LAUREN DILLEN’S DEBUT EP, BLUE STAR, OUT TODAY

Photo Credit : Colin Medley  // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, Lauren Dillen releases her debut solo EP, titled Blue Star. The collection sees Dillen emerging from a “very passionate and difficult” time in her life. “My early twenties were all about working hard and striving for perfection despite what my body wanted, acting on obligation rather than joy,” Dillen explains. “I’m learning that it’s my job to advocate for my body as if it were my small child.” The result of this growth can be heard throughout Blue Star, with Dillen feeling more confident than ever to articulate just what she means: “My channels are clear, and I can be honest.”

Lauren Dillen’s songs are arborescent, ever-growing outward with tender determination. This suits the Toronto singer-songwriter, whose love of plants extends from the metaphors in her songs to the plant cyanotypes she crafts as album artwork to her work as a tattoo artist specializing in vintage botanical designs. With a mindful approach, Dillen’s folk songs uncover the understory by keenly observing what’s on the surface. As she sings, ‘we watch the leaves shoot up as the roots shoot down.’

WATCH / SHARE “CHAINS, RINGS” HERE

While Dillen’s soothing voice and deft musicianship can be heard through her work with folk-rock quartet Burs, her solo project is all about self-work and following her instincts. In recent years, she has brought this work to stages across Canada, opening for artists such as Charlotte Cornfield, Bahamas, and Great Lake Swimmers, as well as performing at festivals and touring extensively across the country, steadily building a reputation for intimate but expansive live performances.

MORE ABOUT BLUE STAR
The record is anchored in questions of identity and how it becomes attached to people and things. The focus track, “Chains, Rings”, unfolds as a coming-of-age lesson in detaching self-worth from romantic validation and breaking cycles of external approval. “Deepest Part of Love” and “Candles” both turn toward long-term relationships and commitment, examining what it takes to build and sustain healthy love.

LISTEN / SHARE “DEEPEST PART OF LOVE” HERE

“One More Time for the Road”, the first release from the project, moves through the disorientation of relapse and return, circling familiar emotional patterns and the pull toward once-familiar forms of validation.

The performance on the EP’s title track, “Blue Star”, draws directly from Dillen’s work in Toronto’s ambient music scene, using a freeze pedal vocal effect to create a suspended, reflective space within the record. Functioning as a pause in the narrative, it gently compels the listener into a moment of reflection.

LISTEN / SHARE “CANDLES” HERE

Dillen began the EP with a day of recording at the National Music Centre in Calgary. In the studio that houses one of Neil Young’s microphones and Elton John’s original songwriting piano, Dillen brought these songs to life with gentle production support from engineer Graham Lessard (The Barr Brothers, Timber Timbre). Inspired in part by ambient organist Molly Raben, Dillen found herself drawn to the studio’s pipe organ (as she puts it, “that’s an insane instrument, I must use it!”), creating a reedy atmosphere that runs through much of the record.

The throughline of Dillen’s music over the years has always been truth-seeking. With refreshing, intentional arrangements, she shares songs with the intimacy of sharing a garment. “These songs aren’t necessarily the truth,” Dillen explains, “but I write them out to explore the truth, to explore what something actually looks like.” Dillen unveils the feelings that linger behind relationships, where the most precious details surface only in soft light.

WATCH / SHARE “WILDFLOWERS OF NORTH AMERICA” HERE

The closer, “Wildflowers of North America”, draws its name from an inherited botanical textbook marked by a sticky note from her grandmother on a page featuring the blue star flower, reframing the EP’s central question into something perhaps more delicate: not only who we are in relation to others, but what remains in the fleeting texture of shared moments.

With a fresh excitement for performing her music and a newfound connection to her own truth, Lauren Dillen is basking in all that arises. “I don’t have to push towards the things that I want,” Dillen reflects, “I can just allow them to unfold.”

PERFORMANCE DATES
Oct 20 - Toronto, ON - Osler Records

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BLUE STAR EP TRACKLIST
01 Overture
02 Deepest Part of Love
03 Candles
04 One More Time For The Road
05 Chains, Rings
06 Blue Star
07 Wildflowers of North America

LAUREN DILLEN ONLINE
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MIND BATH RELEASES AQUEOUS & DEBUT COMPANION NOVEL

NEW ALBUM, AQUEOUS, VIA LIGHTER THAN AIR AND COMPANION NOVEL VIA METATRON PRESS, BOTH OUT TODAY

BUY / STREAM AQUEOUS HERE

ALBUM FEATURING COLLABORATION WITH BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND

ALBUM RELEASE PERFORMANCES AND BOOK LAUNCH EVENTS IN MONTREAL AND TORONTO BEGIN SEPTEMBER 23. TICKETS ON SALE HERE, FULL DATES LISTED BELOW

“Mind Bath has always had a literary flair to his work. Crafting immersive alt-R&B journeys through sound, new album ‘Aqueous’ is intended to function on multiple levels. It’s a deeply imaginative, highly creative work, a conceptual literary-musical work that functions both as a full-length album and companion debut novel.” - Clash

Photo Credit: Sara Graorac // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, Mind Bath releases Aqueous, a conceptual literary-musical work comprising a full-length album and companion debut novel, via Lighter Than Air and Metatron Press.

