What would happen if, instead of a hip-hop DJ sampling old jazz records to make new music, the DJ and jazz musician were the same person? The answer to this question lies in the latest album by Cinephonic, an instrumental project based in Ottawa, Canada. Cinephonic's third album, Refuge, released on Marlow Records, is a mind-melting combination of traditional jazz, instrumental hip-hop, and electronic music that eliminates the barriers between all three genres.
The Tonearm sat down with Cinephonic founder and composer Pierre Chrétien to discuss the making of the new album. Pierre Chrétien, who also leads the more improvisational Atlantis Jazz Ensemble and the international touring collective the Souljazz Orchestra, reveals the secrets behind his seamless blend of musical styles. A lifelong jazz pianist, Chrétien also taught himself guitar and vibraphone in his pursuit of different musical options. More recently, on Cinephonic's three albums (before Refuge, there were Les paradis artificiels in 2020 and Visions in 2023), he expanded his skillset to include turntablism and DJ mixing.
Working with recording engineer Jason Jaknunas, Pierre Chrétien has found ways to combine the remixing potential of digital recording with the warmth and natural compression of analog tape. Both modern Pro Tools digital audio software and a vintage Studer B67 tape machine benefited the making of Refuge. That analog-digital hybrid also came out in the music as Chrétien and his longtime collaborators, bassist Philippe Charbonneau and drummer Mike Essoudry, laid down an album's worth of acoustic piano trio music, which Chrétien then sampled and manipulated into the final takes presented on the album.
The music on Cinephonic's Refuge will be vaguely familiar to fans of classic acid jazz, trip-hop, and intelligent dance music (IDM) from the 1990s and early 2000s. Echoes of Air, J. Dilla, Madlib/Madvillain, Morcheeba, and St. Germain haunt such tracks as "Métropolitain," "La cité engloutie" ("The Sunken City"), and "Temps perdu" ("Lost Time"). The song "Vapeurs" adopts glitch techniques in a kind of jazzified take on Autechre or Boards of Canada. Meanwhile, a jazz trio foundation—over which Chrétien adds jazz guitar or vibraphone on some tracks—gives the music on Cinephonic's Refuge a traditional feeling not always present in electronic music.
My interview with Pierre Chrétien touches on the artist's three projects—the Souljazz Orchestra, the Atlantis Jazz Ensemble, and Cinephonic—as a continuum of musical exploration over the past twenty years. We talked about the process of composing, recording, and releasing music independently, as well as the real-life difficulties that sent Chrétien in search of comfort and familiarity through music. The interview highlights the history behind Cinephonic (the musical group) and Refuge (the album) to better understand the creativity of one of North America's restless musical innovators.
Disclosure: Peter Thomas Webb was a fellow live and session musician with Pierre Chrétien in the Trevor Tchir Band, 2000 to 2006.
Peter Thomas Webb: I’ve noticed that the style changes from album to album in the three Cinephonic albums you’ve released so far. I hear, for instance, a seventies vibe on the first one, Les paradis artificiels (2020), and a more sixties flavor on the second, Visions (2023). Then there is a nineties acid jazz or trip-hop approach on the new album, Refuge. Am I perceiving those changes accurately? If so, what accounts for them?
Pierre Chrétien: Yes, well, they're all cinematic and all could have been movie soundtracks. It just comes from whatever I'm into at the time. The first Cinephonic album, Les paradis artificiels, was influenced by French film composers, such as Michel Legrand (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The Thomas Crown Affair) and Francis Lai (Love Story, A Man and a Woman). So, that's where I was in 2020 when that album was recorded. A lot of those tunes, too, were too mellow for the Souljazz Orchestra, so they ended up in archives. After a while, I pulled them out and said, "Let's record them." That became Cinephonic.
Peter: Could you talk about the creative process of making Refuge—how you went from recording a live jazz trio to adding turntablism and sampled elements?
