Initially releasing singles like “Seeing Is Forgetting” and “Half-Empty Happiness” under a decidedly intentional cloak of mystery, the Montreal-based DJ, production and electronic music artist duo The Beat Escape quickly received attention across the blogosphere for crafting moody and atmospheric pop that’s deeply indebted to 80s synth pop while evoking the somnambulant sensation of a half-remembered dream. Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site for a little while, you may call that the Canadian synth pop duo’s highly anticipated full-length debut Life Is Short The Answer’s Long is slated for an April 27, 2018 release through renowned indie label Bella Union Records, and the album finds the duo shedding much of the mystery that they purposefully surrounded themselves around during their earliest releases; in fact, the Canadian JOVM mainstays, comprised of Addy Weitzman and Patrick A. Boivin can trace the origins of the project to a college short film they collaborated together on. “We made a short oddball work; a video piece that followed two characters through a psychedelic waking dream,” the Canadian pop duo explain in press notes. And since that initial collaboration together, Weitzman and Boivin have worked together on a series of various creative endeavors that combined their interests in music and visual art, including famously, a lengthy stint DJ’ing in Montreal, which lead to The Beat Escape.
Interestingly, Life Is Short The Answer’s Long finds the duo thematically speaking coming full-circle back to their origins, somnambulant, waking dream-like inspired art; but while further developing the sound that grabbed the attention of this site and the rest of the blogosphere. “Sign of Age” the Canadian synth pop duo’s first single off their full-length debut featured propulsive and gently undulating Giorgio Moroder-like synths with a deliberate, textured and painterly quality that evoked gently drifting about in somnambulistic reverie. Continuing in a similar vibe, the album’s second and latest single “Moon in Aquarius” is a a decidedly motorik affair featuring a spectral melody — and while being clearly indebted to 80s synth pop, the song manages to evoke the mesmerizing sensation of a night time road unfurling before you, with white lines and dividers flashing by in a blur; the inexplicable sensation of things being simultaneously alien yet familiar; of the accumulation of the inescapable and lingering ghosts of one’s life, and the lonely moments in which they haunt the most.
