Part of Montreal's fertile experimental music scene,
Fly Pan Am have been one of the most deconstructivist acts signed to the Constellation label. Releases such as their eponymous 1999 debut explored minimalist, Krautrock-inspired rhythms and musique concrète-influenced approaches to composition, marked by abrupt interruptions in the music and bursts of electronic noise. The band went on an extended hiatus around 2005, but they reconvened near the end of the following decade and returned with their fourth album, the avant-noise-pop opus
C'est ça, in 2019, in addition to providing the score to the contemporary dance performance
Frontera, issued as a soundtrack album in 2021.
Fly Pan Am was founded in 1996, with the original lineup consisting of guitarists
Roger Tellier-Craig (then a member of
Godspeed You! Black Emperor) and Jonathan Parant, drummer Felix Morel, and bassist
Jean-Sebastien Truchy. A 1998 split 7" with
Godspeed preceded debut full-length
Fly Pan Am, containing five extended compositions that shifted from hypnotic rhythms to periods of near silence.
Sédatifs en Fréquences et Sillons, an EP featuring production and contributions by other members of
GY!BE, followed in 2000. The band's noisier, more dissonant second album,
Ceux Qui Inventent N'ont Jamais Vécu (?), arrived in 2002. Soon after,
Éric Gingras joined
Fly Pan Am, playing guitar and percussion, and
Tellier-Craig left
Godspeed in order to concentrate on
FPA. The band's third full-length,
N'Écoutez Pas, appeared in 2004, adding shoegaze and post-hardcore influences to the band's sound.
In 2006,
Fly Pan Am announced that they had gone on indefinite hiatus. All of the band's members continued with other projects.
Tellier-Craig and
Gingras founded psych-pop band
Pas Chic Chic, while Parant formed electronic rock unit
Feu Thérèse. During the 2010s,
Tellier-Craig released cosmic synth-drone as
Le Révélateur and more avant-garde compositions under his own name, while
Truchy ran the cassette label Los Discos Enfantasmes and released experimental music on labels such as Digitalis and Root Strata.
Fly Pan Am resumed activity in 2017, and they played their first concert in 14 years in September of 2018. A year later, the band released their fourth album,
C'est ça, which expanded on the sound of
N'Écoutez Pas to incorporate elements of black metal and psychedelia.
Fly Pan Am composed the score to
Frontera, a contemporary dance performance directed and choreographed by Dana Gingras. It premiered at the Grand Théâtre du Québec in November of 2019, and its soundtrack was released in 2021. ~ Paul Simpson