Tag: Calgary AB

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Shane Ghostkeeper Shares a Loving Classic Rock-Inspired Tribute to His Late Uncle

Acclaimed Calgary-based singer/songwriter and musician Shane Ghostkeeper is best known for his namesake band Ghostkeeper, an act that combines elements of 60s girl-group melodies, country music, 90s indie rock, African pop and traditional indigenous pow wow music, and has developed a reputation for crafting some of the more thrilling and interesting music to emerge from Alberta over the past 15 years or so.

Ghostkeeper stepped out into the spotlight as a solo artist with the recent release of his full-length debut, Songs For My People. Songs For My People is a deeply reverential tribute to the music he absorbed while growing up in the Northern Alberta Métis communities of Paddle Prairie, High Level and Rocky Lane. The acclaimed Canadian artist recruited a close-knit crew of collaborators to help bring his songs to life:

He recruited longtime producer Lorrie Matheson, who has been a part of the Ghostkeeper world from the beginning, working on the band’s 2008 debut And The Children of the Great Northern Muskeg through last year’s Multidimensional Culture. His Ghostkeeper bandmates — JOYFULTALK‘s Eric Hamelin (drums), Chad VanGaalen‘s Ryan Bourne (bass) and Surf Kitties‘ Wayne Garrett (guitar, pedal steel) — are his backing band, and as Ghostkeeper says “their expertise and wide-ranging artistic sensibilities helped elevate this album form what could have been a simple tribute project to another fully-formed entry in our body of work.”

Songs For My People‘s latest single “Sunbeam” is a jammy, joyful and deeply loving synthesis of elements of The Band, 60s psych rock and Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Sunbeam” is a mischievously anachronistic tune that sonically wouldn’t sound out of place in your dad’s or uncle’s classic rock record collection, but while being remarkably modern. The result is as song that sounds a bit like the soundtrack for one of the greatest, weirdest adventures ever known — life.

Ghostkeeper explains that “Sunbeam” was written for his late Uncle Tucker, and the family he left behind. “I was unable to attend his funeral, so I wrote this to express my condolences and support for my Aunty Lorraine and my cousins.

“Tucker was a huge force in the Paddle Prairie Metis Settlement community and beyond, and he was a fiercely dedicated father and husband,” Ghostkeeper continues. “This song started as an acoustic lament and then morphed into a classic rock-style tune once the band and I hit the studio. This was not my intent. However, my Uncle Tucker’s spirit stepped in and said let’s make this a rocker. I have awesome childhood memories of his love for classic rock; Led Zeppelin, T-Rex, and CCR. I will forever appreciate his influence on me.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: L.T. Leif Shares Lush “Gentle Moon”

L.T. Leif (they/them) is a Canadian-born singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, who has spent stints residing in the Canadian prairies, Finland, Iceland and the Pacific Northwest — and is an adopted member of the Scottish DIY music scene. Their life and work is rooted in the self-sufficient spirit of the Canadian prairies and is informed by their travels.

Leif first cut their teeth with Calgary-based orchestral pop outfit The Consonant C. Since the group’s split back in 2011, Leif has explored different configurations and approaches, including experimental noise collaborations with the Bug Incision crew, playing sold-out shows with punk-hearted OK JAZZ, drumming with slacker-rock bands Hex Ray and Hungry Freaks, playing synths with Astral Swanns’ Matt Swamn, and even singing in a witch choir, Hermitess. Leif’s admirers including K Records founder and label head Calvin Johnson — they toured together with The Believer Magazine.

As a solo artist, Leif has collaborated with a collection of friends, releasing 2016’s double album Shadow on the Brim/Rough Beasts and her first release on Lost Map Records, last year’s Lost Cat cassette compilation of live and unreleased tracks, Introducing L.T. Lief. Throughout each of those releases, Leif’s spirit is collaborative generative, experimental and kind. The band members and the parameters of the project are ever-evolving, but as Leif says of the overall project, “to the friendships and the moment, we are grateful and stay true.”

