BEGONIA SHARES CBC FIRST PLAY LIVE OF NEW LP, ANNOUNCES NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES

WATCH CBC’S FIRST PLAY LIVE HERE

WATCH FEAR ALBUM TRAILER - AN EPIC SHORT FILM ON ROLLER SKATES

DEBUT LP FEAR, DUE OUT THIS FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 13 VIA REX BABY RECORDS / THE ORCHARD

PRE-ORDER FEAR HERE

TOUR DATES BEGIN SEPTEMBER 26

Photo Credit : Leeor Wild // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

On Friday, Begonia (Alexa Dirks) releases her long awaited debut album, Fear via Rex Baby Records (The Orchard). But today, she shares the CBC First Play Live of the album and the trailer for the LP featuring of an all-star cast of Winnipeg artists which plays out more like an epic short film on roller skates than it does a ‘trailer’.

The CBC First Play Live was “the first time my band and I were playing half of the songs on this record live, as well as the first time I EVER played this record live front to back,” says Dirks. “I was far more nervous for this than I thought I would be. I felt like I wanted everything to be so ‘perfect’ that I was a bit of an emotional wreck on the day of filming to be honest. I truly feel honoured that we were given the opportunity to interpret my record in front of such an encouraging and intimate audience. It feels really special to me that now this performance is locked in a kind of time capsule while everything is still so new. Will be trippy to look back on, I'm sure.”

WATCH CBC’S FIRST PLAY LIVE HERE

The trailer for Fear is an unprecedented creative endeavour. For the video Begonia created a medley of all twelve tracks from the album and Winnipeg filmmaker Gwen Trutnau, in collaboration with Synonym Art Consultation, invited drag performers, dancers, and artists to visually interpret the tracks. The result is glamorous, campy, colourful, and spectacular.

“All throughout the shoot, I kept pinching myself and thinking ‘HOW did this get to be my life?!’,” says Dirks. “The set was full of such amazing energy from all the people that were involved. Together, we made some art that I'm really proud of. It represents the journey of the album so well. Colourful, full of emotion, and all wrapped up in a weird and wonderful little package.”

WATCH FEAR ALBUM TRAILER - AN EPIC SHORT FILM ON ROLLER SKATES

MORE ABOUT FEAR
As Begonia, Alexa Dirks is bold, brazen with her florid, surprising pop that is tempered with sensitivity and wisdom. On the LP, Begonia leans hard into a sense of arrival. She wrote and co-produced the record with a familiar team of Matt Schellenberg (Royal Canoe) and Matt Peters (Royal Canoe) along with Marcus Paquin (The National, Arcade Fire, Local Natives).

Album cut, “Hanging On A Line”, a song about “seriously falling in love in the club,” says Dirks, is currently sitting at #1 on CBC Music’s Top 20, while “Living At The Ceiling” will see its TV debut in tonight’s episode of Queen Sugar, produced by Oprah Winfrey on OWN.

Whether it’s learning to come into her own or processing a brutal heartbreak, Dirks’ intimate lyrics and audacious sound allows for her audience to relate to the messiness of life with an honesty that is refreshing.

Dirks' first solo EP, Lady in Mind, was well-received, being listed on NPR’s 10 Artists You Need To Know in 2017 and single “Juniper” reached #1 on the CBC Radio 2 Top 20. Noisey wrote that, “Begonia has one of Canada’s most extraordinary voices, and thankfully she uses it to obliterate the misery from this world one live performance at a time.” NPR wrote that Begonia is “the place where where synth-pop meets old soul and scrappy meets sexy."

