You'll Never Get To Heaven - The WL14 Interview

Purveyors: Nostalgia for slumber while awake, and vice versa
File next to: Beach House, Slowdive, The Caretaker
Playing: Night one of WL14 Thursday, February 13 @ The Silver Dollar Room (486 Spadina Ave.)

The Internet led us down a golden road that brought us to the doorstep of You’ll Never Get To Heaven. This London, Ontario duo’s hazy, crackly, sampladelic take on dream-pop – a style otherwise known by the ickier term “shoegaze” – also has deep roots in Canadian experimental music, and is yet another example of the incredibly innovative sounds being forged in the distant corners of our country. Weird Canada, indeed. Their 2012 self-titled debut full-length on Halifax’s Divorce Records is essential listening for long, lazy mornings and late, quiet nights. Wavelength is thrilled to have them perform as the very first live act at our upcoming WL14 festival. Jonny Dovercourt chatted with YNGTH’s Chuck Blazevic via the Interweb.

Who is You’ll Never Get To Heaven, and how did you come to make music together under this moniker?
YNGTH is Alice Hansen and Chuck Blazevic. Alice is an accomplished musician and composer, and I've been producing various forms of pop and experimental music for roughly six years now. In late 2010, we decided it was time to begin a new music project that reflects our mutual interests in music and art. 

How do you construct your music? Does it start with a sound, a riff, a melody, a lyric?
We aren't committed to a singular approach. Sometimes an isolated chord or motif from a classical record or film score forms the impetus for a particular song. Other times, a song may be entirely written on guitar or piano, and produced in the studio thereafter. In all cases, our music is very production-heavy; we do a lot of sound-sculpting with digital and analog signal processors to get to the final result.  

I hear the influence of mysterious sample-based artists like The Caretaker in your music – am I on or off-base here?
You are spot on. We highly enjoy the anachronistic textures of Caretaker/Leyland Kirby, as well as those of related artists like Philip Jeck, Colleen, Focus Group, Gas, and William Basinski. In fact, one of the key things we intended to accomplish with our debut album was to bring these kinds of haunted textures into pop song structures with vocals. I think our album actually makes much more sense if you interpret our approach in this way.

There’s an element of nostalgic beauty to all three videos from your self-titled full-length. In what way do you feel these images represent your music?
For the most part, these images allude to sound worlds of the mid 1960s/early ‘70s that have inspired us over the past decade, namely, film soundtracks, left-of-centre easy listening, etc. Although we love a lot of music from the late 1970s and ‘80s, we opted to eschew those visual languages for our first release. Just felt right at the time. 

How did you connect with Divorce Records?
In 2009, Alice and I organized a live performance for [legendary Canadian pianist and composer of "continuous music"] Lubomyr Melnyk in Halifax. We asked Darcy Spidle, owner of Divorce Records, if his label would co-sponsor our event. He obliged and we've been friends ever since. In late 2011, Darcy sent us an e-mail wondering what we've been up to since moving from Halifax to London. With our reply, we sent a couple of You'll Never Get to Heaven demos along and he expressed interest in working us. 

Are you guys part of a local music scene in London? If so, who are your peers and what Forest City exports should we keep an eye out for?

Since our move to London in fall 2010, we've met a lot of great music producers, promoters, and artist collectives that enhance the local music scene: Wormwood, Quinn Read-Baxter, Ian Doig-Phaneuf, So Young, Timothy Glasgow, Exit 2012, Greggy Clipse, New Zebra Kid, Tim Limsana, I Smell Blood, Hot Dog Musique and Cinema, HSST/Cailen Dye, Sweet Magic London/Pete Lebel, Out of Sound, and many more. Keep an eye out for all! 

What’s coming up next for YNGTH?
We are releasing a new EP this winter on our very own Mystic Roses imprint. We will promote this release with live performances in Toronto and Ottawa later in the winter. After that, we will begin work on our next full length and arrange more live dates in Canada and abroad. 

You'll Never Get to Heaven plays night one of Wavelength FOURTEEN, Thursday February 13 @ The Silver Dollar Room (486 Spadina Ave.)