Leif’s recently released album Come Back To Me, But Lightly was demoed in a room on Glasgow‘s Great Western Road and made intercontinentally with contributions both remote and in-person from pals near and far. The album features lush and sensual songs about “the body, loss as a decision, and knowing your own desire as a radical act,” the Canadian artist says. “It has a lot of imagery and thought from the northern places I’ve been living, and takes inspiration from minimalist writers, painters, and thinkers. This album comes from a six-year long space of change, from a life I was living as someone afraid of my own brain and body, into someone a lot more openly unshiney. Painful and seeping. I think that distance and decisions and loss and conflict are all things that can birth you into a different kind of being.”

Come Back To Me, But Lightly‘s latest single “Gentle Moon,” is a lush and beguiling tune rooted in a gentle, kindly spirit paired with an arrangement featuring glistening pedal steel, twinkling keys, strummed guitar and Leif’s expressive vocals singing lyrics that make references to the cosmos, the human body and longing. The song feels warm, deeply-lived in and unabashedly earnest.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: JOVM Mainstays Preoccupations Share Brooding and Lysergic Chad VanGaalen-Directed Visual for “Slowly”

Canadian post punk outfit and JOVM mainstays Preoccupations —  Matt Flegel (bass, vocals), Mike Wallace (drums), Scott Munro (guitar) and Daniel Christiansen (guitar) — just released their fourth album Arrangements today.  Longtime label home Flemish Eye will handle the release throughout Canada while the band will self-release the album outside of Canada. 

Initial work on Arrangements began in the fall of 2019, when Flegel and Christiansen met up with Munro at his Montreal-based Studio St. Zo. The trio wrote the album’s material and recorded all of the bed tracks together. Wallace then joined in and recorded his parts. With all of the instrumental parts laid down, the band planned to reconvene in a few months and decided what else the songs needed.

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck, the JOVM mainstays’ plans to reconvene in person were understandably halted. At the time Munro was in Calgary on tour with his partner when the shutdowns began, so he wound up staying with his parents for the next 16 months. He whipped up a make-shift studio in his parents house, and the rest of the record was finished remotely with Munro and Flegel sending tracks back and forth to each other: Munro’s vocal and keyboard parts were completed in that set up while Flegel’s vocal parts were laid down in New York. Holy Fuck‘s Graham Walsh mixed the record and Total Control‘s Mikey Young mastered it. 

Pandemic isolation helped to encourage the band to reconnect with elements of their earlier releases: Munro, holed up in Calgary with endless weed gummies, obsessively doubled keyboards on guitars and vice versa, sampled the recordings using an old Ensoniq keyboard sampler and made new parts out of the samples. While on 2016’s self-titled and 2018’s New Material, Munro was committed to making keyboards the centerpiece, Arrangements sees guitar returning to the spotlight — an instrument that he describes as much more fun and visceral to play. Throughout most of the album, Christiansen employs a unique tuning that sees him blurring and smearing his parts while Munro’s standard-tuned riffs provide melody and clarity. The end result is an album that sonically will see the band weaving their guitar-heavy origins with their more synth-based recent work to create what may arguably be their most intense and playful album to date. 

Much like its predecessor New Material, Arrangements‘ title is simultaneously literal and cheeky — a sharp contrast to their overall aesthetic. Thematically, the album is dark and direct: “The lyrics are pretty conspicuous and self explanatory on this one, but it’s basically about the world blowing up and no one giving a shit,” says Flegel. 

“I’m certain that I’ve been writing about the same bleak things over and over again throughout the lifespan of Preoccupations,” Flegel adds. “This time around the themes of isolation, anxiety, trepidation, imminent self-annihilation, fear of totalitarianism, and general malaise unintentionally all feel a little more relevant than they have in the past. I guess that’s not a great sign, but I think we’ve taken this culmination of dark things, and turned it into something that can happily be listened to loudly, and that is maybe even…fun?”

In the lead-up to the album’s release, I’ve written about two album singles:

  • “Ricochet,” a murky and dark churner featuring layers of glistening and distorted guitar slashes, rolling and lashing snares,atmospheric synth arpeggios and a propulsive bass line paired with Flegel’s mournful, embittered delivery and their penchant for rousingly anthemic hooks. And while being a slick and seamless synthesis of their earliest work and their most recent work, “Ricochet” manages to evoke the creeping, existential dread we have all felt lately — and perhaps continue to feel — during one of the most heightened and uncertain periods in recent memory. 

