Living in a Dream
By: Adam Grant

 When Torquil Campbell and Chris Dumont met in New York City back in the early '90's, they were just one full-fledged Canadian, and one full-fledged American with a shared passion - music.

 It wasn't long before the two had started the band Luxe with Campbell's childhood friends James Shaw, Chris Seligman and Adam Marvy, but as time went on, this collective would soon take numerous other directions that kept them together, but also, in a way, kept them apart.

Beyond Luxe, Shaw would go onto found the insanely popular synth-pop rock act Metric, while Seligman and Campbell would go onto create Stars - two bands that began to take off into the stratosphere as two of the most highly touted indie rock acts that Canada had produced in a long time.

 However, while in the midst of making Stars light up the Canadian music scene, Campbell brought Dumont over the border and into Vancouver around 2002/2003, where the two would collaborate and eventually create Memphis - a band that allows Campbell to explore a new side of his musical self without having to worry too much about what others may think.

"Now with Stars, it's a different thing because at this point we're in a dialogue with our audience in a way.  Once you find an audience for music and people start to listen to it, then it becomes a conversation," feels Campbell.

"Whereas with Memphis, it's still very much a thing that I'm doing with my friend that we do out of a vacuum - so I think less about trying to communicate I guess, and more about just trying to reflect on things and try to create images that I find interesting."

 In order to create these images, Campbell and Dumont take an unconventional approach to say the least.  While developing their sophomore release, 2006's A Little Place In The Wilderness, the band wound up taking up shop in a Vancouver area hotel room that was not open to maid service, and would usually find vocal tracks being laid down from within a closet.

 Also squeezing their way into this room would be drummer Josh Tager of the Sam Roberts Band, as well as Shaw, who wound up behind a bass guitar and a trumpet, as Campbell took on vocals, and Dumont took on the guitar work.  All told, the end result is an 11 track collection of atmospheric pop-rock tracks that while progressive in nature, are truly embracing and, as Campbell explains, very dreamlike.

"I realize now when I listen to A Little Place In The Wilderness that it's a whole bunch of songs about dreams - like each song could really be looked at as a dream," he believes.  "There are nightmares, weird dreams where weird things happen to you that are about yourself, or who you want to be - your fears, your hopes.

"When you dream at night, there are different kinds of dreams," Campbell adds.  "There are dreams that are seemingly random and pointless, there are dreams that are really profound and heavy, and there are dreams that are scary - there are sex dreams.  This record is that part of yourself that you keep for yourself.

"I think we just tried to make a record that people could dream to."

For more information on Memphis, please visit www.myspace.com/memphiscanada