Tag: Toronto Canada Page 1 of 2

MuteChoir

As a fellow over-thinker, I know this problem all too well. We become so overly sensitized to other people’s ideas and opinions, to that clamoring of outside voices, that we can no longer hear the quiet but essential inner voice. Decisions are mulled over for far too long, we begin to second-guess ourselves, we hold others’ opinions in far greater esteem than our own, and before we know it, we’re lost and without a clear sense of direction.

Set against a backdrop of ’80s synth-pop that wobbles around and then happily veers off into a dreamy psychedelic excursion with string quartet interlude, “Election Season” is an exploration of ignoring all the outside voices and listening to your heart to show the way.

Election season is a song that came as a sort of emotional response to a time in my life where I had a lot of different voices around me telling me the versions of myself that I should be, and that really messed with my head for a while. It left me in a place in my music and in my life where I felt very indecisive, like I didn’t have an objective view of who I was or what I wanted. The song came as a sort of response to that feeling. The music was a result of me rejecting that notion and not really thinking too much of what the song was supposed to be, but just letting it come out naturally..”

Mute Choir is the brainchild of Sam Arion, who was born in Iran and raised in suburban Toronto. He’s a man of many moods, from the alt-pop of “The Pedestrian” to the thoughtful introspection of “Behind the Bars” to the dancy indie rock of “Minefield” to the expansive “Election Season.” This promises to be a wide-ranging and eclectic first album.

“Election Season” is the second single from Mute Choir’s debut album Behind the Bars, which will be released on June 8. Until then, stream “Election Season”, immerse yourself in its depths and listen to yourself. You have a lot to say.

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Lavender Child searches for truth amid ‘Happy Illusions’

By julie

On November 14, 2017

In Indie Music

LavenderChild

“Happy Illusions” by Lavender Child is inspired by unsettled feelings bubbling up from a feel-good outdoor music festival. Among lush forests, magical trails, enchanting art installations, nature and music, the narrator wonders about the honesty and integrity of those in attendance. What happens when you take a utopian setting and add the human element? Confessions of love flowed in this idyllic scene, but were they to be believed? And how did the unknown nature of people’s hearts affect the natural environment? Lavender Child’s search for authenticity comes across strongly in this examination of human interaction with each other, and with nature.

Lavender Child is the project of Caitlin Comeau-Jarvis, a Toronto-based artist. She creates ethereal dreamscapes while guiding her listeners to “reconnect with nature, community and themselves.” In “Happy Illusions,” gentle piano, strings and percussion set a reverant tone, while the artist’s otherworldly voice plays delicately at the edges and then soars like a bird. For the video, she worked with Toronto director Dylan Mitro, who conceptualized the stunning video.

Comeau-Jarvis explains the song’s inspiration:

The unsettling ambivalence of the place came from the juxtaposition between the people and the peaceful surroundings. My head spun from the irony both in relationships to nature and each other. I heard so many people say that they loved one another, which conceptually was beautiful but realistically had me questioning the authenticity of the community… ‘Happy Illusions’ is a song about the experience of love and the human connection to nature and whether that connection can be genuine when under the influence.

“Happy Illusions” is the debut single from her forthcoming EP, Reflections.

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Introducing… Sarah Cripps

By julie

On September 1, 2017

In Indie Music

Photo by Ryan Nolan

Penetrating and haunting, Sarah Cripps’ new song, “Leave Behind,” seduces and intoxicates with its eerie and mournful guitar and the deep shadows in Cripps’ voice. It is the lead single from her upcoming album.

During the making of this album, I was going through a turbulent transition in my life. I was struggling with the perception of who I thought I was supposed to be, and who I truly am. It left me feeling pretty dark at times. It was making this record that helped me decide I would embrace the darkness and the weirdness. – Sarah Cripes

Based in Brigton, Ontatio, Cripps is a Toronto Independent Music Award winner and a powerful new talent in the mainstream country music realm. However, country music is only part of her story, and you can hear the richness of her musical vision in this one song. As she herself describes the search of her strength as an artist, “I pulled myself out of the perfect box I thought I had to fit into. I found a way to create my own narrative and not subscribe to the one that is often forced on young women. Although “Leave Behind” is a reflection of losing myself and some of my lowest moments, ultimately, it’s the turning point that gave me the guts to just embrace the weirdness.”