  • “Death of Melody,” a brooding and tumbling track centered around textured, reverb-drenched shoegazer-like haze, martial, machine-like rhythms paired with Flegel’s plaintive delivery fed through even more distortion. Sonically “Death of Melody” is a one-half funhouse in hell, one-half vacillating thoughts tumbling about in the mind of an anxious, uncertain person. 

Arrangements‘ third and latest single “Slowly” begins with a murky prog rock-inspired bass and drum driven introduction before quickly ditching it for brooding atmospherics that fit the song’s malaise, self-flagellation and uneasy acceptable of annihilation.

Directed by Chad VanGaalen, the lysergic animated visual for “Slowly” fully embraces the song’s dark thematic concerns: The video begins with Picasso meets Dali-like animations that transform from humanoid to other object and back. We see a man turn into a skeleton lying at the bottom of a grave; faces turn into natural flora and fauna and so on.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Indigenous Canadian Trio Double Rider Share a Sweet and Old-Timey Love Song

Siksika Nation, Alberta, Canada-based trio Double Rider (formerly Third Generation) — Hannah and Lennon Owlchild and Erin Many Heads — grew up in a rather musical home: their late grandfather Matthew Many Heads was a singer/songwriter.

The trio started the band back in 2014. And in their first year or so as a band, they quickly established a sound that draws simultaneously from classic and modern rock. Although, they do write their own material, they have also taken some of their late grandfather’s songs and recorded them in a new light with a modern context, as a loving tribute both to their grandfather and to their people. “Our grandfather gave us his songs and his music as gifts,” the members of Double Rider say in press notes.  “These gifts are full of stories and speak about love and loss; the history of our people and the present day.” The band adds “It’s real and speaks to historical trauma to native people; but emphasizes the solidarity and power that Blackfoot people have, has, and will continue to have.”

Within the band’s first few years, they started playing local festivals across Southern Alberta, as well as some of the province’s most notable venues including Banff‘s Rose and Crown and Calgary’s Ship and Anchor. And they’ve frequently played at Siksika Nation’s Annual Run as One Festival.

In early 2020, the Canadian trio went on their first tour, The First Nations Music Tour, alongside a collection of notable Indigenous artists. Although the pandemic forced them, like countless other bands to pause some of their plans and hopes, they were able to record and release their self-titled debut EP earlier this year, which features songs written by their grandfather.

The self-titled EP’s latest single is the folky rocker “Walk With Me.” Prominently featuring some shimmering Harvest-era Neil Young and The Byrds-like acoustic guitar paired with a strutting bass line, a simple yet propulsive backbeat and plaintive vocals, the song is a sweet, old-fashioned love song about finding that special someone, reminiscing about those early moments with them — and knowing that they’d be there with you through life’s most difficult and trying times.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Calgary’s Sunglaciers Share Brooding and Uneasy “Best Years”

Calgary-based post-punk outfit Sunglaciers can trace its origins back to 2017 as a caollaboration between its founding — and core — members: multi-instrumentalist Matthieu Blanchard and lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Evan Resnik. When they started the project, Blanchard had completed his studies in medicine, working in family medicine and addiction and Resnik had returned from a trip hitchhiking through France.

Since the project’s formation, the Calgary-based act has released a couple of EPs and their full-length debut, 2019’s Foreign Bodies. Foreign Bodies saw the Canadian post-punk outfit saw them crafting a maximalist approach that saw them blurring the lines between dazzling indie rock melodicism and icy, post-punk experimentation.

During that same period, the duo have seen a steadily rising profile: They’ve shared stages with the likes of JOVM mainstays Preoccupations, Omni and Daniel Romano while topping the charts of college radio stations across Western Canada.

When the pandemic put their touring plans on a then-indefinite pause, the band quickly shifted their focus to writing material, dedicating 40-plus hour weeks to music during the early months of 2020. Those writing sessions wound up becoming their sophomore album Subterranea, which Montreal-based purveyors of all things psych and trippy, Mothland released today.

