Tag: Montréal QC

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

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.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Le Couleur Shares Icy, Retro-Futuristic Visual for Glittery and Hook-Driven “Addiction”

Montréal-based pop outfit Le Couleur — currently founding members Laurence Giroux-Do (vocals), Patrick Gosselin (bass) and Steven Chouinard (drums) along with newest members Phillipe Beaudin (percussion, synths), Jean-Cimon Tellier (guitar) and Louis-Joseph Cliche (synths, vocals) — debuted over a decade ago with 2013’s Voyage Love EP. And since then, the Canadian outfit has released 2015’s Dolce Désir EP, their critically applauded full-length debut, 2016’s P.O.P. and 2020’s Concorde, which have seen them plumb the depths of human desire, while firmly establishing a glittery and vintage-inspired electro pop sound that draws from a variety of influences including 70s erotica, psychedelia, disco, yéyé and French chanson.

Their long-awaited third album Comme dans un penthouse was released earlier this year through Lisbon Lux Records. The album is a concept album that sees Le Couleur revisiting a past album character: Barbara, the assistant, who stole her former employer’s fortune on 2016’s P.O.P. Giroux-Do was drawn back to Barbara when upon returning from the Montréal-based outfit’s most recent UK tour, she began feeling that her life was “flat, beige and pointless” and developed a “fear of falling into a routine,” while Barbara’s “search for novelty, new feelings, an addiction” was roughly the opposite. 

Over the past year or so I’ve managed to write about the following album singles:

  • “Sentiments nouveaux,” a sleek, slickly produced bop that to my ears sounded like a synthesis of Tame Impala, VEGA Intl. Night School-era Neon Indian and Nu Shooz.

  • “Autobahn,” a song fittingly built around a relentless Krautwerk-like motorik pulse, glistening synth arpeggios and the Montréal-based outfit’s penchant for crafting razor sharp, catchy hooks paired with Laurence Giroux-Do’s ethereal and sultry delivery.

  • “À la rencontre de Barbara,” another glittery, disco and electro pop-inspired track that features glistening Giorgio Moroder-like synth oscillations, squiggling Nile Rodgers-like funk guitar, tight four-on-the-floor, and a relentless motorik-like pulse. But underneath the disco vibes is a tension that’s sultry, unnerving and irresistible while simultaneously nodding at classic spy thriller soundtracks and French chanson — thanks in part to a guest spot from Choses Sauvages‘ Standard Emmanuel. 

Comme dans un penthouse‘s fourth and latest single “Addiction” continues a remarkable fun of glittery disco-tinged tunes. Pairing a sinuous bass line with glistening bursts of keys, squiggling funk guitar and Laurence Giroux-Do’s ethereal and yearning vocals, the hook-driven “Addiction” wouldn’t sound out of place on Roxy Music’s Avalon, Duran Duran’s self-titled debut or Rio.

Continuing their ongoing visual collaboration with Nathan Nardin and his team at The NNS, which includes Steven Laudat and Alizée Legrain, the accompanying video for “Addiction” follows the similar icy video for “À la recontre de Barbara” feat. Standard Emmanuel and features eerie 3D black and white visuals and figures moving about in an entirely white, 80s-inspired futuristic world. The band describes the video as ““A white universe punctuated by lines, wire structures and motifs as an allegory of addiction and desire.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Lyric Video: JOVM Mainstays Elephant Stone Shares Ethereal Yet Politically Charged “History Repeating”

Brossard, Québec-born, Montréal-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Rishi Dhir is a grizzled indie rock and psych rock veteran , who has played in a number of bands, including The Datsons and The High Dials. He is also an in-demand sitarist and bassist, who has collaborated with Beck, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Black Angels, The Soundtrack of Our Lives, The Dream Syndicate, psych rock supergroup MIEN and countless others. 

Dhir founded the acclaimed psych rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Elephant Stone back in 2009. Along with collaborators and bandmates Miles Duper (drums), Gab Lambert (guitar), Robbie MacArthur (guitar) and Jason Kent (keys, guitar), the Montréal-based band has released six albums, including 2013’s self-titled album and 2020’s acclaimed Hollow. They’ve also released a handful of EPs including last year’s Francophone Le Voyage de M. Lonely dans la Lune. Each of those efforts has seen them develop, refine and firmly cement a sound that frequently incorporates elements of traditional Indian classical music with Western psych rock paired with introspective lyrics rooted in Dihr’s personal experiences. 

