the newspaper: What inspires you, The Breezes?

Matt: Everything. Just waking up in the morning. Doing dishes. Trying to get through the day. We all fucking love being outside. We all love the sun. We love music. We love films. We love just trying to understand the place that we're in and try to take as much as we can from everybody we see.

tn: How did you guys come together?

Dan: We always knew each other, and then it grew. See, Matt, back in the day, was playing in this band called The Impalers, which was like a vampire punk thing, and then me and Matt did some stuff . . . The kicking off point was deejaying at the Coda Club [in Montreal].

When we started deejaying, it really changed the way we heard music and we thought more about people. Before it was more like, you know, we just did it for us, as a hobby and whatnot. Then deejaying really made us think about people and it changed the way we hear mixes, you know?

Following that, we had a little time off in the summer - this is going back to 2009 when we started – and then what happened was we had been recording music without playing shows, and James submitted a demo to Pop Montreal. We wouldn't be anywhere without Pop. They booked our first show just off the strength of our demos.

tn: How do you feel about Canadian Music Week. Do you like it?

James: It's like the anti-North by Northeast. It's fun to be part of both worlds. Last year, we came and we played CMW. We just came and hung out. It was Nikki Sixx last year who was headlining – like last year's Slash.

tn: Are you going to check out any other bands at Canadian Music Week?

James: We're having fun. We always love coming to Toronto. We wanna see Georgia Anne Muldrow tomorrow.

Matt: I was really upset I missed that band – the guy who did the beats for The Weeknd. I think his name is, like, Zodiac? Anyway, he played last night and apparently it was amazing.

tn: If there's anyone you could collaborate with, who would it be?

Dan: Collaboration is natural. You can't really talk about, oh, ‘I would like to do that.’

James: Maybe we can talk about who we've been collaborating with?

tn: -- you don't want to collaborate with Slash?

Dan: I would like to collaborate with Slash, but just to answer your question without naming someone that would never happen, I would like to collaborate with string orchestras. I would like to collaborate with different instrumentalists, like a harp player, an accordion player, because what you see now is really just the classic rock'n'roll line up: two guitars, singer, bass, drums, whatever. So, I would like to do stuff with more instruments. But yeah, we could talk about who we collaborated with lately.

James: We did a beat, and then I finished recording vocals for Cadence Weapon, so our beat's gonna be on his new record.

tn: How do you guys feel about Montreal as a city for indie musicians?

James: It's hard, how do you qualify your home, you know?

Matt: It's just a really good place to be trying to create stuff for a number of reasons. There's a lot of beautiful people, a lot of beautiful places, a lot of beauty and good stuff.

Adam: Not a lot of good shoe stores...

tn: What's next for The Breezes?

James: We're set to go on a small tour in a few weeks or a month, just of Quebec and some festivals. Our debut full-length should come out in the spring or summer.

Dan: You know, man, it's all gonna change. Our music, I think is gonna get better, deeper and wider. It'll kind of sound tighter and faster and slower, not at the same time, but I mean, I wanna do everything, but more. So that's where we’re gonna go, and I think a little more upbeat . . .

Matt: We're gonna say yes and no, and go everywhere, but not be there at the same time, is what Danny's trying to say.

Check out thebreezes.ca for tour dates and to hear “Promethean Eyes,” a track off their upcoming LP.