Look Vibrant

Brace yourself! This Montreal-based band is packed full of energy and likely to blow your socks off. At least, that's what they did for me.

"Bull & Eagle" came out last week and absolutely wreaks of talent and originality. Sure, they pull influence from here and there, but the combination results in something unlike anything else I've heard. And I'm not just being hyperbolic...

So yeah, get on the art-pop/rock train. - Indie Shuffle

This Montreal group has a boundless store of energy seen in their hyperkinetic shows and their equally speedy work. Their latest single, “Bull & Eagle,” seems to move at 1000 km/h, with quick, summery guitar licks and an underpinning of moderately off-kilter keys to give it some extra spice. Put this one on repeat. –MT - Greyowl Point

The thing about Look Vibrant is this: they seem less like a band and more like a bunch of best friends who looked for and found another avenue to hang out with each other and have fun. That said, when you open your set with a blasting cover of Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," you can be whatever you want. I was shout-singing the lyrics right along with them like I too was 20 years old.

So yeah, they're young, and I'm old enough to feel old because of that, but there's something so pleasant and winning about these guys. They're like Hollerado in that way. And in other ways: the energy, the wildness, the lead singer's hair. At one point they did a song that reminded me of their youth, but of mine, too. I wrote "Dumb pop song, probably about a girl. It's a song we all get out of our system in our twenties." So yeah, I like these guys, and can't wait to see them play again.
- Dave Jaffer - The Huffington Post (Canada)

Here’s my immediate thought upon the first note of Look Vibrant: “Oh man, this is the love-child of Passion Pit and Talking Heads.” The Montreal-based experimental pop outfit spent the next 40-some minutes both proving my hypothesis completely and utterly defying expectations. On the one hand, their formula is straightforward — take lots of great harmonies, cheery guitar tones and chirpy dance-rock synths, and spin weird little noises and flourishes into them. But where they leave behind those other two acts is in the unwavering, almost nerdy delight they seem to take in playing, rocking wide-eyed grins toward each other the whole set. That enthusiasm is not only unshakable for the audience, but it feeds back into the music, making what’s weird and fun and playful truly anthemic. - Consequence of Sound

Playing one of the fest's two late-night sets, Montreal quartet Look Vibrant were faced with a half-full venue, but managed to turn just about everyone left at the Garrison into a convert.

Mashing day-glo pop and post punk, opener "I'm a Miracle" set a high bar for the night. When the group's guitar, bass and keyboard player sang together in the song's chorus, the band felt unstoppable. That they carry themselves with the frenetic energy of early Franz Ferdinand didn't hurt, either.

Not everything was as sublime as the opener, but the group's enthusiasm was palpable and they kept the energy up throughout their short set. Officially a duo, it's hard to believe the group's rhythm section are essentially hired guns. Barely into their 20s, Look Vibrant perform like veterans, ploughing through their set with a slickness that belied the age of its members and the band itself. - Exclaim!

The 2013 edition of POP Montreal is just about a month away, happening Sept. 25-29 in venues across the beautiful Quebec metropolis. We’ll have a preview of the festival in our Sept./Oct. 2013 issue, but in the meantime, the fine folks working tirelessly behind the scenes to make POP really pop gave us the inside scoop on some of the soon-to-be-well-known breakthrough artists selected to showcase at this year’s festival.

It’s a mighty diverse list of styles, but one that’s already led to some repeat listens around our office, so do check them out. (And where did these Look Vibrant fellas come from. Wow.)

Without further ado, have a look at the Poppers’ picks:

Look Vibrant
http://lookvibrant.bandcamp.com
“These guys could be the greatest band in the world. Get in early. Trust me.”
Daniel Seligman, Co-Founder & Creative Director - Canadian Musician Blog

It’s a joyous moment when two best buddies reunite. Look Vibrant have committed that feeling to tape. Matthew Murphy and Justin Lazarus are two 20-year-old Toronto natives now settled in Montreal. They’ve been making music together since before their teens, but it wasn’t until they went their separate ways and reconvened a year later on the Plateau that Look Vibrant’s ebullient, overdubbed odes to their bromance exploded from their MacBooks. In the group’s seven months or so of existence, they’ve recorded four songs on two cassette tapes. The punchy pop nuggets are packed to the gills with lo-fi sonic fragments. They’re as harsh as they are charming. “There are a bunch of melodies layered and layered, to give it that wash,” says Murphy. “The idea is that you’re supposed to get lost in the noise of it, but upon several listens you’ll notice there are a lot of intricate parts you’re hearing,” adds Lazarus. To give a sense of how much of a fracas these two friends can make, their song “Plateau,” an optimistic number written upon Murphy’s arrival in Montreal — when he was crashing on Lazarus’ couch — features over 100 layers. There’s Murphy’s guitar, Lazarus’ synth, programmed drums and bass and the coup de grace: enough overdubs to simulate a noisy army of houseguests. “The parts were recorded through laptop microphone speakers, so all the tracks by themselves had this weak, dinky sound,” says Lazarus. “But once you added some effects and tonnes of overdubs, the sounds became grandiose.” “Plateau” and new A-side “Sweater in the Lake” — the idea of which came to Lazarus in a dream at a time when he was working the overnight shift at Segal’s Market on St-Laurent — sound at home in their chaotic original states, but the duo can play stripped down renditions as well. The two university students picked up the skill busking in the metro last summer. “We’d come up with ideas while busking, or we’d come up with ideas at home, and try them out while busking,” says Murphy. “It was a great way to try out material, and a good incentive to write more songs.” On stage, Look Vibrant are a five-piece, and the pair say the concert this Saturday will include some cool projections too. They’ll be releasing new music in 2014, although they’re unsure whether it will be a debut full-length, or more tapes. - Cult MTL

