tIn Montreal, the hip-hop/trap producer JP (who goes by the moniker Beau Geste) began performing at the same clubs and practising in the same spaces as the electronic producer Charles (who goes by the moniker Splitshift).

When Beau Geste began growing tired of the limitations of the genre that he found himself in, he looked to expand his sound and he and Splitshift began rehearsing together, before moving into the same place. The fruits of their collaboration were the base for a new project called distraction4ever. When a guitar was added to the mix, the two took influence from post-punk and gothic music and released their debut album, Please Don’t Think About Tomorrow, in 2022.

Today, their follow-up album, Business Core, which critiques society’s expected gruelling work ethic and lack of work/life balance, was released.

We spoke to the members about the album, their project and how it differs from their solo work, their incorporation of multimedia aspects, their thoughts on AI-generated material, the Quebec music scene, singing in French versus English, and much more.

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I guess the first thing I’ll ask, simply, is a little bit about your individual backgrounds as musicians and how this project came to be.

Beau Geste: Do you want to start, Charles, or I start?

Splitshift: Eh, as you wish.

BG: Eh…

S: Go ahead. [Laughs] I’ll talk afterwards.

BG: OK. [Laughs] Cool. So, I guess it was – what? – three years ago? Two, three years?

S: Something like that.

BG: Yeah, not sure. About two years, almost. I was doing music – I’ve been doing music now for ten years, I guess – but I was doing a lot of different types of beats, a lot of hip-hop and stuff. Then some friends introduced me to more of an electronic background, and then, Cha and I, we shared a studio for, like, a year, and then we were like, “Oh, we should try to make music together!” Cha, his background was more electronic, I would say. The first thing we did together was super breakbeat, drum and bass kind of vibe. A bit weird, blah, blah. And then for some reason, I don’t know, Charles picked his old guitar out of nowhere and started to play with the guitar and we switched, completely, the genre we were making. I guess that’s what influenced the fast-paced drum machine vibe; it was the drum and bass background a little bit. So, that’s how we started and, yeah, that’s how distraction4ever was born.

S: Yeah, it was like…For me, I come from an electronic, acoustic background. I like recording stuff and using synths and machines. Yeah, we were sharing a studio, hanging out together. I think the studio really affected the vibe of distraction4ever; it’s, like, an empty building in an industrial place. It’s really popular for raves and afterparties, and a lot of young artists go there. It was a bit empty and super industrial. Also, we were always there, chilling, post-pandemic, like early [into the] end of the pandemic, so we were always there. We were just experimenting with music and I had some electronic machines, like those old, ‘90s/early 2000s machines, and I picked up my guitar and we put it to a fast drum machine, and we were jamming on it. I also grew up with the classic post-punk thing, like Joy Division and stuff, so we were pretty much influenced by that, as well. We all like the dark vibe around it, I guess. Yeah, that’s pretty much how distraction became. Also, a big part of distraction4ever is graphic design and making videos, and JP has a background as a graphic designer, so all those things, like being in the studio, working on music, after we were done, working on visuals and having some fun doing this.

BG: Yeah, fucking around with a VHS camera. Fun stuff.

When you guys got together, what would you say were the overlaps in terms of what you were listening to and, generally, what were the contrasts? What was the stuff that you didn’t share an opinion on and how did that influence the sound of the band, too?

BG: Um, I guess, for me, I was getting tired of hip-hop because I thought it was stagnating a little bit; it was stagnant. I don’t know, the golden era of trap and stuff was, for me, the 2010s and stuff, and now it was – what? – 2021? And I felt like it was kind of flatting out, always the same thing and stuff, so I was looking for something new, I guess. That’s what drove me to love some more old stuff that I used to love, like more electronic stuff, more guitar stuff. We grew up with, I don’t know, like Linkin Park, Sum 41, Blink-182, like all that stuff. So, I guess since Cha and I have a similar background when we were younger, but maybe it was different in the early 2000s and stuff. But, at the end of the day, we kind of love the same stuff.

S: I guess we were always looking for new music. When we started this band, we were also DJing a lot, so we were always finding new music and listening to new music and digging into NTS and stuff like this, and I think we were pretty open-minded and stuff. So, we were like, “Oh, this I like,” “This I like.” We were always creating some playlists on Spotify of stuff we liked. I feel that playing together as DJs for an underground rave for two years, it really brought us together, music-wise, as well.

