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Thinking outside the box- that’s what Montreal boys Matty Jr., Danny LeZnoff, Adam Feingold and James Benjamin have done by getting together, running a few songs, and becoming The Breezes. After a summer of recording, the boys have already put up a few shows (including their EP launch last Wednesday at Casa del Popolo) and are now here for good. A new lively discovery on the music scene that is an interesting mix of influences (be it indie rock, pop or folk), making us eager for more creative “breeziness”. Thanks to James Benjamin for answering our questions.

Valérie: You all seem to have played in different bands. Is there anything exclusive with the music from The Breezes?

J. B. : ‘The Breezes’ is definitely not precisely a band in the traditional sense of the word. At the current juncture, it’s more like an umbrella term to designate a pretty wide stream of creative activities. In other words, ‘The Breezes’ designates the sum of the parts of its members: Matty Jr., Danny LeZnoff, Adam Feingold and James Benjamin. In the same way that a title like ‘actor’ or ‘musician’ could potentially box and limit a designated entity, to call ‘The Breezes’ exclusively a ‘band’ conceptually might limit our creative potential. In addition to always writing, recording, and performing our own music, The Breezes have been working on a script for a motion picture amongst other things. Though The Breezes music runs across a wide range of genres, there’s a certain, for lack of a better word, ‘breeziness’ that runs through everything. You can maybe picture the way a tree tends to move in the wind, like, there’s this continual give and take, and always movement.

Valérie: Your songs were written recently (summer 2009), and with your first EP launch last week, things are already getting started. In a previous interview, you said you wrote 34 songs in a period of just 30 days. How is it possible to be that creative in such a brief period of time?

J.B. : With respect to song writing, it’s very important to keep in mind that unlike many bands out there, everyone in The Breezes has contributed songs to the output of the band. It’s safe to say that our ambitions aren’t small in scale or scope. With respect to the big studio session, we all had a lot of songs, or rather ideas for songs that we wanted to get out, so we simply took the plunge and booked 30 days at Breakglass in Montreal, a studio we feel very comfortable at, and at which James was mentored with respect to engineering. When it comes down to it, we’d rather be recording then doing anything else. It’s a beautiful process, and every song is of course different. One person puts down their idea for a given song, and is more or less running the show for that song. Everyone else is always contributing parts and ideas, and probably most important is that there’s a great deal of trust in one another’s judgment and vision.

Valérie: All proceeds from your EP launch last week at Casa del Popolo have been donated to help efforts in Haiti. This is pretty impressive, given that you are just starting off as a band. Is being politically involved one of your goals as a band?

J. B. : As far as the Haiti benefit goes, I wouldn’t say that we’re especially political, or politically involved, so much as we’re simply people, consciously living in the world. In this case it was a no brainer given the timing, and we, as well as all the other bands involved in the show agreed right away it was the right thing to do. It was really awesome to see the reaction of people who came out to the show, doing things like donating in excess of the ticket price, and it led to a really nice feeling of camaraderie that night. This truly isn’t a case of anyone doing anything remarkable, just a matter of doing the right thing, in the same way we all recycle and compost and try to be generally kind within the societal paradigm.

Valérie : Can you tell us a bit about your upcoming projects and shows?

J.B. : The EP which is now at Phonopolis and Oblique in montreal, and which will soon hopefully be in limited distribution in Toronto and Vancouver (with New York and LA on the horizon) is truly just a ‘Breezes’ sampler, albeit one which was put together in a conceptually unified form. Each and every song on that EP shows a direction towards which a full album will soon be fully devoted. That big session we did last summer was great, and that’s in addition to a number of other smaller sessions we’ve done in the past. We have plans currently to do another big session at Breakglass this summer, which we hope will result in enough material to provide the missing pieces needed to finalize 3 or 4 full albums, and move a number of other projects into various phases of completion. Assuming all goes well on that front, the next step would be a large scale tour in September or October to support all of these releases. In particular, we’ve been asked to play with Philadelphia’s Sunny Days in Glasgow in April here in Montreal, and keep your eyes on our myspace (www.myspace.com/thebreezesmusic) for a ‘secret’ basement show at a neighborhood record store in February to be played with a band that’s in from Chile. Also, we’ve been talking about a music video for ‘count to 11’, which is a really fun song off the EP that people have been really enthusiastic about.

myspace.com/thebreezesmusic

Valérie Mathis