This debut from Look Vibrant out of Montreal exploded into the world and into our hearts with a wall of fuzzy noise pop. This is a new band you should know about! - Silent Shout

Look Vibrant - "Plateau". Face-melting. Face-melting like drooping popsicle face. Like aging willow-tree face. Like Ark of the Covenant dance party. Face-melting like when the sun came out last night, across Montreal's Plateau Mont-Royal, just before dusk. Face-melting like the sour happy terror of remembering your love for a friend, your love for a kitty-cat, your love of clamouring city-soaked daylight. If you fall off your bike your head could crack open. Why do you live in a noisy place like this? Why do you live amid all these roaring cars? Why not move to the country, to the placid brookside easy-life? Why do you sit here and let your face melt, over and over again? What's the allure of the crucible, the metro station, the intersection, the concert-hall, the crowd? Do you see more colours, here? Do you really see more colours? Hello? Can you hear me? Can you even hear me? HELLO CAN YOU EVEN - Said the Gramophone

“MOM. I WANT MAPLE SYRUP.”

Arched over a steaming pile of blueberry pancake perfection, Matthew Murphy passes maple syrup to roommate and fellow band mate, Justin Lazarus. Not only does the duo collaborate on breakfast each morning, they also perform as Montreal noise-pop outfit Look Vibrant.

Although they only formed mere months ago, Look Vibrant has already attracted attention from a magnitude of music writers online, including Pop Montreal’s Creative Director, Daniel Seligman, proclaiming they “Could be the greatest band in the world.”

Their sonic debut, “Plateau” showcases their intense, yet endearing sound. In an easily digestible “cassingle” format, the two-song cassette immediately grabs you with the force of a pop-song stampede.

We sit and talk with them through breakfast as they fill themselves with enough carbs and sugar to make it through a long day of rehearsing for their upcoming Pop Montreal show.

“Primarily it was for fun, it started as something to just please us.” In asking about the birth of the band, Matthew and Justin reminisce about their years of playing music together and finding the pleasure in a duo dynamic. “We’ve always been in groups together since we were eleven… but somewhere along the way we decided why not do something that’s just us?” says Justin, with Matthew adding, “Whatever kind of art we were making, we would be doing it with other people and they wouldn’t be as enthusiastic about it all the time. So we thought for this project, why not make it just us two? We love making music together, it wasn’t a conscious decision.”

Sharing an apartment, the band discusses how living together has influenced their creative process. “It works pretty well” agree the two. Between sharing “seedy night shifts” at the same grocer, Justin explains, “Our schedules end up syncing up automatically. It works pretty organically.”

We discuss how mundane moments such as waiting for a Panini press result in rehearsal time. “I think when you’re living in the same space together you’re always bouncing ideas off one another. Justin [will be] playing piano at four in the morning after work and it’s like ‘That sounds neat, we should try this.’ It’s nice to live with someone you can make music with all the time”.

This also relates to their mentality towards the music-making process, with emphasis on spontaneous and simplified recording methods with intricate production. In describing the process involved with “Plateau”, Matthew explains, “The reason I was recording it through a laptop mic is because I wanted to sketch out all these ideas, but that turned out to be a pretty cool sound in itself,” drawn to the result, they decided to work solely with sound generated by “shitty laptop mics”.

Scheduled to perform for the second time ever, and always wanting to be a part of the festival, Look Vibrant expressed their appreciation for the number of independent acts Pop Montreal supports.

“I think it’s one of the most important festivals in Canada, it’s really vital for getting lesser known artists exposed” says Justin.

Scraping the surviving syrupy remains off his plate, Matthew agrees. “A lot of effort is put into curating the bands and making sure they fit together. People that are playing actually care about music a lot and put time and effort into what they’re doing. It’s going to be an amazing time this year for sure.”