Mind Bath’s most ambitious and fully realised work to date, Aqueous was completed during a two-year residency at Camp Flirty, a secluded gay cabin in the woods.

The album features the singles “Acid Nine” and “Seasons Change and So Do I Bitch,” alongside “Dear Friend, Queer Friend,” a collaboration with fellow Canadian Beverly Glenn-Copeland, the acclaimed genre-defying composer, singer and celebrated transgender activist.

BUY / STREAM AQUEOUS HERE

WATCH / SHARE “DEAR FRIEND, QUEER FRIEND” FT. BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND

Raised in a small town in the BC Rockies, Mind Bath developed a creative voice shaped by solitude, attuned to nature’s divinity and the inner worlds it unlocks. Across lush queer poetry, left-field production, and intimate vocals, his work has cultivated a devoted underground following rooted as much in spiritual devotion as sonic exploration. Expanding his vision into a multidimensional universe, Aqueous invites audiences not only to read and listen, but to experiment, reflect, and evolve.

Aqueous is a psychedelic odyssey through the land of queer fantasy and mysticism. Part auto-fiction, part perverse hero’s journey, where an effervescent stardust boy cuts a hole in the sky and wakes up in a utopic new land, far removed from the oppressive, dusty dominions of the violent world on Earth, in search of healing and liberation.

WATCH / SHARE “SEA JASMINE” LYRIC VIDEO HERE

WATCH / SHARE “ACID NINE” HERE

From radical queer joyous faerie woo to an underground darling’s music career, the abuse of power to vignettes of a sex angel rent boy, Aqueous is healing text. Enriched by a cast of rebellious artists and sublime outsiders in collective search of liberating the core wound in every gay inner child, Aqueous is an evocative and profound meditation on the fragments of a world of trauma and the resilience, humour, and self-interrogation required to see beyond it, right through to the heart.

With Aqueous, Mind Bath deepens his role not just as a musician, but as a world-builder, a world where fantasy is a tool for healing, art is a form of resistance, and imagination opens portals to new ways of being.

WATCH / SHARE “SEASONS CHANGE AND SO DO I BITCH”

MIND BATH AQUEOUS LIVE
Sept 23 - Montreal, QC - POP Montreal - Casa Del Popolo | Album Launch
Sept 27 - Montreal, QC - Librairie Résonance Bookstore | Book Launch & Reading
Sept. 30 - Toronto, ON - Type Queen Street | Book Launch & Reading
Oct. 2 - Toronto, ON - Burdock Music Hall | Album Launch

PRAISE FOR MIND BATH:
“Montreal-based artist making tender, shimmering downtempo R&B” - The FADER

“‘Must Come Spring’ is a triumphant saga of tender poetry, transcendent melodies and textured R&B” - PAPER

“His R&B voice and meditative melodies transport us to a world where spirituality, sensuality, and intensity coexist. It is through his poetic stories that Mind Bath reveals himself in a more vulnerable way.” - VICE

“Mind Bath creates melodies as soothing as a long bath by candlelight.” - Red Bull

“Delicate vocals, with shades of spoken word poetry, fade into and resurge from synth-driven groove; visceral emotion echoes from sonic lacunae.” - Wonderland

Album Artwork by Derek Branscombe // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

AQUEOUS TRACKLIST
01 Acid Nine
02 Seasons Change And So Do I Bitch
03 The Idea Of A Wave Ft. Forever
04 Day Of Venus
05 L.A.K.E.
06 Bathe In Love
07 Sea Jasmine
08 The Thawing Of Your Grief
09 Shirtless In Black Wranglers
10 Dear Friend, Queer Friend Ft. Beverly Glenn-Copeland

MIND BATH ONLINE
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JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS SHARES TITLE TRACK FROM UPCOMING LP, MIRADOR

THE MONTREAL PIANIST AND COMPOSER SHARES TITLE TRACK FROM FOURTH ALBUM, MIRADOR, OUT SEPTEMBER 25 VIA ARTS & CRAFTS

BUY / STREAM “MIRADOR” HERE
LISTEN / SHARE “MIRADOR” HERE

PRE-SAVE MIRADOR HERE

CANADA, EUROPE AND UK TOUR DATES BEGIN THIS FALL

"A piece that opens with the full range of a 12-person baroque choir before Blais' piano takes the lead, guiding us through a vibrant dreamscape in just three minutes. ...with Ulysse, Blais is letting us into his inner world."  CBC Music, Songs You Need To Hear on “ulysse”

