COTS RELEASES “FLOWERS (FRESH CUT)” RE-ARRANGED BY PRODUCER OLIVIER FAIRFIELD

**NEW EP MOONLIT BUILDING OUT JANUARY 25, 2023 ON BOILED RECORDS**

LISTEN / SHARE “FLOWERS (FRESH CUT)” HERE

**STREAM / BUY MOONLIT BUILDING HERE**

PRESS PHOTO : Matthew Cardinal // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Cots – the Montreal-based solo project of composer, singer, and guitarist Steph Yates – today releases "Flowers (Fresh Cut)" – the second single from her upcoming Moonlit Building EP, produced in collaboration with the talented musician Olivier Fairfield. “Flowers (Fresh Cut)” is a reshuffle of the centrepiece of Cots's enchanting debut album, Disturbing Body, which CBC likened to Feist's Let It Die, and MOJO described as "the sophistication of Everything But The Girl's Eden meets the sadness of Portuguese fado." Rearranged from its original form as the beautiful skeletal bossanova track “Flowers,” the new “Fresh Cut” version is tilted askew with robotic drums pronouncing the song's ambling essence with mis-emphasis. Fairfield – a member of art-punk outfit FET.NAT and contributor to the sonic visions of Andy Shauf, Timber Timbre, Last Ex and many more – reimagines Steph Yates's elegant nylon string dirge by removing that elemental guitar, instead wrapping warped samba-inspired levity around its soft implication.

Yates says: "I have long admired Olivier’s rhythmic sensibility and his knack for moodiness in production, and felt he might be a good match for this set of songs. Working in-studio together was collaborative and experimental: trying things out, trading off instruments, seeing what stuck."

LISTEN / SHARE “FLOWERS (FRESH CUT)” HERE

The new perspective on “Flowers” underscores the depth of Yates’s songwriting throughout Cots’s nascent catalogue. The Guelph, Ontario-bred musician cut her teeth in the local DIY scene, where she learned to be “loud, assertive, and unabashedly scrappy” in outfits like Esther Grey and Cupcake Ductape. A startling evolution of her lush sonic palette, the Moonlit Building EP shows how far Cots’s spare and lovely sound can bend without breaking. The recently released title track, “Moonlit Building,” deepens its somber, mysterious beauty, her off-kilter folk absorbing noir qualities from Fairfield’s accompaniment, her crystalline voice devolving in unison with his gravely baritone, cavernous guitar, and eroding rhythm.