KROY

Breaking away from her duo, Milk & Bone, singer KROY confidently steps into the spotlight with her own eerily beautiful music. The artist channels influences like Björk​ and UK trip hop acts like Portishead and Massive Attack, to form her own unique take on experimental pop. - COMPLEX

what I love most about stepping into an artist’s home, is the weird but thrilling sensation of entering another tiny universe. everything from plants to candles, light fixtures to magazines, is carefully curated to create a huge inspiring bubble.

as I met with camille poliquin in her cozy montreal apartment, I was taken by the same feeling. the space was like an open album of kroy, her alias, mixed with a tad of milk and bone, her duo with laurence lafond-beaulne. high ceilings, white walls, delicate flowers and dope artwork across the rooms. the apartment reflected her aesthetic – soft, intimate, minimal and a bit melancholic – but also displayed the work of her closest friends.

sitting with her at the dinner table, I noticed two large – read huge – prints of photographs by jerry pigeon – the montreal photographer who’s signing the cover of her solo album coming out next september (also designed by catherine d'amours). “he printed those for an exhibition, and he exchanged them for a perfume I got him while touring in europe," she recalls. “plus, the arm on this picture is my best friend’s so it’s pretty funny!”

besides those hella impressive art prints, what you can’t miss are the gorgeous light fixtures made by her friend, jean-pascal gauthier (ya know who he is, we talked about him already). “he was experimenting with furniture at first, but as he began tackling light fixtures - I jumped on it! these are all prototypes, so they’re one-of-a-kind and guaranteed for life,” she says, super proud.

but what I found really great about her place is the work-in-progress aspect of it. “decorating has been an on-going process; nothing is temporary, I wait until I can get what I have in mind,” she says about moving in only a year ago. meanwhile, she was touring the states and europe for milk and bone, breaking her personal record of the longest time away from home. “we left for a month, came back three weeks, then left for another month… I had never been away for a whole month before.”

did she like it? “it was cool, but I missed home, my bed, my solitude too,” she confesses. and she’ll be jumping back on that tour bandwagon pretty soon with her new album, coming out on september 23rd. “it’s hard to describe because I know it too well… but I did listen to a lot of ‘youth lagoon’ and ‘lykke li’ while working on it,” she recalls. “it’s gonna be insane, I can’t wait to go on the road and perform!”

pointing to her living room, she tells me all about listening to the first vinyl copy of her album. “there’s something really crafty about vinyl records. as much as I love them for music, I prefer print for magazines and visual arts.” and magazines, damn she has quite a lot! near the window, one can admire her curated selection of the moment, with a portion of her living room wall solely dedicated to the art of print. “it brings together the things I love most, photography, design, architecture – it calms me down, keeps me grounded.” her favorite titles? kinfolk (even if it’s a bit cliché), boys by girls, the gentlewoman, along with all the publications about cooking and architecture from taschen and phaidon. “my go-to spot to buy magazines is colette in paris. I like ending my tour there to pack my luggage with them.”

now, for those of you who know camille, you’ve probably noticed that her wardrobe is one hunna percent black. “it’s been a year and half and, since then, I never missed wearing color,” she explains. “what I like about dressing in black is the fact that I can focus on other things like fabric and shape.” so what can we expect to see her wearing during her tour, apart from black? “I want ‘show’ outfits, stuff that I wouldn’t necessarily wear every day, but nothing too over-the-top either. it’ll be a mix of custom pieces and designer stuff like y-3, black crane and adidas – cause it’s live and I wanna feel gooood.”

upcoming dates in canada
september 23: artgang, montreal
september 29: l’anti-quebec, qc
october 10: broken city, calgary
october 22: fox cabaret, vancouver
october 26: mills hardware, hamilton
october 27: the drake, toronto
october 28: aeolian hall, london
november 5: minotaure, gatineau
november 19: le zaricot, saint-hyacinthe
february 10: beat & betterave, frelishburg
february 16: salle louis-philippe-poisson, trois-rivières - Ankle

Montreal’s Milk & Bone have gone from relative unknowns playing a mid-day set at last year’s festival to one of the best attended, most anticipated nighttime shows at this year’s edition. We can only predict, and hope, the same goes for bandmember Camille Poliquin, who also performed this year under solo moniker Kroy. Helming a simple synth set, Poliquin has the kind of arresting voice that can make an afternoon performance to a stiff crowd at a small bar feel instead like you’ve been let in on her most intimate, vulnerable confessions; that, for a moment, you're acutally sharing something. She released her debut EP Birthday in 2014 and has her first first full-length in the works. - Noisey Music by Vice

KROY, a.k.a. Camille Poliquin, usually supplies her heat ray of a voice as one-half of Montreal synth-pop duo Milk & Bone but she struck out as a solo artist with a cover of Adele's ubiquitous "Hello" earlier this year. However, Poliquin's made her biggest statement yet in the video for her single "River" and that statement is being goth as fuck. Set in a monochrome-shot desert, Poliquin wears black robes and freaky claws on her hands as she wanders the scorched earth (again, in all-black!) like a mystic of the sands or something to that effect. It's pretty cool and also a noble testament to committing to a strong look regardless of the climate. She is literally not sweating it.

"'River' is some kind of apology about becoming exactly who you are," explains Poliquin. "So in a way it's also a farewell to the people who won't stick around. And some sort of suicide of the old self. With the video, it was important for me to be represented completely alone. I feel it's a very lonely path to understanding there are changes in your life you can't ignore any longer. We shot for a week in Nevada. It was absolutely stunning." Watch the "River" video below. - Noisey by Vice Music