Trigger Effect

Ahead of their last gig on their 2013 European/UK tour I was fortunate enough to catch up with Nick Babeu, vocalist for Montreal punk band Trigger Effect in Oxford, England to talk European airport staff strikes, being huge in Slovenia, their new album What’s Left To Eliminate?

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Steven: Nick, thanks for taking time out to speak to me. So you’re just wrapping up a European tour, any particular highlights from this trip?

Nick: Yeah, tons actually. It started off with us landing in Brussels (Belgium) to a baggage handler strike, meaning we could only take what we had with us as carry on, so all our guitars, clothes, anything of relative importance was stuck down underneath the plane. Staff were really helpful, trying to help us out, but there was only so much they could do. So we had to spend the first 4 or 5 shows without any of our stuff. The first part of the tour was in Belgium which is lucky as we have tons of great friends and have played a lot of great shows there. The promoters came through and  hooked us up with some borrowed guitars and other random stuff we needed to make the gigs happen.  But it was an odd start!

Steven: Ha, welcome to Europe, because since you’ve been here there’s been an air traffic control strike in France too, so its a regular occurrence over here. I know you guys have toured Europe before, but is this your first time in the UK?

Nick: Yeah, this is our fourth European tour, but our first time in the UK.

Steven: Did that come about because of the link up with Dry Heave Records, were they able to help make that happen?

Nick: Yes, that’s exactly why that happened. We’ve gone through all the red tape for playing in the US, with the work visas and all that but we never sorted it out for the UK because it was just easier for us to do the mainland and not fucking deal with it, but this time around, Dry Heave came along and Miles (Hackett – from Dry Heave Records) took care of all the paperwork and its been fucking great!

Steven: Cool! I read you had some issues in Glasgow I think where all your support bands dropped off the bill,  so it ended up being just you guys doing almost a showcase type gig?

Nick: Yeah, pretty much. Apparently one of the bands had dropped off a couple of weeks before, but the promoter hadn’t bothered to replace them and then there was a “miscommunication” for the other band, but I’m not quite sure what that miscommunication could have been, but you know these things happen.

Steven: So fourth time in Europe as you’ve said and developed a decent following. I read one of the guys say that you are now “fucking huge in Slovenia”.

Nick: Ha! Well yeah we’ve got some really good friends in Slovenia, and we can do ok over there. Its odd though; like we do fairly well in Belgium, there’s pockets in Germany that are really good for us, but then Poland and Czech Republic and Slovakia are always fucking awesome!

Steven: Yeah, eastern Europeans can be crazy!

Nick: Oh, they are! In the most awesome way, like we had a sold out show in Wrocław (Poland) and we headlined ProtestFest in Brno (Czech Republic) which was pretty awesome.

Steven: So obviously the new album was released at the beginning of May, can you tell us a bit about What’s Left to Eliminate and where it came from as its a little bit of a departure from previous outings?

Nick: Yeah, I guess so. I mean we consciously wanted to make a concept record, having the story flow from beginning to end just because we find it’s more interesting and more of a cohesive piece of work rather than a mash of random songs put together. So yeah, we consciously tried to do that, and we put the songs together and made the structure and the story and we brought in a producer called Ian Blurton.

Steven: Was he a conscious choice to help make the concept record come to fruition?

Nick: Not necessarily, I mean we had the record basically written and ready to go, but we had never worked with a producer per se before, we had just sort of people come in and give inputs and whatever, but in terms of an actual producer, this was the first time we’d actually worked with one (a producer) in that way. We brought him in, more than anything, for pumping up sound and working with layering and things like that. In terms of the song writing and stuff we brought him in a for a few jam sessions and asked him what he would do differently and he basically told us to stop second guessing ourselves that we’d produced the shit out of it already and not to worry, so that was pretty cool.

Steven: Yeah, the vocals are definitely cleaner and you can hear the melodies comes through a lot more (than on previous releases). Did that come out in the song writing, or did Ian influence that as well?