TOUR DATES
Sep 14 - Hamilton ON - Supercrawl
Sep 20 - Hamburg Germany - Reeperbahn Festival
Sep 26 - Montreal QC - Pop Montreal 
Oct 31 - Oshawa ON - Oshawa Music Hall
Nov 01 - Kingston ON - The Grad Club
Nov 02 - Peterborough ON - The Red Dog
Nov 07 - London ON - Call The Office
Nov 08 - Windsor ON - Meteor
Nov 09 - Guelph ON - University of Guelph @ The Bullring
Nov 11 - Washington DC - Vinyl Lounge @ Songbyrd
Nov 12 - New York NY - Trans Pecos 
Nov 14 - Hamilton ON - Mills Hardware
Nov 15 - Toronto ON - Lee’s Palace
Nov 16 - St Catherine’s ON - Warehouse Concert Hall
Jan 30 - Penticton BC - Dream Cafe
Jan 31 - Burnaby BC - Shadbolt Centre
Feb 1 - Vancouver BC - Fox Theatre
Feb 27, 28 - Winnipeg MB - West End Cultural Centre
March 13 - 14 - New York NY - New Colossus Festival

MORE DATES TBA at  hellobegonia.com

PRAISE FOR BEGONIA

“...searing and dignified” - NPR Music

"...a complex, powerhouse synth-soul that hangs on one of Canada’s most
extraordinary voices." - Line Of Best Fit

“The woman has, you would say, presence to spare. When she opens her mouth to sing it's like, ‘What just happened?’” - Exclaim!

"an audacious adventure in modern soul, with gospel inspirations and updated takes on finger-snapping Motown pop and late 20th-century R&B.‎" - Globe & Mail

“With her showstopping voice, Dirks blends acoustics and synths for her own
brand of gospel.” - CBC Music

DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

FEAR TRACKLIST
01 The Other Side
02 Hanging On A Line
03 The Light
04 Fear
05 Every Day Interlude
06 Living At The Ceiling
07 Mirror Talk
08 Two Beers In
09 Beats
10 Cold Fire
11 Dead Flowers
12 Put It Away

BEGONIA ONLINE
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JACQUES GREENE ANNOUNCES NEW LP, DAWN CHORUS, SHARES LEAD SINGLE

DAWN CHORUS OUT OCTOBER 18 VIA ARTS & CRAFTS

LISTEN AND SHARE “DO IT WITHOUT YOU” HERE

PERFORMANCE DATES BEGIN OCTOBER 17

PRE-ORDER DAWN CHORUS HERE

Photo Credit : Mathieu Fortin // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, Jacques Greene is proud to announce Dawn Chorus, the new album out October 18 via Arts & Crafts, and shares the lead single, “Do It Without You”.

LISTEN AND SHARE “DO IT WITHOUT YOU” HERE

A bold step forward, Dawn Chorus is also Greene’s most collaborative project to date, featuring additional production and instrumentation from film composer Brian Reitzell (Lost In Translation), cello by London’s Oliver Coates, additional production from Clams Casino and original vocal contributions from ambient artist Julianna Barwick, rapper Cadence Weapon and singers Ebhoni and Rochelle Jordan, all sampled, processed and stitched back into the album. 

If Greene’s 2017 debut album, Feel Infinite, was the soundtrack to a dream pregame – amping you up to lose yourself in the club – then Dawn Chorus resides in the post-rave reflective moment. A time of heightened sensuality and latent possibility. 

Greene approached the making of Dawn Chorus as if he were a band. He lived in the studio for five months this past winter – half the time at home in Toronto, the other half in Hudson Mohawke’s studio in L.A. – and wrote these songs in a sprint to capture this chapter in his life. Ten years into the game and not yet in his thirties, his perspective on the value of dance music and where it rests with his daily life and inspiration bare out on this album. While samples played a big part in his early output, his creative process for Dawn Chorus revolved around recording a stellar cast of musicians, arranging new parts. 

To craft the sound of the record, he thought about the artists he held dear and researched the gear they used as a means of being in dialogue with their emotional tenor. Some of the gear he sourced included the delay that My Bloody Valentine was renowned for, as well as a compressor used by French Touch producers Alan Braxe and Fred Falke. Working with mix engineer Joel Ford (of Ford & Lopatin), he created a rule book for the album’s sonics that saw each part, from the drums to the pads, be processed in a specific way, through guitar pedals and outboard equipment.