Continuing an ongoing collaboration with Chad VanGaalen, who co-produced the album, Subterranea  sees the band eschewing the maximalist approach of their previous releases and crafting material with a decided laser focus. The end result is a frenetic, breakneck album of material that never overstays its welcome. “We tried to write vertically instead of horizontally,” Sunglaciers’ Matthieu Blanchard explains. “Our last album Foreign Bodies and the EPs that came before it had lots of long songs with different parts drifting back and forth. For this album, we decided to strip our songs down to two or three minutes with only a few ideas in each of them.”

“The bulk of this album came together during the pandemic and the changing of gears that we had to do,” Sunglaciers’ Evan Resnik says. “I was out of work and Mathieu was working half as much as usual, so we had lots of time on our hands. We flipped a switch and started playing music everyday. It’s a good indicator of how we were writing at the time while we wrapped our heads around some new gear and saw what came out of it. Essentially, we took all of our favourite musical tendencies and put them together. We were listening to a lot of McCartney II at the time and loved how eclectic it was, which led to us mirroring that vibe.”

With an extended timeframe to write and record, the album, which was recorded at Bruce Crews’ voiceover studio On Air Studios allowed Blanchard and Blanchard the opportunity to learn engineering skills and for the opportunity to experiment with swapping the instruments that each member typically played, a strategy that was employed during the writing and recording of Portishead‘s Third and David Bowie‘s “Boys Keep Swinging.”

The album also features contributions from the aforementioned Chad VanGaalen, Hermitess‘ Jennifer Crighton and Roman66′s Louis Cza The Black Greek God. The end result may arguably be Sunglaciers most urgent and cohesive batch of material, an effort that draws from the likes of Deerhunter, Total Control, and BEAK> among others.

In the lead up to the album’s release today, I wrote about two of Subterranea‘s singles:

  • “Avoidance,” a woozy and uneasy ripper full of guilt and recriminations delivered with a breakneck freneticism centered around a persistent synth-driven groove. And while sounding a bit like Plague Vendor and Atsuko Chiba, “Avoidance” lyrically touches upon themes of alienation, abandonment and guilt in a way that should feel familiar to most of us during this unusual moment of our lives. 
  • “Out of My Skull,” another breakneck track full of foreboding, uneasy menace centered around hypnotic, glistening synth arpeggios, a sinuous bass line and propulsive drumming paired with Resnik’s anxious delivery. And as a result, the song evokes a frustrated, restless boredom — and it should feel familiar for most of us, stuck at home with nothing to do, nowhere to really go and no one to see. 

“Best Years,” Subterranea‘s latest single features a guest spot from the aforementioned Chad VanGaalen and may be the dreamiest, most Wolf Parade-like song on the entire album with the song featuring wobbling synth arpeggios, a slow-burning grinding groove, glistening guitars and Resik’s plaintive vocals. But underneath, the seemingly placid surface is a gnawing and uneasy dissatisfaction.

“The song is about getting stuck in what comforts you and losing years inside passive contentment,” the band’s Evan Resnik explains. “Time passes, you realize all those plans you had for yourself have charred on the back burner or disappeared completely. You thought you were happy, but it was just the safety of your situation, a relationship or a decent job, that made you feel this way. Suddenly the world is dull and you feel like your time is up. I’m very afraid of that feeling and these days I try my best to avoid it.

The video was made by Calgary-based multimedia artist Ryan Kostel. He reworked old film footage and ran it through different media (weird lenses, old TVs, VCRs, etc.) to create a visual story for the song.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Calgary’s Sunglaciers Release A Feverish Visual for Breakneck Ripper “Avoidance”

Calgary-based post-punk outfit Sunglaciers can trace its origins back to 2017 as a collaboration between its founding — and core — members: multi-instrumentalist Matthieu Blanchard and lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Evan Resnik. When they started the project, Blanchard had completed his studies in medicine, working in family medicine and addition and Resnik had returned from a trip hitchhiking through France. Since the project’s formation, the Calgary-based act has released a couple of EPs and their full-length debut, 2019’s Foreign Bodies, which saw them crafting a sound that blurred the lines between dazzling indie rock melodicism and icy, post-punk experimentation, centered around a maximalist approach.

