Though Elastic Stars’ upcoming LP HOBBYIST represents the latest in a healthy output, it marks Cowan’s first honest to goodness attempt at promoting himself as a musician. A bass player in iconic Canadian indie groups like Destroyer and Dada Plan, Cowan has often taken the back seat of the tour bus. But that’s exactly where he’d pen original music to his own tune — groovin’ acoustic guitar hooks softened by the blissed out haze of a tape machine. 

Encouragement from friends and fans in Vancouver’s underground music scene — a scene Cowan himself helped develop as the founder of China Cloud Studios — pushed the songster to finally take the plunge. It’s official, Elastic Stars have let their music out of the box. 

Who are Elastic Stars and how would you describe the music that you play? 

Elastic Stars is the result of frontman Colin Cowan deciding to branch off as a bass player for many other Canadian bands such as Destroyer and Dada Plan. In Elastic Stars, I sing the songs that I secretly write at the back of tour buses. Self-produced from my TASCAM-388 1/4″ reel-to-reel tape machine, my psyched out Nostalgia-Pop outfit’s music continues to be a fluorescent cup of warm nostalgic soup fit for any contemporary star child or beach bum. The stellar live band also includes Jenn Bojm (bass + vocals), Daniel Ruiz (drums), Roisin Adams (keys + vocals), and Joshua Zubot (violin + electronics).

Congrats on the new video! Can you tell us a bit more about how the video came to be? 

Thanks! This video was directed/edited by myself and filmed/co-directed by constant Elastic Stars video collaborator, Tyler McLeod. Using an analog 8mm camera from the early 90s, Ty follows me on a journey of discovering an adolescent creative self I used to try and run away from. Realizing this original, untainted, unrefined voice is the most authentic voice we can rediscover as people, I attempt to take viewers on a nostalgic journey down memory lane. Personal epiphany eventually results in sharing this type of wisdom with the next generation.

How would you describe the vibes shooting this video and getting into the editing booth? 

When Ty and I collaborate on video projects, our symbiotic creative senses always jive to create a most cozmik and chill vibrance. This video shoot, like most of our video shoots, started with us reminding ourselves that less is more, we are making “a short art film” so there is no such thing as mistakes or f-ups, and that spontaneity is the stuff of music video gold. I brought the antique clown box and the story, Ty riffed on some location ideas, and then we started walking, talking, and recording.

What’s the story behind the music box? Where’d you find that thing?

The antique music box is my daughter’s. It was my wife’s mother’s as a child (Elastic Stars bass player Jenn Bojm). We love old things, whether they be vintage guitars, amps, or creepy clown music boxes. My daughter seems to be developing the same lust for heirlooms and antiques. I thought this music box would be too creepy for her, but the first time I wound it up for her, shortly after she was born, her eyes lit up. A couple years later, she still has the same reaction. I love that she sees and hears the same things in this odd little box that inspire Jenn and I.

You’ve played in iconic Canadian indie groups, including Dada Plan and Destroyer. How has that shaped you as a musician and why did you decide to branch out with your own project? 

I have alway been of the mind that creativity requires an equal balance of inspiring and being inspired. If you can control, or even squash, personal ego, the musical juices of sonic serendipity will forever drip down your chin. Elastic Stars was something I started recording in private when I was in my mid-twenties and just starting to tour as a bass player with other bands with record deals. The more I saw what being in an internationally touring band was all about, with all of its decent highs, and extreme lows, I learned that loving everything about the music you play is the number one thing you will need to stay happy. Your music needs to be something that you can be proud of, whether you have one hundred million fans, or just one. 

Once I started writing and independently recording Elastic Stars, i knew I had found something that was truly me — a creation that is heavily inspired by all of my favourite music and art I have gulped since I was in the womb, rolled up into a fuzzy ball of lint, and oozing with cozmik molten lava. Making my own personal albums and independently releasing them showed me that most of my extremely small fan base were people who played cool bands that I liked. Though Elastic Stars came from me branching off from the 100+ bands I have played or collaborated with, I think that it was the creation of Elastic Stars itself that inspired cool projects like Destroyer and Dada Plan to invite me in.

