Jean-Philippe Goncalves

Jean-Philippe "Jean-Phi" Goncalves (born c. 1978) is a French composer, percussionist, and record producer based out of Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

An active member of Montreal's electronic music scene, Goncalves provides percussion for the bands Afrodizz, Plaster, Le Golden and Beast. As a producer he has worked with many French-speaking Quebecer musicians and in 2005 he collaborated with American recording artist Lauryn Hill.

The musician was particularly busy at the 2005 Festival de Musique Émergente (FME)—an annual new music festival held in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. During the festival he performed on 3 consecutive days for Afrodizz, Plaster and Dan Thouin respectively, causing one reporter to christen him "the star of the FME".

Plaster

Plaster was formed in 2001 by Goncalves and keyboardist Alex McMahon; a year later they were joined by bassist François Plante, also of Afrodizz. The trio's sound has been described as a mixture of electro-jazz, funk, and drum and bass.

Their first album, First Aid Kit, was released in 2005 and won the ADISQ award for Best Electronic or Techo Album in 2006.

In late 2010, after taking a temporary hiatus from his work with the band Beast, he stated that he would be rejoining the band Plaster. Formed in 2002 by Montreal jazz guitarist, Gabriel Aldama, Goncalves has been the band's drummer since its inception.

The band has released two albums: Kif Kif in 2004, and Froots in 2006.

Beast

Goncalves first began working with vocalist Betty Bonifassi in 2006 on a project for the video game company Ubisoft in 2006. Like Goncalves, Betty Bonifassi was originally from France and had been an active member of the Montreal music scene for many years. Goncalves stated in an interview that the split was not due to any sort of quarrel between himself and Bonifassi.

Other projects

Goncalves has worked as a producer for many French-speaking Quebecer musicians, including Pierre Lapointe, Jean-Pierre Ferland, Ariane Moffatt and Daniel Bélanger. Later that same year Goncalves and his Plaster bandmates founded XS, a company specializing in composing music for use in film, advertising and multimedia projects. One of the company's first projects included creating sound effects and theme music for the grameshow Le tricheur (the cheater) which premiered on the Canadian French language television network TVA in January 2011.

He has also composed music for a number of films, including Carface (Autos Portraits), One of the Guys (Ti-Gars), Jouliks and Billie Blue (Cœur de slush), and had a small acting role as Jean-Luc Godard in the 2013 film Hunting the Northern Godard (La Chasse au Godard d'Abbittibbi).