From arias to Austra

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Katie Stelmanis (seated) got into the the world of electronic music as she tried to arrange her own orchestral music with a MIDI controller, before the world of electronic music got her back into classical instrumentation.

It was Katie Stelmanis's attempt to make classical music that led her to the world of electronic music, before the world of electronic music got her back into classical instrumentation.

 "I was interested in making orchestral music so I got a MIDI controller and a computer and started triggering samples of violins and cellos and bassoons and oboes," Stelmanis says on the phone in a van driving the Yellowhead Highway somewhere between Edmonton and Saskatoon.

"I got used to the synthetic sound and more into the electronic side of things and eventually stopped with the classical music."

Those first attempts at composing on a computer were rather crude, she admits, due to the inferior quality of the equipment. As she progressed as an artist and acquired better gear, she ditched the synthetic strings and woodwind sounds altogether, until recording Austra's debut, Feel it Break, when she realized she wanted those instruments back in the mix, but without the fake sound of her initial experiments.

"There are some real violins and a cello on the album, and a real synthesizer," she says with a laugh. "A lot of those samples I was using at first were really crappy."

You've got to start somewhere, though, and those "crappy" samples have evolved into the music of Austra, a mixture of hard-edged, post-punk-leaning electronic music, icy new wave and dance-oriented material that leans more towards underground club music than anything in the Top 40.

Winnipeggers will get to see for themselves when Austra makes its local debut tonight at the West End Cultural Centre with openers Tasseomancy and Young Galaxy. Admission is $15.

Stelmanis has played Winnipeg twice as a solo artist, performing songs she wrote in her bedroom. The solo material from her 2008 debut was too hard to recreate live, which led to the formation of Austra.

"The solo record was basically a demo with all bedroom recordings," she says. "Sometimes the songs didn't have words. I did it all myself and passed it off for other people to mix. I was into aggressive, distorted music, but it wasn't even palatable -- they were dense, aggressive songs."

Stelmanis, 26, got her musical education in her hometown of Toronto, singing in choirs as a youth before studying opera and singing in the Canadian Children's Opera Chorus while learning how to play viola and piano.

Her life changed when she attended her first punk and indie-rock shows as a 19-year-old and her musical interests shifted as she immersed herself in Toronto's live music scene.

"I wanted to be part of it. I thought I would just take a break from classical music, but I never went back," she says.

She was in the rock band Galaxy for three years before releasing her solo album, Join Us, in 2008. While on tour, she asked Galaxy drummer Maya Postepski to join her to add some extra muscle to the live show. They eventually recruited bassist Dorian Wolf into the fold and the project changed from a solo effort to a band.

On their current tour, the trio is joined by an extra keyboard player and two backup vocalists.

"The toughest thing about the solo record was that it didn't have much of a drum presence; it was high-end oriented, synthy stuff. The low end is what you need to connect with an audience.

"It was heady music; now we make body and head music," Stelmanis says.

"We tend to gear our sets to dancier stuff. It's nice, because they tend to turn into dance parties. It helps us connect with the audience and it's fun to get people excited."

The excitement created by Austra has been spreading over the past year and increased in May when Feel it Break was released on Paper Bag Records in Canada and Domino Records in England. The group has been hitting the overseas market hard and recently completed its fourth tour of Europe, where audiences are more open and responsive to electronic music.

Now they are back on home soil and working on winning over North American crowds.

"I felt like the demand was in Europe before anywhere else. We were playing big shows to thousands of people in May and June. When the record came out we felt we had to give it a little time in North America to get a bit of buzz, so we could tour Canada in the dead of winter," Stelmanis says, laughing.

The buzz -- which included Feel It Break being nominated for the 2011 Polaris Music Prize -- and subsequent success hasn't felt like a sudden surge to Stelmanis, since each member of the band has been involved with numerous musical projects over the years and the group had all of the pieces in place to take things to the next level.

And despite her background in choirs and opera, Stelmanis admits there is still a part of the live performance aspect she sometimes has trouble with: remembering the words to all the songs.

"I don't know what my problem is. I just space out sometimes and I have no idea what the lyrics are, so I look at Sari and Romy (backup sisters Sari and Romy Lightman of the band Tasseomancy) to see what they're singing and go from there.

"It's like forgetting someone's name. It's only for a moment," she says.

rob.williams@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 24, 2011 E10