Canadian multimedia art punk Collective Crack Cloud is back with Red Mile, the exciting next chapter on their journey. We spoke to the collective’s drummer / frontman Zach Choy to make a delightful chat.
When I first saw the cover art for Red Mile, I immediately thought of the film La Haine, specifically the anecdote depicting a man falling from a building who repeatedly says, “So far, so good.” While it is true that it is a pretty dark film in tone, I like to think of you as a lighter, more optimistic, and punkier sibling of it, especially considering your journey of non-linear healing and a sense of intrigue toward what comes next. This cover certainly reflects that.
Zach Choy: You know, I think about that all the time. Not specifically the movie so much as just the line. Every now and then, I’m saying, “So far, so good!” to myself. And you’re right.
I really love your interpretation. I really like the connection you are making there. What gives that film such momentum and vitality is the pace, sentiment, and analogy of this person falling with the fatalism behind that. Not really knowing for certain if you’re going to land on your feet, but just moving in this deterministic way as best as you can, based on the minutiae of your environment and circumstances. There’s something really tense about living that way, but I would say that our whole experience with Crack Cloud over the course of ten years is something that has never felt certain. It’s something that has always felt ephemeral. It just keeps presenting itself in our lives in a way where it’s still feels relevant and it still feels like we’re finding a lot of fulfillment in it. It’s definitely a precarious sort of balance. It creates a duality, a void in our lives.
Sometimes we think that if we were to remove ourselves from the art, our lives might be more simple, and there’s beauty in that. But I think just by nature and by design of kinds of people we are, we enjoy living a bit more viscerally. This album was really just trying to find cohesion between both sentiments. Wanting to feel grounded and cultivate our home life, our families, and then on the other hand, just feeling like there’s always this urgency to be creative and to explore some of the darker emotions through our platform.
How was that cover actually created, by the way?
So we spoke to our friend Beck. He’s a very adventurous person, and we knew that he would have likely be interested. We spoke to Beck, proposed that we get him to learn how to skydive, and, essentially, we flew him out to the desert. He lived there for a week, did an expedited course to learn how to freedive on his own. We flew out a week later when he was certified. We worked with a cinematographer (Craig O’Brien) who’s pretty renowned within that industry. He does blockbusters like Mission: Impossible, and so it was really humbling to just connect with him and know that he was excited about the idea, as small scale as it was based on the rest of his filmography. Aidan (Pontarini), who conceptually came up with the whole idea and designed the suit came out from Berlin. He got on the plane, jumped out, and we captured it all. I think we did four jumps, and we had four different camera units, so we really maxed it out. We really got as much as we could, knowing how absurd the idea was. We didn’t want to walk away feeling like we didn’t get what we needed. (laughs)
What a cool story. I was about to say that he looks like Tom Cruise in that photo, and you come up and say you worked with a cinematographer who did Mission: Impossible. (both laugh)
Yeah. It’s all very trippy.
To you, what are the best things about being on the move versus being static?
The best of both worlds… It’s funny. I think it can be symptomatic of just touring all the time, and not everybody shares this sentiment. My brother, for instance, adapts pretty seamlessly. I think a lot of people are able to just adapt to one or the other. I feel like I’m really being challenged every time I go on the road. It takes me a while to adjust. Sometimes I don’t adjust, sometimes I’m just kind of grinding. It’s not until I come home that I, in retrospect, cherish everything that I have experienced. Often life is very much in retrospect when you’re moving at a janky kind of pace. When I’m on the road, I miss home. I miss my dogs, my wife. I miss the routine. I guess I’m kind of answering your question antithetically. I’m listing all the negatives because, in Canada, we always say “the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.” It’s something that we’re all working on.
I think there really needs to be this emphasis put on the moment when you’re traveling, because it’s transient. We really never truly know if we’re returning to a place. For instance, we did Istanbul, I guess it was two summers ago now. It was an incredible experience. It was life changing, and don’t ever know if I’ll come back, but the way that it’s embedded into my memory has become so intrinsic to just how I experience things now. In that subliminal, kind of physiological way, when you’re traveling, you’re absorbing a lot, and it’s really interesting to see how it manifests when you go home and just how it changes your perception of things. Your values, what you take for granted. Yeah, it all depends on perception.
Speaking of your Istanbul concert, what do you remember from the time you spent there?
I remember multiple dimensions of our time there. The scent, the sight, the feeling. I’m not from there. I’m from a very different country called Canada. So virtually everything we experienced was radically different. I think I get the most when I’m in those kinds of environments where it’s very unfamiliar, you know? We did a lot. We spent maybe just under a week there. We crossed over onto the Asian side of the continent. We observed the mosques. We spent a lot of time just on the streets. I really couldn’t help but feel the history and how dense it was just to be standing on those streets, knowing that it has been facilitating civilization for a long, long time. Canada, comparatively, is less than 150 years old. So it’s very different. I just felt like I was stepping into a historical moment, you know, that was really prevalent. The food, the people, the music. We met some people that showed us around, and it was gorgeous.