Look Vibrant perform twice in the Pop Montreal festival, Thursday the 26th at Parc de la Petite-Italie and Friday the 27th at Casa Del Popolo.

They are also releasing their follow up cassingle in the coming weeks.

Listen for yourselves on Bandcamp!
Like them on Facebook!

Images and Words by Aaliyeh & Max T. - The Main

Look Vibrant are Quickly Becoming Montreal Favourites

FRINGE ARTS by Ben Goodman — Published September 24, 2013 | Updated September 24, 2013

When POP Montreal’s founder Dan Seligman calls you “possibly the greatest band in the world,” you know you have something good going.

Look Vibrant’s brand of noise-pop has garnered much attention in Montreal with catchy tunes laced with hazy distortion.

Originally hailing from Toronto, Look Vibrant is made up of Justin Lazarus, an arts and science major at McGill University and Matthew Murphy, an electroacoustics major at Concordia.

The group’s songs are a tinny blast of electric pop, which Murphy describes as “tinsel being shot through a cannon underwater.”

The duo released their first two-song release Plateau this summer as a digital download and on cassette. They wanted to capture their sound in something that was cheap, plastic and fun, while also aiming to spark nostalgia in their target audience of 20-something university students.

“We didn’t have the skills to make songs that sound good production-wise, so we tried to make something the exact opposite, said Murphy.

“Much to our surprise, people seemed to like them.”

Going Way Back

The pair have a long history together, meeting when they were 11 years old and bonding over a mutual love of Depeche Mode. They formed their first band in ninth grade, and constantly created new projects over the years.

Look Vibrant began while the two members were travelling across Europe in the summer of 2012. The moniker came from a misunderstanding when a heavily accented record store clerk in Milan mispronounced artist Luke Vibert’s name.

After moving to Montreal, the two began working on songs together simply using the built-in microphone on Murphy’s laptop. The unique quality of sound was basically a fluke, but they liked it and decided to pursue it as a musical direction, eventually releasing Plateau in May.

Four months later, the band will make their POP debut with two shows, much to their excitement.

“It was a surprise, at first, that anyone even bothered to listen to us, let alone to like our music,” Murphy said. “To have this experience with POP is better than we had hoped.”


Embrace the Fuzz

Translating their special so-bad-it’s-good lo-fi fuzz into in a live performance required a completely new approach—specifically, bringing in live bandmates.

“Since our time in Montreal, we’ve had some chance meetings with musicians we’ve instantly clicked with,” said Murphy.

For the live lineup, the band enlisted the help of guitarist Andrew Moore, bassist Alex Rand and drummer Eli Kaufman.

“There’s a lot of energy in our performance; we have five or six players onstage,” said Murphy.

The band meshes onstage as if they’ve been playing together for years. Recent live shows have featured wild video projections accompanying their music to boost the energy further, with visions of animals and fireworks cascading across the stage like a grandiose acid trip.

After POP, Look Vibrant plans to release new material for hopefully newly-acquired fans.

“We have another ‘cassingle’ coming out soon; it encompasses the hard-hitting rawness of our first single but with added dynamics and intricacy,” said Lazarus.

Look Vibrant // Sept. 27 // Casa del Popolo (4873 St. Laurent Blvd.) // 8 p.m. // $10 advance, $12 door - The Link

These two sick/fucked up skeletons have decided to make some squashed tomato music like nobodies done it before. It’s ripped me down and it’s taken me to the toilets a couple of times (i won’t go into the details) but I’m still here loving this beautiful organized mess. You can swap one of their cassettes for a hand job on their sweet Bandcamp. I just love Chameleons. - END

When a band describes themselves as "noise pop" these days, that doesn't always lead to the wonderful expectations it sets itself up to be. Some bands think that hitting a single distortion pedal suddenly get's them in the same class as a Slumberland band or their ilk. However, Look Vibrant call themselves a noise-pop band and mean it in the most glorious way. Drawing from the same sort of hyper-constrated blasts of noise that DSTVV use to craft their music, Look Vibrant don't sound like the organic lo-fi clang of old, but the harsh, blistering assault on the ears of now. "Plateau", off the their debut cassingle of the same name, is four minutes of the most tinfoil like guitar chords enhanced by a demented computer's take on static blasts. Yet all the while, buried under this earsplitting blend of distortion is an actual, catchy piece of indie rock. It sort of reminds of Sleigh Bells, if they had cracked it up to 12, and had tried to make songs rather than cheerleader chants. B-side "Stranger Kind" is a small breather, a slightly loopy track that feels more attune to an Animal Collective song pulled from an hell portal. Plateau is two very twisted, headache inducing nuggets that are just the right amount of beyond saturated noise-pop to be gems in their own right. A decisively modern take on the sound, but one that is still glorious in its own right. - The Creative Intersection

