WATCH / SHARE “DECEIVE ME SO EASY” HERE
BUY / STREAM “DECEIVE ME SO EASY” HERE
NEW LP, WARM TERRACOTTA, OUT FEBRUARY 17, 2023 VIA DINE ALONE
PRE-SAVE WARM TERRACOTTA HERE
PRE-ORDER WARM TERRACOTTA VINYL HERE
Photo Credit: André Rainville // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Recently, Edwin Raphael, the Dubai-born, Montreal-based songwriter, announced his upcoming LP, Warm Terracotta, and shared album singles “Tripping Through My Blood” and "Under Weather”. Today, he shares "Deceive Me So Easy”, a song which “portrays itself as a theatre performance,” says Raphael. “The dance is constant, an ode to everyday life, interweaving itself within the problems of the actors and audience. The protagonist enters the stage with nothing, unaware of the beauty of the dance itself, they are consumed by fleeting burdens of human life. They exit the stage as they entered, with nothing."
WATCH / SHARE “DECEIVE ME SO EASY” HERE
STREAM / SHARE “DECEIVE ME SO EASY” HERE
Single Artwork // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
MORE ABOUT WARM TERRACOTTA
How do you anchor yourself when occupying multiple geographic identities at once? For Edwin Raphael, it requires an intentional and intensive form of world-building. By developing an unmistakable style of folk that merges Eastern scales with the Western pop canon, Raphael reimagines his music as a exploratory tool that allows him to construct an interior and sacred home to retreat into.
Where his past projects found inspiration in the metaphorical potential of water, his forthcoming album Warm Terracotta walks deeper into the island after standing on the shore. On Edwin Raphael’s most intimate and ambitious project to date, he grapples with the realization of being a foreigner everywhere; of longing to know your ancestral roots, while also honouring the home you’ve built for yourself. Both spacious and pulsating, the album is inspired by Indian classical music, experimental psychedelic folk, and spacey 80s pop; at times, conjuring the lower-jaw tingle of grass between your toes, or the sun-soaked splendour of late afternoon ragas. In Raphael’s own words, the album is an antidote: “one that swallows you into forgetting your present troubles, while also painting a world you can escape into — and keep coming back to.”
Raphael continues, “Warm Terracotta represents a sacred space to find yourselves over and over again. Fourteen songs that bring forward the duality and complexity of simply being. It trusts that when you do things from your soul, you feel a river move within you.
“It’s about balancing the good with the bad. It’s encountering a landscape that is completely surreal to you but also the closest thing to home. This project involves the arch of self-realization & leans on the generosity of the unexpected. It is a space for thoughts, discovery and new connections.”
WATCH / SHARE “UNDER WEATHER” HERE FT. ELENI DRAKE
BUY / STREAM “UNDER WEATHER” HERE FT. ELENI DRAKE
MORE ABOUT EDWIN RAPHAEL
Growing up in Dubai, as the son of parents who immigrated from the city of Cochin in India’s coastal Kerala state, Raphael studied classical guitar before deciding on the keys. As he developed an affinity for John Mayer and Ben Howard, he felt at odds with Dubai’s distinct sense of “placelessness” — and the bewildering feeling of being immersed in a culture where everyone claimed an alternate homeland. It wasn’t until he moved to Montreal to pursue a business degree that he felt a sense of stability, and became deeply entangled with the city’s indie bedroom pop scene.
WATCH / SHARE “TRIPPING THROUGH MY BLOOD” HERE
BUY / STREAM “TRIPPING THROUGH MY BLOOD” HERE
His debut EP Ocean’s Walk (2015) paired stirring, melancholic instrumentals with a fierce self-reckoning. It would set the stage for a string of releases that would dive deeper into the psyche; like confronting the aftershocks following a significant heartbreak, or relearning your emotional baseline as you mature. Subsequent releases, Cold Nights (2017), his acclaimed debut Will You Think of Me Later? (2019), and its follow up Staring at Ceilings (2021), reveal an artist devoted to sharpening his ability to translate his experiences into ubiquitous statements, and saw him open for Hollow Coves, JP Saxe, Noah Kahan.
PRE-SAVE WARM TERRACOTTA HERE
PRE-ORDER WARM TERRACOTTA VINYL HERE
EDWIN RAPHAEL TOUR DATES
03/14 - Montreal, QC @ Le Ritz *
03/15 - Toronto, ON @ Velvet Underground *
* = supporting ¿Téo?
WARM TERRACOTTA TRACK LIST
01 - Desire Paths~
02 - & She Drinks Tea Just For The Company
03 - Have You Been Told?
04 - Under Weather (feat. Eleni Drake)
05 - Contours Of Spring
06 - Sights Like These
07 - Hate It When You See Me Like This!
08 - Tripping Through My Blood
09 - Deceive Me So Easy
10 - Tea Break~
11 - Bazaar Days
12 - Purple Inside
13 - Homesick For The Place I Don’t Even Know (feat. Sam Valdez)
14 - Sirimiri