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Introducing… Andi

By julie

On August 25, 2017

In Indie Music

AndiMusic

Ah, the optimism and fortitude of youth! And yet, Toronto-based Andi, in her most recent new song “Half Home,” sounds lonely and not so certain about her chosen life as a musician. She also sounds not so certain about her own abilities and none too excited by her current lifestyle of traveling between recording sessions and rehearsals, alternating between sleeping on friends’ couches and crashing in her car. “Half Home” suggests a state of flux, a sort of earth plane “bardo,” where you don’t really belong anywhere. Meanwhile, there’s change in the personality and progress is being made, but it’s not always perceptible. For an impatient youth, the clock might not seem to be moving at all.

“I call on the phone just to reach a busy tone
I call on the phone just to feel like I’m not alone.

I’m calling just a little bit older, a little bit bolder
and still I’ve got nothing to say
I’m calling just a little bit older, a little bit bolder
and still I’ve got nothing to say
I’ve gotten just a little bit colder
I needed a shoulder to help get me through the day.
I’m afraid, I’m afraid
I’m the same girl as yesterday.”
– Half Home

Andi’s Sketches EP, released just last year, was her debut. It made the top 4 in Canada’s national CBC Searchlight competition. She describes the inspiration behind the new single as “being young and in a transitionary stage of life.” The song has a pop feel, but with touches of other genres that include an R&B swagger that adds dimension and gives Andi her own unique sound. In her early 20s, Andi writes and produces her own music. Along with supple, smoothly sliding vocals, the instrumentation, with its neat, tasty guitar and bass lines, raise the level beyond the average pop song to something more progressive.

Andi is currently working on her full-length debut, inspired by weighty world issues and her personal connection with them. She tackles subjects such as women’s empowerment and autonomy, sociey’s ideas about masculinity, LGBTQ+ issues and her life experience as a bisexual woman. She observes and writes about the human condition, including emotional struggles, self-conflict and love, while championing the individual’s quest for empowerment and acceptance.

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Introducing… Anna Atkinson

By julie

On October 18, 2016

In Indie Music

In the first single from her new album, Anna Atkinson takes us on a trip down memory lane. Wistful nostalgia never sounded so good, with her angelic voice and sparse, old-timey strings. It’s a quiet story, beautifully told, of being a descendant of family members who were craftspeople and creators, whether it was a pair of shoes, wood carvings, visual art, quilts or a family feast. Through the ages, they survived war, poverty and suffering. As we watch her revisit her family home, now boarded up and derelict, we see a quilt being sewn. It’s sad and hopeful at the same time, filled with sweet remembrance, admiration and a lot of love. It seems to be a celebration of humankind’s enduring spirit, to continue to create through hardship, and especially the idea of creating a vibrant and meaningful life together as a family.

“When we weave our sad stories together
Maybe we could knit a sweater
Gather silk scraps and cashmere
Embroidery threads
Morsels of blankets all tattered, in shreds
And the quilts that our mothers unfurled on our beds
When we were young”
– When We Were Young

As Atkinson explains,

“When I was a child, my mother had a subscription to ARTnews, and one edition had an article about a Canadian artist — Janet Morton — who knit a sweater for a house on Ward’s Island. I thought it was the most amazing concept and it was the initial inspiration for the song — its working title (Sweater For A House) came from that.”

Her new album is called Sky Stacked Full, and it features David Occhipinti. She wrote the songs over a 10-year span and spent five months recording at CBC Studio 211 in Toronto.

