Grand Trine

Montreal's noise kids on the block, Grand Trine, played a jam-packed, sold-out show at Casa del Popolo. In spite of some technical difficulties and a broken bass amp, the band sailed through their set unfazed and put on a short but sweet - not to mention sweaty - show. Grand Trine ripped through old favourites like "I Am a Magnet" while introducing a fresh direction with new songs like "End Times" and "Youthanize Me." The trio even paid homage to the Sonics with a cover of "Strychnine" that made the crowd go wild. It should come as no surprise that the Grand Trine show sold out - these guys play good old-fashioned rock'n'roll, which is exactly what the doctor ordered. - Exclaim! Magazine

Prescribing treatments
Steve Guimond

Montreal rockers Grand Trine have the cure for what ails you

To be young. To be talented. The joys of being both. Such is the lucky burden born by Montreal junk-punk outfit Grand Trine.

Throwing traditional music conventions out the door of their slow-moving van, the trio do things their own way. They preach a gospel of rock, blues and noise that is periodically leaked out on small imprints in small runs, while the stage and long miles on the road have always been almost a necessity for the band, so says guitarist Shub Roy.

"Playing outside of the city has been invaluable in making us a tighter live unit and introducing our music to new people. We want to tour as much as possible," he says. Roy's partners in musical experimentation are Tobias Rochman and Scott Monk, the three young goats having emerged from a still-fertile underground Montreal scene some two years ago, proof positive of the city's creative juices and staying powers.

Local label gurus Alien8 have just dropped a digital-only release of Grand Trine's Free All Psychic Centers, previously previewed via a limited edition cassette run of 100 copies. While still fresh to the listeners, the material on Centers is viewed differently by the band.

"It's not quite representative of what we're doing right now in that there are only two songs on there that we still play live and we've gotten a lot better at recording ourselves since then," Shub mentions. "We treat

the live material and recorded material quite differently. We approach the shows as a more visceral experience, while we allow our recordings to be more cerebral, in a way." The time is now to free your mind.

Grand Trine
w/ Lovvers and Dead Wife
At Divan Orange (4234 St-Laurent), July 25 - The Hour, Montreal

From the wish-I-had-a-tough-guy-leather-jacket stylings of Aaron Levin:
Monochromatic Youth, the vanguard of Grand Trine’s Bruised Tongue debut, captured their synthetic sans-wave pedigree at the cusp of their existence, posing the question: where now? Defying all expectations, Grand Trine returned with a barrage of brilliant psychedelic biker-punk transplanted from their phantasmagoric Montreal freak-clinic. Some wastoid time-warp seizure has them sounding like Marty McFly opening for the MC5; face-melting genre-collages, bursting celluloid solos, and decimating saxophone freak-outs; all of it wrapped in layers of frayed leather, busted zippers, and skitched sunglasses. Translation: Sunglasses is not for the faint of heart, mind, spirit, or stomach. All orifices will succumb to their unwholesome mutant hard-rock and I suggest you send all litigations directly to Divorce Records c/o Weird Canada legal services (but make sure to grip the 12? vinyl (limited to 600 copies) as evidence of their crime). Now, if you don’t mind, I have a large mess near my stereo system to attend to. - weirdcanada.com

Disc Review

Grand Trine
Sunglasses (Divorce)
By Paul Terefenko

In roughly a year, Montreal’s Grand Trine – a trio featuring vocalist/bassist Tobias Rochman, drummer Raf Katigbak and everything-else-ist Shub Roy – have pulled together a sweaty raw success of an EP. It hints at classic Sonics witchcraft and modern Black Lips mayhem and packs energy and variety.

Lead-off track I Am A Magnet travels with high-speed bass lines through a cloudy haze and back. The mood calms for the reverb-soaked psychedelic Catatonic State; then Export USA bursts into experimental blooping and electronic vacillation that might be the sounds of a 70s-era Skylab mission.

The last two tracks close on a fuzzy rock-out high, leaving us wanting more.

Grand Trine play June 18 at Teranga.

Top track: Nazi Gold - NOW Magazine, Toronto

Grand Trine push the possibilities of punk
with their debut EP Sunglasses

Montreal’s punk scene is currently exploding with a new breed of bands taking the form in refreshingly new directions by adding elements of psychedelia, noise and more. One of the more musically adventurous punk bands in our burg right now is Grand Trine, who’ve just released their barnstorming debut EP, Sunglasses. As their controlled chaos threatens to careen off the rails, unlikely bedfellows such as ’70s electronics and an outside jazz sax add further depth and density to their attack. The Mirror sat down with these three hunky punks (including Mirror columnist Raf Katigbak) at a popular St-Laurent bar and eatery.

Mirror: Seeing as you’re friendly with a lot of local labels, why did you decide to go with Halifax’s Divorce?

Tobias Rochman (bass/vocals): Well, I’m from Halifax and my old band Be Bad put out our stuff with them, so I guess we’ve always worked closely together. They were really excited about what we were doing and they’re close friends, so it just made sense.

M: The songs on the EP are really varied in style—was that conscious?

Raf Katigbak (drums): I think that’s kind of the driving force behind this band and I would theorize that it’s what will give us longevity. I can’t imagine just being in a band that only sounds one-dimensional. In the end, we’re just making songs that we want to hear and I guess sometimes it will work against us, but it would be so boring to just do one kind of music.

M: With the Montreal punk scene becoming increasingly fractured with subgenres, where does Grand Trine fit in?

TR: We don’t really know. There’s a lot of talk about weird punk, but most of those bands aren’t really that weird. I think why bands like Dead Wife have such a broad appeal is not that they are really all that weird but because they’re just a really good band. We’ve been lucky and gotten pretty healthy crowds out to our shows, and I think that may be because we aren’t too specific to just one scene.

Shub Roy (guitar): People can label us whatever they want, but to us, it’s just rock ’n’ roll, and hopefully our music can offer different things to different kinds of people.

M: Montreal has always been known as a hotbed for indie pop but there seems to be a new vibrancy in the live scene for punk, hardcore, noise, doom, drone and so on.

TR: When I moved here from Halifax two years ago, I was really impressed that I could see touring bands that I had records of. That blew my mind, but there would be the same two local bands opening for every show. Now there are a million great bands in the city as well as a million great venues and loft spaces for them to play. When there are spaces for bands, great things happen, and I think that’s something we should cherish. It just happened so quickly too, and for a band like us to play to 400 people in a loft, there’s just nothing better. Montreal has really got something special going on now and I think the people that live here are just starting to realize it. What we have in Montreal right now is pretty fucking awesome.

WITH SLIM TWIG, DEAD WIFE AND
INTERRACIAL LOVE TRIANGLE AT
FRIENDSHIP COVE ON FRIDAY,
APRIL 23, 9 P.M., $5 - Montreal Mirror