Colin Stetson Suffered Through a 'Stress Nightmare' to Earn Polaris Prize Nod
- Posted on Sep 19th 2011 2:00PM by Aaron Brophy
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Courtesy of Colin Stetson
You might think that Stetson's status as the go-to guy when indie royalty like Arcade Fire, LCD Soundsystem, Feist, the National and most recently Bon Iver need a saxophonist would make for a life of wine and roses. You'd be wrong, though. Mostly, Stetson's is a life of hurt and sweat.
See, Stetson is a master of a playing technique called circular breathing -- basically inhaling through your nose at the same time you breath out while playing a wind instrument. And Stetson's use of that technique on his sonically fascinating solo album 'New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges' has been a revelation to music fans around the world, even earning him a spot vying for this year's prestigious Polaris Prize at a gala tonight (Monday, Sept. 19) in Toronto.
"Where the pain sets in is in my face and in my hands because a lot of this stuff is just a repetitive stress nightmare -- you're really just clamping down, doing the same thing for 10 minutes at a time," Stetson tells Spinner of his intensely physical music making. "And in the live show you don't have a few minutes to take a break, you have 30 seconds and then you start another one."
In order to wrestle that whole orchestra of foreign sounds out of his instrument (think all the noises on a Godspeed You! Black Emperor record played by one person, at the same time), Stetson has to be in pro athlete-level shape just to have "the bellows" to get through a song.
"With the lungs -- the bellows -- you're working and you're sweating like you're running, the things that will force me to stop are the pain in my lips and my face muscles and my hands."
A 2008 study conducted by a group of universities in the UK determined that touring drummers were as fit as professional soccer players. Perhaps they should have considered apocalypse-minded bass sax players, too, because Stetson is just as healthy, if not healthier. With his daily routine it's no wonder.
"People ask me sometimes, 'Well, don't you find it stressful to have to do that thing every day? Don't you find it boring'" says Stetson. "And I don't, I mean, people have day jobs and they go to a place for eight hours and what, am I supposed to say that same thing to them? I think of this as my day job, having to get up and do an hour of intense breath work, then spending another hour-and-a-half doing yoga, and then practicing two-to-four hours on the instrument -- that's a pretty f---in' nice day job -- then you're running for a few miles somewhere at the end there."
That Stetson is the creator of some of the most otherworldly, most mind-meltingly obtuse ambient jazz to flare at the fringes of the indie universe has created something of an uncomfortable paradox then. See, in order to pursue his avant-garde music, he's turned his body into the sort of vehicle the average sickly indie-rock fan defines themselves against in many ways -- Stetson is sort of a jock.
"Yeah, you got me dude. I'm totally that guy," he confesses. "I mean, I was always an athlete when I was young. Unfortunately, I feel so many people classify things like a run or certain physical activity in this weird negative zone where people are into punishment and into the result because the process is such a pain, such a piece of boredom, and you're keeping yourself away from, like, amazing times on the Internet, and for that half-an-hour when you were running you could have been on such-and-such dot com dicking around a little bit longer.
"But, for me, when I'm running, it's really all of those feelings, be they pain, fatigue, bliss, elation, it's all just alive. And it's the things like sitting sedentary, dead-eyed, viewing a screen of what another person said about another thing, those things are to me -- not that I don't go on there and use the Internet like everybody else does for everything that it can be used for -- but those moments are kind of death, those are the moments of stagnation where you can let yourself become entirely of the mind and you can forget that the thing you call the mind is housed somewhere.
"For me, the physical activity is essential, not just for the music, but just for me, for my own sanity in my life."
Life could become far less sane for Stetson if he wins the Polaris Prize. Better gigs, bigger pay cheques, and a far larger international profile are just some of the perks of winning the Canadian critic-voted award, which is given each year to "the best full-length Canadian album based on artistic merit, regardless of genre, sales, or record label."
Stetson, though, figures Arcade Fire's album, 'The Suburbs' -- which he also contributed to, along with other nominee Timber Timbre's 'Creep on Creepin' On' -- deserves to take the $30,000 cash prize.
"I continue to think that 'The Suburbs' is the best record," he says. "I mean, there's a reason why it won the best Grammy and why it's got so much attention. It's a f---in' fantastic record. The composition is incredible, the production is impeccable. It's a great record."
That said, if Stetson happens to pull out an underdog victory he's not going to be shy about trash-talking his Montreal band friends. When asked what his speech would be like if he won the Polaris, Stetson says:
"I think it's going to be something like, 'To my friends in Arcade Fire, HAHAHAHAHA!'"
