MARIE DAVIDSON

MUSIC

INTERVIEW BY ELENA CESCON

IN CONVERSATION WITH MARIE DAVIDSON, ELECTRONIC PROVOCATEUR AND SYNTH-POET, SHE OPENS UP ABOUT HER LATEST ALBUM CITY OF CLOWNS — A RAW, IRONIC, AND RHYTHMICALLY SHARP DIVE INTO THE ABSURDITIES OF MODERN LIFE. BOTH DEEPLY PERSONAL AND POLITICALLY CHARGED, THE ALBUM DANCES BETWEEN SATIRE AND SINCERITY, PROVING THAT NOT EVERYTHING SERIOUS HAS TO KILL THE VIBE.

 

 

YOU WERE BORN AND RAISED IN MONTREAL, AND YOU ARE STILL BASED THERE. THE MUSIC INDUSTRY IN THIS CITY IS KNOWN FOR ITS ECLECTICISM AND INDEPENDENCE. HOW HAS MONTREAL INFLUENCED YOUR WAY OF CREATING AND THINKING ABOUT MUSIC?

Yes, indeed, I’m born and raised in Montréal, as they say. I was born on the Plateau Mont-Royal, then grew up in Mile-End, the most artistic neighborhood in the city. My mother was also involved in the cultural scene, and my father is a music lover. We listened to a lot of music—jazz, contemporary music—when I lived with him. For me,it was very normal and almost predetermined that I would become an artist. When I started making electronic music, it was completely different from my parents’ background. I entered the music world through a very experimental, very DIY scene—rock, psychedelic, ambiance, free jazz. I evolved in a rather mythical space in Montréal called La Brique, which lasted for years. It was a very laid-back and free place. There was all kinds of music and all kinds of people, and we shared a huge industrial space for almost nothing, I think we each paid 100 dollars a month. There were a lot of us because it was so big and it allowed me to be surrounded by incredibly talented people, and everyone around me had tons of projects and ideas happening simultaneously. We were all involved in a dozen projects at the same time. Then, around 2011-2012, techno parties started happening there—raves—which I didn’t know at all before. I came from a more rock, disco background, and above all, was deeply influenced by “weird” experimental music. Through those first parties, those first raves, I fell in love with electronic music. In 2012, I started making music with sequencers and drum machines, and it completely changed my life. But even in my approach to electronic club music, my beginnings were rooted in that scene, in that place, which unfortunately no longer exists. Everything was done in a very intuitive way. There was no one to teach me, and it all happened in a genuinely clumsy and punk rock way—not punk in its sound, but in the way of doing things. It makes me want to relive it all. It was a magical time in Montréal, I’d say from 2008-2009 until the pandemic. A good 10-12 years. I don’t want to say it was better before, but there was a pivotal era where many people agree that we truly had a scene.

 

YOUR ARTISTIC CAREER BEGAN AS A MEMBER OF THE GROUP LES MOMIES DE PALERME, THEN WITH ESSAIE PAS, BEFORE TAKING OFF AS A SOLO ARTIST. YOU THUS MOVED FROM THE EXPERIMENTAL SCENE TO INTERNATIONAL RECOGNITION. WHAT WAS THE KEY MOMENT WHEN YOU FELT THAT THE SOLO PATH WAS THE ONE YOU HAD TO FOLLOW?

I was in three projects: Les Momies de Palerme, Essaie Pas, and DKMD , the latter with David Christian, who was my mentor in electronic music. He is a slightly older man, a pioneer of electronic music in Montréal. During the Summer of 2011, all these groups went through a period of uncertainty. Each person, for different reasons, was telling me that they either wanted to stop or take a break to explore something else. There were also romantic tensions, problems… in short, internal conflicts or a lack of time for some. But I had such a strong desire to make music; it was so important to me. I was also the youngest, and I had an immense thirst for creation. It was David Christian, the one i worked with in DKMD, who told me: “Marie, it’s time for you to start making music on your own.” And I replied, “Oh no, no, I’ll never be able to.” I was 24 years old, had little confidence in myself, and things weren’t going well in my life. No one knew it, but at that time, I had started developing an illness, an eating disorder that was taking up a huge space in my life and ruining it little by little. But David Christian put a sequencer in my hands and said: “Take this home with you ” and it saved my life. I discovered that I could program my music, that I could finally transcribe what I was hearing in my head by taking the time to structure it. And it was also in those moments, while composing on electronic equipment, that I stopped thinking about my existential problems and the eating disorder that was consuming more and more of my life. It literally saved me, that’s why it became my main project. Music has given me so much, and I try to give back as much as I can. I have a rather rigorous work ethic, and I take music very seriously. Even if I don’t take myself seriously, music, I do.

