GHOSTKEEPER RETURNS WITH NEW SINGLE / VIDEO, “MOHKINSTSIS”

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

PAST PRAISE FOR GHOSTKEEPER

“a re-conjuring of joy that mingles with wounds past and present, thrusting them to the forefront of a musical partnership that spans decades, land, time and space. … amongst the tapestry woven by Cîpayak Joy's multilayered extension of contemporary electronica, Ghostkeeper's past, present and future dance hand in hand.” Exclaim!

“The pop experimentalists return to their roots while pushing their creativity forward on new album, Cîpayak Joy.” RANGE Magazine

Photo Credit : Jared Sych // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

“Mohkinstsis” is the brand new single from Calgary Métis pop experimentalists Ghostkeeper. It's the first missive since their last album, the critically-acclaimed Cîpayak Joy. Centred around the core duo of founding members Shane Ghostkeeper and Sarah Houle, “Mohkinstsis” gets the rest of the band – drummer Eric Hamelin (JOYFULTALK) and bassist Ryan Bourne (solo, Chad Van Gaalen) – back in the room together, and the results are stellar.

The band's playing provides a robust framework for Shane's storytelling, expertly nuanced but never drawing attention to itself. Subtle sonic colourings in the margins add a sense of tension and release for the song's key moments, and it all rides out in a dreamy, quasi-doo wop reverie, Hamelin's tumbling drums tussling with a more developed version of the opening guitar lick. The mix, by longtime Ghostkeeper associate and JOYFULTALK mastermind Jay Crocker, is roomy and spacious mix, allowing the song room to breathe, and revel in the dramatic sonic vistas that emerge from simmering, in-the-pocket rhythm section-led sections.

The song itself is both a nostalgia-laden origin story of Ghostkeeper and Houle's romantic beginnings, and also an offering of sincere thanks to the various communities that welcomed them so warmly upon their initial move to Calgary years ago. Chief among these communities were the Blackfoot people, Shane recalls. “They were so welcoming, so nourishing and supportive when we first got here”, he says. “Not long after moving here, I was gifted an eagle feather as a welcoming token, and it hangs from the headstock of my guitar to this day.”

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

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Before living together, Shane would – literally – run from his house north of the Bow river (‘vintage kicks look sweet on concrete’ he sings) to meet Sarah after work, stopping only for a short breather on the picturesque Crescent Heights ridge, which overlooks the river and downtown Calgary. While bracing himself for the rest of his journey, he'd find himself gazing down at the confluence where the Bow meets the Elbow river, imagining what it would have been like in its days as a Blackfoot nation encampment.

Thanks to his participation in filmmaker Trevor Solway's Amplify, an acclaimed docu-series focused on Indigenous singer-songwriters, Shane was able to meet and talk with various Blackfoot elders as part of the project. It was in these meetings he learned that, historically, the Blackfoot people were well known for welcoming people of other nations to meet at the confluence to prepare for their journeys west to the holy waters of the Banff hot springs, and Ghostkeeper couldn't help but see a parallel with his own feelings of welcome in the community. He began to regard the confluence as “two rivers that meet like lovers forged in destiny” a perfect metaphor for these early romantic years with Houle.

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GHOSTKEEPER RELEASES NEW LP, CÎPAYAK JOY, SHARES NEW VIDEO

GHOSTKEEPER’S CÎPAYAK JOY OUT TODAY VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS

WATCH / SHARE “STORM CHASER” HERE

BUY / STREAM CÎPAYAK JOY HERE

“a re-conjuring of joy that mingles with wounds past and present, thrusting them to the forefront of a musical partnership that spans decades, land, time and space. … amongst the tapestry woven by Cîpayak Joy's multilayered extension of contemporary electronica, Ghostkeeper's past, present and future dance hand in hand.” Exclaim!

