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I’ve been following The Flower Bomb Collective since I interviewed them for Discorder’s Dec/Jan issue, and I was excited to discover The Raycam Project, created by Flower Bomb members TALON and Dushine. Their friendship, and the network of music and musicians spiraling out around them, really encapsulates what I love about the music scene here in Vancouver. Their music is so raw and real about what it means to live in the Downtown Eastside, and it needs to be heard. So keep your ears open for them on Pacific Noise Weird (CiTR 101.9 FM on Fridays @ 5pm) which focuses on the music scene here in the Pacific Northwest, because I will be having them on the air. I’m excited to keep following this group forward. Cora: So, TALON, Dushine, tell me about yourselves, and this project you’ve been working on.TALON: So, the name is The Raycam Project. We only recently started making music together — it was spontaneous, right? Dushine and I have always been brothers. Since he got back from Africa we just started hanging out. I used to freestyle, and he was like, “oh, I don’t like to freestyle.” So I [would respond with], “well, then let’s write.” We wrote our first track, and just kept going. It was never planned, it was never like, “come over to my house, let’s make a song.” It’s more like, “yo, what are you up to? Let’s hang out.”Dushine: And we wrote so many songs that it was just like “yo, might as well put it all together.” We got influenced by where we come from. We’ve seen a lot of things, we’ve seen a lot of heaviness. So the way we live, [is to find] the words and express ourselves. I hope that people listening to it can relate. Even if they don’t, at least we’re telling our stories, you know? For real.TALON: Yeah, we’re telling our own stories, and expressing ourselves. You know, coming from East Vancouver, it’s got this reputation of just bad kids, troubled youth, and that’s all people really know. With this project, we want people to actually hear what goes on with the youth that live in this neighbourhood — the Downtown East Side — the struggles we face day to day. People will get the real side of the East Side with The Raycam Project.Cora: They’ll get to see the people that live in the Downtown East Side, not just the poverty that exists there. TALON: Exactly, exactly. Cora: Tell me about your favourite track off the album.TALON: My favourite track would be ‘Dream Real’. We were supposed to record a different song at the studio because we had some time booked. But we had some time to kill, and we wrote a new song in thirty minutes but didn’t plan to record it. When we showed up at the studio and played the beat it was like, “okay well, let’s record to it.” So did we did, and now it’s my favourite song. ‘Dream Real’ is about the struggles we face, and see, every day in the Downtown East Side. It’s how I feel — I heard the beat, and it just came out. It comes from the heart.Dushine: Straight from the heart, from the soul.TALON: Exactly.Dushine: My favourite track is called ‘Came Up’. It was just so different, it was something I’ve never heard before. I was surprised by what I was saying, and then TALON went super hard on it — he went crazy. Cora: So how did you get started?Dushine: I’m from a small country in East Africa called Burundi. Growing up there was like a movie, for real. Gunshots everywhere, it was crazy. But there was a lot of joy, I enjoyed living there. Then I came to Canada, I was twelve. It made me think about how we don’t always think about where we come from, you know? So, we just kinda live. Cora: How’d you get into music?Dushine: That one is a funny one. My friend, his name Glady, RIP to him, he made a song and he went crazy. Every time we went to parties, all the shawties wanted him, you know what I’m saying? I was like, “Yo, I really gotta do this! I can do this!” Based on that story I came up with my first song ‘Hey Shawty’. It was just to get all the girls to catch on the vibe. Then I got into music more, and I found out I like it. I love it now. TALON: Music’s been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Whether at home or at school. I used to go to St. James Music Academy. That was my introduction to music — to singing, butI also used to play the piano. If you asked me this six months ago, I would have said I started making music because I love listening to music — but now I love expressing myself. If I’m going through something, a hard time in my life, then I have music. I write it out, I get it out. Even if I don’t release it, I still write about it so I can get it out. Listening to music and being influenced by the artists I listen to got me thinking, what if I make my own music? At first I started off with just freestyling, with a beat off youtube, then I started writing. I did that for a couple months. I was trying to find a studio for the longest time, and when I suddenly found one I didn’t have anything prepared. I just went to the studio and wrote the verses for ‘Touch Down’, which was my first single. That’s how I started. Now with The Raycam Project music is a release. It’s about what I've gone through, how I feel, but also so that people can relate. I think that’s a huge part of why I write — is the relating. Because I used to relate to the songs I listened to, what if I could do that for other people? I know I’m not alone in this, whatever I go through — everyone does. Everyone has downs. Cora: So when is the album dropping? Where are you taking this?TALON: We’re dropping the album this year, with two music videos. There’s going to be ten or twelve songs on the album. We’re still planning everything out, trying to lock in the vision. But we’re giving everyone an insight to the Downtown East Side. It’s going to be on all platforms, get it anywhere. We just want to keep going forward, keep making music.