You getting to stay for almost a week in Istanbul is really lucky since during tour, you mostly get to stay for a couple of days maximum in a single city.
Yeah. We were really fortunate with that, as well as with people who hosted us.
Personally, I love your new album. How are you liking the initial reception for Red Mile?
My ideal kind of relationship with criticism and reception and all that is to have total separation, but that’s really hard. I have taken the time to pay attention to some of the reception, and it’s divisive, I think, which is to be expected. I feel that, undeliberately, we’re constantly challenging if not losing fans, gaining new ones. Actually, I’m reluctant to use the word fan. Just people who are listening and people who are engaged. People who find something out of the narrative that we’re creating. I think that the Crack Cloud experience is very nonlinear. We aren’t really bound to a particular sound or aesthetic. It’s more of a philosophy that manifests in different ways depending on where we are in life when we embark on an album.
Red Mile was incredibly fulfilling for us, just as a personal sort of psychoanalysis of the group and where we were at. And I expect the next record to sound- Who knows? It may sound totally different theoretically, but I know what Red Mile served for us as a group. We’re about to go tour it for two months. So, in a way, it’s just getting started. (laughs) But I feel pretty at peace with kind of relinquishing my attachment to it. Every time we do a record, I think we just have a better understanding of ourselves, and that’s why we’re doing it.
You said that Crack Cloud’s journey isn’t linear, and I think pretty much everything in life is nonlinear, like healing or growth.
Totally. And that took a while to understand. Even as somebody who struggles with the history of addiction, it’s not linear. Just progression. Right? Sometimes we go in circles.
if you were to pick two tracks from the record, one easiest and one hardest create, which two would those be?
Well, “Ballad of Billy” was absolutely the most effortless track on the record. That was my brother Will, his first song that he wrote and contributed to a Crack Cloud record. He brought the chords and the vision to the room, and we put it together in the course of a couple hours. We did it in one take, and it was as simple as that.
“Crack of Life” compositionally took a lot of time. It was very much a labyrinth in terms of songwriting, trying to find the right compositional arc for that one alone was difficult. Also the sounds and the delivery. That song took on multiple shapes. And I think it was coming from more of a school of thought that we applied to Tough Baby, which was very production-heavy. Songs were always being deconstructed and rebuilt. I think “Crack of Life” was the first one that we wrote, and we were still lingering on this idea of production mentality. As we got deeper into the recording of the album, we really loosened up and we kind of surrendered ourselves to a more live off the floor feel.
When you check out your streaming platform’s search history, what are the last three songs that come up?
The last song that I listened to on my way to work is called “Last Train Home,” and it’s by a group called Pat Metheny Group, from the album Still Life (Talking). It’s kind of a western fusion soundtrack. Before that, there is “Downbound Train” by Bruce Springsteen. Finally, “White Flag” by Dido.
What do you think was the moment you felt most elevated with Crack Cloud?
It’s just pure elation throughout. Cause if I were to describe the mood, I would say it’s constantly at odds with itself. There’s always a kind of cathartic undertone, but there’s also a lot of anxiety and self-scrutiny that comes with it. So I’m just thinking, was there a moment where I just felt pretty at peace with things?
There are many good moments when we are on a set for a music video. That’s always a really cathartic experience, especially when we capture the last shot, because filming a music video for us is as much work as an album. It’s basically a small album, a lot of moving parts. It’s like a family reunion every time we do it. So yeah, I think I get my highs, the biggest highs, the most lucid highs from doing the music videos.
Maybe in the studio, too. I guess some people would say performing is where they get their catharsis. I’ve always been more. I’ve always gotten a lot more from just being creative in the studio or on the set.
I love that you have always been a group giving equal importance to the visual part of your identity as much as the audial part.
Yeah, we’ve never really felt like one medium is more significant to us, or we have more of an affinity for one than the other. I feel like they’ve always been pretty symbiotic and instrumental to our expression.
Let’s imagine we’re at a Musicians Theme Park 100 years from now, where every artist or band featured have their own memorial stone with a certain lyric by them written on it. Which one of the lyrics would you like to see written on Crack Cloud’s stone?
As it stands, I feel like the lyrics are always just a stream of consciousness of my time here on life. And so I reckon that until I write the last lyric, the story isn’t over. But if I were to die today-
Hopefully not. (both laugh)
And if there was a lyric that somehow encapsulated my experience on Earth… Oh man. I don’t know if I can answer that. I really don’t know if I can answer that. (laughs)
You can check out Crack Cloud’s Bandcamp profile here.