 

YOUR LATEST ALBUM, CITY OF CLOWNS, RELEASED IN FEBRUARY 2025, IS INSPIRED BY THE BOOK “THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM” BY SHOSHANA ZUBOFF. CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW THIS READING INFLUENCED THE SONIC AND THEMATIC CONCEPTION OF CITY OF CLOWNS?

It’s interesting because I had a few demos, a few tracks lying around on hard drives, some sessions. I didn’t have an album at all. I had no direction, nor enough material to make one. And I didn’t really have the impulse, a real direction, whereas usually, I’m someone who has clear projects—I know where I’m going. Then, in June 2022, I started reading this book, and after a few chapters, it was obvious that I had to build something from it. This book was so important to me. The topics it covered affected me deeply, and I wanted more people to become aware of them, to understand the weight and consequences of technology in our lives. I found the book’s language to be very cold, very methodical, but incredibly well-documented. I imagined the words, the lexicon surrounding the topics discussed. So I thought: wow, this is an incredible source of inspiration. So, that was it—I had to make an album about this. Today, the world, with this ultra-fast technological advancement, doesn’t encourage us to remain aware of its impact on our future. I want to invite my audience to stay critical, to keep thinking and making choices, to try making choices together, as a society. And then, it’s also essential to talk to people in real life, in the streets, in everyday life. We need to stop communicating only through platforms, phones, and all kinds of websites. This is not reality.

 

IN CONNECTION WITH THE THEMES RAISED BY THE AGE OF SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM, IN YOUR ALBUM, YOU HIGHLIGHT THIS NEW FORM OF DIGITAL POWER THAT SURVEILS, MANIPULATES, AND TURNS INDIVIDUALS INTO PRODUCTS. DO YOU THINK THAT MUSIC AND ART IN GENERAL STILL HAVE A POWER OF RESISTANCE AGAINST THIS NEW FORM OF CONTROL?

Yes, absolutely. Art is one of the fields where we have the most counter-power. Even on a small scale, each individual, each artist has a role to play. And if all these artists speak up, whether in the same conversation or at different moments, the echo of these voices eventually fills the space. There are also good politicians—even though, generally speaking, I think politics is completely rotten—who fight to make information, reality, and accuracy accessible to the public. But artists have a different role: they don’t just report facts, they stimulate thought. Artists have always been the ones who question their era, and even today, we can look back a few years and say: « Oh yeah, this person saw it coming, they were already thinking ahead » . It’s essential in art to provoke reflection. This can be done very gently or in a highly subversive way, like with punk rock, hardcore, performance art, or even subtly through the lyrics of a song or the composition of a photograph. An image can say so much. And I think it’s crucial that artists don’t all fall into the trap of social media like Instagram, TikTok, or X. These platforms have completely taken over art, turning the artist and the promotion of art into marketing tools. Artists are losing their sense of purpose, they are being stripped of their work because they have to conform to questionable guidelines: stories, reels, perfect lighting, polished staging, precise durations, reduced attention spans, blablabla… We are being pushed, as artists, to produce content that looks like advertising. But that’s not a coincidence. It’s because they don’t want us to create subversive art, they want us to create propaganda. Meta always sends me messages: « Oh, you’re doing great, but if you follow these guidelines, you will do better » but I’m not selling a product, I’m not an influencer or a brand. I make art. Their new format of story, reel, carousel—it all goes right over my head.

 

 

IN SEXY CLOWN, YOU EXPLORE THE NOTION OF THE INNER CLOWN THAT EXISTS WITHIN EACH OF US. THIS CLOWN OFTEN REPRESENTS AUTHENTICITY, IMPERFECTION, AND SPONTANEITY; IT’S A BIT LIKE OUR CHILDLIKE SIDE—THE ONE THAT LOVES TO BE NOTICED, TO PERFORM, AND TO ENTERTAIN OTHERS. BUT EVERY INNER CLOWN IS UNIQUE: IT CAN BE DRAMATIC, SHY, JOYFUL, OR, ON THE CONTRARY, DARK. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURS?

