Do Make Say Think play on a world stage

Last weekend, London welcomed a wide variety of artists and performers to the city for the third annual London Ontario Live Arts festival, better known simply as LOLA.

Headlining Friday night's festivities were Do Make Say Think, a mostly-instrumental band from Toronto with an international following.

They played to an excited crowd which numbered in the hundreds, if not thousands — a great turnout for a band that plays post-rock, a genre that strives to take rock instruments out of their traditional context. Alongside electric guitars and drum kits, horn and string instruments are layered to create soundscapes which swell and pulsate, borrowing dynamic elements largely from classical composition.

But while the bandshell at Victoria Park was packed for DMST, it still couldn't compare to the band's experience in Japan.

“We played a festival called the Arabaki Rock Festival in Kawasaki, Japan,” remembered Charles Spearin, bassist/trumpeter for the band. “We were the first non-Japanese band to play the festival, and it's been going for eight years. 40,000 people there. It was just insane... And there were so many great bands that we'd never heard of. It was quite an experience.”

The band also played two nights in Tokyo — both sold out - which could make one wonder how an instrumental band from Toronto have gained such recognition on the international stage. Part of the answer lies in the fact that two of Do Make Say Think's founding members, Ohad Benchetrit and Charles Spearin are also members of Broken Social Scene (which is also why the bands' tours have to be carefully organized). It also helps that they're signed to Constellation Records, home of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, perhaps Canada's most influential indie band of the past decade behind Arcade Fire.

And to top it off, Do Make Say Think also have one of the most important qualities of a touring group today: a great live show.

But organizing eight members to write, practice and perform regularly is no easy task, especially when schedules are further complicated by side-projects and day jobs. Violinist Julie Penner, for instance, is also the music producer for Stuart McLean's “The Vinyl Cafe” on CBC Radio.

After being a band for 15 years, have they developed any kind of rehearsal strategy?

“No... nope,” laughed Spearin. “We get together to rehearse a little bit and it's a different experience... We can certainly do our old songs a million times with no problems, but when we come back we sort of have to reinvent [ourselves] to a certain degree.”

Throughout the band's different incarnations, their dynamic has also changed.

“When we first started, we had periods of learning to trust each other and a lot of times free-forming... we did years of improvising in front of people and just making noises and it was just really pure experimentation,” he said.

Now DMST focus more on song-writing.

“We got more into composing, and actually having an intention to create a certain mood,” explained Spearin. “When you're performing, you know what mood you're trying to convey, so we work together to try to present that as best we can, whereas before it was more... meandering.”

The band have already been working on some new tracks, which they plan to record in the winter, but with such a big band, arrangements can take longer than expected, and given the four year gap between previous albums, fans shouldn't get ready to see a follow-up to 2007's You, You're a History in Rust any time soon.

“We're definitely a slow band when it comes to [recording]. We've been a band for 13 years and have only had five records... It's hard to find time to actually get it together.”

Nevertheless, Do Make Say Think are more than happy playing some one-off gigs in the mean time, and given the crowd response at LOLA, we might see Do Make Say Think returning sooner than later.