Cecile Believe Shows Us What She’s Made Of, Christening Modern Love at Sled Island Music Festival
Photo Credit: Cody Critcheloe
Reflecting back to 2020, the world was faced with uncertainty, yet music remained to be a safe haven for new ideas and expression. It seemed like everyone at the time had Plucking a Cherry From the Void by Cecile Believe (aka Caila Thompson-Hannant) on repeat: it was a blissful retreat from the mundanity of daily routines. An album that is best listened to eyes closed, body-swaying for maximized euphoric bliss. Flash forward three years later, listeners in Calgary, AB were finally able to hear new life breathed into Cecile’s songs at this year’s Sled Island Music & Arts Festival. Cecile Believe took to Modern Love (formerly known as Broken City) to perform hits like “Made in Heaven” and “Bitch Bites Dog” to a sweaty crowd of movers and shakers. It was a night to remember and team Reverie got to re-live it the next day during our chat with the hyperpop pioneer.
Reverie: Hey Cecile - thanks for chatting with us! Can you give us a brief intro to you and your sound?
Cecile Believe: My name is Cecile Believe and I’m a Canadian currently living in Los Angeles. I once sort of flippantly said I made “girly drum and bass”, but I think that’s apt. I like emotional, ethereal stuff. I grew up on electronic music from the UK, as it’s where my family is from. So, I like to mix the two. Girly, drum and bass - let’s leave it at that.
R: You performed at Sled Island this year at Modern Love. You were one of the very first performers at the venue. How did it feel and what do you think about the space?
CB: I loved it! Everyone was positive. I could feel that there was this good energy. The sound was great, the people took good care of us - and sometimes that’s the hardest hurdle to get through (the technical side of things, making sure everything sounds good). It was a joy to christen Modern Love.
R: I mean…the sound system was great but YOUR VOCALS! Your voice is very ethereal and beautiful - are you classically trained?
CB: Yeah! I grew up doing a lot of different vocal styles, but I did classical training up until the end of high school.
R: And you were previously known as Mozart’s Sister, but now you go by Cecile Believe. So, when I think about your music, classical styles come to mind. Was that intentional and why did you choose to switch up the name of your project?
CB: Cecile came as a name when I moved to Montreal at 20. It’s a french name and I thought to myself, “one day, I’m going to become a DJ and be known as Cecile B”, but that was put on the back-burner for 10 years. Then when I started working with SOPHIE, I started thinking about making a new project and how I would change it sonically. The name just kind of came to me from my memory log. And then I found out afterwards that Sainte Cecile is the patron saint of music. So, I thought “okay - I’m on to something!” and became Cecile Believe.
R: Are you comfortable talking about your relationship with SOPHIE? We’d love to hear the backstory.
CB: SOPHIE was originally a Mozart’s Sister fan, but I didn’t know who she was! She’d only released one track at the time and she came to my show at SXSW in 2013. That festival, as chaotic as it is, is a really interesting place because it is global, and that’s where I first met her. So we kept in touch over the years and she was very persistent about it because I’m not that great at it.
She had moved to LA from London. That’s where she’s from by the way - she’s not from Scotland - everyone always thinks that, but she was born and raised in London. I visited her in LA because I was in the city staying in Glendale with another band called TOPS. And while I was there, SOPHIE and I did some writing together and I’d never done that type of collaboration before - where you make a song with another person that you don’t know. It’s not like being in a band. And we were making it in front of a computer. You don’t have a guitar in hand. And I was like “how does this work!?” - it’s kind of weird to think about how it wouldn’t be second nature for me after working in bands for such a long time. But it was a new experience. She really clicked with my sound and the way I used my voice. And the way we talked about music was very similar. The way we see what music is and the energy around it. So she asked me to write and create Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-insides and we did that in 2016 over Christmas and New Years. We spent a few weeks together, did the majority of the writing together. But that’s the origin story!
R: I had no idea about the TOPS connection! What did you play in the band?
CB: I played bass.
R: And now it’s Patrick Holland? He was recently in Calgary playing bass for TOPS as well.
CB: Yes, I know Pat! The TOPS bass position is a crazy saga. There have been like 10 different bass players in that band. I was a short-term bass player and I loved it. But I was doing my own thing and they were very busy at that time. So I wasn’t able to commit fully - but it was such a fun time and they’re truly great people.
