Photo by Charles O’Keefe

For this interview, I chose to interview the musician Gaspard Eden while watching the latest music video for his song “Pancakes” simultaneously. Follow along with the time stamps by clicking on the video link here. And don’t forget to make yourself a stack of pancakes beforehand.

00:00

Allston Pudding: Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from? What’s your background? 

Gaspard Eden: I’m from the french part of Canada. I’m from Quebec. I was born and raised in Quebec City and my name is Gaspard Eden. 

00:12

AP: I love the colors of all the breakfast items! What’s the scale of the clay people? Is everything in this video made of clay?

GE: Everything is made of clay. All the furniture is made of “salt dough” (flour, salt, and water). In french we say “pate de sel.” Which is something you form before and put it in the oven and then it becomes solid. Phil Berge, the guy who made the video, was not able to make everything entirely in play-doh or clay because every time you move [those materials] you lose the shape. So he chose to make all the furniture in salt dough. All the floors are in paper. The characters are [mostly] made of play-doh… and about 10 inches tall.

00:35

AP: The blue person is eating toast and jam with orange juice. That’s a lot of sugar, gonna be a sugar crash without some proteins and veg… What do you normally eat to start the day?

GE: To be honest, I start my day with — it’s not healthy at all — I start my day with a cigarette and a coffee. 

AP: Haha. Like a true musician.

GE: I just can’t help it. I’m not hungry when I’m waking up and that’s part of the lyrics. I’m [also] a grumpy guy when I wake up. There’s sarcasm in the lyrics with the high pitched vocals. If you make pancakes it’s like “the perfect family breakfast meal” —  [The song “Pancakes”] is just an angry guy being sarcastic about it.

00:50 

AP: The boobs on the yellow person are hilarious. Reminds me of an opera singer. What kinds of music/bands do you normally listen to (I’m guessing not opera)? What were you listening to when you were writing this song?

GE: Mainly Alex G. When I wrote that song I discovered Alex G and I was really into [the Alex G album] DSU. The way that I discovered it was so special because I just went into the record store, and I didn’t know what it was, but I just put DSU on the record table and I discovered that album and I was blown away by how good it was. At some point I was messing around with a friend [thinking about Alex G’s music] and I made [the song Pancakes].

01:26

AP: I’m watching the dancing legs coming out of the shell and then smashing into the floor. This is ambitious and surreal. What inspired you to make a claymation video specifically for “Pancakes?”

GE: There’s a lot of reasons for that. We were not supposed to do a claymation video but all the circumstances with the pandemic pushed us to use another medium for music videos instead of just shooting a casual video myself. I’ve always been a huge fan of [claymation]. Being a 90’s kid I grew up around a lot of TV shows that were clay animation. My dad was old, he was like 50 years old when I was 10. He had an old collection of beta tapes. He recorded all the California Raisins episodes and I grew up watching them. It was really stimulating for me. Even now, I think that it looks so good, that it’s so beautiful. I thought that it’d be a great fit for “Pancakes.” The song is a little bit wacky and that [the video fits the song].

01:50

AP: Claymation was definitely an aesthetic more popular in the 80’s and 90’s. I definitely think there is a nostalgia element that draws me to this style of video. When I was a kid, this style of animation was fashionable and used in everything from saturday morning cartoons to video games to corporate tv commercials. Maybe for younger audiences that didn’t grow up with claymation, what do you think younger audiences take away from this video? Claymation might be new for them.

GE: I think that stuff that looks good is still stuff that looks good. [Younger people] probably don’t get the same nostalgia that we do when we see claymation because they didn’t grow up around it. There’s always a trend for the younger generation, about 30 years ago [coming back into fashion] and for quite some years now there’s been a trend around the 90s. I thought that [the music video for “Pancakes”] would fit in that approach.

Photo by Sam St. Onge

01:34

AP: The old man/candle just gave birth to another yellow person! This video was definitely made by someone with a sense of humor. Any inside jokes or other secrets you can reveal about the video? 

GE: No inside jokes. Phil [Berge] is just a creative guy. At some point in the video I [asked him to make] everything creative and chaotic and weird. There’s an aspect of claymation that you can use, especially for doing weird stuff. He came up with those ideas. He did it in a month, working all day everyday. It was a great process for us because he sent a little clip everyday of what he finished. So it was really cool [to watch the progression].

02:37

AP: Oh there we go. Now they’re making “pancakes.” 

GE: Yeah they’re finally doing it.

AP: Last time I went to Toronto I bought a bunch of maple syrup but they made me check it which became stupid expensive for maple syrup. That was before I moved to New England which has excellent maple. Being from Canada, I take it you’re a maple syrup fan?

GE: Not really. That’s just another Canadian stereotype. “We like maple syrup, we ride mooses, we drink coffee at Tim Horton’s.” OK, first, I HATE Tim Horton’s. I hate it. And yeah — Maple syrup is good on pancakes, it’s way better than corn syrup. Way better. I don’t eat it very often. I could eat it more often.

02:48

AP: The title card at the end says “This project was funded in part by… The Government of Canada…” That’s amazing, how do I get the Canadian government to fund my music?

GE: Well you need to move to Canada. There’s a lot of grants for musicians in Canada. We’re very lucky [to have] that. The government injects a lot of money into culture. So that’s cool, one of the good things about Canada.

02:50 END

AP: Well, that was awesome. What do you want readers to know about the upcoming album Soft Power?

GE: It’s my first album. I’m really excited to release it. Those are all songs that I did quite a while ago and I kept for myself. During all those years I had to hold onto [them] because they defined some [important] times of my life. The big picture of the last four years of my life. We had a really good time working on those songs and to release them is such a relief for me. Now I can finally move on.