The pop experimentalists return to their roots while pushing their creativity forward on new album, Cîpayak Joy.” RANGE Magazine

Photo Credit : Jared Sych // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Available everywhere today, Cîpayak Joy is the new album from Ghostkeeper, the ever-evolving project of Métis pop experimentalists Shane Ghostkeeper and Sarah Houle. The new LP follows their critically-acclaimed 2023 Polaris Music Prize long-listed album Multidimensional Culture.

To celebrate the album’s release, Ghostkeeper is sharing the new video for “Storm Chaser”, an homage “to the moment when these two lovers chose to accept a mutual invitation to propel themselves into the iconic, formidable and epic storm that arises when one decides to battle their ego – a sincere and fierce commitment to romance and progressive individualism so as to gift each other true love,” says Shane.

WATCH / SHARE “STORM CHASER” HERE

MORE ABOUT GHOSTKEEPER AND CÎPAYAK JOY
In recent years, the band has been operating as a full five piece band – and they still are – but this particular missive from Ghostkeeper offers a new take on their sound; it's at once a bold step forward and also a return to some of the band's earliest roots. 

The album is replete with strangely inviting, otherworldly noises and a raft of sounds, rhythms, and textures that borrow liberally from trap music and reveal a sly interest in sounds and rhythms from the futuristic-sounding sonic architecture of contemporary R&B acts like FKA Twigs, Doja Cat, Vince Staples, and Rosalía. From the chirping, digitized cicada sounds that open first single “Lipstick” and the minimal beats and floating, effected vocals of “Sleep Dream” to the auto-tuned vocals and celestial synthesizer environs of “Dark At The Helm”, the album is a bold new sonic language for the band. And when one does hear a familiar sound, such as the acoustic guitar that snakes through album opener “Astum Ota”, it's filtered through a pleasingly psychedelic lens. Elsewhere, minimal synths, playful hi-hat syncopations, and dub-like snare hits radiate into the background, samples of speech intermingle with hallucinatory shifting textures and smeared voices. 

Cîpayak is a Cree term that translates as 'the ghosts are dancing' and it is often used to describe the Northern Lights. Originally in the running as an alternative to the Ghostkeeper band name, Shane and Sarah finally adopted it as the moniker for their collective visual art practice, which had its debut at Contemporary Calgary in April of 2020 with their interactive piece Four Words Challenge. That show included a few pieces of music the two had spontaneously cooked up with tech wizard and longtime engineer Brad Hawkins, and following this initial jolt of inspiration, the three began descending to the basement for a string of collaborative, off-the-cuff sessions. These sessions quickly became defined by new working methods that were the direct inverse to those that have produced the ‘Ghostkeeper sound’ to date, and the three uncovered some truly fresh new sonic territory for the band.

WATCH / SHARE “LIPSTICK” HERE

“Brad would come down to the basement, Sarah would work up a drum beat, and I'd start improvising, coming up with different vocal ideas and other melodic parts, finding the songs in the sounds,” Shane recalls. “It was all about being immediate, with no premeditated ideas.” This 'no songs first' approach of Cîpayak Joy was a radical reinvention of their creative process, but more than anything else, this project represents a return to that core band trajectory that Shane and Sarah originally laid down in their halcyon days. And, possibly in keeping with this sense of coming full circle with the band, Shane and Sarah decided to reach out to Jay Crocker, one of their oldest musical associates, to bring his highly unique perspective to the album. 

Jay Crocker is a multi-faceted composer, producer, and musician living on the south shore of Nova Scotia. He's well-known in experimental music circles for his run of JOYFULTALK albums on the venerable Constellation Records, and has co-produced the last three albums for Sackville-based songwriter Jon McKiel, including the critically-acclaimed Bobby Joe Hope. And perhaps more crucially, Crocker also played guitar in the one of the earliest Ghostkeeper band lineups, which led to him recording and producing their albums Ghostkeeper (2010) and Horse Chief! War Thief! (2013).