During that same five year period, the members of the Canadian post-punk outfit have seen a steadily rising profile, as they’ve shared stages with the likes of JOVM mainstays Preoccupations, Omni and Daniel Romano while topping the charts of college radio stations across Western Canada. Understandably, when the pandemic put their touring plans on a then-indefinite pause, the band quickly shifted their focus to writing material, dedicating 40-plus hour weeks to music during the early months of 2020.

Those writing sessions wound up becoming the Calgary-based outfit’s sophomore album Subterranea, slated for a March 25, 2022 release through Montreal-based psychedelic purveyors Mothland. Continuing an ongoing collaboration with Chad VanGaalen, who co-produced the album, Subterranea reportedly sees the band eschewing the maximalist approach of their previous releases and crafting material with a decided laser focus. The end result is a frenetic, breakneck album of material with songs that never overstay their welcome. “We tried to write vertically instead of horizontally,” Sunglaciers’ Matthieu Blanchard explains. “Our last album Foreign Bodies and the EPs that came before it had lots of long songs with different parts drifting back and forth. For this album, we decided to strip our songs down to two or three minutes with only a few ideas in each of them.”

“The bulk of this album came together during the pandemic and the changing of gears that we had to do,” Sunglaciers’ Evan Resnik says. “I was out of work and Mathieu was working half as much as usual, so we had lots of time on our hands. We flipped a switch and started playing music everyday. It’s a good indicator of how we were writing at the time while we wrapped our heads around some new gear and saw what came out of it. Essentially, we took all of our favourite musical tendencies and put them together. We were listening to a lot of McCartney II at the time and loved how eclectic it was, which led to us mirroring that vibe.”

With an extended timeframe to write and record, the album, which was recorded at Bruce Crews’ voiceover studio On Air Studios allowed the members the opportunity to learn skills in engineering and for the opportunity to swap the instruments that each member typically played, a strategy that was employed during the writing and recording of Portishead‘s Third and David Bowie‘s “Boys Keep Swinging.” The album also features contributions from the aforementioned Chad VanGaalen, Hermitess‘ Jennifer Crighton and Roman66′s Louis Cza The Black Greek God. The end result may arguably be Sunglaciers most urgent and cohesive batch of material, an effort that draws from the likes of Deerhunter, Total Control, and BEAK> among others,.

Subterranea‘s latest single is “Avoidance,” a woozy and uneasy ripper full of guilt and recrimination delivered with a breakneck freneticism and featuring a nagging and persistent synth line-driven groove, angular guitar attack, driving four-on-the-four, dryly delivered vocals and screams by Louis Cza. Sounding a bit like JOVM mainstays Plague Vendor and Atsuko Chiba, “Avoidance” lyrically touches upon themes of alienation, abandonment and guilt in a way that should feel familiar to most of us during this unusual moment of our lives.

Directed by the band’s Evan Resnik and Ryan Kostel, the video is a paranoid and uneasy fever dream in which the video’s protagonist is tormented by figures that he thinks are his friends — but prove to be in his own head.

“The video depicts a nightmare scenario with the protagonist in a panic as he is tormented by figures he thought were his friends, ultimately coming face-to-face with himself,” Sunglaciers’ Evan Resnik explains. “The fogged-out rooms, varied lighting, and overlaid shots pull the viewer inside this dreamscape and accentuate the anxiety and trepidation we explore in the song.”

“When filming ‘Avoidance’ I really wanted to mimic the anxious, unsettled mind,” Ryan Kostel adds. “Constantly shifting angles, I used long fluid shots and shifts in time to create an unbalanced sensation. Rapid fluctuations of light and color layered over kinetic and sometimes violent imagery help to convey the subject’s mental unease.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Astral Swans Teams Up with Julie Doiron on a Mesmerizing New Single and Visual

Matthew Swann is a Calgary-based singer/songwriter, best known as the creative mastermind behind the acclaimed recording project Astral Swans. With Astral Swans, the Calgary-based singer/songwriter specializes in narratives of lonerism, frailty, absurdity and whimsy, told with darkly comedic empathy and helpless concern.