<a href="http://annaatkinson.bandcamp.com/album/sky-stacked-full">Sky Stacked Full by Anna Atkinson with David Occhipinti</a>

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Brooklyn Doran and The Villain

By julie

On August 27, 2016

In Indie Music

We first introduced you to Canadian musician Brooklyn Doran a few short months ago, but as her debut album These Paper Wings is due out on September 9, we’re revisiting this talented songstress to pass along a lovely second single from this upcoming release. It’s called “The Villain” and it stirs up some strong emotions about a relationship misadventure. It’s sad, but out of pain comes renewed strength and determination.

The music on the 7-track album straddles the line between folk and adult contemporary, but with a sharp edge and a strength of spirit not always found in the former and typically never found in the latter. As she describes it, the songs each represent a different time and place in her life within the past three years, and are about the different stages of being in love (or out of love). The video was filmed at Scarborough Bluffs in Toronto by Public Space Productions, created using a series of cinemagraphs.

Doran will be touring around Canada to support These Paper Wings, starting with an album release show on September 10 in Toronto at The Drake Hotel with Ukae and A Fellow Ship. For more information and a complete listing, see Bandsintown.

Track Listing

Not the Time
Sing Me Your Song
I Found A Home
Paper Wings
Haunt Me
The Villain
Say The Worlds

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Introducing… Darling Cora

By julie

On August 20, 2016

In Indie Music

Darling Cora (a.k.a. Darlene Cuevas) has a secret weapon — it’s an impossibly supple voice that conjures the mysteries of the ages. It soars, glides and flutters overhead with the grace and fluidity of birds whle deftly accompanied by electric and acoustic guitar and strings with occasional touches of soft percussion that combines the best of classical, folk, jazz and shades of world music visited by exotic gypsies from a bygone era. Her astonishing debut album, Heart Strung Out, is a rich bouillabaisse of all these ingredients, yet the music never upstages her hypnotic vocals. Instead, it complements her beautifully, creating magical settings for her to truly shine.

As the album flows, just when you think you’ve figured out her sound, she suddenly surprises (such as with the tremendous power and passion of “Three Pennies Faling” and “Charade”). The album spans a range of emotions. As the artist herself explains, her debut is about “a young woman figuring out matters of the heart, especially to do with love — the good, the bad, the sweet, and the ugly. I wrote about different facets of loving, and how its lack or excess can wear upon the heart and psyche.”

Currently based in the Toronto area, Darling Cora has a pair of shows coming up — at The Cameron House in Toronto on September 23 and at the Red Brick Cafe in Guelph on October 8.

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Says Ronley Teper and The Lipliners, Have Faith

By julie

On August 9, 2016

In Indie Music

Even without its accompanying psychotropic video, a mixed-media crazed cacophony masterminded by Davide Di Saro, the song “Faith” by Ronley Teper and The Lipliners is a very curious creature. It has a magical fairy princess vocal that innocently winds its way into the subconscious — “here comes faith, like a river to the soul,” while the music slowly builds into an ‘everything-but-the-kitchen-sink circus tent orchestra with a choral accompaniment of woodland hippies. The video itself, comprised of pencil and water color drawings, flash animation and 3D graphics, has a kind of Beatles ‘Yellow Submarine’ vibe, though perhaps with just a tinge of madness.

The message is of hope and faith in the face of unavoidable change toward the unknown. Here is the story of this fantastic voyage:

“The adventure unfolds among a living landscape representing the paradoxical friction of force between our real world and dreams to achieve. Within this world we gracefully follow a fantastical character roaming with his soul, toward an unalloyed river which streams silver shimmers of faith and optimistic peace. Ultimately the adventurous soul, embarks on a floating mountain disappearing in the distance while we learn how to respectfully pose an eternal farewell to what we have left behind.”

The video is part of an 8-year collaboration between Di Saro and Ronley Teper, performance artist turned musician. Their trilogy of animated films (this is the first) came out of massive upheaval in her life — a time when she got rid of everything from her clothes and belonging to her nostalgia and memories. The song “Faith” was a reminder to herself to accept the changes that ushered in a new chapter in her life and to overcome them.