WATCH / SHARE “RAVEN” HERE

While the band initially approached him with the idea of mixing a few tunes, Crocker, as he often does, saw the project from another angle, and the band eventually gave him carte blanche, as producer, to re-imagine the album as only he could. “I wanted to see what was in there,” Crocker says, and with an arsenal of samplers, drum machines, and synths, he dug in. Once he began excavating the songs' innards, he compared his working method at times to collaging; with his keen eye for detail and almighty hook, Crocker would locate an element of interest (a vocal riff, a drumbeat, a synth sparkle), pluck it from its original context – sometimes literally stretching, inverting, or otherwise wholly manipulating the existing material – and put it back together in new and unexpected ways. Even Crocker himself was surprised at how radical some of the reinventions were, admitting “I don't know if I've ever taken it as far as this, just stripping the whole thing back to the vocal and re-building the song around that.” He likened the process to “building a digital sculpture of something that was,” but ultimately he viewed his role in the classic producer/artist mold; “I tried to give the songs whatever they needed - or didn't need.” The end result is endlessly engaging, singular, and, as both Ghostkeeper and Crocker insist, impossible to create without the other.

This record does indeed foreground the core duo of Shane and Sarah, but they are highly aware of the fact without the tech savvy and good vibes that Brad Hawkins brought to those initial basement production sessions, this project would not have materialized (and the record also benefits from a few remote contributions from live band members Eric Hamelin and Ryan Bourne, who supplied drum sounds and synth samples at various stages). And despite the fact that Crocker's role in the birth of Cîpayak Joy is crucial enough to have part of his band name added to this album's title, he is also quick to point out that “it doesn't happen without Shane and Sarah. I just try to contribute whatever magic I can. It's just good to be a part of it.”

BUY / STREAM CÎPAYAK JOY HERE

DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

CÎPAYAK JOY TRACKLIST
01 Astum Ota
02 Lipstick
03 Raven
04 Phantom
05 Dark At The Helm
06 Sleep Dream
07 Storm Chaser
08 Maps

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GHOSTKEEPER ANNOUNCES UPCOMING LP, CÎPAYAK JOY, SHARES NEW SINGLE

GHOSTKEEPER’S CÎPAYAK JOY SET FOR RELEASE AUGUST 28, 2024
VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS

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

PRE-SAVE CÎPAYAK JOY HERE

CANADIAN FESTIVAL DATES CONTINUE THIS SUMMER

Photo Credit : Jared Sych // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Cîpayak Joy is the new album from Ghostkeeper, the ever-evolving project of Métis pop experimentalists Shane Ghostkeeper and Sarah Houle. The new LP follows their critically-acclaimed 2023 Polaris Music Prize long-listed album Multidimensional Culture, and is set for release via Victory Pool Records on August 28.

In recent years, the band has been operating as a full five piece band – and they still are – but this particular missive from Ghostkeeper offers a new take on their sound; it's at once a bold step forward and also a return to some of the band's earliest roots. 

The album is replete with strangely inviting, otherworldly noises and a raft of sounds, rhythms, and textures that borrow liberally from trap music and reveal a sly interest in sounds and rhythms from the futuristic-sounding sonic architecture of contemporary R&B acts like FKA Twigs, Doja Cat, Vince Staples, and Rosalía. From the chirping, digitized cicada sounds that open first single “Lipstick” and the minimal beats and floating, effected vocals of “Sleep Dream” to the auto-tuned vocals and celestial synthesizer environs of “Dark At The Helm”, the album is a bold new sonic language for the band. And when one does hear a familiar sound, such as the acoustic guitar that snakes through album opener “Astum Ota”, it's filtered through a pleasingly psychedelic lens. Elsewhere, minimal synths, playful hi-hat syncopations, and dub-like snare hits radiate into the background, samples of speech intermingle with hallucinatory shifting textures and smeared voices. 

Today, they share another new single “Raven”, which Shane describes as “a mantra written to manifest a life together in which we walk, talk and breathe in a good way with nature and all her realms. Living in the realm of the raven and embracing that medicine keeps us in solidarity and committed to each other’s well-being. May the spirit of the raven keep us well as we walk in the realm of rock n roll.”

