Celogen Confronts Devastation With Colour on New Album, Fire Alarm Himitsu!
Celogen, the solo project of Calgary art-pop tinkerer Dominic Demierre, released Fire Alarm Himitsu! recently, an album born from choosing life over ruin. Following a breakdown shortly after his 27th birthday, a year filled with grief, and a failed move, Demierre found himself at a creative and existential crossroads. Yet rather than succumb, he assembled a musical live wire, putting a spotlight on the darkness to see if it can’t ultimately make us laugh. The album represents a warped take on Sondheim-style showtunes filtered through the abstract electronic lens of acts like Justice and Mr. Oizo, featuring a host of friends who bring gutsy interpretations to resoundingly intimate material.
Demierre has spent nearly eight years evolving Celogen, from its 2018 origins as a triple-EP study in funk and new wave, through heartfelt folk, searing industrial, prog rock, and house, creating a style truly his own. Playing all instruments and handling all programming and production from his bedroom – in keeping with studio maestros like Prince and Trent Reznor – he draws on influences ranging from classics like Brian Wilson and Kate Bush, to modern auteurs like Sufjan Stevens, Daft Punk, and St. Vincent. Twin fascinations with jazz harmony and McCartney-esque melody pervade his songwriting, creating curious yet memorable tunes that explore consistent themes of trauma, nostalgia, and healing.
The first single, “Hey Dissolver,” melds an angular nursery rhyme to slippery synths and a pounding rhythm. Demierre sings alongside Victoria Silver and Sasha Bogdanov of chemical warfare, scrutinizing the inexplicable death drive. Demierre created cut-and-paste poetry from lyrics he wrote at eighteen, “a way of interfacing with lost selves, trying to tell them it doesn’t get easier, but it does get more natural.” Sophie Hébert contributes verses midway through, pleading for reconciliation with our own destructive elemental forces. “It’s strange to bring the people you care for into a decaying world,” Demierre reflects, “but watching them open up in front of the mic was tremendously rewarding.”
“The Oracle Bone” features backing vocals by Kue Varo and an absurdist poem recited by Raphaelle TBD on her phone, exemplifying the amateurish approach Demierre deliberately cultivated. “It had to be sincere,” Demierre states; “I wanted nothing to be contrived.” Written during a numb late-winter night, the track channels mounting tension through lyrics that joke darkly about the cyclical nature of cruelty: “Stop all the clocks / halt the flow of time like bile in the kitchen sink / oh, murkiest stain on the porcelain / like the oracle bone touched by Indian ink.” Over distorted drums and a lively horn section, the imagery becomes increasingly surreal – an evil king condemning the innocent, a sibyl being burned alive, a sandstorm tearing down a house filled with creation – building towards the recognition that, finally, “no one is cursed, and no one gives into their doubt.”
“Waif (Polyphasic Sleep)” delivers what is easily Demierre’s angriest writing, with a haunted piano melody, a delicate backup by Carlos Rojo, and an explosive synth solo that took a full day to compose. Written as a direct response to watching close friends being abused and escaping a toxic living situation, the track scathingly depicts an all-too-familiar type of malignant narcissist: “Did you notice your sting is a relative thing / and that mine is alive while yours barely survives / and the thunder protects me directly with the waif at my side?” Demierre sampled his own back catalogue to create the song’s insistent beat, wanting a chaotic-yet-catchy hook, and his performance builds to a scream that is viscerally real.
“Let me make no mistake: Fire Alarm Himitsu! comes from taking charge of my own life,” Demierre states. “I needed to work through what it means to be devastated. Even still, I knew I didn’t want to make a dour and gloomy record, and I knew I wanted to look outwards more than inwards. Enough of self-pity; what makes the other tick? How does anyone get past anything?” The result is a tremendously extroverted effort, creating a rallying cry for love and persistence. Despite the despair explored, Demierre insists: “I feel better now. I hope others will, too. I am sure you only get out of the mystery by pursuing the truth.”
Fire Alarm Himitsu! continues Celogen’s evolution as a deeply personal and emotional body of work. Demierre jokes that with each record you can tell what went wrong and what went right that year, but Fire Alarm Himitsu! transforms personal crisis into something colourful, vivacious, and more than a little electrified. It is, in the end, a reaching to touch others via the magic of pop songwriting—proof that no matter one’s wanderlust, the gift of human connection remains paramount.
Hi, Celogen! Good to see you again! Care to introduce yourself to the readers for those not familiar with your music?
And to you! I am a howling lunatic in a colourful padded room. I’ve been recording for nearly a decade now, working as a solo musician since 2018, after my band Painted Ivory broke up the year prior. I wanted to do jazz-funk anyways. Celogen has been my diary ever since, which is awfully exhibitionist of me; I keep trying to dance like nobody’s watching.
It’s the debt I pay to music, I suppose. Even very young, sound was always my escape, and I don’t expect I’ll ever stop chasing those dense alternate universes. That’s what this is all about, really, isn’t it?
You’ve described this album as choosing life over ruin. At what exact moment did you realize you were going to fight back creatively instead of folding?
Yes, there are some genuinely harrowing times behind this record. I kinda lost it. I swear I can be a fun person, honest, but I was not at all for a while. I very nearly wound up in hospital, and I pretty much scared myself straight.
That’s the closest we get to a definitive turning point; I went home, and I said to myself well that can never happen again, so what now? A lot of the songs already technically existed, but realizing I had to get through instead of out strengthened my resolve to make sense of them.
I’m not the type to scream and cry, at least certainly not anymore. I prefer dirty jokes. By putting a million nagging grievances in a character, I could step back and laugh at how ridiculous their sorrow is. I hope I’m laughing with them.
“Warped Sondheim filtered through Justice” is not a sentence you hear every day. When did musical theatre and French electro collide in your brain?
It’s always so clean on paper, isn’t it? I raised myself from a young age on artists like Aphex Twin and Autechre and Venetian Snares and Mr. Oizo. One of the perks of being a digital native. It’s less that I contrived to mix in Justice, if I even managed to, and more that I wanted to explore the sounds I’d loved so long ago. A homecoming, if you will.
Similarly, believe it or not, my folks met during a production of Annie Get Your Gun. That theatricality was an important part of my musical upbringing. One of the first sonic ideas I remember loving was the opening to West Side Story. Consequently, those chords are all over the record. I think I feel things in a very big way. A habit I have to bear in mind. Why not make things sound as grandiose as they seem?
So, it was quite seriously about doing what felt most natural. I have this private joke that my number one creative guide is confusion.
You play everything yourself in your bedroom. Is that about control, intimacy, budget – or a bit of all three?
Control, intimacy, and communicating the uncommunicable. I don’t really know how to get myself across but through sound. My move toward a solo project was pretty begrudging at first, but then things started to move so much faster. I just sit down and sort it out. Paul McCartney has some excellent tips on how to finish songs; it’s my personal gospel.
Maybe I’m a tremendously conflicted person, because sometimes I feel like Paul and John in one bizarre spirit. At least, certainly in mood and temperament. I’ll write something I think is pretty, then wake up the next morning determined to destroy it. Turns out both are permissible.
If Fire Alarm Himitsu! is the sound of a breakdown turned inside out, what does the next Celogen chapter sound like – peace, chaos, or something stranger?
A strange, chaotic peace, I’m sure. I really am doing better now, and it only makes me want to work harder. I’ve never fully understood needing to be sad and distressed in order to get things done, anyways; it’s always been a distraction to me. I don’t anticipate looking back with much fondness on the last half-decade, but I’m curious about the future. Curiosity is step one.