Dihr’s own journey in music frequently found him tryin to find a place that fit him, until he decided that what he made was worth sharing in the space that he had created for himself. “I only write about what I know and think I understand. As long as there’s Rishi, there’s going to be Elephant Stone,” Dhir says in press notes. 

2023 has been a busy year for the Canadian psych rock outfit: Earlier this year they released Dawn, Day, Dusk, which featured “Godstar,” and “The Imajinary, Nameless Everybody In The World.” Those two tracks saw the band continuing their narrative journey through crating material that deftly balanced human complexity with introspective themes paired with an evolving sound.

They followed that up with “Lost In A Dream,” a song built around a Tame Impala-like groove, while continuing their long-held reputation for dexterous guitar work, catchy hooks and introspective lyrics. “Creating ‘Lost In A Dream’ has been a thrilling journey for us, one where the fascination with dreams and their mysterious ties to reality took center stage,” the band’s Rishi Dhir says. “While there are subtle hints of inspirations like The Nazz’s ‘Open My Eyes‘ and Echo and the Bunnymen‘s ‘Killing Moon,’ this song is really about charting our own musical course. We’ve woven an auditory landscape that we hope allows listeners to dive into their thoughts and dreams. It’s all about losing yourself in the music, in the narrative it spins, and finding a resonance within your own life.”
 

Elephant Stone’s highly-anticipated seven album, Back Into the Dream is slated for a February 23, 2024 release. The album will reportedly feature a harmonious blend of introspective lyrics and entrancing melodies that represent the latest culmination of their musical evolution. Thematically, the album explores the mysteries of dreams, capturing the cycle of sleep and wakefulness. As the band’s Dhir puts it, “Our music aims to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown.” Previously released tracks “Godstar” and “The Imajinary, Nameless Everybody in the World,” draw from the themes of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, delving into the intricacies of human existence, creation, life and death while “Lost In A Dream,” is an exploration of dream-like states and blurred realities. 

Last month, I wrote about Back into the Dream single “The Spark,” a breezy power pop-meets-jangle-pop take on psych pop built around soaring electric guitar, strummed acoustic guitar and Dihr’s earnest, plaintive falsetto paired with the band’s unerring knack for crafting enormous, remarkably catchy hooks and choruses.

“Crafting a song is like tapping into a kind of magic that exists beyond the realm of the ordinary. I’m in perpetual pursuit of that elusive sensation—the spark that turns fleeting thoughts into something immortal,” the band’s Rishi Dhir admits. “’The Spark’ is my love letter to the art of songwriting, a tribute to the creative process itself. It’s about that serendipitous moment when time and space align, allowing you to capture lightning in a bottle.”

Back into the Dream‘s third and latest single “History Repeating” sees the band blending their dreamy, 60s psych sound with slick, modern and hi-fi flourishes: The track is built around an arrangement of swirling and washed out tambourines, jangling, reverb-soaked guitar, twinkling keys, glistening synths paired with Dihr’s plaintive delivery. But despite the song’s ethereal nature, the song lyrically is centered around Canadian indigenous history, serving as a plea for reparations owed to the country’s First Nations people.

“History has a haunting tendency to repeat itself, from the scars of colonialism to the rise of authoritarian regimes,” says frontman and songwriter Rishi Dhir. “It’s as if we’re trapped in a loop, forever replaying the same tragedies. ‘History Repeating’ is my way of confronting these harsh realities, particularly as they relate to my home country of Canada, which was built on the deeply troubling foundations of genocide and ethnic cleansing targeted at Indigenous peoples. In recent years, thanks to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the appalling truths about our past have been laid bare…This song serves as an urgent plea: let’s break the cycle. Let’s learn from the darkest chapters of our history to create a more just and compassionate future.”

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Montréal’s AN_NA Shares Uneasy, Industrial “So Far”

Formed over three decades ago, French-born, Montréal-based married couple and electronic music duo AN_NA have had a lengthy career in which they’ve used their experiences in electronic music, industrial and experimental music to create a unique sound of their own while playing with different styles and genres. They’ve found that their penchant for experimentation has given them the space to evolve as artists while keeping them open to new ideas and influences that could be incorporated into their own sound and approach.

Now, if you’ve worked in the music industry long enough, you’d begin to recognize that surviving for longer than a few minutes in a cutthroat industry is extremely difficult. The members of AN_NA have managed their lengthy careers by being true to their art — and making music that they’re passionate about.