My inner clown is super fun and it saves my life. I’m a person who tends to introspection, existential questioning, and depression. Not the big, big depression. I’ve never been depressed to the point of being medicated, for example. But I’ve been depressive for most of my life, while still loving life a lot. I love having fun. I really love making music. I love going outside, walking, meeting people. I talk to a lot of people on the street, I’ve been going to the same gym for years, I talk to people there. I love life, but I have a bit of an introspective and slightly depressive side too. I can easily be melancholic, a bit lost in life. And then, as I got older, I discovered humor, and it helped me a lot, a lot. In 2012, when I started making electronic music at 24, I was very dark, I dressed in black, I started clubbing, I was making experimental music with my machines. I listened to techno, then synthwave, and then, eventually, around 2016, I started having more and more humor. My inner clown started to take up more and more space. Until now, humor is part of my everyday life. I joke with everyone, and when I’m alone, I make jokes to myself. My clown is there to take care of me. My inner clown really has my back, and sometimes, it tells me: “Marie, you’re too serious.”

 

I’M STILL DWELLING A LITTLE ON SEXY CLOWN, BECAUSE ITS MUSIC VIDEO, DIRECTED BY LORIS GENTILE, SHOWS YOU ENJOYING AN UNDERGROUND MILAN, FAR AWAY FROM THE CLICHÉS OF THE CITY OF LUXURY AND FASHION. MILAN IS OFTEN PERCEIVED AS A CAPITALIST CITY, MARKED BY THE PRESENCE OF BIG COMPANIES, BANKS, AND ITS CENTRAL ROLE IN DIGITALIZATION, FINTECH, AND THE DIGITALIZATION OF SERVICES. THROUGH YOUR VIDEO, DID YOU INTEND TO DECONSTRUCT THIS MILANESE IDEAL? FOR YOU, IS MILAN A CITY OF CLOWNS?

Wow! So many good questions in one. So, firstly, I would say that I knew it was the capital of fashion, but I didn’t know it also had tech. So that’s interesting, the digitalization. But for me, Milan is one of my favorite cities in the world. I love its underground side and the people who live there. I’m happy I worked with Loris Gentile and Bernardino, as well as my friend Dorian, who plays in a band called Jackal, Jackal and who found the place, the run-in, to shoot the video. In Milan, I love the VITAMINA scene, a very gay, very queer collective that has been organizing parties for a decade. I played for them in the Fall, and it was one of the best parties of my last years. So yes, I love all that underground side of Milan, both in live music and the club scene, very raw, very real. And it was perfect for the sexy clown video because sexy clown is about outsiders. It was exactly this Milan that I wanted to show, and that I didn’t fully know, and through Loris and Bernardino, I discovered it, and it was so perfect. Everyone who came for the video worked for free. everyone came to be extra, do makeup, play a character, or help out a bit. It was really a beautiful day, a beautiful night. We had so much fun, and everyone was so hard-working, everyone was super enthusiastic to work, to give their best, to party, and in the end, we got a really beautiful video. I have a lot of hope for this Milanese scene: a little fashion, a little punk, a little strange, a little clown. It’s perfect for me. This underground part of Milan is the city’s inner clown. Very different from the very high-tech, superficial, fashionable front we see at first glance. I was shocked when I went to the center of Milan. I had never seen such huge ads, billboards of fashion everywhere. You can’t escape it, and as a normal human being, a city dweller, I thought it must be hard for Milanese people because they live in it and are bombarded with images of super young, super stylish people. But these people don’t exist for real. They’re 15, 16, 17, 20-year-olds, dressed like adults. But even if we know that, it still must have an impact on their self-esteem. They have to walk through that to go to work. So, I found the dichotomy between the slightly working-class, slightly underground Milan, more modest and more artistic, and the heart of Milan, which is very capitalist and very focused on fashion, image, and the superficial side, to be interesting. It’s an interesting city.

 

YOUR ALBUMS EXPLORE DEEP THEMES: BURNOUT AND THE ABSURDITY OF THE WORKING WORLD IN WORKING CLASS WOMAN, TECHNOLOGY IN CITY OF CLOWNS… IS IT A NEED TO EXPRESS A COLLECTIVE UNEASE OR A DESIRE TO AWAKEN CONSCIOUSNESS?

Both.

Sometimes, in certain phrases, certain ideas, certain lines, certain words, it’s just to highlight a subject that we all experience, that we are all aware of or almost. I know I’m not teaching anything to my audience, but I just want to either criticize, or mock it and laugh to exorcise a problem, a situation that presents itself as a collective unease. And sometimes too, I hope that in my message, some people can become aware of the situation and maybe step out of a bubble. Like in a piece like Validation Wait and Unknowing, the opener and closer of the album, it’s more about planting a seed in people’s minds. maybe we can live differently, or not, but get them to reflect. Whereas in a piece like Demolition, Sexy Clown, or Statistical Modeling, that’s more the fun times. I’’m making fun of our era and society.