Swann first rose to prominence in 2015 as the first artist signed to Madic Records, an imprint of Arts & Crafts Records, helmed by Juno Award-winning artist Dan Mangan. The label was created for the purpose of releasing Swann’s Astral Swan debut, 2015’s All My Favourite Singers are Willie Nelson. The album was released to widespread critical acclaim receiving praise from Noisey, who described it as “a stark, beautiful project that embraces darkness rather than shying away from it,” and from The Calgary Herald, who called Swann, an artist of immeasurable depth, incredible smarts, remarkable bravery and infinite charm creativity and insight.

2018’s Scott Munro co-produced Strange Prison was released to even more acclaim, receiving praise from Paste, Tiny Mix Tapes, Post Trash and a long list of others. Album single “CONTROLS” reached #1 on CBC Radio 3 and lead to a live performance on CBC’s q.  Adding to a growing profile, Swann supported the tours across Canada, Japan and Europe, including a packed show at the 2019 Reeperbahn Festival.

Swann’s self-titled album comes after three and a half year of touring — and well, a pandemic. Unlike his previously released material, Swann almost exclusively composed the album’s songs internally on solo walks through various cities around the world before the pandemic and in the same city repeatedly during the pandemic. As Swann describes it, “the melodies were written in my head, on long walks alone, like spontaneous flowers sprouted from the id; ecstatic downloads from a cosmic wind. Sometimes the lyrics appeared with the melodies, other times they were refined, after the fact.”

The self-titled album is reportedly Swann’s most upbeat, catchy and immediate album to date. Each of the album’s songs operates as an absurdist short story filled with the Calgary-based singer/songwriter’s wry observations of the sad beauty of mundane moments. The songs range from affirmations of joy amidst dread, composed in the streets of Shimokitazawa Tokyo, ballads of disorientated musings on uncertainty and addiction, birds heckling the anxious and heartbroken in Amsterdam’s Vondel Park and more.

The album’s first single “Flood” was released to widespread praise last month. Continuing upon that momentum, the album’s latest single, “Spiral” is a breezy and mesmerizing bit of cosmic folk centered around twangy guitars, atmospheric synths and a soaring hook reminiscent of Nick Drake — but paired with Swann’s woozy delivery. Julie Doiron contributes her gorgeous vocals as a backing vocalist. Lyrically, the song reveals Swann as a sort of zen trickster: underneath the playful and absurdist jokes is a deeper message about our existence, if you pay close attention.

“This was the first song I wrote after Covid quarantine, in March 2020,” Swann explains. “It’s about seeking out joy, and trying to escape pain in ways that backfire, within reference to the hamster wheel of late stage capitalism; consumerism, addiction, neoliberalism, the reduction of identity to social media posturing, etc ad infinitum. It’s about trying to escape something that seemingly has no escape, in spite of its glaring foolishness and lack, and the desperation which it brings to a person’s humanity. In the studio we went for a 1970’s wrecking crew polished country vibe speckled with synth exploration a la Stereolab and Broadcast. Once again Julie’s vocals are the cherry on top. When I sent the final album to Jim Bryson (who’s one heck of a producer in his own right), He simply replied “you have Julie Doiron on it, you’ve already won the war.”

Directed by Laura-Lynn Petrick, the recently released video for “Spirals” follows Swann walking through a series of sun dappled and surreal settings. At one point, we see Swann pick up a black and white photo of Doiron from a stream. Throughout, there’s a sense of Swann seeking something, even if he doesn’t quite know why, what or how.

The self-titled album is slated for an October 8, 2021 release through Tiny Rooms/Major Tom Records.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Emerging Vancouver-based indie pop act Vox Rea — siblings Kate Kurdyak (lead vocals, piano, guitar, bass), her sister Lauren Kurdyak (vocals, piano) their childhood friend Kaitlyn Hansen-Boucher (vocals, percussion) and Mitchell Schaumberg (vocals, piano, guitar, bass) can trace some of their origins back to when the Kurdyak Sisters and Hansen-Boucher singing in choirs together as children.

