Patrick Holland and Priori Are Building a Montreal Hit Factory (for Leftfield Electronic Music)

An interview with the Canadian duo, who explain how their love of the studio and penchant for collaboration has blossomed into behind-the-scenes production work for a variety of artists.

What is a music producer? The average person most likely has little idea how to substantively answer that question, and even among knowledgeable fans, the word “producer” is often associated with the likes of Rick Rubin, Quincy Jones and other svengali-type figures who sit behind the boards and provide some sort of indefinable, behind-the-scenes magic. That magic, be it creative or technical in nature, is thought to be so potent—and, in many cases, so valuable—that artists will specifically seek out certain producers to help finish their records, often traveling to whatever remote locale where said producers have set up their own personal studio complexes. Taking part in these little pilgrimages isn’t necessarily cheap—aside from the travel costs involved, producers in the major-label system used to routinely take a percentage of whatever revenue an artist’s finished record eventually generated—but it has nonetheless become a part of music industry lore.

That particular lore, however, rarely extends to the electronic music realm, where artists and producers are generally one and the same. Moreover, they’re often imagined as solitary figures, toiling away in front of a DAW or a bank of machines in search of the perfect beat. There’s something romantic about that, and when one thinks about the cult-like fandom around people like Aphex Twin and Burial, it’s obvious that the electronic music world has a tendency to put its “mad geniuses” on a very high pedestal. That’s fine of course, and no one can deny that these proverbial lone wolves have created some very special music during the past few decades, but it does raise some very intriguing questions, namely:

Wouldn’t electronic music artists have a lot more fun if they were making music with other people? More importantly, would their music be better if they could collaborate more often?

Talking to Patrick Holland and Priori (a.k.a. Francis Latreille), the answer to both questions appears to be an emphatic “yes.” During the past few years, the Montreal-based artists—who have also spent the past decade making music together as Jump Source—have notably expanded their practice. While both still have busy solo careers, and Latreille continues to run the hotly tipped naff label alongside his close friend and fellow producer Adam Feingold, they’ve also begun to lend their songwriting, engineering and production talents to other artists’ records. What they’re doing is not ghostwriting. It’s fully credited collaboration, and it’s most visibly evident on Friend, the critically acclaimed new album from NYC artist james K. Holland and Latreille’s names are all over the credits, and the same could be said for Nothingburger, the recent EP from Physical Therapy’s ambient-leaning Car Culture alias, which will soon be followed by the project’s forthcoming Rest Here album.

In a time when the culture of electronic music has become intensely individualistic, and scratching out a living, even as a solo artist, has become almost absurdly difficult, Holland and Latreille are purposely swimming against the current, taking time away from their own music to help other artists bring their records across the finish line. One might assume that there’s some sort of financial motive at work, but the Montreal duo are working outside the major-label system, and aren’t privy to big budgets either. So what are they doing?

Hoping to find out, I asked if they’d be up for an interview, and over the course of a long call last week, Holland and Latreille provided a window into exactly what they’re up to. Speaking from Jump Source Studios, a frankly envy-inducing space they’ve built in Montreal, they laid out the history of their working relationship and the evolution of their craft over the past decade-plus, explaining how they’ve purposely made an effort to move beyond standard dance music tropes, expand their knowledge of studio and production techniques and collaborate with a wide variety of different artists. While their contributions to the james K and Car Culture records were something that happened organically, Holland and Latreille have already played a similar behind-the-scenes role on several other projects, and are looking to do more such work in the future. The word “fun” came up an inordinate number of times during the course of our conversation, and as far as these two are concerned, it’s a lot more likely to happen when they’re working with others, regardless of whose name gets top billing on the records they make.