Clay and friends come back to us with Aguà, a thirst quenching album

When the pandemic hit, the players from Clay and Friends didn’t have time to recover from their all-out concert with Les Louanges at La Maroquinerie in Paris. But instead of stopping in the middle of the trip, since March 2020 the group has experienced a period of abundant construction, including seduce It represents the first coffee.

We wandered a lot about the five corners of Quebec City and came back with a multi-terabyte hard drive full of new music. So as not to play with words, seduce, that’s really what was distilled to make a project that we liked, both conceptually and musically, explains Mike Clay over the phone.

Guide the audience’s reactions

Public performances have been a staple of Clay and Friends’ approach since the beginning of the training. The fans also had a role in choosing the songs that ended up seduce, which were all auditioned on stage last year.

We let the crowds decide in the summer. It was really cool for us, confirms the singer, apologizing for his new obsession with watercolor puns, which he inherited from band manager Sam Rick.

It allowed us to investigate what was going to work or not and master beats [rythmes] which we started. At the end of the day, it was kind of the audience who decided what ended up seduce.

Drink some water and call your mom

As its Spanish name suggests, seduce It starts with the theme of water inviting people to recharge their batteries and get back to basics. I often forget to drink water and know it’s the same for the other members of the groupMike Clay explained.

I’m at home, I work in the studio, we take a tour and we forget to drink water. There is an analogy with forgetting to listen to yourself: Do I need to sleep? Do I need to meditate to spend time with my friends? I didn’t talk to my parents. How are they doing? continued.

Hence our motto: drink water and call you Illiterate. It solves a lot of problems.

Clay and friends

Photo: Clay & Friends/Felix Reno

A group that has full potential

It might seem rash to confirm that the Clay and Friends members have already reached their peak, with the band’s career still relatively young, but seduce, we feel they have their full potential… like fish in water.

The album follows in my footsteps grolids With sunny songs sometimes reminiscent of Seu Jorge or Manu Chao, while bearing the unique signature of Adel Kazi, also known as Poolboy, get overmaker The group, in the words of Mike Clay. There is also a collaboration with two singers who are still unknown to the general public, Marilyn Leonard (at the title Cardan) Claire Ridley (on repeat).

Clay & Friends, Cardan

Photo: Martin Ole

Maryline Léonard is a young singer working on her debut album, while Claire Ridgeley is a longtime friend of Mike Clay, with whom she collaborates discreetly on several stylish songs. Electronic dance music (EDM) for artists in the United States; He wrote the lyrics and sang.

Mike Clay also emphasized the primary contribution of Clément Langlois-Légaré, alias Popps, the modulation guitarist, who also serves as the brains for the process. He’d never point to the matter himself, but he’s really the conductor of the orchestra. He is the one who takes our thoughts and makes them look good. […] He’s the surgeon, he’s finisher Who puts the ice, the final touch.

Planetary ambitions, from Paris to Seoul

Clay and Friends are heard more and more, in Quebec as elsewhere, and the group intends to take advantage of this opportunity to establish itself internationally, especially in France. Mike Clay also dreams of playing in South Korea, where the quintet skyrocketed in popularity after the pop star lauded it on national television.

There is France, Belgium and Switzerland; The whole European Francophonie, which we will go to in March. But, it’s surprising that [nous figurons parmi les cinq meilleurs vendeurs] in South Korea. One of my fondest dreams is to go to a country where they speak neither English nor French, but they still listen to it Verdun’s Folk Music (2019)The singer concludes.

Clay and Friends will officially present their new album to the public on April 1, 2022 at Mtelus in Montreal and at the Imperial Bell in Quebec on April 15, 2022.