BRANDON WOLFE SCOTT (YUKON BLONDE) SHARES NEW VIDEO FOR “RAZOR LOVE” FT. STACEY

WATCH AND SHARE “RAZOR LOVE” (FT. STACEY) HERE

STREAM / BUY “RAZOR LOVE” HERE

BURDEN ON YOUR SHOULDERS EP OUT NOW  VIA DINE ALONE

STREAM / BUY BURDEN ON YOUR SHOULDERS HERE

“...loaded with the kind of floating harmonies, slide guitar and waltzing cadence that the Fab Four specialized in at their peak...this could open up a whole new audience for this talented writer.” - Vancouver Sun

“...searing guitar riffs sound like a broken heart coming apart at the seams,” - Exclaim!

Photo Credit : Roberto Brundo // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, Brandon Wolfe Scott is sharing his version of Neil Young’s “Razor Love” featuring vocals from STACEY. "When Silver & Gold came out in 2000, I was still in senior high, working at a small record shop at the time,” says Scott. “The best part of working there was getting shipments on new release day and listening to them in the store. I can remember hearing ‘Razor Love’ and thinking, Neil's still got the goods! It's a timeless writing style that stops you in your tracks. I ended up recording this version almost 2 years ago. I would revisit the session from time to time but the vocal never felt right. After revisiting it again this past year, I ended up singing a low harmony under the entire main vocal and that's what sparked the idea that this would make a great duet if the right voice was on it.   

I knew I had to reach out to STACEY, I didn't know her well at the time but was a big fan of her songwriting style and loved her voice. After sending her the session to see if she'd be into taking a crack at it, a day later she sent the session back with two vocal passes. I ended up keeping her first take, her laid back delivery was exactly what the song needed and everything fell into place."

WATCH AND SHARE “RAZOR LOVE” (FT. STACEY) HERE

STREAM / BUY “RAZOR LOVE” HERE

"When Brandon sent me the track I loved it instantly. His production radiates nostalgia and the dual vocal was so sweet and intimate,” says STACEY. “I thought ‘I’ll just try it quick’ one night while laying in bed this past summer. I never sing laying down and didn’t intend for it to be the vocal take that we used but we ended up feeling it was the best one. I love the song and it’s extra special because it sparked a great collaborative and songwriting relationship between Brandon and I. Thanks be to Neil."

Best known as the guitarist and co-songwriter in the JUNO Award nominated Indie rock group Yukon Blonde, his latest EP Burden On Your Shoulders came together in the winter months of 2019, when the band found themselves with time off between tours, giving Scott the opportunity to turn his tiny living room space into a minimal recording set up. 

WATCH AND SHARE “SUMMERS ON FIRE” HERE

“Being fully immersed in the recording process became a comforting experience and a constant learning curve. Working at my own pace, deliberately tracking with limitations, helped me shape a cohesive sound that feels like the most genuine thing I’ve done.”

Scott has settled into a natural songwriting style - paying homage to the golden era of the 70’s drawing inspiration from Al Stewart, Todd Rundgren and Beatle favourite; George Harrison - whilst still maintaining a modern approach through his introspective lyrics laced with lush harmonies.

STREAM / BUY BURDEN ON YOUR SHOULDERS HERE

WATCH AND SHARE “BURDEN ON YOUR SHOULDERS” HERE

TOUR DATES
Feb 21- Kamloops, BC - Brautigan Library(*Sold Out)
Feb 22 - Kelowna, BC - @bnabrewing Tasting Room (tickets sold only at BNA Brewing) 

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R GRUNWALD SHARES “DETERMINATION OF THE CROSSING”

WATCH AND SHARE “DETERMINATION OF THE CROSSING” HERE

NEW SOLO PIANO LP, OMA, OUT MARCH 6, 2020 VIA COMMON NOISE/OUTSIDE MUSIC

PRE-ORDER OMA HERE

TOUR DATES BEGINS MARCH 11, 2020

Photo Credit : Jen Squires // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, R Grunwald is sharing the third new song from his debut solo piano LP, Oma, out March 6 via Common Noise / Outside Music. “Determination Of The Crossing” is “cyclical, frenetic, and contemplative,” says Grunwald. “This piece is my musical interpretation of the act of escape.” The track comes complete with a video from animator Jacob Mittermaier-Zubeck.

WATCH AND SHARE “DETERMINATION OF THE CROSSING” HERE

“Determination Of The Crossing” Single Cover // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

A session player for hundreds of musicians, the Toronto keyboardist has been faithful to two different singer-songwriters, jazz/pop chanteuse Jill Barber and songwriter Donovan Woods, for the better part of a decade. He’s played with New York City’s Three Famed Cantors, and scored film and TV shows including the award-winning Yid Life Crisis (“It’s basically Curb Your Enthusiasm, but set in Montreal and in Yiddish,” he says.)