At the end of 2022, the French-Canadian duo began to write and record new material, which they began releasing as a series of singles across the following calendar year, before being officially released as their forthcoming album More Pills.

Their sixth and most recent single of the year “So Far” is a brooding yet dance floor friendly bit of industrial electronica built around glistening synth arpeggios, a relentless motorik groove and twitter and woofer rattling thump paired with icily detached vocals and anthemic hooks and choruses. The result is a song that channels Detroit-based electronic music legends ADULT., complete with a similar sense of unease.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Montréal’s Das Mörtal Shares Chilly and Uneasy “NOSHAME”

Montréal-based singer/songwriter, producer and electronic music artist Cristóbal Cortes is the creative mastermind behind the rising chillwave/goth project Das Mörtal. Cortes’ music career started in Berlin, where inspired by Steve Moore and Aphex Twin, he began to craft a dark, nostalgia-inducing sound that meshes an array of influences including German techno, horror and sci-fi soundtracks.

Cortes has released a handful of EPs and albums that have amassed over 20 million streams on Spotify. He has supported those efforts with tours as an opener for Vitalic, Pertubator, Carpenter Brut and a lengthy list of others and as a headliner with stops across the States, Scandinavia and France among others. He has also played sets across the global festival circuit, including Osheaga, Transmusicales de Rennes, FME, and Meg Festival. Adding to a growing national and international profile, the Montréal-based artist has also received airplay in over a dozen countries and several influential YouTube pages.

While still rooted in the dark, occult vibes that has won him attention both nationally and internationally, Cortes’ fourth Das Mörtal album Bury The Sorrow is a change in sonic direction for the Montréal-based artist, with the material rooted in a sound that meshes elements of trap and trip-hop. Thematically, Bury The Sorrow may arguably be Cortes’ most personal to date: The album is informed and inspired by the isolation, unease and stress of the past couple of years, starting — naturally, perhaps — with pandemic-related quarantines. As the Montréal-based artist explains in press notes, Bury The Sorrow in many ways is about how difficult it was to actually make the album — with the album’s material constantly hinting at the unstable mindset that created it.

“NOSHAME,” Bury The Sorrow‘s latest single is a chilly bit of coldwave built around dense layers of glistening synth arpeggios, a relentless motorik groove paired with skittering four-on-the-floor, a remarkably catchy hook and Cortes’ achingly yearning yet detached vocal. While sonically recalling early Depeche Mode and others, “NOSHAME” accurately captures the boredom, unease, self-loathing and anxiety of someone who’s been isolated and left with their own pride, thoughts, memories and regrets.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: JOVM Mainstay Naomi Shares Sultry Revenge Fantasy “Hot Ex”

Over the past 18 months or so, give or take, I’ve managed to spill a bit of virtual ink covering rising Montréal-based multi-disciplinary artist, singer/songwriter and pop artist Naomi. After studying theater, Naomi first made a name for herself, when she began to land roles on both the small and big screen by the time she turned 14. She went on to study dance at École de danse contemporaine de Montréal. 

As a dancer, Naomi has appeared in and/or choreographed music videos for Rihanna, Marie-Mai, Cœur de Pirate and others, as well as for local dance performances. While she was establishing herself as an actor and dancer, the Montréal-based artist quietly developed a passion for singing — without giving herself permission to explore it fully. However, Cœur de Pirate, a.k.a. Beátrice Martin saw potential and took Naomi under her wing. 

Encouraged by Martin’s mentorship, the rising Canadian artist began to realize that she was never far off from making her own music. All she needed was a bit of a push. 

She signed with Martin’s Bravo Musique, the label home of JOVM mainstay Thaïs, Cœur de Pirate, Chocolat and lengthy list of local Francophone acts, and began writing her own original material. Since then, the rising Montréal-based artist has taken a bold leap into a career as a singer/songwriter and pop artist. Her first two singles “Tout à nous” and “Zéro stress” received airplay on WKND, Rouge FM, Arsenal, POP, CVKM and several other regional radio stations across Quebec.

Naomi went on to release four more singles over the next handful of months, which I managed to write about on this site: 

  • The club friendly, Rowan Mercille and Naomi co-written “Semblant,” which featured glistening synth arpeggios, skittering trap-meets-Carribbean beats paired with her sultry delivery and an infectious hook in a remarkably self-assured summertime banger, that simultaneously serves as the coming out party of a bonafide superstar in the making.