LISTEN TO JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS ON CBC Q

Photo Credit: Adrian Villagomez // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, Montreal pianist and composer Jean-Michel Blais shares “mirador”, the title track from his forthcoming fourth album, released September 25 on Arts & Crafts. Following “ulysse” and “carnavalito”, “mirador” brings Blais to the heart of a record shaped by childhood, imagination and the places we create in order to look out onto the world. Hauntingly beautiful, the piece begins with the pulse and breath of a choir before Blais’ piano slowly emerges, its gentle melody surrounded by voices that gather, dissolve and gather again.

The title track takes its name from the imaginary lookout Blais created for himself as a child in his parents’ basement in Nicolet, Québec. As a musical kid and, even if he wasn’t fully aware of these things yet, as a queer person with Tourette’s, this private world became a place of refuge and possibility: somewhere from which he could dream of everything that might exist beyond it.

On “mirador”, Blais returns to that lookout from the other side of childhood. What was once solitary becomes collective, with piano and human voices moving around one another until they finally converge on a single triad. It captures something central to the album itself: memory not as something fixed, but something that can be revisited, rearranged and shared.

Speaking about “mirador”, Blais says:
“‘mirador’ is at the same time the title of the album and of this single. It’s a Spanish word, with ‘mira’ meaning ‘to look’. So, a ‘mirador’ a lookout or a tower from which you protect a castle… ‘mirador’ for me is this place that as a kid, I would go to travel time and space. I had Tourettes, and as a queer kid I had a hard time, sometimes, to find my way in society. So I would go to the basement, like the one depicted on the album cover, where we had a bunch of VHS, CDs and vinyl, through which I would feel like I could travel the world.”

BUY / STREAM “MIRADOR” HERE
LISTEN / SHARE “MIRADOR” HERE

With more than 375 million streams globally to his name, Blais began mirador by reflecting on childhood memories of building imaginary worlds in his parents’ basement. From there, the record expands far beyond those walls: an odyssey spanning choirs, strings and the music of the Andes, travelling from Spanish caves to Estonian forests and eventually finding its way home to Québec.

Working with composer and arranger William Brittelle (LA Philharmonic, The National), Blais assembled a choir of 12 baroque singers before adding a string quartet of friends. He also enlisted Tulio Velazco Villagra, a master of Andean instruments, while residencies at the Arvo Pärt Centre informed the album’s meditative atmosphere.

The result is Blais’ most adventurous and transportive work yet, exchanging contemporary minimalism for a light and generous maximalism while retaining the intimacy that has always sat at the centre of his music. If the childhood mirador was somewhere Blais could retreat to and imagine the world beyond him, the album that bears its name finds him opening that space up: looking backwards, outwards and towards the future.

BUY / STREAM “ULYSSE” HERE
WATCH / SHARE “ULYSSE” HERE

MORE ABOUT JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS
Jean-Michel Blais is a Montreal based pianist, composer and performer signed to Arts & Crafts and Mercury KX (Decca). In the first decade since the release of his landmark 2016 debut album, II, the classically trained Blais has defined his music through the reverent intimacy he shares with his instrument, the piano. Named in TIME’s Top 10 Best Albums of the Year, the magazine described his improvisation inspired debut as “music that breathes, invites one to take a moment, and acknowledges that there is still much beauty in the world.”

Through this connection with the piano, the multiple Polaris Music Prize shortlisted and two time JUNO Award nominated artist has reached audiences around the world. He has performed one of the largest neoclassical concerts in history to nearly 40,000 people at the Montreal Jazz Festival, collaborated with the Orchestre de l’Agora and the Orchestre symphonique de Québec, and amassed more than 397 million streams across a catalogue that includes the ambient and new age inspired Dans ma main (2018), which drew influence from the music that soothed his Tourette syndrome as a child, the Félix Award winning aubades (2022), his first exploration of composition for chamber orchestra, and désert (2025), a collaborative album with American harpist Lara Somogyi.

BUY / STREAM “CARNAVALITO” HERE
WATCH / SHARE “CARNAVALITO” HERE

His diverse résumé also encompasses the Cannes Award winning Matthias & Maxime (2019) soundtrack, the twilight inspired serenades EP (2023), and Cascades (2017), created with producer CFCF. Together, these works continue Pitchfork’s observation of the “thrilling synchronization of piano and electronics” that has become a defining thread throughout his catalogue.

