Saint-Étienne-de-Bolton resident Mathieu Forand spent the better part of his musical career as a musician in a band, away from the limelight. Forand’s new project, under the stage name ‘MEF Muse,’ has taken a whole other direction, with his first acoustic folk album ‘The Clock.’ “The album regroups 12 songs that are all acoustic. I’m a guitar player first, but then also a singer songwriter. MEF Muse explores this second aspect more,” said Forand in an interview with The Record. “I had 20 musicians and singers help me record this album. There are tonnes of different instruments, like the Mandolin, the Spanish flute, trumpets, and strings, and we’ve also experimented with a choir. It’s a big project.” Completing ‘The Clock’ was no easy ordeal. It took Forand, who also writes for other artists, nearly two years to write the music and lyrics to his album, and a full year to produce the songs. “I try not to overthink my writing. I have a lot of freedom in my process and I write whatever comes out and feels the best. Overall, I wrote around 100 songs,” he explained, adding he narrowed his selection down to his 12 favourite songs. “If I look back, though, you can see a lot of subthemes like romance, friendship, spiritual awakening, and human nature.” See full story in the Friday, Aug. 23 edition of The Record.
Mathieu Forand: exploring folk music, self-discovery, and time
By Emilie Hackett, Special to The Record