Pierre: A lot of music in this genre will sample two bars from an old jazz record, Wes Montgomery, Erroll Garner, or somebody like that, then loop it over and over. While I like that sound, I thought it was a cop-out to just "steal" someone else's music. I thought it would be cool to create our own 1950s-style jazz record and then use it as a sampling source. So that's what we did—laid down a full jazz album, all with acoustic instruments, before adding the electronic and hip-hop dimension.
Peter: You can definitely hear traditional jazz in the foundations of the music.
Pierre: Right. Once in a while, the hip-hop style drums go away, and you hear just the acoustic drum kit in the track.
Peter: It's interesting how seamless the combination is. I listen to a lot of jazz and electronic music, but in the case of Cinephonic, there’s hardly any distinction between jazz and electronic or hip-hop styles.
Pierre: Cool, I'm glad that comes across.
Peter: On Refuge, I'm noticing the hip-hop element emphasized more than on the earlier albums. What motivated you to DJ your own music, including the glitch elements I hear on the track "Vapeurs," and so on?
Pierre: I'll tell you the real story behind the album. My wife Marielle was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer two years ago. It threw us for a loop and turned our world upside down. I was having trouble dealing with all this. We'd be at the hospital during treatments, and I'd hear these tunes in my head—these comforting, warm tunes. They were like some soothing defense mechanism, so when we'd get home from the hospital, I'd run to the piano and write them out. After several months of being at the hospital, I'd accumulated quite a few of these tunes, so I decided to make an album with them. Refuge was that—it was my "refuge" from what was happening in my life.
Peter: Wow, I'm sorry to hear about this. So, how did hip-hop, in particular, become part of your refuge?
Pierre: The hip-hop elements were part of that comforting thing. When you press ‘Play’ on a drum machine, you know that the snare is going to hit on two and four, you know that the hi-hat is going to hit every eighth note. There's something comforting about that.
Peter: Is there a kind of order in the music that is missing in your everyday life?
Pierre: Yes. Jazz always has an element of surprise, but I was also looking for comfort.
Peter: Again, on the matter of hip-hop, your notes for Refuge mention the influence of Madlib (also known for his work with Madvillain), and I can hear J. Dilla's stamp as a DJ in there as well. Were these influences already in your musical wheelhouse?
Pierre: Hip-hop is something I grew up with, and before those artists you mentioned, I was into A Tribe Called Quest and Digable Planets. I listened to quite a bit of that as a teenager. Maybe that's also part of the "safe place"—going back to happy childhood memories. Although I think such things also happen subconsciously.
Peter: I notice that despite the differences between your three projects—the Souljazz Orchestra, the Atlantis Jazz Ensemble, and Cinephonic—the one common element is soul and funk music. If my observation is accurate, how do you see soul and funk as a unifying continuum in your work?
Pierre: I guess I'm just attracted to those kinds of rhythms; it's part of my musical DNA. Whatever I write, it always comes out that way—with a soul influence.
Peter: Was there something in your past, growing up, that turned you on to soul, funk, and jazz? I'm asking because I know that in Ottawa, Canada, in the eighties or nineties, soul-jazz music wasn't especially common for a young person to be into.
Pierre: Yes, well, my parents weren't much into rock and roll. They were more into Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, and a lot of jazz music. There were jazz musicians in my family, and we had jam sessions at the piano, so it was always around me.
(A short pause in the interview occurs while we gush about our mutual love of Lionel Richie.)
Peter: Okay, I'd also like to ask about the vibraphone. I hear you playing a lot of that instrument on the new album, Refuge. As a lifelong pianist, how did you come to play the vibraphone—a relatively unusual instrument in contemporary jazz?
Pierre: I always liked the sound. Bobby Hutcherson is probably my favorite vibes player. For the Souljazz album Rising Sun (2010), I rented a vibraphone from St. John's Music in Ottawa. I just got it in the studio and started playing it. At first, I wasn't very good, but with enough takes we managed to get something good enough. Then I really started to like it, so after a few years, I took the plunge and bought a used 1960s Premier vibraphone. I also taught myself the four-mallet technique through Gary Burton's online courses on YouTube.
