As electronic sounds diffuse across musical genres and musicians look to the backdrop of urban civilization for inspiration, Toronto’s Do Make Say Think prefers a different strategy.
To find inspiration for their expansive, instrumental rock experimentations, Do Make Say Think members turn away from all things developed and retreat to a decidedly unmodern place ““ the Canadian countryside.
“We can’t always get together, so deadlines work well. We put our feelers out, ask about a good place, and find out about a barn or a cottage. We lock ourselves there, and have to fill a tape,” said Ohad Benchetrit, guitarist and saxophonist.
This unlikely home for a decidedly modern rock outfit brings isolation that Benchetrit credits with nourishing the band’s creativity. For a group that cares for neither structural rules nor what others are doing, the isolation is truly a gift. This sort of retreat provides the independence needed to lose sight of others and focus on themselves.
“It’s just about doing nothing but the music; usually we get caught up in our lives, but this way we can let music take the forefront. We sleep with our guitars in our beds,” Benchetrit said.
With emptied and music-driven minds, Do Make Say Think members take their time sequestered in rural tranquility to create the musical backbone of whatever musical project is in the making. Everything begins with improvisation, and as the band members bounce ideas around a cricket-packed barn or a never-before-amplified cottage, musical shapes and patterns begin to take shape. Reaching something worth remembering, the band saves the riff, or idea, and takes this pure, uncorrupted musical idea back to Toronto. There, the band polishes the ideas, fleshes them out with computerized tools, and makes them ready for entry back into the modern and chaotic world.
Even when their music re-enters the world of criticism and rules, Do Make Say Think members find it important to hold on to the same ethic of freedom that inspired their creativity in the countryside.
“We try to make music with no theoretical limit. All the technologies we employ and everything we have at our disposal we use to satisfy ourselves,” Benchetrit said.
“We follow the music sort of like an emotional train of thought ““ things lead you one moment from a melody to the next, or a chordal shift inspires something else.”
And while many groups start off with aspirations of fame and stardom, Do Make Say Think formed with the same self-assured sense of freedom that allows their music to develop naturally.
“The way the band started, we weren’t looking for a career. We were all friends before we started, and just wanted to get together and have fun,” Benchetrit said.
This loyalty to making music for music’s sake helps to explain some elements of Do Make Say Think’s sound.
The idea of writing an eight-minute, slowly evolving rock opus strays from the marketable norm, but the group’s music is as auspiciously unplanned as the member’s careers.
No one band member chooses which direction a song will take; rather, collective musical communication allows a flowering of ideas into a form-defying, riff-based track.
Working from the inside, from an instrumentalist’s perspective, the members aren’t constrained by a single, overarching vision of accessibility and cohesion. Musical layers are added one at a time, and the song’s path isn’t premeditated as in the work of the band’s singer-songwriter counterparts.
“I love singer-songwriter music, but as musicians we hear the instruments first. Without good music, lyrics don’t cut it for me,” Benchetrit said.
And while their ear for instrumental ideas and insistence on musical freedom has led their work down a path often labelled as post-rock, Benchetrit stresses that Do Make Say Think’s only allegiance is to their own creativity.
“Post-rock as a term is a fashion statement, something that goes in and out of style. It’s unfortunate when fashion invalidates good music ““ all we want to do is continue making music that means something to us,” Benchetrit said.