  • “Pas le temps de jouer,” a slickly produced and self-assured banger centered around shuffling reggaeton-meets-trap beats, glistening synth bursts paired with the rising Canadian artist’s sultry delivery and her seemingly unerring knack for crafting a big, razor sharp hook. Much like its immediate predecessor, “Pas le temps de jouer” is an accessible, summertime bop that will help launch a bonafide superstar into the stratosphere. 

  • “Okay Alright,” a sultry bop that continued a remarkable run of slickly produced, genre-defying, accessible pop bangers. But with an English language hook, the song seems to show an artist reading for an audience outside of the Francophone world – but while retaining the elements of her sound and approach that have won her fans at home and abroad. 

  • A new version of “Okay Alright” that featured a guest spot from Mike Clay, the frontman of Clay and Friends. Retaining the slick production and fun air of the original, the new version adds a bit more swagger and fun to the proceedings, and a reminder that Naomi is a star in the making.

The Montréal-based JOVM mainstay’s latest single “Hot Ex” pairs Naomi’s sultry delivery with a soulful house music-inspired production featuring twinkling keys, bursts of sexy Quiet Storm-like horn, skittering beats paired with a remarkably catchy hook. But despite the sultry exterior, the song is part break-up song, part tell-off, part revenge fantasy — full of the bitterness, disappointment over the relationship ending, the sadness over what could have been, the desire for revenge, the stupidly desperate and dim hope for reconciliation and more that can only come about from randomly running into an ex-lover.

“I started writing “Hot Ex” while chatting with Willy (Willy Wonder, who wrote the music) about an anecdote that had happened to me recently. I talked about it laughing, for once running into one of my exes wasn’t an atrocious story (!),” Naomi says about the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Elephant Stone Share Radiant “The Spark”

Brossard, Québec-born, Montréal-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Rishi Dhir is a grizzled indie rock and psych rock veteran , who has played in a number of bands, including The Datsons and The High Dials. He is also an in-demand sitarist and bassist, who has collaborated with Beck, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Black Angels, The Soundtrack of Our Lives, The Dream Syndicate, psych rock supergroup MIEN and countless others. 

Dhir founded the acclaimed psych rock outfit and JOVM mainstays Elephant Stone back in 2009. Along with collaborators and bandmates Miles Duper (drums), Gab Lambert (guitar), Robbie MacArthur (guitar) and Jason Kent (keys, guitar), the Montréal-based band has released six albums, including 2013’s self-titled album and 2020’s acclaimed Hollow. They’ve also released a handful of EPs including last year’s Francophone Le Voyage de M. Lonely dans la Lune. Each of those efforts has seen them develop, refine and then firmly cement a sound that frequently incorporates elements of traditional Indian classical music with Western psych rock paired with introspective lyrics rooted in Dihr’s personal experiences.

Dihr’s own journey in music frequently found him tryin to find a place that fit him, until he decided that what he made was worth sharing in the space that he had created for himself. “I only write about what I know and think I understand. As long as there’s Rishi, there’s going to be Elephant Stone,” Dhir says in press notes. 

2023 has been a busy year for the Canadian psych rock outfit: Earlier this year they released Dawn, Day, Dusk, which featured “Godstar,” and “The Imajinary, Nameless Everybody In The World.” Those two tracks saw the band continuing their narrative journey through crating material that deftly balanced human complexity with introspective themes paired with an evolving sound.

They followed that up with “Lost In A Dream,” a song built around a Tame Impala-like groove, while continuing their long-held reputation for dexterous guitar work, catchy hooks and introspective lyrics. “Creating ‘Lost In A Dream’ has been a thrilling journey for us, one where the fascination with dreams and their mysterious ties to reality took center stage,” the band’s Rishi Dhir says. “While there are subtle hints of inspirations like The Nazz’s ‘Open My Eyes‘ and Echo and the Bunnymen‘s ‘Killing Moon,’ this song is really about charting our own musical course. We’ve woven an auditory landscape that we hope allows listeners to dive into their thoughts and dreams. It’s all about losing yourself in the music, in the narrative it spins, and finding a resonance within your own life.”
 

Elephant Stone’s highly-anticipated seven album, Back Into the Dream is slated for a February 23, 2024 release. The album will reportedly feature a harmonious blend of introspective lyrics and entrancing melodies that represent the latest culmination of their musical evolution. Thematically, the album explores the mysteries of dreams, capturing the cycle of sleep and wakefulness. As the band’s Dhir puts it, “Our music aims to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown.” Previously released tracks “Godstar” and “The Imajinary, Nameless Everybody in the World,” draw from the themes of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, delving into the intricacies of human existence, creation, life and death while “Lost In A Dream,” is an exploration of dream-like states and blurred realities.

