Check out our new promo video for the band. It was produced, filmed, and edited by Dan Holden of Phase Productions and My Sister Ocean. He did an amazing job and we’re super happy with how it turned out. Stayed tuned for some more video footage coming soon once we officially release the new album online in less than a months time.

Check out the Living Illusion EPK Promo Video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcnB2xjRPkc

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

“With the exponential growth of technology, musicians every where finally have the tools & vehicles to compete with corporate artists,” says Shane Lamotte, Lead Guitarist, Manager and Director of Marketing & Sales for Edmonton indie band Living Illusion. “Musicians are becoming successful self-employed business owners, not just talented artists. After all, who’s better at selling a band than the band itself?”

Technology advancements in video and music recording combined with the growth of the internet have at last made it possible for musicians everywhere to get songs in front of their target market without having a lucrative bank roll. There are many advantages for Musicians who choose to stay independent, from the ability to retain creative control, to the amount of profit they can personally make.

“If we’ve written, produced, engineered, marketed, promoted, managed, and sold records for our own band, what sense would it make to have some one else take over so we receive 5 cents per CD we sell? All we’re doing is cutting out the middle man, and taking the power back.”

For more information and for an entertaining interview, call Shane Lamotte at (780) 904-7625.

You have to give Living Illusion credit: the Edmonton band has not only put out an independent CD, which they just celebrated at a release party a couple of weeks back at the Sidetrack—but they’ve also accompanied it with a DVD featuring an acoustic song and an interview with the band. Pretty ballsy for a group that is still establishing itself, wouldn’t one think? But Living Illusion doesn’t really want to play by any set music industry rules; brothers and founding members Shane and Jason Lamotte are champions of the independent spirit and want to show off that an up-and-coming band can do more than record a simple demo and pray for the best.

For Shane, the album that most influenced his musical career is Frogstomp, the 1995 debut from Australian youth-rockers Silverchair. As those of us in our 20s and beyond will recall, the Aussies in question were a genuine rock phenomenon simply because the members of the band were 14 and 15 when this album was released. No member of Silverchair was old enough to drive a car when the band’s first single, “Tomorrow,” became an MTV fave.

And while many critics at the time dissed the kids as simply being Pearl Jam wannabes who won a few talent contests Down Under, Silverchair had a simple formula for success: even at such young ages, the band members had a penchant for writing simple, hooky rock music. And it helped make Frogstomp the first album in Australian history to enter the domestic chart in the number-one slot.

And it was those rock melodies that made Lamotte a fan—and want to be in a band even that much more. “They were all so young, the songs weren’t difficult or very hard to play,” he says. “But the melody lines were so catchy and they could write simple, catchy hooks, too. And those songs just got stuck in your head.”

Lamotte has been playing guitar since Grade 7, about the same time the Silverchair trio got together. And the fact that three guys who were so young could go on to find fame and fortune was not lost on Lamotte. “It was the first CD that made me think ‘why can’t I do this?’” says Lamotte.

As well, what impressed Lamotte is that, despite the ages of the band members, Silverchair was able to do something with a debut that hardly any band ever does: according to him, the music was mature enough to make him think the band had been recording for years. “It is rare that a band’s first album is so solid that everyone likes it and connects with it,” he says. “But they did it.”

Unfortunately, the band could never replicate the success of that debut, and few music fans outside of Australia have heard their fourth and most recent release, Diorama (which, by the way, has earned the band the best reviews they’ve ever received). At the moment, Silverchair are still together, but Chair man Ben Gillies has taken time to work on his other band, Tambalane, which embraces a funky ’70s groove and has received good press in Australia.

As for Lamotte, Living Illusion is the realization of a dream he had when he was just 17 and started a band with his friends on Vancouver Island. He was crushed when, upon graduating high school, none of his friends wanted to go on, so he moved to Edmonton, joined up with his brother and started anew. After all, why let go of a dream when a trio of Australian kids showed you that if things go your way, it could come true? V

By STEVEN SANDOR

Interestingly, the gist of the release was not directly promoting the recently released album by the band, but was a discourse on musicians taking business into their own hands by choosing to be independent of multi-million dollar corporations. “ Musicians are becoming successful self-employed business owners, not just talented artists” states Lamotte and he goes on the technological advancements in video, music recording and the growth of the internet that have made it possible for musicians to get songs to the market without “a lucrative bank roll”. The press release ends with its first mention of the band and again is not a direct sell for the album, which probably wouldn’t have attracted my editor’s attention, but rather reads like a article or a mission statement for indie bands and labels. “If we’ve written, produced, engineered, marketed, promoted, managed and sold records for our own band, what sense would it make to have someone else take over so we receive 5 cents per CD we sell? All we’re doing is cutting out the middle man and taking the power back.”

Living Illusion definitely takes its own advise to heart with all the manufacturing and promoting of the album being done ‘in house’. Design, layout and printing of the CD cover and insert is now possible with a good personal computer, web site design and management facilitates the bands needs on many levels such as booking tour dates, building a data base of fans, press, distribution and generally making the whole band package accessible to the world.

I called Lamotte for an interview and was struck by the industry savvy displayed by the young musician, though his day gig as a marketing rep has clearly helped him in the various hats he wears in the band. Their CD release party at the Sidetrack Café in Edmonton was well received and was captured for an upcoming video release. The video already has a destination for release, YNN (Your Music Network) is a video broadcaster focused exclusively on independent videos and are awaiting Living Illusion’s first video.

As any good marketer would do Shane got around to trying to place product here in Edson. As we SCENERS know, Scribes & Vibes Books & Music has a great Indie CD section and even brings live bands to the store so you can look for look for Living Illusions to be on sale here in our SCENE soon. If you can’t wait that long, and why would you when the band experience can be had right now by going to their website at www.livingillusion.com. Click on to the future of today’s musicians yourself and remember that it’s great to be SCENE and heard, here and there, everywhere on the world wide web.

By Lee Frezen

“One of the best songs is the untitled acoustic bonus track, which finally shows us some of the different facets of their songwriting ability.  If I had my way, this song would be treated as an integral part of the CD, a central track, instead of just being thrown on as a bonus as a kind of afterthought.  The disc is good, and we should all really watch out for these up and comers, especially if they take time to branch out into other genres and embrace a little diversity in their sound.”

7 out of 10
Brent Francis