On mirador, his fourth studio album, released in September 2026, Blais embarks on an expansive, beneath the surface odyssey spanning choirs, strings and the music of the Andes. Travelling from Spanish caves to Estonian forests before returning home to tiny Nicolet, Québec, mirador opens listeners’ eyes onto Blais’ wide, wondrous and deeply personal world. It is an aspirational journey that exchanges contemporary minimalism for a light, generous maximalism.

Throughout his discography, Blais has used instrumentation and composition as tools of personal expression, subtly revealing different facets of his identity as a queer artist, perpetual traveller, student and caregiver, often through the lens of his upbringing. Four albums into his career, Jean-Michel Blais is no longer simply charting the map of his grown up heart. On mirador, he offers a new perspective on childhood: a vivid and vicarious invitation to listen again, gazing ahead into the imaginary.

PRE-SAVE MIRADOR HERE

JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS PERFORMANCES

2026
09.24 — WATERLOO, QC — Maison de la culture de Waterloo
09.27 — STE-GENEVIÈ— VE, QC — Salle Pauline Julien
10.03 — VAL-MORIN, QC — Théâtre du Marais
10.19 —  TROIS RIVIÈRE - Salle J.-Antonio-Thompson
10.23 — BERLIN, DE — Felt Room
10.26 — LONDON, UK — World Heart Beat
10.27 — UTRECHT, NL — TivoliVredenburg
10.28 — PARIS, FR — La Piccola Scala
11.28 — TORONTO, ON — Koerner Hall

2027
01.23 — NOMININGUE, QC — Espace Saint-Ignace
01.28 — SAINTE-THÉRÈSE, QC — Théâtre Lionel Groulx
01.29 — ST-HYACINTHE, QC — Centre des arts Juliette Lassonde
01.30 — BAIE-DU-FEBVRE, QC — Théâtre Belcourt
01.31 — VICTORIAVILLE, QC — Le Carré 150
02.05 — SHAWINIGAN, QC — Centre des Arts
02.06 — SHERBROOKE, QC — Théâtre Granada
02.07 — SALABERRY-DE-VALLEYFIELD, QC — Salle Albert Dumouchel
02.10 — DRUMMONDVILLE, QC — Maison des arts Desjardins Drummondville
02.12 — JOLIETTE, QC — Centre Culturel Desjardins
02.13 — MONTMAGNY, QC — Salle Edwin-Bélanger
02.14 — QUÉBEC, QC — Grand Théâtre de Québec
02.17 — BROSSARD, QC — Théâtre Manuvie
02.18 — L’ASSOMPTION, QC — Théâtre Hector Charland
02.19 — ST-MARIE-DE-BEAUCE, QC — Salle Méchatigan
02.20 — THETFORD MINES, QC — Salle Dussault
02.21 — TERREBONNE, QC — Théâtre du Vieux-Terrebonne
02.25 — LONGUEUIL, QC — Théâtre de la Ville
02.26 — LAVAL, QC — Salle André-Mathieu
02.27 — ST-EUSTACHE, QC — Le Zénith
03.05 — OTTAWA, ON — National Arts Centre
04.30 — VANCOUVER, BC — Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
05.20 — EDMUNDSTON, NB — Salle Léo-Poulin
05.21 — CARAQUET, NB — Centre Culturel de Caraquet
05.22 — MONCTON, NB — Capitol Theatre
10.01 — BROMONT, QC — Espace Culturel St-John
10.02 — CHÂTEAUGUAY, QC — Château Scènes
10.03 — LÉVIS, QC — L’Anglicane
10.07 — ST-JEAN-SUR-RICHELIEU, QC — Théâtre des Deux-Rives
10.08 — MONTRÉAL (LASALLE), QC — Théâtre Desjardins
10.10 — GATINEAU, QC — Salle Odyssée
10.12 — ST-JÉRÔME, QC — Théâtre Gilles Vigneault
10.13 — VAL-D’OR, QC — Théâtre Télébec
10.14 — ROUYN-NORANDA, QC — Théâtre du Cuivre
10.15 — AMOS, QC — Théâtre des Eskers
10.19 — TROIS RIVIÈRES, QC    Salle J.-Antonio-Thompson
10.20 — SAGUENAY, QC — Théâtre C
10.21 — RIMOUSKI, QC — Salle de Spectacles Desjardins
10.22 — CARLETON-SUR-MER, QC — Studio du Quai des Arts

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mirador TRACKLIST
1. muses
2. ulysse
3. pavane
4. carnavalito
5. mirador
6. quwi
7. granada
8. kyrie
9. laulasmaa
10. silhouettes
11. querelle
12. a chambre des possibles

JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS ONLINE
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