Back Into the Dream‘s latest single “The Spark” is a breezy, power pop-meets-jangle pop-like take on psych pop built around soaring electric guitar, strummed acoustic guitar, Dihr’s earnest, plaintive falsetto and the band’s unerring knack for crafting enormous, remarkably catchy hooks and choruses.

“Crafting a song is like tapping into a kind of magic that exists beyond the realm of the ordinary. I’m in perpetual pursuit of that elusive sensation—the spark that turns fleeting thoughts into something immortal,” the band’s Rishi Dhir admits. “’The Spark’ is my love letter to the art of songwriting, a tribute to the creative process itself. It’s about that serendipitous moment when time and space align, allowing you to capture lightning in a bottle.”

Directed by Laurine Jousserand, the accompanying video for “The Spark” is indebted to 1960s futurism while mischievously referencing the album’s overall themes: At one point we see opened eyes slowly drifting off to sleep as the band performs the song.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Montréal’s Choses Sauvages Share Icy and Uneasy “Pression”

With the release of their Emmanuel Ethier-produced 2018 self-titled, full-length debut, Montréal-based dance punks Choses Sauvages — Totalement Sublime‘s Marc-Antoine Barbier (guitar), Theirry Malépart (keys), Tony Bélisle (keys), Philippe Gauthier-Boudreau (drums) and La Sécurité‘s Félix Bélisle (vocals) with Foreign Diplomats‘ and Frais Dispo‘s Charles Primeau (bass) as a touring member — exploded into the local and provincial scenes. The album was a critical and commercial success with the album topping Independent Radio Charts across Québec while receiving widespread critical applause. In 2019, the Montréal-based outfit landed Association Québécoise de l’industrie du disque, du spectacle et de la video (ADISQ) Félix Award nominations for Alternative Album of the Year and Indie Rock Album of the year, with a Félix Award win for Indie Rock Album of the Year.

Over the course of 2019, the quintet along with touring bassist Charles Primeau supported their full-length debut with a relentless touring schedule across the province. And through this tour, the band quickly developed a reputation for a must-see live show that they’ve since brought across the global festival circuit, including stops at Reeperbahn, MaMA, FIMPRO, SXSW, Le Printemps de Bourges and Wide Days.

2021’s Choses Sauvages II saw the French Canadian outfit boldly pushing their sound more towards electronic dance music and nu-disco influences like L’Imperatice and Lindstrøm while still drawing from their love of funk, Bowie and Bee Gees while balancing a rigorous and meticulous songwriting approach with a rebellious spirit.

The acclaimed Montréal-based outfit’s latest single “Pression” (“pressure” in French) sees them continuing a new trend of pushing their sound into new directions. Sonically, “Pression” features a unique blend of their long-held disco punk sound with glistening and icy techno-like synth oscillations and subtle LCD Soundsystem/New York 00s indie dance punk scene nods. While being rooted in a dance floor friendly groove, the song possesses an underlying tense, unease air that should feel familiar to those prone to overthinking and self-doubt.

“At its core, ‘Pression’ is all about the anxiety and the sense of paranoia that accompanies it whenever you’re looking to prove yourself,” the band explains. “It’s that sense of feeling like you try and try but never quite succeed to hit that nail on the head. Even with how amazing this year has been, from making quite a bit of buzz at SXSW 2023 to embarking on our first-ever large-scale tour in the United States, that anxiety-induced ‘pressure’ still lingers.”

Directed by Philippe Beausejour, the accompanying video for “Pression” employs a distinct style through the application of several different animation techniques — i.e. paper cutouts, computer graphics, hand drawings and rotoscoping — and then processing the final video onto VHS, which creates a dated feel while translating the song’s anxious air into visual unsteadiness.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Medicine Singers is an experimental collective that can trace its origins back to a chance encounter between the Eastern Medicine Singers, an Eastern Algonquin powwow group and Israeli-born, New York-based guitarist and producer Yonatan Gat, who invited the group to a spontaneous collaboration on stage at SXSW 2017 after seeing them play outside the venue he was about to play. 