Now he’s ready to step onto the public stage with his own music—alone. But there’s one person who will be with him every night he performs, though she won’t be there physically. His 96-year-old grandmother, who has lived in Chile after fleeing her native Poland in 1946, is the primary inspiration for Grunwald’s first solo album. It’s called Oma — which is the German word for ‘grandmother’.

Grunwald started piano lessons in Canada when he was 6. His teacher was a strict Russian woman whose edicts frustrated the boy enough that one day he leaned back on his piano stool, anchored his feet on the keyboard and announced, “I quit!” His mother started gathering their things. The teacher admonished her for caving in to the petulant child. That Christmas season, when Grunwald’s family went to Chile to visit his paternal grandparents, his Oma was concerned that the youngster was giving up so easily. So she gathered family and friends for a day of piano music, including a four-hand duet with Grunwald’s uncle. The boy was smitten. On the plane ride home, he told his mother he wanted to play again. 

Decades later, Grunwald found himself at the Banff Centre for Creative Arts, nestled in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta. He was there in January 2017 to compose music for solo piano, inspired by ambient music he’d been making with friends. He’d already recorded one piece, “Fountain”, for a 2016 compilation called Slow Music Vol. 1 (featuring Christine Bougie, Sarah Slean, Felicity Williams and others). Whenever he would get stuck, he would think about his grandmother and the music she loved: Chopin, Lizst, Satie, “a lot of late classical and early Romantic composers,” he says. “That music is really deep inside of me because of her.”

WATCH AND SHARE “WOOD MEETS WATER” HERE

Grunwald was also inspired by a wave of solo piano music in recent years, including favourites of his like Nils Frahm, Chilly Gonzales, and Max Richter. “I would never have considered doing this project five years ago,” he says. “Who’s going to listen to solo piano? Especially the kind of music I write, which is very slow and cerebral and takes a lot of attention.” He admits, though, that there is now a glut in the genre, and he hopes to stand apart. “When I look under the category ‘solo piano’ on streaming services, I go through the list, and 90% of it sounds exactly the same: arpeggios, not very melodic. What’s different about my music is that it’s intensely focused on melody. It’s not pop music, but it has something to latch on to. I’m a session guy, so the one thing I know more than anything is that melody is king, and you shouldn’t get in the way of that.”

His family’s history was on his mind while he was composing, but there’s a whole other history he was in touch with while recording. The grand piano on which the album was recorded now sits at Toronto studio Union Sound Company, but for years was located at the city’s legendary Montreal Bistro, where many live recordings were made; everyone from Oscar Peterson to Diana Krall played at some point. “People know this piano; it’s famous,” says Grunwald. “There was actually an album made where they got all the top Canadian jazz pianists of the ’90s to perform on it as a tribute to the instrument itself.”

PRE-ORDER OMA HERE

This isn’t jazz, though. Grunwald refers to the compositions on Oma as “extended minimalism.” He explains, “It’s taking from the tradition of Philip Glass and Steve Reich, but in all that music the motifs are short and develop through repetition. I wanted to expand that, using motifs that form complete melodies, and have those evolve through different textures or harmony.” The album’s creation was also extended: two years between composition and mastering of the final recording, and almost another year before the album was ready to release. No need to rush slow music. 

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OMA TRACKLIST
01 Wood Meets Water
02 Determination Of The Crossing
03 The Gate
04 Age
05 Fountain
06 Fountain Var 1
07 Said He To Thee08 Emily

TOUR DATES
March 11 - The Bassment, Saskatoon, SK
March 13 - King Eddy, Calgary, AB
March 17 - Central Library, Halifax, NS
March 28 - NAC 4th stage, Ottawa, ON (International Piano Day)
March 31 - Café Resonance, Montreal, QC
April 2 - Heliconian Hall, Toronto, ON

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MISTER NOBU (CHOIR! CHOIR! CHOIR!) SHARES “DEEP IN A DREAM”

LISTEN AND SHARE “DEEP IN A DREAM” HERE

MISTER NOBU’S TAVIE OUT MARCH 27 VIA ARTS & CRAFTS

PRE-ORDER TAVIE HERE

Photo Credit : Matthew David Sleep  // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Mister Nobu is the solo project of Nobu Adilman, co-founder/director of Toronto's Choir! Choir! Choir!. Today, he shares a pop version of “Deep In A Dream”, the 1938 slow jam made famous by Chet Baker and Frank Sinatra, included on his upcoming album, TAVIE, out March 27 via Arts & Crafts. “Chet’s cover of ‘Deep In A Dream’ popped up on my feed on a day I didn’t have anything going on,” says Adilman. “I loved it and realized, as I spent the whole day learning and arranging it, that the lyrics spoke to the themes of love and loss that are all over TAVIE - the perfect addition and the sole cover on the record. 