BG: The only thing I can think that we disagree on when we show each other music is sometimes I could love some vocals, vocal patterns that Charles could find too cheesy, maybe, sometimes. Maybe that’s the only moment where it clashes but, other than that, it rarely happens that we disagree on music. Like Charles said, we’re super open-minded and we love the same stuff.

S: Yeah, and JP has a way of producing more cleaner than I have and I have a way of producing more dirtier, and it kind of blends together in a good way, you know?

Yeah. I was going to ask about the lyrical aspect of your music. Being from Montreal, you incorporate French and English into your music, kind of bilingually. I’m always interested in the language that people incorporate into their music. Was that something that was thought of from the start, to incorporate the two, or was it something that kind of came naturally? How premeditated was that?

BG: We kind of incorporated French only on one song, now. We tried a little bit, to fuck around, because, I don’t know, in France, I know there’s a lot of post-punk music that’s very good, super spoken word, very monotone in French. We love that. I would love to incorporate more French in our songs but it’s difficult because, here in Montreal, the French scene is like…It’s hard to…How can I say this? [Splitshift begins laughing] Like, it’s easily cheesy because this is the language we speak. The people we speak with, if they listen to a song and I say something that’s so real that they understand right away because it’s in French, they’re going to be like, “You’re weird” or “I don’t know.” I guess the judgment affects the whole French thing.

Does speaking in English give you a sense of detachment? I’ve talked with other artists who don’t make music in their native language, and they kind of argue that it helps to, as you were saying, not be so self-conscious about what it is they’re saying and it helps them to bring the songs, as they need to be, out. Has that been your relationship with singing in English?

BG: Oh, yeah. Totally.

S: I feel as I’ve grown up, with my background, I feel like I was always listening more to the singing as an instrument, melody-wise, and less to the real lyrics. As for JP, it’s the other side. So, that’s really an interesting dynamic, where maybe English was better for us to create the tone we wanted to because the kind of French we speak is like half…Not half, but there’s a lot of English in the French we speak, as well. It’s like a bastard French or sometimes it’s corny to sing in Quebecois, you know? It’s not the Frenchman’s French. [Laughs]

BG: Yeah, the slang makes it different from French from France.

S: But we love our language, though! We love our language!

BG: Yeah, yeah! We love to speak it, it’s just so difficult to make music with it because it’s not it. It’s like the things you hear on the radio, like this guy with a guitar and it’s super cheesy. Like, your aunt is going to listen to this but not us.

[Laughs] That’s fair. I know in France itself, they have quotas on the radio; like, a certain amount of music has to be in the French language. I don’t know if anything like that exists in Quebec or anything. Are there any benefits to singing in French, in terms of grants or airtime, or anything like that?

BG: Oh, if we start to make all the songs that we’re making in French, we’ll be rich. We’ll be totally rich if we do this, here! [Laughs] Yeah, yeah, yeah! It’s a big thing!

S: No, no, no! That translates bad[ly]. It’s a joke, but there’s more grants for French artists, for sure, and radio opportunities, for sure. 

BG: Yeah, totally.

As artists who incorporate music, incorporate visual media, incorporate video, how do you feel…. – because you kind of started, really, at the beginning of the AI craze that is around now – …how do you feel about AI art, AI-generated art? Are you in favour? Are you against? Do you have mixed feelings?

BG: Em…it’s a good question. Like…

S: We’ve been following the trends. You know, we work for a company that uses AI, as well, in music, and they’ve been trying to use AI in images, as well, but it’s not working. But if it’s a tool that can help you to clean your image and stuff like this, we kind of like it, but if it’s created from AI, we don’t really work on that level as it doesn’t really fit our aesthetic for now. We’ll see later.

BG: Yeah. I’m not closeminded by it, because, just like anything, when the drum machine came around, the drummers were like, “Oh, my God! No! Never!”, you know? It’s kind of the same thing, it’s a new technology. It would be weird to just be against it because it’s the future, you know? So, we have to be aware and still learn from it and stuff but, as Charles said, we’re not trying to make music with AI, right now. It takes the fun out of it, you know? It comes from your head or a moment: we’re drinking, we’re having fun, blah, blah, then we’re sad, and then it comes from your head. That’s what’s fun about it. So, for now, no.