Originally from South Africa and raised in Toronto, Ronley began playing guitar in high school to accompany her poems and monologues. She released her debut Stories From The Tray in 2001, which told the story of a naive waitress serving unsavory customers. Her follow-up, Cornered In The Alley, explored both universal love and everyday love, with all its ugly and beauful experiences. In her work with her many collaborators, she experiments with music as performance art.

Teper collaborates with a revolving cast of Canada’s finest artists in the indie music scene (in addition to puppets) to create art that combines poetry, comedy, magic, theatrics and good old-fashioned storytelling. In her new album, 20 short musical monologues are featured that were workshopped during improvisational shows where she and her musicians create startling new musical worlds.

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Introducing… Place Erupt

By julie

On August 6, 2016

In Indie Music

There’s something about a cello that can make any music seem both sophisticated and somber. That’s certainly true for the song “Mayday,” a track from the debut album Breathe A Storm from Toronto ensemble Places Erupt, out August 20th. Previously known as The Benefit of the Free Man, this Canadian quintet is a classy outfit. With the strings and traditional classical/folk harmonies, at times they sound like something straight out of Renaissance. At other times, they really rock out, even dipping into prog rock and experimental terrain. The subject matter of the aforementioned song includes the following line in it — “Checking on the pulse/ Beat reporter/ Plastic tentacles / Reaching in.” It came about when Piazza was experiencing heart palpatations and had to wear a heart monitor for a few days to monitor his heart activity. Traditional instrumentation and modern concerns. However, the song is ultimately about how hard it is to shake things off and how difficult it can be to compartmentalize that which disturbs you. Amen to that.

<a href="http://placeserupt.bandcamp.com/album/breathe-a-storm">Breathe A Storm by Places Erupt</a>

Having listened to their amazing forthcoming album, I’ll call their music “fierce progressive rock/folk/classical.” They veer madly from hushed to hypnotic to hellfire fury, and often within the same song. It’s a unique sound that really gels.

The band comprises Anna Jarvis (cello), Greg O’Toole (guitar, vocals), Lee Piazza (vocals), Mike Legere (percussion) and Katie Wolsley (violin). For those in the Toronto area, Places Erupt will be hosting their album release party at Burdock Tavern in Toronto on August 20th.

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Introducing… The Elwins

By julie

On November 9, 2015

In Indie Music

There’s quite a cheery indie-pop sound that permeates what, at least lyrically, seems to be rather sad sentiments in The Elwins’ official video for “So Down Low.” This single, which was on the Canadian commercial radio charts for six months, was the first to come from their album Play For Keeps, the follow-up to their debut And I Thank You, released back in 2012. In addition to the upbeat music, there’s an equally upbeat menagerie of strange creatures on post-in notes. What that means is that you might not want to watch this video late at night.

Hailing from Ontario, Canada, The Elwins began in 2006 as the duo of Matthew Sweeney and Travis Stokl, releasing their debut EP in 2008. They then decided to add to their sound with guitar, keyboards and bass. On their first tour, they opened for SPEAK and Jukebox the Ghost, and by the following tour in 2003, they were headliners. With this new release, they’ve continued to tour steadily throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe and Japan. They’re now in the midst of shows in Eastern Canada that run through mid-December. See their official site for more information.

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screams, whispers and songs from planet earth

Tag: Toronto Canada Page 1 of 2

A Lovely Bit of Psychedelia from Over-Thinker Mute Choir

Lavender Child searches for truth amid ‘Happy Illusions’

Introducing… Sarah Cripps

Introducing… Andi

Introducing… Anna Atkinson

Brooklyn Doran and The Villain

Introducing… Darling Cora

Says Ronley Teper and The Lipliners, Have Faith

Introducing… Place Erupt

Introducing… The Elwins