CFCF

Mike Silver records as CFCF, an indie electronic producer based in Montreal, Canada. Before issuing his first commercial production in 2008, he had already built a profile through inventive remixes. A musician who trained himself, Silver has refined his approach across more than a decade, shifting from early hip-hop beats and chiptunes toward the Balearic disco of his debut album Continent in 2009 and later ambient and new age territory, such as the 2015 release The Colours of Life. Across much of his 2010s output, he displayed an earnest regard for styles frequently dismissed as uncool, among them soft rock and smooth jazz. Silver also receives shared credit for shaping the “night bus” notion, a web-born tendency defined by emotional atmosphere rather than fixed genre traits. At the 2015 Grammy Awards, CFCF earned a Best Remixed Recording nomination for his version of Max Richter’s “Berlin by Overnight.” Subsequent recordings have revisited his formative tastes, with Liquid Colours in 2019 revisiting the commercial dimension of atmospheric drum’n’bass and Memoryland in 2021 summoning multiple strains of electronica and alternative rock.

Silver began creating music at age 12. He first attracted notice under the CFCF name through a run of unofficial remixes in 2007, among them Crystal Castles’ “Air War,” Justice’s “Phantom,” and Cassie’s “Me & U.” These bootlegs spread solely online; their reception prompted official remix commissions in 2008 that encompassed Health’s “Triceratops,” Sally Shapiro’s “Time to Let Go,” and Heartsrevolution’s “Choose Your Own Adventure.” Once established as a remixer, Silver issued his first original CFCF production in 2009: the 7-inch single You Hear Colours on the Acéphale label. Pressed in a run of 500 white-vinyl copies, the single circulated widely on music blogs and generated anticipation for Panesian Nights, a seven-track, video-game-inspired EP that appeared the same year on the Toronto-based Paper Bag Records imprint. One track from the EP, “The Explorers,” was reworked with guest vocals by Sally Shapiro and issued as a four-track single. CFCF’s debut full-length, Continent, followed on Paper Bag in November 2009. The album presented a notably assured synthesis of Silver’s influences—Italo-disco, piano house, Fleetwood Mac, and Junior Boys—into a unified, emotive voice. Drifts, a six-track remix EP drawn from Continent and featuring reworkings by Junior Boys, Memoryhouse, Young Galaxy (whose former drummer Andrea Silver is Mike’s sister), and additional contributors, came next.

In 2010 CFCF drew further attention with inventive online mixtapes that wove together disparate strands—melancholic R&B and hip-hop, ambient and Krautrock, soft rock—most notably Do U Like Night Bus?, a mix widely associated with the moody “night bus” aesthetic. His own compositions began to move away from dance music as the voices of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Talk Talk, David Sylvian, and Peter Gabriel grew prominent. Rvng Intl. in New York released The River, an EP modeled on Popol Vuh’s soundtracks for Werner Herzog films. In 2011 CFCF also issued the more house- and garage-oriented EP Cometrue on the New York label UNO.

Silver began a sequence of EPs in 2012 intended to examine “the lighter side of our relationship with our surroundings.” Exercises, which contained a David Sylvian cover and addressed health-related themes, opened the series; Music for Objects followed in 2013. His second album, Outside, arrived in October 2013 and emphasized atmospheric, vocal-led pieces. Silver announced the “death of night bus” via the online Night Bus 3 mix late in 2014. In an unexpected turn, his remix of Max Richter’s “Berlin by Overnight” received a Grammy nomination for Best Remixed Recording in 2015. Radiance & Submission, an LP reflecting the Windham Hill approach of artists such as Michael Hedges, appeared on the Spanish label Driftless Recordings in late July 2015. Two weeks later the Canadian imprint 1080p released The Colours of Life, a more synth-pop-oriented CFCF album that had actually been recorded in 2011. The more acoustic On Vacation surfaced on International Feel in 2016.

In 2017 CFCF joined Montreal pianist Jean-Michel Blais for the EP Cascades on Arts & Crafts; the set included a reading of John Cage’s “In a Landscape.” SOBO issued Self Service, a three-song EP of lush, atmospheric dance tracks, in 2018. Liquid Colours, issued on Silver’s own BGM Solutions label in 2019, comprised a continuous suite of ambient jungle pieces. Memoryland, released in 2021, channeled several of Silver’s earliest reference points, ranging from Underworld and Basement Jaxx to Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth. Its 2022 companion, Memoryland Enhanced, gathered remixes, alternate versions, and additional material.