Fuudge is a high-energy fuzz concentrate from David Bujold. However, in recent years, the multi-instrumentalist has put a lot of effort into his acoustic project recorded with a string quartet. So he needed a rock dump now more than ever; his new disc, …that a nightmare becomes so true, was the perfect remedy.
“For this album, I wanted something really aggressive,” the singer-songwriter tells us. We spent two years with the Déplogué project at the Grand Théâtre de Québec, longer than we thought, in fact. We got carried away by adding a string quartet, for example. I wanted to go back to the original plan, with a more stoner, more psych sound. »
More psychedelic, really? David Bujold takes his album cover and skims through the tracks before changing his mind: “If you listen to my first two EPs, it’s super psych and there’s a stoner touch to it,” he says. Now I’ve rocked, it’s definitely stoner, grunge, noise, with a touch of psych. I don’t even know if there’s still any psych left…” We are indeed resolutely in stoner territory, it’s heavy as hell, there’s not much more soaring about Fuudge, apart from maybe be a few passages from the title track.
In fact, it’s as if the Syd Barrett-era Floydian scents naturally evolved into proto-prog territory. “I was tripping solid on the psych, but I also listened to a lot of prog when I was young: Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant. This is the kind of terrain that I try to forget, but it lives in me, despite myself, recognizes the musician. In fact, I fight with my two identities. But wanting to put forward the stoner side, all that remains as a secondary accent is prog. »
David Bujold, who composes all the songs and plays all the instruments on the Fuudge albums, wanted something organic and natural for his third studio LP. He even pulled his four-track recorder out of the mothballs! “When I started playing at the age of 16, I used this kind of recorder,” he recalls. Today, everything goes back to the laptop, my life is the computer! That’s why I came back to four-track. »
He therefore put the ideas he had kept on tape, a somewhat chaotic process, admits the musician. “There are people who create every day, they go to volume and keep 10% of what they compose, explains David Bujold. I don’t have the discipline to do that. So I try to write down what goes through my head when I walk, when I ride my bike. »
As David Bujold wanted a more abrasive sound, he also went back to his old metal records, classics of the Slayer genre, Metallica, “but Nirvana too, I’m a big fan”, tells us the one who happened to showed up for the interview at a café in Rosemont with a Metallica t-shirt under his jeans jacket.
The guitars are therefore deliciously fat, sometimes out of tune to B flat — you have to listen to Ta yeule, everything is fine to hear how the strings are relaxed, we would even dare to say loose!
A rock profession of faith that reflects the spirit of the times, David Bujold predicts the return to favor of the sound of the 1970s and 1990s. “We did a show in Chicoutimi at the Bar à pitons, and it was full young people in their twenties. I really caught what that night seeing them trashing and crowdsurfing, the 42-year-old musician tells us. There are really young people coming back to rock. I think it’s a question of accessibility and dissemination, it creates a mass effect. Young people today listen to just about anything, there are no longer any categories. »
“For us, we try to keep the flame of rock burning, but we also see that people are really happy that we do it, he tells us. I am grateful to see that what I build is well received. The pleasure is all ours, David.
