New Audio: Montréal’s Raveen Shares Lush and Atmospheric “in The Middle”

Montréal-based experimental pop outfit Raveen — founding members vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Eric Seguin, producer and musician Stokley Diamantis, along with drummer Peter Colantonio — can trace their origins back to 2013: The band’s founding members started the project after attending a Mount Kimbie show together at Montréal’s Société des Arts Technologiques (S.A.T.). In 2014, Peter Colantonio joined the project and finalized its lineup.

The trio spent the next handful of years playing shows in Montréal, Toronto, New York and several other cities while crafting and honing the material that would eventually comprise their full-length debut, 2017’s Always.

After sets at Montréal’s Festival International de Jazz, POP Montréal, the PHI Centre and the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, Diamantis was forced to return to the States, derailing the recording of their sophomore album. The remaining members adapted, collaborating with Gayance on her Polaris Music Prize shortlisted album Mascarade and hip-hop duo THe LYONZ. Seguin also played solo versions of Raveen’s live set while opening for Ghostly Kisses.

Understandably, the pandemic kept the project’s members separated by the US-Canada border for years — until recently. The trio went into the studio with BRAIDS‘ Austin Tufts to complete work on material that will be released over the course of the rest of this year and 2024. Along with collaborations with Nick Henriques, Lost Prince and others, the trio are relentlessly seeking ew and original ways to blend electronic music influences with vocal-performance-driven songs with feeling.

The trio’s latest single, and first in some time, the sublime “In The Middle” is a lush and atmospheric song built around glistening Rhodes, gently padded jazz soul-like drumming paired with Seguin’s plaintive and ethereal falsetto. Sonically resembling a synthesis of Cloud Castle Lake, Radiohead, Jeff Buckley and others, the song is an expression of the longing, yearning, confusion and regret that comes from love — and naturally, relationships –being confusing and uneasy.

“This song tries to provide a snapshot of the emotions we feel in those moments when love and growth fight for dominance in our lives,” the members of Raveen explain.