L CON shoots for the moon

By: Vanessa Polojac

Fresh off the release of their sophomore album, Moon Milk, L CON had a chance to stop by Hamilton to play a sold-out show at HAVN alongside Coszmos Quartette and EONS while promoting their new music across Canada.

The Silhouette sat down with the band tor talk about their LP, touring life and sexism within the music industry.

“L CON is a produced, fluctuating project which always has me and it’s just an umbrella for making things that I am interested in,” explained front woman Lisa Conway.

“The album has a lot of people on it. Right now, Andrew Collins is playing bass and bass synth with us and Jordan Howard is on guitar.”

For Conway, music has always been a part of her life.She has been the vocalist of bands such as The Owle Bird; but feels the most musically artistic through her latest project L CON.

“I have been making music for a really long time under a lot of different names. The Owle Bird was a specific group of people; Jordan actually played guitar in that band as well. It seemed like I needed a new start and it just sort of naturally evolved,” said Conway.

Since dropping her first LP, The Absence Of, with The Owle Bird in 2008, the music industry has changed, and so has Conway’s writing style.

The punk-rock sound of The Absence Of turned into synth and techno a cappella tracks in Moon Milk.

“I am always trying to make things that challenge me as a musician and as an artist. In the past I have been doing a lot of things with strings and voices without a lot of electronic elements with more acoustic elements… it’s all about staying inspired. I really am inspired by bands that are pushing the elements and are experimental,” explained Conway.

The lyrical inspiration for Moon Milk comes from a collection of 12 short stories written by Italo Calvino called Cosmicomics.

Each song on the album is based on and named for a story within the collection.

“I was doing a song writing residency in New Brunswick and it was the first residency that I [had] ever done. I was really nervous that I wouldn’t write any new songs and I was recently introduced to Calvino’s writing; he wrote really beautiful stories," reflected Conway.

"I thought it would be a interesting exercise to write a song for every story and the album took off from there.”

Conway also addressed the discrimination that female musicians still face in 2016. She explained with passion the struggles she faces with being a woman trying to break into the male dominated music industry.

“As a woman in the music industry a lot of people make assumptions about you and I found especially as a vocalist I get pegged as somebody who just sings; who doesn’t know anything about recording or production," said Conway.

"I think it is really important to be brave and feel they are talented… In bands it is a very white dude scene and in techno music as well. There is not a lot of women in the studio and that needs to change.”

Together with Andrew Collins, Conway created Moon Milk in her very own studio: Wildlife Sanctuary Sounds. Since then, the work has gotten recognition from The Ontario Arts Council and is now available to purchase online and in local record stores now.