulate things to the best of their knowledge. But then there’s the problem of being Japanese – the only way to truly express that is to be Japanese. They’d ask ‘How do I come to terms with the fact I’m a Japanese person and I’m playing blues music?’… So with electronic music they’d ask ‘How do I make house or electro or techno truly Japanese?’ There’s that struggle,” he says, and in true academic form concludes: “There’s not really an answer to that question.”
“Why is my music Canadian electronic music? There’s no real answer to that, but I’m interested in the struggle,” he adds, his modesty being perhaps the most telling part of his Canadian identity: “Is this kind of boring you?”
In fact, when it comes to his pop-inspired electronica as Vitaminsforyou, Kushnier keeps the intellectualizing on the down-low.
“It’s something that interests the analytical part of my brain, but that’s not how I make music. I may come to understand other people’s music that way, but with the creative side of me a lot of what I make is through trial and error. I don’t rely on the normal constructs of a song – verse-chorus-bridge-verse-chorus-bridge - or the ins-and-outs of software” he says, noting his free-form use of the latest electro-programming gadgets like the Tenori-on or the Monome). “I’m able to live in those two worlds (analytical and creative) quite comfortably, in the same way I can listen to John Cage or Stockhausen, or be just as content listening to a great top-20 tune or dance track that has no academic integrity, no thought put into it other than what is required to make money.”
Speaking of dance tracks, Vitaminsfouyou is pairing with Ottawa’s big beat-electro wizards Jokers of the Scene to release “dark” tracks in the near future.
In the meantime you can catch him on YouTube remixing (most recently dream pop sensations XX ) or DJing at the Drake lounge; Tonight he performs his last show of the year at Supermarket, live with bassist Jordan Kern (Escalate) and drummer Rob Butcher (Vas Vega). – Marsha Casselman
VitaminsforYou-HeClosedHis EyesSoHeCouldDanceWithYou by Vitaminsforyou
