Annie-Claude Deschênes

Multidisciplinarity is an integral part of the creative process of Annie-Claude Deschênes, who continues her perpetual personal quest of uniting music and performance art by bending the pre-established conventions of stage presence. A key figure on the Montreal independent music scene for almost twenty years, she made her mark as a singer, musician, songwriter, performer and visual artist with Duchess Says and PyPy, two bands that are renowned as much for their electrifying performances as for their artistic sensibility. Her exploratory approach to staging and sound design takes a new direction with the genesis of this solo project: the urgency that characterizes her work remains, but frustration and aggression give way to introspection and vulnerability. Annie-Claude Deschênes explores and reinvents herself under her own name, driven by a constant need to create outside her comfort zone.

Conceived during the lockdown to overcome the surrounding inactivity, the songs that make up LES MANIÈRES DE TABLE, her debut solo album which came out in spring of 2024, were not intended to be released. It was by familiarizing herself with new technologies (drum machines, sequencers) that the conceptual and aesthetic ideas that define the album began to develop organically. Through producing beats composed from samples of utensils, table etiquette became a source of inspiration, a form of conformity that she enjoyed deconstructing. At the same time, a fascination for surveillance cameras and other futuristic-looking, but already obsolete technologies became part of her visual universe. Her experiments gradually evolved into a full-fledged project reminiscent of the works of the pioneers of electronic music. Inspired by Steve Reich’s minimalism, Kraftwerk’s synthetic textures, Herbie Hancock’s stylistic diversity and experimental cinema’s non-traditional approach to narration, LES MANIÈRES DE TABLE is as danceable and melodic as it is disquieting and dystopian.

Over the course of her career, Annie-Claude Deschênes shared the stage with a number of internationally renowned bands, including The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, The Black Lips, The Hives, The Hot Snakes and Buzzcocks, among others. Duchess Says and PyPy's extensive touring has taken her all over North America and Europe, playing venues, bars and festivals (Primavera Fest, Eurockéennes de Belfort, OSHEAGA, Sled Island, etc.) as well as golf courses, factories and churches. True to her versatile nature, her creative career is punctuated by collaborative projects linking various art forms, including the co-founding of the multidisciplinary collective Conclusion Finale, with whom she exhibits at Concordia University's VAV gallery, the DARE-DARE diffusion center and Université Laval, and the production of the soundtrack for Yves St-Laurent's Los Angeles fashion show with PyPy in 2016. Winner of the 2022 cohort of the PHI NORD program, she was awarded a two-week immersive creative residency, during which she saw her songs transform into a tangible debut album.