A little birdy said you played in the live band for Paul Anthony’s Talent Time! Good times? 

Great times. It’s probably been close to 8 years now since the last time I did that, but I always appreciated Talent Time as an absolute Vancouver original. Any local show that equally cheers on good Art and roasts questionable Art — and vice versa! — I gotta get involved somehow.

Speaking of your resume, you run China Cloud, an intimate event space in Vancouver (thank you for your service). How have you found being a part of the city’s underground music scene? 

Yup! I founded China Cloud Studios 15 years ago with an old band called Analog Bell service when I was in my early 20s. I signed the lease, and ran the place pretty much solo for over a decade while balancing being on the road as a touring musician, comedian and actor. It was not easy, as the venue was never supported by any funding entities or grants, and never made enough money to survive, so it was perpetually in debt. But it has always been a hub for dreaming, giving a platform to any and all who have something unique to show, and it has always been my personal hub of creativity. My analog studio, Elastic Stars Productions, is in that building, just up the hall from local legends, and good friends, Mood Hut.

Now, many years later into China Cloud’s existence, the creative space and venue is finally surviving. It has a vast team of curators, and other cool folks that help run it. I still run the odd music series out of there, and host a standup show called Comedy World twice a month. I still do quite a lot, from fundraising, to fixing toilets, but the space’s programming and voice is a constant collaboration. I still own the business — not the building, as sometimes people mistake … there’s not much money in being an extremely passionate weirdo — but I love seeing what all of the voices and next generations are bringing to our creative hub. 

With all of the financial ups and downs it has taken to keep a crazy space like China Cloud Studios alive for nearly 15 years, and though it nearly killed me a couple times, I don’t regret a thing. Maintaining a small stage in Vancouver is not only important & inspiring work for our city, but, as I have learned from all of our performers and visitors from around the world, it’s also an inspiration globally. Long live space! Long live underground music scenes! These places are where all this creative shit starts, whether it be the poppiest of art, to the most experimental.

Describe your perfect day in Vancouver

Wake up at 8am, put on a ravi shankar record, do some yoga, sip a coffee, sing a song on my beater nylon guitar, write two new larks in my sad pad of paper labeled ‘Joke Boke’, ride my 1979 Honda CB 650 motorcycle I grew up on the backseat of through the backstreets that guide me to Chinatown, pull into the back alley that leads to China Cloud, pull into the garage, park the bike, run upstairs to Elastic Stars Productions, put a fresh reel on my Tascam 388 Tape Machine, Setup some mics, leave the studios for a quick Bahn Mi, return and burn out some ideas until twilight. Exit, go home and neurotically make some old, mastered recipes from someone’s Mexican or Italian grandmother for my family. Rinse and repeat.

Anything else you would like us to know about Elastic Stars or your new video single? 

I am a very comfortable extrovert, but when I make this music and put out music video releases, something about how extremely personal it is reminds me of my buried introverted qualities. Putting Elastic Stars newbies out is one of the only things that makes me feel nervous, anxious, and gives me butterflies. ‘Music We Play’ is currently my favourite song on the new album HOBBYIST coming out this fall. I am very excited to share this music video and song. I hope those who dig on this style of crispy-analog-deluxe-dufus stuff find the music, the video, and tell their friends. 

Elastic Stars started from a desire to confidently sing into a cave for no one… but now I want to do as my most passionate fans have always gotten mad at me for not doing, and try anything and everything to share this stuff with the world. If you listen to this, if you watch the video, please tell your friends to do it too. And, heck, even find me and tell me you like it too! Though still quite hardened, I am aging into an old softy, so flatterers hold the power to melt my heart.