Lifelong academics at heart, the Kurdyaks attended a small liberal arts schools in the mountains, where Kate studied philosophy and Lauren studied ecology. And while at the school, they met Mitchell Schaumberg and started playing school parties under the name BEEF. Although they started the band as a lighthearted endeavor, the trio quickly realized the creative chemistry they all shared, and would later meet up all over the world for late night, liquor-fueled writing sessions that would eventually comprise Vox Rea’s earliest material. But more on that later. . . .

The Kurdyak Sisters and Hansen-Boucher formed the indie pop trio The Katherines, which released their full-length debut To Bring You My Heart back in 2017 through 604 Records. The album amassed over one million Spotify steams with songs off the album appear on a number of prominent playlists including New Music Friday, Pop All Day, Hot Hits Canada, Indie Pop Chillout and the Canada Viral 50 chart. The Katherines were featured in a number of major media outlets including Vice, MTV, Vancouver Sun, the National Post — and they’ve performed on morning shows in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver.

Accompanied by a top-notch backing band, the members of The Katherines have toured across Canada and have made stops along the national festival circuit. including Rifflandia, NXNE, Juno Fest, Canada Day Vancouver and Denim on the Diamond, among others. And adding to a growing profile, the trio had songs appear on TV shows like Orphan Black, Reboot and The Order.

The Vancouver-based quartet’s latest project together Vox Rea is a bit of a sonic and stylistic departure. Citing influences that range from Arcade Fire to Friedrich Nietzsche, the members of Vox Rea, the act’s full-length debut chronicles a group of artists trying to come to terms with their generation’s place in the larger human story — and thematically, the album’s material touches upon addiction, self-doubt. lust, identity. independence and grief. And as a result, the album can be seen as a soundtrack to the confusion and euphoria of coming of age in a world seemingly on the verge of annihilation. The band’s unique brand of noir pop finds them crafting material that features classically inspired string arrangements, three part harmonies, brooding atmospherics and a seamless mesh of digital and analog while underpinned with raw emotionality.

Written in collaboration between the Kurdyaks, Hansen-Boucher, Schaumberg, Luca Fogale, Begonia, and Joël, their Connor Seidel, Tim Buron, Derek Hoffman and Joel Stouffer-co-produced Vox Rea full-length debut was written in apartments in Vancouver, Toronto, Berlin, Montreal and Boston — and was recorded during a snowy winter in the Quebec forests.

Vox Rea’s latest single “Dose Me Up” is a slow-burning, atmospheric ballad centered around a stunningly gorgeous lead vocal and three part harmonies, twinkling piano, brief bursts of shimmering guitar, stuttering drumming and electronic plinks and a soaring hook. Sonically speaking, the track may draw comparisons to Cloud Castle Lake‘s gorgeous Malingerer, PJ Harvey and others but with all the sturm und drang of one’s 20s.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: AMAARA Releases a Cinematic and Expressive Visual for “Desert Storm”

Kaelen Ohm is a British Columbia-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and award-winning filmmaker. As an actor, Ohm is known for roles in AMC’s Hell on Wheels, NBC’s Taken, MGM’s Condor, Lifetime Network’s Flint and several others. Ohm is also the creative mastermind behind the the multimedia project AMAARA. Interestingly, upon receiving the news that she was cast as a series regular in the Netflix original series Hit and Run, Ohm left Calgary with six songs off her forthcoming album Heartspeak completed. (Of course, much like everything else Hit and Run was impacted by COVID-19: the series’ first season was filmed in NYC last fall and they were filming in Israel when pandemic-related quarantines put this on hiatus, four weeks out from wrapping up thee season.)

