He was going a little cabin crazy.
Future soul musician Frase was living in a remote cabin in Crawford Bay this past winter with his girlfriend Emily Honegger when the pair decided to collaborate on a music video for his track “She Said.”
“I wanted something cinematic and personal and intimate,” he told the Star this week.
“This is a song about a relationship that had a heavy high and a heavy low, and I wanted that tension to be in there. We were brainstorming this idea and she came up with the idea of recruiting her friend.”
The pair called up professional dancer Geneviève Gagné, who flew in from Montreal and completed the chaotic choreography in approximately one week this spring.
While Frase croons into the camera, Gagné hurls herself around in the background — her hair creating mesmerizing shapes in slow motion.
Honegger has been teaching dance in Nelson for the past six months through Slava Doval’s DanceFusion and the youth centre, and she’s been trying to bring contemporary hip-hop dance to the Kootenays — something Frase is passionate about as well.
His music, meanwhile “is basically soul mixed with electronic music.”
“People hear soul and they think Marvin Gaye, Otis Redding, but my music has obviously evolved a lot from that initial inspiration. I’ve been using the tag future soul, and I’ve even been adding the word analogue, because people perform in that genre but don’t sing or play guitar or use analogue instruments the way I do.”
“She Said” is the latest in a series of videos Frase has released online. The camera work was done by Mark Stan and Alex Martin, two filmmakers from Nelson, who released it at the end of May. On the track he collaborates with Dead Horse Beats.
This summer Frase will be performing at four nearby music festivals — Kamp, Unity, Kaslo Jazz and Shambhala, and four more throughout the province. And having just finished a tour through Europe, he’s looking forward to being back in the Kootenays.
“Last year was my first time playing in B.C., at Kamp and Diversity and Shambhala, and from word of mouth I’ve been given the opportunity to play at a bunch more,” he said.
“I’m super looking forward to the west coast music festival scene. It’s something that’s really unique, the freedom and the creativity and the planning and art that goes into those festivals.”
His new album FRNZ is due out in October 2017.
“The idea of calling it FRNZ was I really wanted to create a name for the community of people who have been involved in and supportive of my music. I like to know people on a personal level, and with social media the idea of being a friend has been diluted.”
But the album pays tribute to people who have made a deep connection with him.
“The word is supposed to capture someone you can really trust, lean on, someone who supports you and encourages you to pursue your art and your passion.”