Nick: Definitely, in terms of the vocals on previous albums I’ve done various harmonies (I love that kind of stuff), I love doo-wop and that type of shit you know? But in terms of the actual sounds, Ian had a lot to do with that, you know like placing me at a certain distance from the mic or at the studio where we recorded the vocals at there was a bathroom that had a lot of tiling, so we had a couple of songs, the ones that sound really reverb-y or where you can really hear the room a lot, those are probably the bathroom ones.

Steven: Did that cause any logistical problems during recording?

Nick: We just ran a mic out to the bathroom saying “let’s try this” and it sounded cool so we just went with it.

Steven: So did the whole idea for the concept album come from the fact that you were reading a lot of German philosophers at the time, like Hermann Hesse? Was that specific research to make the concept album or did you find the ideas flowing both ways?

NB: They kind of flowed together. I mean its funny, with the Hermann Hess book, I had finished writing the lyrics (for the album) completely and when I passed them off to the guys to take a look, and see what they thought and Pat (Bennet – guitarist) had just finished reading the Herman Hess book Demian and commented that it was  “remarkably similar” not in storyline but in theme and I hadn’t read it yet so I was like “oh yeah, for real?” Then I checked out the book and thought it was fucking awesome so we decided to include the quote in there.

Steven: So you’ve said that the concept of the story for the album about a man searching for truth and meaning in all the wrong places wasn’t based on a real man, and that no one in the band had ever had any kind of existential experiences, “but there was that one time in the jazz squat in Amsterdam”. Can you tell us that story?

Nick: Yeah, we could, haha! It was our first time playing in Amsterdam and we’d had a decent show and been to a smart shop and got these Hawaiin woodrose seeds that contain LSU supposedly, and we’d eaten a bunch of those and then nothing happened for about 4 hours. Once we got back to the little jazz squat where we were literally sleeping in temporary beds on the stage and as we were going to bed it was like HOLY FUCK I started tripping my fucking ass off! So that was what we were referring to.

Steven: That’s about as close to an out of body experience as you’re likely to have! During this tour, how have you found the reaction to the new record? It’s not a huge departure musically, but the sound is cleaner and it’s a brilliant record.

Nick: Well first off, thank you! The set list that we’ve been doing takes care of most of the album, and then a bunch of stuff from the older albums obviously. So for people that have known us before they seem to dig it and its funny because they maybe can’t quite get into the songs because they don’t know them yet, so you know they can’t sing along and that type of stuff but people are generally enjoying them. Then for all the people that haven’t seen us before, it’s been positive reactions for the most part.

Steven: One of the things about bringing Ian on board is that you have used instruments on this album that you never used before like piano, moog organ and violins. Obviously that is more difficult to replicate when you’re playing live so do you just not even worry about trying to incorporate those elements on tour?

Nick: Yeah, I mean there’s a lot of stuff on the album like vocal harmonies, piano, the violin even some of the guitar layering, and some additional percussion and stuff that if we wanted to do that live we’d need to bring extra people on the road or do it artificially, which is lame, and so we just go on the road continuing with our punk style I guess you’d say. But with the album we wanted to make something more textured and interesting you know?

Steven: Going back to early days touring Canada for a second, you guys were renowned for taking barbeques out with you, have you ever done that in any of the four European tours to date?

Nick: As far as taking barbeques no. Its much less of a necessity in Europe because everywhere we go we tend to be fed and supplied drinks all night. Half the time people are making us breakfast and accommodations are way way better in Europe.

Steven: Canadians are nice people though, they’re globally renowned for being nice and friendly?

Nick: Oh they’re very polite, but you know I guess there’s just a lot of band traffic. I mean there’s a lot of bands going on in Europe too but I don’t know what it is but in Canada you can be from across the world and its like “there’s the stage”, there’s not so much of a, not obligation but sort of a sentiment of like wanting to take care of people and show off your food and beers like you get in Europe.

Steven: Its a good point, I think there’s a real community in some of these places.

Nick: Yeah, we’ve played a lot of squats and more off the radar anarchist places and they tend to have really tight knit communities behind them. Everyone has dinner together, it’s really cool.

