Michael C Duguay & Quinton Barnes Present 'Ain't Apathetic/1975 Remix' EP

Today Quinton Barnes and Michael C. Duguay share Ain’t Apathetic / 1975 Remix EP. Barne’s “Ain’t Apathetic - Q’s Mix” is an icy footwork take on Duguay’s droned-out new age ballad that radically restructures the original into a chaotic, surging cyclone of beats and modulated vocals. With “1975 Michael C. Duguay 2011 Remix”, Duguay knowingly and expertly winks from behind a hazy fog of 2011-era bloghouse and indie trash signifiers, stopping just short of full-on dubstep ecstasy, and takes Barnes thrilling original album opener from, well, one drugged-out club to another. In either case, these tracks are both nothing you could ever guess but exactly what you would expect from these two enigmatic Canadian artists in collaboration.

Listen/Share: Quinton Barnes and Michael C. Duguay Ain’t Apathetic / 1975 Remix EP

At first glance, Quinton Barnes and Michael C. Duguay might appear to exist on opposite ends of the DIY Canadian music spectrum. While Quinton Barnes produces a unique and visceral blend of industrial hip-hop and cinematic R&B with lyrics that wrestle with contemporary blackness, sexuality, ego, and self-doubt, Michael C. Duguay wraps his distinctive poetic confessions in an idiosyncratic synthesis of cosmic country, new age, and post-rock adornments and maximalist ensemble arrangements. Upon closer look, however, these two industry outliers share a remarkable kinship. Both producers relentlessly create brazenly authentic music and neither can easily be easily classified by conventional genre or industry labels. Their shared one-of-a-kindness is precisely what makes them obvious peers, and now the two of them have come together to release a collaborative remix ep.

Barnes and Duguay first connected on social media during early lockdowns after both released new albums. Finding themselves in the same press cycle and emotional spirals of the first year of the pandemic, the two formed a genuine supportive camaraderie before meeting in person at shows in Toronto and Montreal years later and deciding to work together. After exchanging files from their most recent albums, Barnes For The Love Of Drugs and Duguay’s Saint Maybe, the two have produced the sort of collaboration that only these two fabled artists could come up with together.