Do you worry about the copyright aspect of AI, where AI has been accused of using other people’s copyrighted material in order to generate images, sound and video, or do you kind of view it the same way that people did when sampling came out? When sampling came out…  – as you were talking about, with the drum machine – there was a similar backlash against sampling, that it was stealing people’s copyrighted material. How do you feel about that?

BG: Yeah, that kind of sucks for now. AI is not good at just picking some little things and making a new thing. It’s being trained right now with…I don’t know, there’s this thing right now where it was making a Bladee song exactly like a Bladee song. It was, like, him. It was his voice, the same thing. So, I’m not for that, for sure. It’s weird to make the same thing. Any artist needs inspiration and stuff, but AI is not taking inspiration; it’s just learning from something and spitting out the same thing with other words, kind of. So, we’re not there yet, I guess.

S: Yeah. We’ll see.

I want to talk about your new music video, “you’re an actor.” If I’m correct, this is going to be the last single to be released before the album’s out. Is that correct?

BG: Yeah.

The video is really cool. It’s you guys on puppet strings, acting like marionettes. It’s a song that’s critical of the nine-to-five work grind, which I think a lot of us experience in the First World, or however you want to put it. I was wondering if you could talk about the artistry of that and how it leads into the album as a whole?

BG: Yeah, the album is named Business Core, so already the big topic about this is the nine-to-five, work, losing your soul into something you’re not into, blah, blah. And “you’re an actor” is basically the first song off the album, so it was a good introduction to the theme of being an actor in your own world, not being yourself, people not knowing you even if you’re popular but they don’t really know you. There’s not a lot of lyrics in there but the message around it is super simple and has this old-school feel, blah, blah. So, we wanted to portray that in the video, and I felt that the puppet vibe, with the city background and the suit and tie, was really speaking for itself. It’s, like, super simple to understand the message behind that. It’s a strong image and that’s what I like about it.

S: Yeah. I feel the marionette thing was that you can sometimes feel controlled by the society we live in, you know? Just to give the message and the feeling of it. That’s the metaphor, I guess, yeah.

I love the album title, Business Core, because I do find a lot of things now – and I don’t know if you guys feel this; this could just be my opinion – but a lot of things now have become “cores” and aesthetics, and people are seemingly more interested in the veneer of being a part of something greater. Business Core is interesting because younger people are kind of split now between those who see capitalism and rail against it and are against the work ethic that’s been ascribed to us for all our lives, but there’s also a set of young people who really embrace that, who brag about being on the grind, [and] who brag about how well they’re doing. It’s like LinkedIn culture, in a way. I was wondering, how do you feel the reception to the nine-to-five grind is among people your own age?

BG: I don’t know. I always embrace doing what you love first and stuff, but everything is becoming so expensive, like very crazy for – I don’t know – five to ten years. So, we made this album about this theme and stuff, but Charles and I, we work a nine-to-five, you know? We have to. So, it’s a matter of trying to join those two worlds together and just trying to be true to yourself. Alternatively, it would be nice to never work but, at the same time, it’s doable to make great art and have to pay for your stuff, as well. Pay for your house, you know? So, yeah. But it’s weird. It’s a mixed feeling.

S: Yeah, it’s a mixed feeling. We’re sharing our experience, I guess. [Starts and stops a few thoughts] I’ll come back in a second, I have to think more. I was not prepared for that.

In general, from a music perspective, how do you find the music has shifted between this and your first album which you put out about two years ago, Please Don’t Think About Tomorrow? What have you been listening to since then that, maybe, inspired the music on this record that you weren’t listening to back then?

BG: I don’t know, we played around with a lot of acoustic guitar but, finally, there’s none on the album, I believe. We were listening to some James Blunt…No, not J…Dean Blunt! James Blunt, that’s a good one, too! That’s one of my favourite karaoke songs! [Singing] You’re beautiful!

S: Yeah!

BG: Different. But, yeah, this, a lot of electronic stuff, still. Similar stuff but more synthesiser, I feel, than guitar, compared to the first album, so that’s a big difference, I would say. As a theme, it’s kind of the same theme. Please Don’t Think About Tomorrow is like “Be in the moment,” blah, blah. The vibe of “This is when you work and this is the weekend,” that was kind of the vibe. So, it’s kind of similar that way, as a theme, but a bit different.  But, musically, Charles, what else did we listen to?

