Now we have a more fully formed group with three other people, currently. Ben Borden, Lisa Gamble, and Nick Scribner, who are all friends of ours in the art and music communities in Montreal, which are quite diverse and very interesting. So I think this band has a lot more to do with letting that identity come into being rather than stitching something together that isn't what it is. Or is more of a fabrication.

This is more in the spirit of being a band, though a band can be so many different things. It doesn't have to consist of four best friends who have fun on weekends or whenever. Clues will very soon unfold into what it is, and that may change over time as well. So as we reveal ourselves, it will be a process of defining it as well.

SFBG: Sounds like it's a mystery to you as well as to me and other people.

AP: It is very much - I find it exciting in maybe a similar way that you do. I don’t always know what's going on. That’s the magic, having this mystery congenitally a part of the band. It's important, and the name itself speaks to that. And we’re in the process of assembling a bunch of things that point to another greater thing or maybe several other things or maybe nothing at all! [Laughs]

We’re in the process of being a detective. It's not a crime necessarily, but we're assembling a puzzle and hopefully making a nice image of it. It's very much a creative and definitive project. And musically it's bound to fall into several different categories. If you want to take Unicorns as a stepping stone that’s fine. It's certainly something that I was heavily involved in, so there's going to be similarities.

That project was really about making sketches. Even in the course of this we’re making sketches as well, sketches of possibilities. Not to be too ambiguous but to get at something greater. Just use a language that we invented and taking parts from here and there and putting them together.

SFBG: How would you describe the personality of Clues?

AP: I would say that we’re all generally relaxed people. [Laughs] I think the personality of the group is in the process of emerging, so it's sort of like what Sister Nancy says in one of her songs - she says, "Bam Bam," amongst other things, ["What makes them talk about my ambition?"]. She recognizes that within the song itself she's doing what it is her ambition to do, but also recognizes that it's something you're reaching for and you're never attaining it, and if you feel like you have attained it, a part is always missing. The task is always undone.

It's sort of difficult to talk about as static. It's something that's moving as we go along. The record we’re working on has come together in very different circumstances, and the unity of the group is expressed in many ways. It doesn’t come about as us working as one. We have just completed it, and we’re going to announce very soon when it's coming out. That’s sort of an unknown clue for you. There's a record in the making, and I think we’re proud and excited about it and privileged to be in such an interesting relationship with our label Constellation here in Montreal.

That's an extension of what I was trying to describe earlier - people who consider themselves artists but in different capacities. Constellation is a unique label. We were working in immediate vicinity of where they are, so there was a lot of back and forth there.

SFBG: You were approaching the band in a gentle way?

AP: Certainly, certainly, but it's also our take on when you want to make something important and to me bands are important. And I've been involved in a lot of projects and bands where the time frame seems to be... there's a lot of urgency to it or there isn't enough consideration of the band and what we’re doing. So I think it's sort of important for us to be reflective about it and take our time - not really even building up a lot of external things that we see bands are known for, like records and playing shows, which will happen eventually and are great things to be a part of it, but the notion of a bunch of people working with such closeness... It doesn’t really exist in any art form, where people are part of that much of a family.

It's very different kind of work that allows a lot of personal dynamics and really engaging with people and sort of being friends. I can't even see in any other way than describe it as gentle. If the band is defined by rocking out, y'know, or if the band has other aspirations than attending to its internal structure... But everything that we work on internally is reflected in how our shows will be and how our records will come about. It's very important work to take this time.

SFBG: What will Clues sound like live?

AP: We have some unconventional instrumentation. We have a Commodore 64, which we use as a synthesizer and an OLPC generating some of the sounds that we foist on people. [Laughs]

And we have multiple drummers and we currently have two people drumming on pretty much every song. The idea is to have one drum kit be fairly stripped down and the other more composed of pieces of metal and what we call bing-bongs - just random objects that have resonant frequencies that might as well be used in music.

I would say sonically our music is sort of a cross-pollination of Harry Partch and some sort of post-rock pop kind of thing. Or no wave. Or something like that. Using these terms is kind of revolting to me, but it's sort of necessary for your profession, at least. Using these words, hopefully, they can be clues to something else.

"Live" is something we’re still refining and getting together in a more sophisticated way. There's nothing mind-blowingly visual at this point, which a lot of bands rest on defaulting to. We’re resting on the composition or music - that’s where I'm coming from. This band has only done a couple shows in the US and Europe.

SFBG: So what became of the Unicorns - are you still together?

AP: No, not together. Unicorns was a band I had formed with a friend of mine in high school a number of years ago - we were the kind of band that came quickly and left quickly. I think it was sort of like an explosion and... it's sort of hard to talk about it.

SFBG: Why did you break up?

AP: It had a shorter lifespan. You never really know. These things happen and you discover what happened afterward. Why it happened was not clear to me, I had my own reasons for wanting to do other things, personally. But the end result was not lost at all - the fruit of that band. Hopefully what was good about that band will find its way into other things. I'm neither rejecting that past nor am I dwelling on it as a lost history.

It was very much about action, y'know. When things are all action, you tend to culminate in something explosive, I suppose. You can only be constantly moving for so long till you exhaust yourself. It was constant movement and very little consolidation of that movement - at least in my understanding of it.

CLUES
Noise Pop show with Loch Lomond, Harbours, and the Red Verse
Feb. 28, 9 p.m., $12–$14
Rickshaw Stop
155 Fell, SF
(415) 861-2011