Kimiyo, by Alex Henry Foster | Open-hearted journey

(Drummondville) Absent from the stage since the end of the tour which took him all over Europe in the wake of the recording of his superb album live Standing Under Bright Lights at the Montreal Jazz Festival in 2019, Quebec songwriter Alex Henry Foster has come a long way. Made while he was in remission from open heart surgery, his new project Kimiyo is a creative and luminous jewel. Interview with the free electron of Quebec music.

In February 2023, Alex Henry Foster underwent emergency surgery for a double heart valve transplant. A delicate surgical procedure which was supposed to last four hours, but which stretched over more than ten hours. The musician, now 47 years old, could have died there.

“They lost me for a while, so I had to undergo numerous blood transfusions, which caused me to suffer from micro-embolism problems in the brain,” he tells us, alive and well in front of us, from his church-studio in Drummondville. “I was no longer able to speak and I lost my memory on a lot of things. Even today, I am still relearning certain things. »

Add to that the respiratory irritation caused by the ten days spent intubated in intensive care, and it took Foster almost four months to be able to speak normally.

Working entirely independently since the days of Your Favorite Enemies, Alex Henry Foster has continued the adventure with all the members of the group, who not only collaborate with him creatively under the name Long Shadows, but also responsible for all aspects of the management and marketing of their record company Hopeful Tragedy, whose premises are located in a Drummondville church purchased by the group in 2009 – there is also the impressive Upper Room studio.

But for Kimiyo, Alex Henry Foster chose to invite only his close collaborator Ben Lemelin, who expected to work on an instrumental album, given his friend’s state of health. “I started working on a project in Japan about ten years ago, a film with a soundtrack and all that, but I never had the chance to finish it because Your Favorite Enemies had took off, recalls Alex Henry Foster. I told myself that it was an opportunity to revisit certain images, and it also reminded me of stories that people had shared with me at the time, that’s really what gave me a little insight. ‘momentum. »

The artist therefore put the finishing touches to texts that he already had in the bank, a collection of poetry written in Japan that he decided to entrust to his friend Momoka Tobari, a Japanese woman who settled in Drummondville there around ten years ago to come and work with Foster at the time of Your Favorite Enemies – she notably ensured communication with the group’s many Japanese fans.

The musician therefore invited Momoka and Ben to his home, in the small studio set up in the veranda of his house in the wild mountains of Virginia. “I always told myself that it would be great to collaborate with her on something outside of the context of a group,” he tells us. I told Momoka not to just do a literal translation of my writings, I wanted her to interpret them in her own way, so that she could make them her own. »

The result, which oscillates between spoken word and the singing, highlights the superb voice of the Japanese artist, who puts all her emotion at the service of the pieces which can be listened to like a soundtrack.

Because that’s what it’s about – the music will in fact be accompanied by images no later than spring 2025. “I was offered to launch the film at the same time as the album, but I ended up choosing to shift all that, I wanted it to be two different entities, explains Alex Henry Foster. As the text is in Japanese, I knew very well that the majority of people who appreciate my music would have to imagine their own journey. »

Nevertheless, the trio was inspired in their composition by the images filmed by Foster, who already had a good idea of ​​the sequencing of the upcoming film. However, if the songwriter had images in mind, his state of health forced him to rely more than ever on his collaborators for musical creation.

Alex Henry Foster is now recovered, so the two musicians have returned to work with their friends with the objective of recording a new album with the Long Shadows. Until then, the group will spend the summer in Germany, where they will play at several festivals. The group is hopeful of playing in Quebec in the fall.

Drummond Vinyl

Alex Henry Foster and his friends have been producing their own promotional material for several years – the sensory experience of Kimiyo can even be enhanced with incense, Japanese black tea as well as other objects created in the group’s workshop in Drummondville. However, since November, the group has opened its own vinyl factory, Drummond Vinyl, which can produce up to two records per minute. The workshop, which required an investment of $1 million, is now the best equipped in Quebec and its order book is already full. His two workers were even trained for three weeks at Third Man Pressing Plant, Jack White’s factory in Detroit!

Kimiyo

Alex Henry Foster

Hopeful tragedy Records