Artists Recommend: E-Prime
The Canadian electro-pop duo on nostalgia through a poptimist lens, Woodstock '99, and recommendations from Tears For Fears to Janet Jackson.
There seems to be no time for unease when immersed in E-Prime’s loungey sonic universe, in spite of the occasional thought provocation in their themes. Hailing from Toronto, brother and sister Trevor and Jaclyn Blumas (formerly part of Doomsquad) were motivated by a pandemic-borne urge to unapologetically relish comfort for their new musical project, E-Prime. It’s why the pair — whose debut EP Dry Throats & Sunburns came out this October — dabbles in lush soundscapes of laidback, electronic pulses laced with a nostalgic pop sensibility that harkens back to the ‘80s and ‘90s.
Coming across the duo’s artist page via Scenic Route’s socials, what promptly caught my attention was their reimagining of Scottish rock band Big Country’s major 1983 hit “In A Big Country” into a synth-soaked, breezy yet sophisticated tune that would sound at home on Solange’s Dev Hynes-produced True EP. A few weeks later and upon the release of Dry Throats & Sunburns, closing track “Flea at Woodstock ‘99” instantly claimed a spot in my autumnal rotation with its intricate, layered production and enigmatic lyricism.
Read on for a deeper look into the crossover inspiration behind the latter and the EP’s title, and much more about E-Prime, who didn’t shy away from including concerts and record labels in their recommendations.
This interview has been lightly edited for context, clarity, and uniformity.
Evi: Please give us a basic introduction of yourselves.
E-Prime: Hi, we’re Jaclyn & Trevor Blumas, a brother/sister duo from Toronto and now spread out between Vancouver and Toronto. The long distance between us means we’re now forced to make the majority of music individually in our home studios and share files back and forth.
Evi: How would you describe your sound?
E-Prime: I guess we would describe our overall sound as electro-pop, perhaps? Which is a convenient blanket term. But it certainly goes well beyond that with R&B, house, street soul, and new beat being big influences for us, too.
Evi: How did you get into making and releasing music?
Trevor: We’ve been making music together seriously for over a decade. We had a previous music project called Doomsquad along with our other sibling Allie (who makes incredible ambient music now under the alias ALMA). Doomsquad was much darker, experimental and political. That band kinda formed organically in a basement in Toronto back in 2012, and we released three albums, several EPs, and toured all over the world together. Eventually, it felt like that project was ready to be retired. We gave all we could to it. And almost immediately after, Jac and I started to write songs with a totally new energy and direction, which would eventually become E-Prime.
Evi: Is there an element or theme that’s integral to your artistic identity that you’d like listeners to know about?
Trevor: Mainly, I think for us, E-Prime came out of this poptimist embrace of the classic and influential songs we grew up with. During the pandemic, when we were stuck inside and isolated, we had so much time to reflect, reminisce and lean into all these comforts that would just cushion you in good feelings. I think also being cut off from the underground communities we are a part of, which often feel like [they] support and encourage more experimental ideas, we were instead able to allow ourselves to be more absorbed by pop music freely and unabashedly. And it was having such an impact on us. It was okay to belt out Whitney in your shower and not feel ashamed about it. And so our music kinda came out of that.
Our second single, “Lens of Love,” perhaps most encapsulates this spirit and feeling, and the music video for that is literally an iPhone video of [myself] singing that song in the shower. But we really wanted to make sure we didn’t fully dive head first into nostalgia. So with all our music there is both a definitive look backwards at the music we came of age in and kinda defined our beginnings in music, while also bringing the wisdom of our present experience into it. Like a lot of music from the past, the themes or concepts didn’t necessarily age well in today’s context, whether they’re just too naive, or detached from the present experience. So a lot of the music we make explores this kind of approach.
Evi: Share a little bit about your latest project.
Trevor: Dry Throats & Sunburns is the name of our debut EP that just dropped. The name comes from a lyric in the album’s closing song, “Flea at Woodstock ‘99.” The full lyric is: “My memories are eroded by the tinnitus and the heat and the dry throats and sunburns and the high hopes and broken hearts.” The song takes the P.O.V. of Flea, the bassist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose insane and chaotic performance at Woodstock ‘99 — in which he came out on stage completely naked and was doing cartwheels and such — was meant, I think, to mostly distract, entertain and subdue the rising violence and destructive energy that was building in the massive crowd [over] three days of intense conditions. Anyways, we all know how that festival tragically ended, and Flea’s onstage response to it all felt like a suitable metaphor to carry across some of the large themes of the record.
E-Prime Recommend:
Tears For Fears: Live at Massey Hall
E-Prime: Not only is this one of our favorite bands but this concert was recorded in our hometown, so its close to the heart. Everything about this concert does it for us. The energy, the musicianship, the audience. It's exactly what we’re striving for in some fantastical way with our music.
Janet Jackson — “No Sleeep” Feat. J. Cole
E-Prime: E-Prime wouldn’t exist without Janet. All roads lead back to Janet for us. But this song in particular just brought us in so deeply into her world. Her famously smooth vocals over this brooding, romantic, laid-back 2-step beat lit our fires so much and pretty much birthed E-Prime in its ashes.
Antinote Records
Trevor: I think the throughline of this extremely eclectic, genre-agnostic label is simply brilliant curation. If you trust the ears of the label’s team, they will reward you. Straddling the lines between pop, experimentalism, blissful and bizarre, it shows you that form and genre are more of an applied concept rather than a defined term. It also does everything with a playful grin rather than something too serious and arty for art’s sake. (This label compilation is maybe the best place to start.)
oakland — “informer”
Trevor: Fave new artist discovery of the moment. Oakland doesn’t have a track that isn’t STELLAR in my opinion. Pure vibe. Pure Flow.
Nabihah Iqbal — “Gentle Heart”
Trevor: Been really obsessing over Nabihah’s album Dreamer lately. This is one particular gem from the amazing album. Actually, fun fact: our old band Doomsquad had the pleasure of performing with Nabihah’s former alias Throwing Shade in London’s iconic venue OTO Cafe many years ago. It was a crazy show.
Keep up with E-Prime on Instagram, YouTube and their website. Check out their music on Spotify and Bandcamp.
You can find all music mentioned on “Artists Recommend” in the “Of The Moment: Artists Recommend” playlist:
Check out the series’ previous installment featuring South Korean underground duo Y2K92 here. Interested in more ramblings from me? Have a look at the archive, here.