Steven: And that kind of leads me to TurboHaus, the venue/arts space that you guys launched back in February, how did that come about?

Nick: Actually it’s pretty much a direct influence from having toured Europe and just seeing how people do things. I mean it’s not feasible in Canada to squat a place because you’ll have police with bats and dogs at your door in 24 hours.

Steven: Well they’re trying to change those laws in the UK as well, but there are always ways around them!

Nick: Oh yeah? But that’s it really, just seeing how people had come together and just transformed spaces, make venues and party spots out of them and what have you – gardens even! It’s pretty inspiring, and we had been running some shows in our jam space previously and then through a fortunate / unfortunate series of events which involved our jam space flooding, we ended up with a much bigger jam space that we transformed into a venue. So that’s it, and (since launch) we’ve been running concerts, movie and comedy nights, dance parties, and fundraisers.

Steven: So is TurboHaus going to host Fear and Loathing in Montreal at some stage?

Nick: It would be too big an event, but I haven’t done it for the past couple of years. I left it off at the 10 year mark, but I do plan to bring it out of retirement, just like Jay-Z, but it(TurboHaus) would be good for a Fear and Loathing after party.

Steven: What about the status of Rock Fight?

Nick: No, I haven’t done rock fight in a while because I was running it at a BMX park that one of my friends ran and he lost the venue and I haven’t been able to find a suitable replacement venue. Well, one that would be suitable for the event and viable financially because any places big enough that I would be able to get would be pretty expensive to rent and then we gotta get all the equipment together etc etc.

Steven: It sounds like an awesome concept, it must have been great fun to put on?

Nick: Oh it was, it was fantastic! There was talk for a little while of us shooting a pilot for a contest TV show you know?

Steven: Now that would be reality TV worth watching, it sounds seriously awesome.

Nick: That’s what we figured, a bit like Wipeout, but with music!

Steven: I take it bands were good humoured about getting involved in a battle of the bands that didn’t involve playing music at all?

Nick: Ha! yeah yeah, everyone had a lot of fun with it, just kind of a party with friendly competition rather than something cut throat.

Steven: Going back to TurboHaus for a second, its a one hundred person capacity venue and obviously Montreal’s got such a huge scene with so much going on, how do you make TurboHaus stand out?

Nick: Well it’s a space that doesn’t really look like any other for one. When we came in we painted all the walls white, the floor black and then we had a bunch of artists come in and do murals in black on the walls so its all black and white with the exception of the back of the stage with a red curtain and our Turbo Flags (of course) on the side. So it’s pretty cool looking in that sense but I guess it’s only unique in that it’s us who run it, our community of friends and extended friends who go there. Well that said, its open to everyone, but that tends to be core group. And we can only fit 100 people in there anyway, so I guess it’s like the headquarters for our little scene!

Steven: Along with TurboHaus now, you guys took the DIY approach in the early days and set up a company to produce and promote your own stuff, but who deals with that side of things when you’re out on tour?

Nick: Yeah, well we talked about having someone run it for us while we were gone but we just decided to just keep it shut and then just bring it back and start doing more events per month once we get back home. We weren’t comfortable with having someone else run it yet, we want to work out all the kinks first.

Steven: I guess its still fairly a young venue, with only being launched in February?

Nick: That’s it, I mean we’ve been doing shows and running shows for years and years so we know how it goes, but in terms of having our own space and being responsible for all the shit that can happen. If shit goes down, we want to be the ones there to take care of it first. If something catches fire, or a pipe breaks or someone breaks their face on stage!

Steven: One last question, and since the album is called “What’s Left to Eliminate?”, if you could eliminate one thing from this world, what would it be?

Nick: If I could eliminate one thing from the world? Haha, I have so many things going through my head right now that would be so inappropriate, but I’ll go with jerks!

Steven: Jerks? I can agree with that! There’s a lot of them in the world, and we’d be better off without them! Thanks very much Nick, really appreciate you taking the time out to speak with me.

Nick: Right on, thanks!