Smooth Sounds and Conversation with Forever
Forever. Photo Michael Brock.
I turned on the music of Forever and the morning slipped by easy like Sunday morning… and it was Monday. This Montreal based enchantress has combined the smoothness of groove with sweet vocals and a beat that keeps things moving along. I had the good fortune to talk to her in advance of her show opening for Austra at POP Montreal.
Forever is the moniker of June Moon. She explains that though she’s been working “night and day” on work under her artist’s name, she’s involved in a number of other projects, including a musical venture called Café Lanai with Michael Brock and a monthly radio show on Arbutus Records’ N10.as radio.
Each song blurs beautifully into the next on her first eponymous EP, but each was made in a new way. “I do not have a formula,” she says. “My creative practice is heavily based on improvisation. I check in with myself every day and align myself and prepare myself to be a creative being and roll with it, depending on who I am working with. Each song gets started in a different way — sometimes a beat, sometimes a melody, sometimes a lyric. I feel the vibe and stay open to all possibilities.”
Most recently, she has been working with fellow seductive beat maker, Ouri. The two of them have been working together on a six-track EP. I ask her what to expect. “I’m indulging in pop fantasy and exploring pop sensibility to the max. It’s very up tempo, my first record was hazy, a little bit blurry, and liquid. I definitely wanted to up the bpm,” she says. Both a video and single have been released, with a second single slated.
True to her go-with-the-flow, Moon has been malleable with her line-ups. “I’m still kind of manifesting a permanent live set up,” she says. Ouri will be joining her this year at POP Montreal on the synth. Last year, for POP Montreal, she had an all-girl jazz band backing her up.
Moon has been fortunate to be able to play around the world and find fans everywhere — fans who know her even before she arrives. “It’s exquisite,” she says. “It’s really a tangible experience of the phenomenon of what the Internet has done for everyone. It’s so amazing to go to a place where I have never been, but my music has been there. It is so overwhelming in the most magical way.” In particular, she loved playing in Berlin. “I connected with the city,” she says.
Her radio show proves to be another outlet that she values. The show’s name “Flip Phone Forever” is not mere retro cute. She really has a flip phone. “I have one and anyone who knows me knows I’m obsessed with my flip phone,” she says. The music is a chance for her to play around with pop music, putting together songs by Arianna Grande and Rhianna, along with conversations with the many musicians with whom she connects.”Being a vocalist, I’m such an admirer of other vocalists. I love having a way to connect with people and just talk and have real talk. This is a vehicle to have those conversations. Also, I’m inspired my peers. My friends do amazing shit and I collaborate with them, I’ve had them all on the show.”
“Everything is connected and I have all these projects, but they’re entwined,” she says. “They’re all part of my palette.”
Forever is opening for Austra along with Doldrums at POP Montreal on September 14 at Theatre Rialto at 8 p.m. $25. Information HERE.