 

IN THIS ALBUM, ONE OF YOUR ICONIC TRACKS, “Y.A.A.M.“, ORIGINALLY RELEASED IN 2024, IS FEATURED AGAIN BUT HERE REVISITED IN COLLABORATION WITH THE BELGIAN DUO SOULWAX. THIS NEW VERSION ENRICHES THE ORIGINAL WITH PROTOELECTROCLASH ELEMENTS AND PUNCHY SYNTHS, REFLECTING THE DYSTOPIC AESTHETIC OF THE ALBUM. HOW DID THIS COLLABORATION COME ABOUT AND WHAT DID IT BRING TO YOUR ORIGINAL VISION OF THE TRACK?

I don’t know if they did it consciously like that, but I also thought that when the chorus comes in – “entrepreneur, producer” – with the bassline, there’s a real electroclash vibe. I love the bassline they added in the chorus. This second version of “Y.A.A.M.” is special, it’s kind of the beginning of our collaboration. It showed how fluid the process was and how much we could do whatever we wanted with them. They brought a lot of energy to the album. It was an album that already existed, but they injected their energy into it, that playful and irreverent spirit that characterizes them, both in their own music and in their Dj Sets. There’s a lot of abrasive sounds and good basslines. They added lots of little details that give it that electroclash touch. I love the bassline they integrated into the chorus, yes!

 

 

JUST LIKE THE SOULWAX DUO, YOUR MUSIC RELIES ON AN APPROACH WHERE SOUND BECOMES A TOOL FOR ANALYZING THE MODERN WORLD. YOUR TRACKS ARE PLAYED IN CLUBS, BUT THEY ALSO CARRY A DEEP CRITICAL AND POETIC DIMENSION. HOW DO YOU JUGGLE BETWEEN THESE TWO DIMENSIONS: MAKING PEOPLE DANCE WHILE MAKING THEM THINK?

So, for me, pleasure is the most important aspect above all. When I make music, especially if it’s club music, but in general, if I make music with beats or lyrics, verses, choruses, even if it’s not purely club, I want it to be enjoyable. I want there to be a good amount of energy. I want it to be fun above all. And the critique or reflection comes after, but because I have an introspective tendency that pushes me to dig deep, a tendency to analyze the world we live in, it always ends up in my songs. It’s stronger than me, yes. I would like, maybe one day, to be able to write a ballad. I wrote one on the album renegade breakdown, the album i made with the band l’Ooeil Nu. There’s a track that’s really a ballad, a love song, called “My Love“. It’s not bad at all, but I’d like to write more one day, maybe. We’ll see, maybe with summer, spring..a bit older, more settled..

 

AFTER THIS ALBUM THAT QUESTIONS OUR DIGITAL WORLD, DO YOU SEE A NEW DIRECTION FOR YOUR MUSIC? WHAT TOPICS WOULD YOU LIKE TO EXPLORE IN THE FUTURE, AFTER CITY OF CLOWNS?

It’s a good question. Well, after city of clowns, one project is to make an album with Essaie Pas, a duo with Pierre Guerineau that has existed since 2011. Our last album came out in 2018. It was New Path, released on DFA records. And then, we would like to make an album that is a bit more introspective, a bit more melodic. We have a few directions, a few ideas. And eventually, I don’t know when, but one day… it’s been a long time that I want to make an album of more introspective music, more ambient. But “ambient” doesn’t really mean anything to me now. It’s a bit of a vague term now. But an album of more introspective, more contemplative music, where the sound would be more deeply worked, with probably fewer words. Because I express myself a lot with my voice, my words, and the beats, but I’m capable of doing other things as well. And I personally listen to a lot of ambient music, actually. It’s funny, because the music I listen to the most has nothing to do with what I make. The music I listen to the most is ambient and classical music in my personal life. So, one day, I would like to make some music. The music I listen to the most in my personal life is ambient and classical music. So one day, I’d love to create something like that — maybe something more cinematic — but I’m in no rush.

 

MARIE DAVIDSON
CITY OF CLOWNS
PICTURE FROM ©️ NADINE FRACZKOWSKI
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST,
BECAUSE MUSIC LABEL AND THE PHOTOGRAPHER