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

Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

MORE ABOUT CÎPAYAK JOY
Cîpayak is a Cree term that translates as 'the ghosts are dancing' and it is often used to describe the Northern Lights. Originally in the running as an alternative to the Ghostkeeper band name, Shane and Sarah finally adopted it as the moniker for their collective visual art practice, which had its debut at Contemporary Calgary in April of 2020 with their interactive piece Four Words Challenge. That show included a few pieces of music the two had spontaneously cooked up with tech wizard and longtime engineer Brad Hawkins, and following this initial jolt of inspiration, the three began descending to the basement for a string of collaborative, off-the-cuff sessions. These sessions quickly became defined by new working methods that were the direct inverse to those that have produced the ‘Ghostkeeper sound’ to date, and the three uncovered some truly fresh new sonic territory for the band.

“Brad would come down to the basement, Sarah would work up a drum beat, and I'd start improvising, coming up with different vocal ideas and other melodic parts, finding the songs in the sounds,” Shane recalls. “It was all about being immediate, with no premeditated ideas.” This 'no songs first' approach of Cîpayak Joy was a radical reinvention of their creative process, but more than anything else, this project represents a return to that core band trajectory that Shane and Sarah originally laid down in their halcyon days. And, possibly in keeping with this sense of coming full circle with the band, Shane and Sarah decided to reach out to Jay Crocker, one of their oldest musical associates, to bring his highly unique perspective to the album. 

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

Jay Crocker is a multi-faceted composer, producer, and musician living on the south shore of Nova Scotia. He's well-known in experimental music circles for his run of JOYFULTALK albums on the venerable Constellation Records, and has co-produced the last three albums for Sackville-based songwriter Jon McKiel, including the critically-acclaimed Bobby Joe Hope. And perhaps more crucially, Crocker also played guitar in the one of the earliest Ghostkeeper band lineups, which led to him recording and producing their albums Ghostkeeper (2010) and Horse Chief! War Thief! (2013).

While the band initially approached him with the idea of mixing a few tunes, Crocker, as he often does, saw the project from another angle, and the band eventually gave him carte blanche, as producer, to re-imagine the album as only he could. “I wanted to see what was in there,” Crocker says, and with an arsenal of samplers, drum machines, and synths, he dug in. Once he began excavating the songs' innards, he compared his working method at times to collaging; with his keen eye for detail and almighty hook, Crocker would locate an element of interest (a vocal riff, a drumbeat, a synth sparkle), pluck it from its original context – sometimes literally stretching, inverting, or otherwise wholly manipulating the existing material – and put it back together in new and unexpected ways. Even Crocker himself was surprised at how radical some of the reinventions were, admitting “I don't know if I've ever taken it as far as this, just stripping the whole thing back to the vocal and re-building the song around that.” He likened the process to “building a digital sculpture of something that was,” but ultimately he viewed his role in the classic producer/artist mold; “I tried to give the songs whatever they needed - or didn't need.” The end result is endlessly engaging, singular, and, as both Ghostkeeper and Crocker insist, impossible to create without the other.

This record does indeed foreground the core duo of Shane and Sarah, but they are highly aware of the fact without the tech savvy and good vibes that Brad Hawkins brought to those initial basement production sessions, this project would not have materialized (and the record also benefits from a few remote contributions from live band members Eric Hamelin and Ryan Bourne, who supplied drum sounds and synth samples at various stages). And despite the fact that Crocker's role in the birth of Cîpayak Joy is crucial enough to have part of his band name added to this album's title, he is also quick to point out that “it doesn't happen without Shane and Sarah. I just try to contribute whatever magic I can. It's just good to be a part of it.”

DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

CÎPAYAK JOY TRACKLIST
01 Astum Ota
02 Lipstick
03 Raven
04 Phantom
05 Dark At The Helm
06 Sleep Dream
07 Storm Chaser
08 Maps

TOUR DATES:
August 3-5 - Canmore Folk Fest

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