Photo from Frayd’s Facebook page.
Ottawa-based electronic musician Frayd released his debut album Mountain online last week, and you can listen and download it for free on Soundcloud. “Frayd” is the stage name chosen by 17 year-old Gabe Roberge, a senior at Canterbury High School.
The album ranges from slow, dreamy, ambient tracks to up-tempo dance songs that would make a great soundtrack for any party. “Leave Here Now” was the first single released ahead of the album, and it’s the slowest song of them all, but Roberge said it’s a good starter for someone to get an idea of his music.
“I’ll have slow songs and I’ll have “dance-y” songs, but I feel like overall, no matter if it has a different sound, they’re all very emotionally based,” he said. “I think that my overall goal is to put my emotions into the music and make people maybe feel those emotions or feel other emotions because of that.”
Roberge is in the drama program at Canterbury High School, where students pick an arts program to specialize in. He said the school has been a really supportive environment for his music career, because there’s a lot of collaboration that goes on between students in the different programs.
“It’s amazing collaborating, because I can get amazingly talented musicians to help out with different tracks, and I can get people in the visual program to help out with the artwork,” he explained. Three of the songs from Mountain feature collaborations with vocalists.
Roberge said he took an interest in electronic music four years ago, and since then he’s been influenced by artists such as Flume, the xx, and Canadian electronic music producer Ryan Hemsworth – he’ll even be opening a show for Hemsworth later this month.
Photo by Gina Emdon, from Frayd’s Facebook page.
For the last two years, Roberge has been going out and booking his own shows, playing wherever he can around Ottawa. At only 17, he’s aware that he doesn’t have as much experience as older musicians, but he said he’s found the music community in Ottawa really supportive. The biggest challenge right now is simply being too young to play shows in clubs – that’ll be the next step when he turns 19.
As for other young musicians who want to get out there but aren’t sure where to start, Roberge said it comes to just putting in the hard work.
“At this age, before you get big, you’re not going to have people doing this for you, you need to go and… discover this world by yourself,” he said.
“You have to teach yourself about the whole business side of it and the performance side of it. Just go out and find venues, book shows, find friends that make music too or are involved in music somehow, and maybe play shows with them or be collaborators… be open to different influences.”
Currently, Roberge is working as a programming assistant for Ottawa Bluesfest and also helping to develop new in-school programs for their Blues in the School music education program. He’ll be going to different schools around Ottawa with them and running the electronic music section of the program.
Looking ahead, Roberge is planning to tour outside of Ottawa next summer and play shows in Toronto and Montreal. Next year is sure to bring lots of big changes – for one thing, he’ll be graduating high school.
“I think for sure it’s going to push me a lot more to do a lot more, because I’ve always had this huge drive to keep going and doing bigger things, but I feel like actually needing to do those things is going to change what I do,” he said.
“It becomes more of a job, and that’s fine, you know, I want it to be a job. That’s what I want to do.”
Frayd will be opening for Ryan Hemsworth at Ritual Nightclub on December 26. Event + ticket info can be found here. Check out his Facebook page for more updates about shows.
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