Selected Werkz by Tony Ezzy

In the early conversations of how In Our Lives should realize its mandate, Tony Ezzy stood out as an undeniable musical force with a very different way of producing music.

Using primarily tape as his recording destintation, he achieves a stereo print that is unique: the grit and grime of the medium receding into the background, wrapping the listener in his mystical vision of the human experience, which, like Dr John, retains a special trap door into humour and lightness. It makes for multi-dimensional listening.

The process of making this record was unconventional: I didn't touch a single fader because Tony had already cooked up the mixes straight to casette tape and transferred them to wave files. With hundreds of such tracks in hard drives, my job was to go through them with the objective of assembling a coherent two-side record that represented what I felt were his best "tracks."

I would venture to say that Tony's production style was honed by his long-standing weekly radio show at CKUT where he does live 2-hour broadcasts of music and talk-show type content where he sources from tape, cd, and streaming while performing live in a truly multi-media improvisation. I can only imagine what coming up with 2 hours per week does for one's artistic output. So, it's no surprise that he had tons of material in those hard drives. I feel kind of like a musical historian here, pouring through field recordings to find unreleased gems. Getting Tony's blessing for the track list and edits was easy, and, in terms of mastering, Mikael did a great job of getting us more impact, density, and a bit more frequency spectrum.

Of all these tracks, my favorites are still the same as when I first combed through those drives: "Free Like the Sun" for its vocoder melody and Caribbean beat, and the epic "We Build Werldz With Sound," which climaxes with Tony playing synth and bass clarinet simultaneously.

Adam Daudrich, 2024.

Tony Ezzy rides the plasma stream wisdom beam. His vehicle is a style of musical divination that he refers to as, “Psi-Funk”. A multi talented, multi instrumentalist: his preferred medium is cassette tape, though other forms of analogue tape will do (reel to reel, VHS, micro cassette).
He has been a staple on the Montreal music scene since 1997. .