CFCF, unmasked!
Even if you haven’t heard his music, chances are you’ve seen the images on a music blog; a red masked figure with wide white eyes contrasted by a black or blurred background. They’ve been inescapable presence over the past year and a half making Continent, the debut full length from Mike Silver’s CFCF alter ego, the musician they represent an inescapable presence. The only thing is, that isn’t Silver behind the mask.
“None of those photos are me,” says the 21 year old Montreal, Canada-based DJ and producer. Rather, the images are screen caps from a 1970s French film called Nuit Rouges (Shadow Man). “I personally find photo shoots a really awkward thing. At the time, it was just giving this image to the music that wasn’t me. There’s no reason to care about me, or what I look like because it just has nothing to do with it” While Silver’s attitude could be chalked up to either modesty or artistic hubris, imagery is an important factor to the breezy instrumental dance music he makes as CFCF. “I’m definitely trying to incorporate more film influences,” he says, citing Michael Mann, David Cronenberg and Werner Herzog as influences. “Their films are quite beautiful often and have an interesting atmosphere to them.”
Silver began creating music on his computer in his teens. “I won’t say that most of it was any good, but it was definitely a good way to get started,” he says. “It was from a hip-hop point of view, cause that’s what I was really into when I was 15 or 16. I was trying to work from a sample based point of view. It’s a bit of a framework for piecing things together which is the same thing that I do now.” At the same time he began flirting with dance music but grew bored with it. “As a teenager growing up you just start to look at other things. Eventually I came back to it and realized that it had a lot of potential. As lately as two years ago I wasn’t even working in the same way as I do now, as far as trying to maintain a certain atmosphere.”
These days, Silver’s music marries the two genres, creating icy-warm tunes that sound like a cross between Kraftwerk and DJ Shadow. The creative process begins when he finds inspiration in other songs and spaces. “Almost every song [on Continent] I could pinpoint what I was really into at that time and what it’s influences are.” He cites Tangerine Dream, Junior Boys’ first record, the style of late 80s and early 90s Chicago House, the general vibe of Prague and “Alan Parsons obviously,” as inspirations for the record. And inspiration seems to come fast and furious to Silver. The material found on his 2008 debut EP, Panesian Nights dates back to 2006. “By the time that the EP came out a lot of the stuff that’s on the album was already being recorded,” he says, by which time he’d bought a new computer and completely changed over his recording software. “All that Panesian stuff is really tongue in cheek, that video game or 80s sound. With the stuff on the album I was going for something a bit less obviously retro.”
Despite his own growing success, Silver, who has lived in Quebec all his life, says that dance music in Canada remains a marginalized genre, it’s scenes regional and insular. “Especially Montreal. It’s kind of a different vibe. I don’t participate in the scene here because it’s quite insular. The people that are really into [dance music] immerse themselves in it so that they can’t really remove themselves from it. The people who can get really into it, it’s because from their point of view it has these qualities like corny or weird or not commercially viable.” Rather than aligning himself with any scene he sees kindred spirits in other Canadian artists like Junior Boys, Friend and Azari & III. “They do a lot of things that I wish I could do. But I can’t because they do them so well.”
Despite his growing success and an imminently dropping LP, Silver still seems eager to keep confounding his fans. Although he hopes to get on the road soon at this point it will just be DJ sets. “I don’t have a live show yet and I haven’t looked into a tour.” Ian Gormely
CFCF, Fleetwood Mac cover – “Big Love”
CFCF , “Crystal Mines” video
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