Music
Q&A: Land of Talk's Liz Powell
by Melody Lau
April 12, 2010
AUX TV sat down with Land of Talk's Liz Powell to talk about her new album with Jace Lasek of the Besnard Lakes and her budding side career as a rapper.
What is Jace Lasek’s role on the new album you’re currently finishing up?
He recorded it and he helped produced; it was a collaborative effort. He plays, he sings on it. I love Jace. He was our first studio experience as a band; we recorded our EP with him as well. Basically, he’s my producer, studio go-to guy.
How and when did you first start working together?
I think it was for the EP – we did a factor demo grant application and I just asked people what studios were affordable and cool for young musicians and people kept saying Breakglass or Hotel2Tango and Hotel2Tango was booked during the time we wanted to record. I just loved working with Jace and we toured with The Besnard Lakes afterwards, all through Europe and the UK and now we’re friends and colleagues.
What is it about him that makes you love working with him over and over again?
We’re very similar. We don’t really have to talk about things, we just do it. He’s just very intuitive for me, personally. Its better that way because I’m not very articulate. He just knows all our records and he’s hilarious which makes it lots of fun. Sometimes a little too much fun.
Any particular funny moments in the studio?
We were trying to record a song and we were just cracking each other up so hard that we just ended up doing a whole vocal take of me freestyle rapping and he was in the control room, interrupting me and dropping in like another MC. That’s what we honestly spent two hours doing; pretty embarrassing! But sometimes you just get so burnt out that you just need a different perspective to freshen things up. Sometimes we get a little zany. We’ll shoot a little short film or something but we just need to rein it in and focus!
Do we smell a rapping career in the making?
Spoiler alert, I’m already in a hip hop band! We’ll drop the album at some point. After 2012, if the world still exists.
What’s the band called?
What were we going to call it again…actually, I think its too explicit! I can’t even say it! It’s a surprise; an explicit surprise!