R: Your EP Plucking a Cherry From the Void came out in 2020 during the pandemic. What was the experience like making that record?
CB: I released two EPS that year and I wrote Plucking a Cherry very quickly, mostly in 2020. Except for a couple songs that I had demos of. I work well under pressure but I also work well when I feel there is nothing to lose. And there was something about that year where everything was up in the air and I didn’t know what my future was…I mean we never know what our future holds but it felt more daunting than ever. I even had a moment where I thought “oh…maybe it’s not going to be music” and for some reason when there’s this negative, swirling hypothesis that music is over for me and for a lot of people - out of that was me feeling “well whatever, I’m going to make an album then”. It’s weird…sometimes letting the pressure off can prove the point that your fears are wrong.
R: And how was the reception to it?
CB: That record was made on a shoestring and when I say I shoestring I mean $1500 Canadian dollars for everything, including visuals. No PR. It was made with Arbutus on the back-end as a distro deal. So I did put a little bit of my own money into it. But we all just thought, “let’s try it!”. Make it low stakes. I still really feel like it was this beautiful moment in my career and life that made me realize “yes, it is about the music sometimes”.
R: That’s really impressive to hear you did it in such a DIY way and saw such successful results!
CB: Yeah, more or less. I did have help on the visual side. My friend Antoine Lahaie, formerly Antoine93, did a lot of the visuals. And A. G Cook did a bit of production and sent me a loop for “Crickets”. My friend Oren Ratowsky, who was DJing last night at Modern Love with me, helped with the writing on “Times” and did all the mixing for me. He’s always there for me. And sometimes the things he contributes are really integral, even if it’s not production/writing, he’s always listening and giving me feedback. It wasn’t totally alone, but it was self-produced.
R: I think that’s why I really resonate with your music and other musicians in the scene like A. G. because there’s that community-feel to the music. Especially here in Canada with Casey MQ and Club Quarantine…
CB: Yeah I did a collab with Club Quarantine and I’m roommates with Casey now in LA!
R: And you recently put out a song together!
CB: I reached out to Casey to do a zoom session and we really clicked back in 2020, near the end of the year. He then came to Montreal in 2021 and we hung out for a few weeks and worked in my studio making music. We wrote “I Got A Bike” with my friend Brad Loughead as well. We really love each other and support each other musically. It’s another one of those relationships where sometimes we do direct collaboration and then other times we just listen to each other’s new songs or albums to get feedback. We just trust each other’s ears a lot and love one another a lot. We’ve also worked on a lot of other people’s projects together, writing and producing, because LA is a very collaborative city.
R: I’d love to talk about the community aspect as well because we really feel the strength of community during Sled. You’ve talked a bit about it already - but how has community impacted your journey and growth as an artist?
CB: I think community has always been something that I’d describe as a “garment, best worn loose”. That’s what it feels like to me. I have found that scenes can be really rewarding and enriching for some people, and then others can feel really dejected. I appreciate community and especially community that is longer standing. That’s why I like these longer standing festivals like Sled Island that are intimate city festivals in venues, they’re not like the big Coachella-outside-style festivals. They fluctuate with time, but they remain. That to me is really cool. Community has to flow and it can’t stay small, tight knit. It has to keep evolving. That’s my personal community too - it’s a loosely knit group of people that might know each other, might not, but we probably all get along.
Since moving to LA back in 2018, there’s a diversity of community there - meaning that some people are huge superstars making tons of money and others are making experimental weirdo music and everything in between. You can kind of envision a wider scope for yourself and go in whatever direction you want. With community though, it can be really finicky and stifling as well. So, I’m always like “come one, come all”. Leave if you want. Fight if you need to. And include each other and let each other go too! If you let people go, they’ll come back. Sometimes you have to leave a city so you can grow and then there can be feelings of tension in your community because of that.
R: It was truly a dream to see you on the Sled Island lineup. Last night you played a new song - so what’s next? What’s on the horizon?
CB: I’m in the process of finishing and mixing an album now. And then figuring out how to release it! Who and how, it’s going to happen. I’m continuing to collaborate with really cool artists and I’ve been thinking about what I want my wikipedia page to look like. I want it to be really diverse. I want it to span a lot of different scenes and genres. So I’m continuing to produce and write for any artist I consider to be cool and interesting. So collaborations are incoming over the next year.
*this interview is available via CJSW 90.9 FM. Listen to the full episode here.