From Creative Commons to the Olympics

Misteur Valaire is a Québec electro-jazz band who sold around 1000 albums yet got their ticket to the Olympic Games in Vancouver. Their secret? Over 40,000 downloads of their web album Friterday Night available through a Creative Commons non-commercial share-alike licence since 2007.

MV (Misteur Valaire) – It’s All Good

Today, Misteur Valaire cleverly combines musical knowledge with its equipment-real drums, drum machines, tablas, saxophone, trumpet, turntables, laptops and banks upon banks of synthesizers and keyboards. Oh, and cowbell ! This instrumentation sure sounds like sensory overload-think the Dust Brothers’ “sampledelica” production on Beck’s Odelay, except played live. The band is a crazy hybrid of hip-hop, jazz, electronic, indie-pop and old school rave music!

Thanks to the originality of its music, its dazzling live performance and its mind-blowing visuals, Misteur Valaire will soon make its way to the top of the international electro-jazz music scene.

I was planning to see them at Usine C a few weeks ago but I missed my chance. Here’s one of the videos that was filmed that night, Plocul Black:

Their next album is to be released in May 2010 and I know I will be there for its launch.

Here they are in Tadoussac, where instead of raising the roof, they actually lowered the floor!