Peter: Can you talk more about the jazz trio performing on the new album, including bassist Philippe Charbonneau and drummer Mike Essoudry? What did those two musicians bring to the new album?
Pierre: I wanted to work with them because we've been playing together forever. They instinctively knew what I was looking for. For instance, there's a song called "Café" on the album that references Café Nostalgica [on the University of Ottawa campus] where we started. We used to play the Wednesday jazz nights in the early 2000s.
Peter: Now, a question about your recording and mastering process. You and engineer Jason Jaknunas tracked Refuge digitally on Pro Tools, then mastered it on an analog Studer B67 tape machine. Why do you favor the analog sound for the end product?
Pierre: We've done analog mastering on every album over the past fifteen years. I love the way it compresses everything and softens all the transients in a nice way. It makes everything fat and gooey-sounding. We also ran the mixes through a Neve transformer, which added even more analog compression.
Peter: All your albums, including the new one, have come out on vinyl, and there has been a huge vinyl resurgence in recent years. Do you find the appeal of vinyl for your audience to be steady, increasing, or leveling off?
Pierre: When the Souljazz Orchestra made our first records in 2005, there weren't many artists releasing vinyl. We were still selling mainly CDs. But I've seen vinyl pick up quite a bit since then, and now vinyl outsells CDs. Oddly, though, I've noticed CDs making a bit of a comeback in the past two years. Maybe it's an economic thing.
Peter: Still, you maintain that long affinity with the vinyl album.
Pierre: Yes, with every album I'm always thinking about Side A and Side B, forty minutes of music, and so on. Whatever ends up on digital is more of an afterthought.
Peter: You have very distinctive cover art on your albums. How do you see the role of cover art in presenting your music?
Pierre: I do my own graphic design, so it is very important to me. The record must look like the music sounds. You look at the cover and already have a sense of what it's going to sound like.
Peter: If you were to cite something you still haven't explored yet in your music career, what would it be?
Pierre: I guess every album I've done so far has involved bigger bands—horns, strings, drums, and so on. The new album, Refuge, is the first I've done just with a trio. I've never explored doing just a solo album—something barebones on just a piano.
Peter: Like the solo piano works of Keith Jarrett or Brad Mehldau?
Pierre: Yes, perhaps, or like Thelonious Monk, who has amazing solo albums, where stride and ragtime-type of stuff comes out a lot more in his playing.
Peter: Erroll Garner used to always hum along with the music, and I noticed a bit of that on your album. I hear shouts. At one point, you sound like you're shouting at the drummer.
Pierre: Yes, I'm singing along to the whole album. I've been doing more and more of that lately. The guy you hear singing along in the background is me. Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner—they all did that. It's like, if you didn't hum along, you weren't doing it right. (laughter)
Peter: What's coming up for you in the future?
Pierre: Due to Marielle’s medical condition, and with a young son, music has been taking a bit of a back seat lately. So I'm concentrating more on writing and composing than performing. I'll probably be working on the next Atlantis Jazz Ensemble album soon. I usually alternate between the two—Atlantis and Cinephonic.
Peter: The Atlantis Jazz Ensemble is closer to traditional or spiritual jazz, whereas Cinephonic is a more chilled-out acid jazz style. Is that important to you—the ebb and flow between different styles?
Pierre: I guess it quenches different thirsts that I have. The straight-off-the-floor recording I do with Atlantis is more improvisational, whereas Cinephonic appeals more to the composer in me—more notes on the page.
Purchase Cinephonic's Refuge from Bandcamp (vinyl LP and CD also available) or Qobuz and listen on your streaming platform of choice. The back catalogs of Cinephonic (two albums, 2020 and 2023), the Atlantis Jazz Ensemble (two albums, 2016 and 2023), and the Souljazz Orchestra (eight albums, 2007–2019) can also be found on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and major streaming services.
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