WORK: Red Bull Music Academy’s animated series The Junction

Red Bull Music Academy has teamed up with leading Canadian animators to launch a six-part film series about musical collaborations.

The Junction was launched to coincide with the Academy’s latest residency in Montreal. Each short is narrated by a pair of Canadian musicians, who discuss their creative partnership and the story behind how they met.

The first film in the series, Sample Gumbo, is narrated by Montreal-based producer Kaytranda and Toronto R&B singer/producer River Tiber. It was animated by Hamish Lambert using brightly coloured crayons.

Brandon Blommaert and Josh Holinaty have created an abstract 3D world for Exploding Synapses – a film narrated by DJs and Fool’s Gold Records A-Trax and Nick Catchdub:

And director Patrick Dyon has created some charming 2D characters for Ma, Can I Sing With the Band, in which Chilly Gonzalez and Peaches discuss how they were inspired by their musical differences after meeting in a basement:

Films were created in partnership with arts publication Booooooom with support from the National Film Board of Canada. A new film will be released online each week – other shorts in the series were created by Dylan Glynn, Malcolm Sutherland and Kyle Mowat, and will feature musicians Jessy Lanza and Jeremy Greenspan; Lunice & Ango and 247 esp and BadBadNotGood and Samuel T. Herring.

Red Bull Music Academy takes place in Montreal until October 28 – for details, see redbullmusicacademy.com. You can watch all of the films in the series on YouTube or follow the Academy on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.