ARTIST FEATURE: PONTEIX
lect with a kinetic outlet, high regard composers who like to leave their homes on Saturday night.
Meeting LePage, one is impressed by his easy demeanour while talking succinctly about his musical ideas. As artists, it can be difficult to explain one’s work without coming across as pretentious and overbearing, or aloof and elitist. LePage has a casual grace and humble sensibility, a musician who is clear of focus while retaining an approachable air.
Logan’s answers are direct and clear, to the point without edge, concise in thought and articulation. His precise ca- dence and focus contrasts LePage’s ease in a complementa- ry relationship, how best friends can seem to be opposites, Mutt and Jeff out on a play date.
For Ponteix, the shared songwriting and audience experi- ence is paramount in discussing their music, writing, perfor- mance, and philosophy.
Artists across mediums, whether it be visual, musical, or performance, aim to accomplish a shared experience. As a collective, the audience will leave with a sense of a commu- nal connectedness, iterated using various vocabulary, but sprouted from the same creative root becoming a symbiotic component of the performance.
This holistic shared experience, “as any show should be” according to Logan, is key to the philosophy and direction of Ponteix, to transcend the barrier of audience and per- formers, to allow their sets to be as experiential as they are musical. Logan continues, “The audience wants to feel they are involved; being propelled or pulled towards the act itself is very important and very profound.”
Part of their live show is creating a platform for giving and receiving, actively listening, shaping the experience of the audience and themselves. “We try to leave little room for clapping between songs - using ambient transitions between songs,” Lepage explains. “These allow for a larger seamless experience, a performance to be appreciated in its entirety, not meant to be broken up into separate parts.”
The pace of the show and shaping of the performance is more than (simply) playing through the songs. “It’s not a delivery response kind of thing,” explains Logan, “where it’s ‘here’s the product, I made this in my basement. I’m going to do one thing, you clap for me, and I’m going to do another, and you clap for me again.’ ”
Instead, Ponteix creates a space to take listeners along with them, to use sound and music as an authentic, transforma-
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tive encounter. Experimenting with sound is vital to the Pon- teix live show. “Especially if you are exiting out of a track and you start to tear apart its essential elements,” says Logan, “and carry them through in a monotonous manner, or carry the flow out in a particular tone, then the audience gets to feel like they are going for a journey with you and hear how it goes from this-to-this and that-into-that.”
The holistic shared experience is a fundamental cornerstone of the band’s live show. “The audience wants to feel they are involved, being propelled or pulled towards the act itself. It’s very important and very profound,” says Logan.
“We are all fans of ambient music,” adds Lepage “like Brian Eno and Tim Hecker, and building a story to the set was something that was encouraged at the very beginning, I’d say. The more and more we do it, the more we like it. By see- ing other bands do it, we found it very interesting.”
Besides the experiential live performances, the group’s phi- losophy is one of discovery and struggle. This is not the type of struggle to ensue audiences storming the streets to riot or smash public property. Instead it is the inner-struggles of self-discovery and personal identity, trying to find one’s true self among the cacophony of societal chatter and cultural norms. Everyday there are struggles that need attention that can change people profoundly.
The name Ponteix itself comes from a small village in southern Saskatchewan. “They are French surrounded by English,” says Lepage, “holding their own and fighting their own.” A Francophone community fighting to keep its culture and identity in a largely English-speaking, English-cultured province.
“It’s an everlasting story trying to figure out who you are and what you’re about.”
As a band, Ponteix is finding and defining their sound, add- ing their individual musical voices and influences to work cohesively and unified while, to borrow a great adage from the music hub of Austin, to ‘stay weird.’ “We are still trying to identify how we all write and how it’s like a cohesive stream- lined experience,” says Logan.
The idea of personal struggle is evident in the track “Chasing the Sun,” a tune initially pontificating the narrator’s struggle of finding a place in the world, of never settling or being comfortable.
From the onset the narrator seems confident stating, I will not hide / I will fight to survive, then quickly takes a true T.S.
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