PRE-ORDER DAWN CHORUS HERE

Dawn Chorus opens with “Serenity”, an all-back-to-mine breaks tune that Greene describes as “a weird, euphoric take on Chemical Brothers.” “Night Service” is a neon-lit hip house anthem helmed by Canadian rapper Cadence Weapon, who drapes a love letter to the club around Greene’s acid-dipped synths. Elsewhere, “Distance” blends ambient textures with sampled birdsong and the snaking lines of Oliver Coates’s cello.

Now 29, Greene has been making music “about the club” for over a decade. His sound could be described as an emotional haze, in that its balance of sonic elements work to illuminate the overlapping feelings that lie between the familiar binaries. Outside of his own releases, Greene has explored his relationship with the club in a variety of contexts, from remixing Radiohead to producing for Katy B and Tinashe and touring with The xx. 

He will tour Dawn Chorus in Europe and North America this fall  with a stop in Montreal on October 26. Full dates can be found below.

ARTWORK CREDIT: Hassan Rahim // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

DAWN CHORUS TRACKLIST
1. Serenity 
2. Drop Location
3. Do It Without You
4. Night Service
5. Sel
6. Let Go
7. For Love
8. Sibling
9. Whenever
10. Understand
11. Distance
12. Stars

TOUR DATES
Oct 17 - Berlin, DE @ Burg Schnabel
Oct 18 - London, UK @ St. Pancras Old Church (Sold Out)
Oct 18 - Manchester, UK @ Warehouse Project (DJ set) (late show)
Oct 19 - London, UK @ Five Miles (DJ Set)
Oct 23 - Brooklyn, NY @ National Sawdust
Oct 25 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
Oct 26 - Montreal, QC @ Ausgang

JACQUES GREENE ONLINE
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JORDAN KLASSEN ANNOUNCES NORTH AMERICAN FALL TOUR DATES

TOUR DATES BEGIN OCTOBER 24

WATCH AND SHARE “VIRTUOUS CIRCLE” HERE

Photo Credit : Rachel Pick // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, BC songwriter Jordan Klassen has announced a run of North American tour dates that takes him across the continent. Tour dates begin October 24 in Alberta and run till the end of November when Klassen returns home to BC. Full route listings can be found below.

Recently, Klassen released “Virtuous Circle”, the first new music from Jordan Klassen since 2017’s Big Intruder.  Of the track Klassen says, "I wrote 'Virtuous Circle' at a time in my life where I felt surrounded by a lot of death primarily; a death in my family, broken relationships, personal instability, and a seemingly endless streak of career disappointments. The song is a plea of hope, that what feels like a vicious circle could invert into a virtuous one."

WATCH AND SHARE “VIRTUOUS CIRCLE” HERE

The stunning video for “Virtuous Circle”, directed by Farhad Ghaderi and produced by Shelby Manton of Boldly, explores the joys and pains of brotherhood through the volatile relationship between a young boy (Ben Andrusco-Daon) and his self-destructive older brother (Antoine Olivier Pilon) in the pursuit of winning a famous regional long-distance race.

Watch for more new music from Klassen in the near future.

TOUR DATES
Oct 24 -Edmonton, AB - Station on Jasper
Oct 25 - Red Deer, AB - Red Hart Brewing
Oct 26 - Calgary, AB - King Eddy
Oct 27 - Regina, SK - Artesian on 13th
Oct 28 - Winnipeg, MB - WECC
Nov 1 - Wakefield, QC - The Blacksheep Inn
Nov 2 - Toronto, ON - The Cameron House
Nov 3 - Kingston, ON - Musikki Cafe
Nov 5 - Elora, ON - The Porch Light
Nov 6 - Hamilton, ON - Mills Hardware
Nov 9 - New York, NY - Underwater Sunshine
Nov 21 - Kelowna, BC - New Arts Collective
Nov 23 - Vancouver, BC - Biltmore Cabaret
Nov 29 - Victoria, BC - Lucky Bar

JORDAN KLASSEN ONLINE
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