The light outside is just beginning to fade on East Van, just in time for the end of a photo shoot. Sitting in a circle, five of the members of Flower Bomb Collective are winding down from the shoot, but the energy and excitement still reverberates through them. Conversation is easy, like everyone in the room has been friends for their whole lives. Whether in pairs, or across the whole group, there is harmony and community in the air. Around the room is the accoutrements of a band, synths, guitars, recording devices, a large piece of concrete with a pipe sticking out of it functioning as a light fixture. Benton Robertson (He/him): I'm Benton, I guess I'm the initiator of this project [Flower Bomb] — I produce it and invite collaborators.DJ (He/him): I'm DJ, I’ve played keys for Flower Bomb, which was a lot of fun, that's my instrument.Benton (laughing): Yeah but what else do you do?DJ: Oh I'm so bad at this. I make music, I play drums, I make films. I'm just chilling. Caleb Heppner (They/them): I'm Caleb, I sang on one of the songs in the project. I've been mingling in and out with these folks for a number of years. I'm also a songwriter/producer.Benton: What's your artist name?Caleb: Oh, it's Willohill.Jade (She/her): Hey, I'm Jade, and I help out with art direction — videography and photography. Dushine (He/him): My name is Dushine, and I’ve worked on two songs for Flower Bomb — and they're amazing [laughter from group] can't wait until they come out, yeah. I'm still young, I mean forever young, you know what I'm saying? Benton: Wait, what about your own stuff?Dushine: My what?Benton: Your own music.DJ: We're all dodging that question. I don't know why [laughter]. Cora: So what is Flower Bomb Collective doing with this project? Where did it start and where is it going?Benton: It initially started while I was working with kids — I had done some harm reduction work, working at Insight and places like that, and then I started working with an after school program out of UGN, and the initial thing was I was just inspired by these kids — their resilience and ability to have so much fun within a sometimes pretty chaotic environment. That was like the conceptual basis for it. I just thought — with any creative project, the people most affected by it are the people who make it. And I just thought, okay, how can I use my musical ability and bring people in. So it's just been a process of, at least for me, collaborating and figuring out what sticks. Cora: So what's your first inspiration, give me a snapshot. Benton: It's interesting, because I think this project was highly influenced by Jade — and a group of us, including DJ and Caleb too, who l were listening to a lot of classic sounding things. Jade: Kaytranada was definitely a thing.Benton: Yeah I think my mindset was: how can I create something that lasts longer than a moment? Because I feel like a lot of music is so ephemeral, to use that word. Before that I was making a lot of trap, and I think at some point that will come back into Flower Bomb's sonic vocabulary, but this project I really wanted to go for something that will stand the test of time. And when I heard Caleb, AKA Willohill’s, voice on “Rush” it was just like — “alright, we found it.”Caleb: So Fall 2021, Benton had shown me the skeleton of “Rush”— he had an idea of the melody, and some sort of context for the song, and that evening that we really nailed all of the parts. It just flowed really well. Everything connected, and I think because of our connection during the process, it came out feeling like that too. I think it was what Benton was trying to do with this project from what I can see. And I think it’s something that people — artists, the community, — need, which is just giving each other ideas and giving each other perspective, and doing so in an accepting way.Benton: Thanks.Jade: I feel like that's the whole thought process, it comes from a place of desiring community, desiring connection, and I think that comes first. It’s not just,“I just want to make the music,” it's like connection first, and music is the means to do so. Cora: So how did you all meet? Where did this community start?Jade: That's a web.Benton: I feel like me and Dushine's meeting is the most random though. We literally met on the street — just by MacLean park. They were listening to some trap music and stuff, I just saw them and I liked the vibe. I was producing trap at the time and I walked up and I was like “hey what's up, how are you guys doing?”Dushine: And the day after we went to the studio and recorded this crazy song. Me and Benton developed this friendship, a very strong one. I feel like, the song we made for Flower Bomb was just inspired by that. Benton: And we have another one coming under Dushine's name on July 29 called “Running.” Go listen to it, stream it.Cora: Tell me about the first song either all together — or the first song of the collective.Benton: It's been a bit disjointed. The first release, “Come Together,” was with my friend Wilson Blue and Dushine. I wrote this song on my guitar, and Dushine had sent a voice memo while he was in Rwanda. I texted Wilson Blue like, “Sam do you want to come over and sing [Dushine’s] hook for me?” and he was like “for sure.” and then the rest is history. We made a music video too, with a bunch of kids in the neighbourhood. It was super hectic. I think we had 4 kids in it and they were all like ten years old. I knew them all from the after school program, and it turned out way better than I could have imagined because it was so hectic. Caleb: And DJ's Vibe is…DJ: Yeah tell me, what's my vibe?Caleb: He’s influenced by a lot of, I'd say jazz, but also modern classical, avante garde, and he always gravitates towards complexity and melancholy. He gives a lot of dissonance — he says a lot through what he plays. He's a very versatile instrumentalist. Very flavourful, very expansive.DJ: No, yeah, that's actually accurate. 'Cause yeah, I’ve played drums since I was in the third grade — that's my main instrument. and then I got into modern classical, which is a vague term. More like… cinematic music, or ambient music, experimental music. I loved it, and if I wanted to replicate that sound, I would need to learn the piano, so I taught myself. It was a lot of fun. And yeah, very melancholic. I was in a mood.Caleb: I find when he plays things, he also sees specific visuals as well.DJ: Yeah it's pretty synesthesic (sic). That's the vibe. One of the songs I wrote, I remember I was looking at a painting while I was doing chords.Benton: One thing I would say about Caleb as a musician especially after making “Rush,” is that they have the craziest falsetto of almost anyone I've ever met.DJ: I remember that — Caleb was sitting on my drum stool, and they just hit the highest note you've ever heard, without any warm up really. They even surprised themself, like, “how did I do that?”Caleb: I was hard into Moses Sumney.Cora: What's the platonic ideal of this project — like a concert, or a music video, or an album? What's the dream?Benton: Flower Bomb is a starting point, and there's a lot to explore. So, I feel like I couldn't say right now what the ideal would be, because I feel like as I did this project and now I know what I want to do for the next project [...]Probably with more of a visual aspect — having Jade create the vibe, the aesthetic.Jade: I really liked what we did with the short video for “Rush.” I'd like to do something similar by compiling different visuals of people within the project, adding in some floral arrangements for sure. That's a huge part of Flower Bomb, flowers and all that [laughter]. The main concept would be connection, I feel like family and relationships are very