The narrator sits, all alone, smoking the night away in silence, as she, or he, reminisces a past love. The power of the memories fill the dark, lonely space, and, for a moment, we get to be at the centre of such happiness and comfort. Until it ends.”

“Deep In A Dream” was written in 1938 by Jimmy Van Heusen and Eddie De Lange and became a celebrated jazz standard. There’s no better time than to share Mister Nobu’s cover of the classic track than Feb 13th, the day before we’re supposed to all fall in love! And, “it’s also my birthday,” says Adilman. “So it’s also a good time to do some deep forensics on my failed relationships!!!”

LISTEN AND SHARE “DEEP IN A DREAM” HERE

The twelve songs on TAVIE indelibly mark the emotional highs and lows of a perfect relationship running out of time. The range is unapologetically diverse but slides comfortably under Indie Pop, celebrating melody, harmony, and unironic emotionality. There are ballads and there are dancers.

The album is “mostly about connection,” says Adilman. “From my TV work to music stuff, I generally like to explore human interaction by throwing everyone into weird and collaborative creative environments. Music has a beautiful way of pulling people’s guards down, and cutting through lots of emotional red tape quickly. Music helps me process my emotions, my life, and, if I can get it down in a song, then I feel more resolved.”

Some have said they hear traces of Lennon, others McCartney, perhaps some Dennis Wilson, maybe some Judee Sill and Sibylle Baier, but here's hoping for .01% of Frank Ocean.

LISTEN AND SHARE “BEST OF ME” HERE

TAVIE was produced by Rob Benvie (Thrush Hermit/Bankruptcy), and mixed by Byron Kent Wong, mastered by Noah Mintz at Lacquer Channel Mastering. Mister Nobu is joined by many friends including Benvie, Mike Belitsky (The Sadies), Matt Murphy (The Super Friendz/Flashing Lights/TUNS), Moshe Fisher Rozenberg (Absolutely Free), members of Choir! Choir! Choir!, and Danielle Duval, with string arrangements by Chris A. Cummings (Marker Starling) + Benvie.

Nobu Adilman is one of the two founding members of Choir! Choir! Choir!, the international phenomenon that has collaborated with David Byrne, Patti Smith (twice!), Stewart Copeland, Rufus Wainwright, Brandi Carlile, and more. They’ve wracked up millions of views on YouTube, sung for Lionel Richie on American Idol, been the subject of a half-hour PBS All Arts special for their 2019 performance at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, and performed at Carnegie Hall and Radio City Music Hall. Even Rick Astley dropped by their Toronto weekly to RickRoll a sold-out crowd! And, most recently, held a gig at the border between Mexico and the US, with Nobu leading a group of singers from a stage in Tijuana, and his partner, on the other side of the wall, in San Diego.

WATCH AND THE SHARE THE ALBUM TEASER VIDEO HERE

Never one to sit idle, Nobu’s documentary film SHORT ROUND UP premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival earlier this summer. The film follows Nobu’s search for the Asian men who, like him, auditioned to be “Short Round” in Indiana Jones And The Temple of Doom, their first shot at becoming Hollywood Stars. Nobu has also appeared as a series regular in the cult-hit TV show and films Trailer Park Boys, co-created and starred in forty episodes of the gonzo cooking/gadget creation show Food Jammers seen on the Food Network and Cooking Channel, and travelled in the US in a short-bus powered by vegetable oil meeting innovators of green science for Invention Nation on Discovery Science USA. 

Nobu started out as a writer on Canadian episodic television (Emily of New Moon, Cold Squad), and then co-hosted, with his brother, a couple of national Canadian TV shows (Smart Ask!, ZeD), and acted as a pop culture reporter (>Play). In the late 90s he co-founded and played in the Halifax rock band Rick Of The Skins (ROTS), and in the early 2000s he released his first solo album as Mister Nobu titled C’mon Wid Your C’mon.

Due out March 27 via Arts & Crafts, TAVIE is available to pre-order today on vinyl and digital download. 

PRE-ORDER TAVIE HERE

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TAVIE TRACKLIST
01 Best Of Me
02 Falling Down
03 Ways
04 Take A Knee
05 All This Time
06 Etude
07 Either Way
08 Underneath
09 Do You Know Me
10 Deep In A Dream
11 All Of This
12 I Don’t Want To Lose You

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