S: I mean, we listened to a lot of stuff. A couple of years ago, I really dug into a lot of the Russian new wave, like Molchat Doma and a couple of other bands that I don’t know how to pronounce. [Laughs] So, I really dug into that, like icy guitars, a lot of pads and synths, and a lot of fast drum machines. So, that was where the inspiration came, first. After that, we had a trip in 2022. We went for a month to Berlin, and I’ve been there a lot, so while being there, I guess the Spotify algorithm went super, super German. So, we were listening to a lot of German post-punk stuff, weird stuff. When we came back here, we really digged into the more American stuff, like post-punky, more popular a bit. It’s hard to name because, for me, I guess it’s hard to pinpoint [an] exact band because all the bands I’ve liked have something I like and something I don’t like. With all that, my roots come from, like, Delroy Edwards and Andy Scott type of stuff. So, that old, electronic, post-punky vibe with the more Russian new wave with a lot of Berlin post-punk, and, when we came back, the American thing.

BG: It’s just being on NTS, and on the weird mixes, and Shazam, and finding a nice song on YouTube that has only, like, four hundred plays, you know? That kind of stuff.

S: There’s this label from New York called Minimal Wave that does pretty nice stuff. I don’t know if you know. Yeah, there’s a lot to dig, from the post-punk of the ‘80s to the 2000s. It’s pretty cool. It’s hard to pinpoint names for that, but yeah. We’ve been doing a lot of mixes for Kiosk Radio – Kiosk Radio in Belgium – and a new mix every month, so we find new songs every month. We have another residency with Radio Raheem in Italy, as well, so, yeah, we’re digging a lot of music these days.

That’s cool, the international aspect of the band, as well. I think what you’re doing could only really exist at this scale in the digital age of the internet. Do you find if the internet wasn’t a tool that you guys had that Montreal would allow you guys such a range of music? Is it easy to find any music you want in the city or do you have to go online? What’s your experience, in terms of getting music?

BG: Yeah, I feel like when we were in Berlin, we were going to record stores and browsing through vinyls and stuff, just because the culture is more towards that. They have good places where you can sit. It’s a vibe; you sit down, and you pick ten vinyls, and you listen to them. Here, we have record shops, obviously, but it’s less into the vibe of sitting down and dig like that, so I guess we have to be on the internet all the time. We’re interested by, yeah, foreign stuff and, like Charles said, it was so funny that when we were in Germany, a lot of the music that was proposed to us on Spotify was in German, so that helped a lot to discover a new sound, and a new language makes new flows, as well, for your voice and stuff because the words are shorter. So, new flows that are fun to try to incorporate into our language, I guess.

S: We were jamming. When we were in Berlin, we were like, “We cannot sing like this!” It’s like the flows are so different in German, it’s crazy, but it was so interesting to listen to and we jammed with this guy and we were like, “Oh, shit! That’s such a different flow!” and stuff. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

I like that idea of record shops, actually, because, over here, it’s kind of the same as you guys are talking about, which is, “Are you buying something? No? Then leave!” I like the idea of it being like a café or a library, where you can actually just sit down with other music fans and listen to music and share music. I think that’s a really nice thing. I would love to see it here, but, unfortunately, we don’t have that. [Laughs]

BG: Yeah, it’s such a vibe!

S: The other pretty good record shop, just around the corner here, that we can sit and listen, but it’s really just more electronic stuff and jazz, and there’s a slight post-punky stuff. So, yeah.

One final thing I wanted to ask was, you were talking about the difference in the music that you guys bring, but, in terms of production, do you have favourite producers? Do you try to listen to, say for example, the same artist but being produced by a different engineer? What’s your feeling, in terms of the difference between analogue and digital? Do you have any opinion? Would you like to experiment with analogue?

BG: We’ve definitely moved towards more of an analogue set-up compared to, like, two years ago, I guess. Because our backgrounds were super electronic, super computer. So, that’s how we started, kind of. We were still incorporating the guitar on top of that, but now since we have more gear and stuff, we try to jam together for an hour without talking and just try some stuff. That’s why I love the analogue part of it, I guess, but we still do both. We’re super hybrid, I guess. But to change your flow, instead of starting with the drums, you start with this and touching the knobs and stuff and having more variation in a sound, that’s what’s interesting to the analogue world, I guess. It’s just fun to have a bunch of gear because it looks cool.