That chance meeting led to a five-year live collaboration that saw Gat and the Eastern Medicine Singers playing festival stages across the US, Canada and Europe — and in many cases, those shows saw the Algonquin powwow group bring powwow to audiences and places that had never heard of it before. 

The collective’s highly-anticipated self-titled debut was released last year through Yonatan Gat’s Stone Tapes, an imprint of Joyful Noise here in the States and through Mothland in Canada. Their acclaimed self-titled debut saw the Medicine Singers expanding into a full-fledged experimental supergroup that also included Swans’ Thor Harris and Christopher Pravdica, ambient music pioneer Laraaji, former DNA drummer and no wave icon Ikue Mori and the acclaimed trumpeter Jaimie Branch, who we tragically lost too soon last August, along with contributions from their co-producer and longtime collaborator Yonatan Gat.

Through their live shows and their debut album, the collective creates a spellbinding, mystical musical experience that cycles through a kaleidoscopic array of sounds including psychedelic punk, electronic music, acid jazz, spiritual jazz and a list of others. But, the genre-blurring approach is firmly rooted in the intense, physical power of the power of the powwow drum — and the Eastern Medicine Singers’ deep connection to their ancestral music and connections. The end result is material that lovingly honors and celebrates tradition while boldly breaking free from its restrictions — or in the words of Medicine Singers’ leader Daryl Black Eagle Jamieson: “These two cultures can work together, and blend together. We created something that needs to be out there in the world, to show people how we can work together and make something beautiful.”

To honor Indigenous Peoples Day, Medicine Singers share their latest single “Honor Song,” which features Sonic Youth‘s Lee Ranaldo (guitar), Godspeed You! Black Emperor‘s Timothy Herzog (drums), Swans’ Thor Harris (drums), Dean Running Deer Robinson (powwow drum) and Zoon‘s Daniel Monkman, a Canadian Ojibwe artist (backing vocals) — all of whom make their official recorded debut with the collective. Recorded live at famed Montréal-based studio Hotel2Tango, “Honor Song” was produced and mixed by Gat with help from Swedish electronics maverick and frequent Fever Ray collaborator Peder Mannerfelt and Josh Berg, who previously worked on albums by Kanye West and Earl Sweatshirt.

Building upon the collective’s groundbreaking approach to Eastern Algonquin powwow music by blending it with elements of spiritual jazz, psych punk and electronic music to create a wholly unique post-genre sound, “Honor Song” is a brooding song fueled by heartbreak, loss and remembrance. Shoegazer-meets-no wave guitar textures and swirling electronics are paired with the propulsive dynamism of the powwow drums and the Medicine Singers’ haunting cries. The song is meant to transport and connect both the performers and the listener to their departed loved ones wherever they may be.

“Honor Song” is a dedication to loved ones, who have passed, namely vocalist Arthur Red Medicine Crippen’s partner Kathleen, who he lovingly refers in a statement you’ll see below as Ms. cat, as well as their collaborator Jamie Branch. The track was recorded two weeks after Branch’s death, in a recording session she was scheduled to appear on.

On this, his recorded debut with the band, Lee Ranaldo remarked, “Joining the Medicine Singers, both in the recording studio and live on stage, has been a highlight of the last couple years for me. Breaking boundaries and stressing the shared similarities between indigenous music and more modern styles has been a profound, expansive experience. Recording sessions with Native Americans, Canadian First Nations and local Brazilian players, along with an amazing crew of sympathetic collaborators, has, I think, opened up new avenues and ideas for us all. I’m very happy that ‘Honor Song,’ sung so beautifully by Artie Red Medicine Crippen, joined by Zoon’s Daniel Monkman, is the first released example that includes my participation in the group. More to come!”

Medicine Singers’ Arthur Red Medicine Crippen says in press notes: “’Honor Song’ was given to me by my uncle Wayne Red Dawn Crippen. When my wife Ms. Kat wasn’t feeling well I used to sing it to her when she was in the hospital every night. Ms. Kat is from the Ramapo tribe of NJ and NY, she’s also Montauk, her name is Spirit Dancer. When we were in the KEXP radio station in July, that was the song that came to my mind – the ‘Honor Song.’ I didn’t know how sick Ms. Kat really was, until I came home and she passed away in August. This song lingers because we lost her since we recorded it. When I sing this song I think of her the whole time. It’s a part of my prayer, I end each day singing this song and I know she’s listening. ‘Honor Song’ is a travel song, when people leave this world they travel to another dimension, and songs like this reach them.”