Officially released today through Lady Moon Records, Heartspeak continues her ongoing collaboration with Reuben and the Dark‘s Brock Geier, and the album is the result of ten days of stream-of-consciousness-based songwriting, recording and production in Geiger’s bedroom studio. The material can trace its origins to the British Columbia-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and filmmaker sitting at the piano or with a guitar first thing each morning until a song was found — with the two collaborating on production and instrumental work, spending each day laying down tracks. But at its core, the album’s material was written as the culmination of life-changing heartbreak and the end of a marriage, and was a result is a deeply lived-in meditation on love, grief and self-evaluation. 

I’ve written about two of the album’s singles so far: the slow-burning and brooding “Awake” and the shoegazy Mazzy Star and Lightfoils-like “Gone,” both of which came from a place of lived-in grief and heartache, in which each narrator learns to accept them as a natural part of life that have to be lived with and through. “Desert Storm,”  the album’s third single is an brooding track that has two clearly delineated sections: a sparsely arranged introduction with twinkling keys, that slowly builds up into a brooding and cinematic bit of synth pop with thumping beats, fluttering synths; but the song is held together by atmospheric electronics and Ohm’s achingly plaintive vocals.  Much like the previously released material, “Desert Storm” is informed by heartache — in particular, life altering moments that wound up deeply changing us and the paths our lives will take. And while in the middle immeasurable pain, we don’t see that what we’re going through at that moment is profoundly important. 

Directed, produced and edited by Ohm, the incredibly cinematic visual is shot in the middle of the desert and features the Canadian-born artist expressively dancing with a collective of acclaimed dancers including Denzel Chisolm, Sohey Sugihara, Alekz Samone, Sarah Francis Jones dancing an expressive, hip-hop tinged moves choreographed by Tatiana Parker. Each and every moment from the dancers feels like a cathartic release of something previously pent up. 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: AMAARA Releases Two Gorgeous and Dreamy Videos

Kaelen Ohm is a British Columbia-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and award-winning filmmaker. As an actor, Ohm is known for roles in AMC’s Hell on Wheels, NBC’s Taken, MGM’s Condor, Lifetime Network’s Flint and several others. In 2018, Ohm appeared in Charles Wahl’s short film Little Grey Bubbles, which premiered at ten Oscar qualifying festivals worldwide, including SXSW. The film was featured as a Staff Pick on Vimeo, earned best actress and best short film award nominations and received widespread praise from critics and blogs across the globe. 

Ohm is also the creative mastermind behind the the multimedia project AMAARA. Upon getting the news that she was cast a series regular in the new Netflix original series Hit and Run, Ohm left Calgary with six songs off her forthcoming album Heartspeak completed. Hit and Run was filmed in New York last fall and was filming in Israel and  was put on pause, four weeks out from wrapping up their first season as a result of COVID-19 quarantines and social distancing guidelines. 

Heartspeak, which continues her ongoing collaboration with Reuben and the Dark’s Brock Geier, is the result of ten days of stream-of-consciousness songwriting, recording and production in Geiger’s bedroom studio. Written completely by Ohm, the material can trace its origins to the British Columbia-born, Los Angeles-based singer/songwriter, musician, actor and filmmaker sitting at the piano or with a guitar first thing each morning until a song was found — with the two collaborating on production and instrumental work, spending each day laying down tracks. Written as a culmination of a life-changing heartbreak and the end of a marriage, the album’s material is a meditation on love, grief, freedom and self-evaluation. 

Slated for an August 14, 2020 release through Lady Moon Records, Ohm and Geier have released two singles from the album. “Awake,” a slow-burning and brooding single centered around shimmering guitar, twinkling keys, a soaring hook and Ohm’s plaintive vocals — and “Gone,” a decidedly shoegazey track featuring shimmering synth arpeggios, thumping beats. And while respectively bringing Mazzy Star and Lightfoils to mind, both tracks come from a place of lived-in grief and heartache, accepting them as a natural part of life that one experiences and learns to live with — and through. 

The accompanying videos were directed and by Ohm. “Gone” employs a simple concept of Ohm performing the song by herself in the desert — but the video features a cinematic sweep that makes its creator seem tiny. “Awake,” features Ohm traveling a surreal and unusually empty New York. And while capturing the experience of wandering New York during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a commentary of on how the jarring experience of realizing one’s own illusion of perfection can be an awakening experience.