S: Yeah, I feel like we’re pretty much on analogue now than before. It’s just for recording; it’s easier to record on a computer than on a cassette, that’s for sure! [Laughs] And once you record on your computer, you want to put some other effects on stuff, you know? Pretty much all of the instruments on the album come from analogue synths and guitar and drum machines. Some drum samples, as well, but the drum machine [for] pretty much 70% of it.

BG: Yeah, and it’s still going to be samples from the drum machine, so…

S: Yeah! [Laughs]

BG: We didn’t make the sample, but, at the end of the day, it sounds pretty close, I guess. It’s fun to experiment in real life and just jamming. That’s the fun part, as well.

I suppose also – because you guys mentioned that when this project started, you were coming out of quarantine – obviously, quarantine was such an isolating time; it was people in their bedroom making beats and stuff. I don’t know how bad the quarantine was in Montreal or anything, but, over here, nothing was open and there was a lot of bedroom demos being made. Now that quarantine is over, there is that communal aspect, too. Do you find that that drives you, too, just comparing where you are versus when the project started, and what you were capable of doing when the project started?

BG: Yeah, it was pretty wild out here, too. We had a curfew. What time was it, Charles? Nine or eight?

S: Yeah, something like this.

BG: Yeah, so anyway, it was pretty intense here, as well. But, I guess for us, the curfew, and everything was closed, “You’re not allowed to go down this street,” blah, blah, it was kind of a way to go, “Oh, let’s make a cool underground party and play music.” That was a big part of it. But, as far as staying inside and producing music, I don’t know, Charles. Did we…? I don’t think it did influence me that much into staying alone and making music.

S: We were living together at this time, I guess.

BG: Oh, OK.

S: Or just after that, we started living together? No, just after that?

BG: It’s hard to remember.

S: But, definitely, we got the studio because of the pandemic, though.

BG: Yeah, yeah.

S: So, we were together for the studio.

BG: We were still sneaking to go to the studio.

The final thing I’ll ask is, now that you guys work together as a collective, does that inspire you to up your game as a songwriter and as a producer? Is there a competitive edge between what you guys are doing? And, generally, how do you find that what you’re doing in this project bleeds over to your solo work, or does it?

BG: I don’t know, since we have such different backgrounds, we always try to make different…Inspired from some stuff that we like, but we always try to mix a lot of things together so it sounds different. I do really think that’s what we achieved with the album and even the one before. I guess that one a little bit more because we always try to go up with this thinking. But it’s just, like, three different, four different genres of music that we like and it just creates something new and that’s our song now, and we don’t even realise it sometimes. It’s just how we do it. It’s important for us to try and make something different and popular at the same time, that’s enjoyable, it’s not too weird, where it’s just this fine line of, “Oh, it’s a bit weird, but this thing is catchy.” It’s a nice mix of both, I guess.

S: What I would say is, this project, for me, there’s a sound to distraction4ever, and that’s what’s cool; we created a sound. We’ve been doing music a lot and I feel, with distraction4ever, you recognise, “That is distraction4ever,” and I’m pretty happy with that, and that came from a lot of experimental stuff and I guess it changed, as well, because of the machines we have. We have a lot of MS-20s, a lot of Yamaha CS, and, on a lot of the tracks, we’ve been experimenting, like sending MIDIs to one synth and a lot of moving knobs and, after that, we can cut some parts. So, there’s a lot of experimental stuff in the process and then when we’re done with the process of experimenting with  the sound – so, finding nice sounds and things like this – we can now start to compose the sound and the structure and stuff. I feel we do that a lot.

BG: Yeah, our solo stuff took a little aside, I guess. You still release something, Charles? Like, super electronic and lo-fi and stuff? I guess we’re still producing a little bit on the side, but way more for distraction, yeah.

S: Yeah. We have a couple of projects. We run a livestream radio in Montreal that’s pretty popular now. We still work a nine-to-five. We’re doing distraction4ever. And, me, myself, I also have a solo project and we’re jamming with friends. So, we have a lot of projects, but I guess distraction4ever is the main project, so we’re putting more forward to that.

distraction4ever’s latest album, Business Core, is out now on all streaming platforms. You can find the band’s music, live dates and social media accounts here.

Aaron Kavanagh

Aaron Kavanagh is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Post-Burnout. His writing can also be found in the Irish Daily Star, Buzz.ie, Totally Dublin, The GOO, Headstuff, New Noise Magazine, XS Noize, DSCVRD and more.