1. Pat Jordache – O.M.O.
2. Nouveau Zodiaque – Avant Longtemps
3. Thomas – Kissing
4. Paula – Totally Nice
5. Jay Holy – Skeletons
6. Doom Squad – Riders on the Storm
7. Dean Jones Armada – High as a Cat
8. Brusque Twins – Game of Desire
9. A K U A – One’s Company
10. Sean Nicholas Savage – Other Life
11. Mark Mills – By My Side
12. Quinn Read-Baxter – Don’t Go
13. Tigerwing – The Hunt
14. Artifiseer – After Dark
15. Look Vibrant – Plateau
16. Sexy Merlin – What Is Real
17. Baked Goods – Oh Darlin’ - Silent Shout

There’s no such thing as too much fuzz, right? well yeah there probably is actually but Look Vibrant like to push the fuzzy those boundaries and they do so brilliantly.

'Plateau' is off the new self-released cassingle from the Montreal garage duo. Pick up a copy of the tape for just 2 CADs now from BANDCAMP if you have got the guts. - Fuzzbook

Estaba a punto de hacer un comentario sobre cómo me había llegado el día en que todo lo que escucho suena a una cagada, al estilo South Park, pero agrupaciones nuevas como Look Vibrant hacen que no pierda la esperanza y caiga en la desesperación. Aclaro, no afirmo que no suene mal, pero de últimas -y para ser alguien que se aventura por el transitado mundo del lo-fi pop- tiene mucha energía y vitalidad, por no decir algo de huevos, cosa que se ha visto aminorada en muchos de los nuevos tracks que me han tocado escuchar; gracias. A esto, juega con el factor sorpresa y engaña con imágenes tímidas, de tonalidades suaves y un inicio que asemeja a lo más cotorro de los sonideros ñeros (y es que hay de sonideros a sonideros). Fácilmente podría confundirse con rock o garage, pero basta con algo de ruido extra para hacernos olvidar que el chico de la foto usa una playera del dinosaurio más inofensivo nunca antes visto.

El sencillo puede ser descargado de manera gratuita desde el bandcamp de Look Vibrant, donde también encontrarás el precio para adquirir el cassette limitado. - Matinee as Hell

It’s a shame I cannot draw a face getting it’s teeth kicked in, because that’s the immediate reaction I have to the Plateau EP from Look Vibrant. Maybe it’s ear drum caving?

These tracks are a pulse driving cacophony of noise that are oddly more tender than your ears might admit.

What does noise pop even mean? You’d be surprised at the variety of sounds folks send to me with that label. Look Vibrant is guitars, veiled melodies, and a lot of fuzz and feedback. It’s beyond awesome and such a breath of fresh air for me because it’s unlike anything else I’ve been listening to in recent times.

You can download both tracks for free by clicking the players below, or click here. - Sirens of Decay

Like Youth Lagoon in a smelting works. That's the best description I can find for this discordant but utterly hooky racket. - Electric Sound of Joy

Look Vibrant - "Grow Up". An avalanche of a song, rocky and jagged, rainbow-grey all over the habitations. Distortion and noise, chunks of guitar and shrapnel-like drums, a voice fighting through the hail. Look Vibrant continue to deal in splendid catastrophe, noise-pop almost too thick to bear. - Said the Gramophone

El último mes del año para muchos artistas -así como para muchas personas- es aquél donde ya no se trabaja, ni mucho menos se lanza material. Esto porque son fechas donde mucha gente se desentiende y prefiere pasar todo su tiempo libre conviviendo con familia y amigos, además de andar comprando regalos, comiendo como si no hubiera un mañana y saliendo a entorpecer las avenidas mientras miran cada árbol o adorno colgado al aire libre. Contrario a este razonar, Look Vibrant no quiso esperar a que terminara el año. De introducción más épica que su anterior “Plateau”, esta agrupación ha estrenado un par de canciones bajo el título Sweater In The Lake. La primera, homónima al cassingle, es igual de atrevida -si no es que más- a lo que habíamos escuchado anteriormente. Convergiendo entre arreglos nacidos de una computadora, distorsiones por demás exageradas para la voz y jugueteos de percusión que, más que perturbar el oído, de cierta manear hacen fluir la adrenalina en algo que podría caer en el llamado future pop de Cecil Frena (si no es que adopta mucho de ello).
Las dos canciones están a descarga gratuita por medio de su cuenta en bandcamp, donde también encontrarás el primer sencillo, cual llevó de nombre Plateau. - Matinee as Hell

Shrouded beneath a cloak of dischord Look Vibrant dispense nuggets of pop gold. It is this contrast which makes this Montreal noise-pop band such a compelling proposition. - Electric Sound of Joy