AUSTRA ANNOUNCES NEW LP, SHARES VIDEO FOR “ANYWAYZ”

AUSTRA ANNOUNCES FOURTH LP, HiRUDiN, OUT MAY 1, 2020 VIA PINK FIZZ

WATCH AND SHARE “ANYWAYZ” HERE

BUY / STREAM “ANYWAYZ” HERE

TOUR DATES BEGIN MAY 5

PRE-ORDER HiRUDiN HERE

Photo Credit: Virginie Khateeb // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Being in a toxic relationship can sometimes feel like being lost in a maze. Every attempt to turn a corner lands you back where you started. Today, Austra (aka Katie Austra Stelmanis) announces her fourth album, HiRUDiN. Set for release on May 1, via Pink Fizz, HiRUDiN is both a bold acknowledgement of such patterns of behaviour and a testament to the power of breaking them.

Having previously shared “Risk It” from the forthcoming record, now Austra shares new single “Anywayz”. The album’s opening track, Stelmanis says of “Anywayz”: “It explores the fear associated with leaving someone, and the terrifying realization that without them in your life, the rest of the world will continue unscathed as if nothing has changed.”

WATCH AND SHARE “ANYWAYZ” HERE

BUY / STREAM “ANYWAYZ” HERE

The director of the video for “Anywayz” (and also the video for “Risk It”), Jasmin Mozaffari (‘Firecrackers’) adds: “I wanted the video to feel as dramatic and chaotic as heartbreak can be, bringing this fear into fruition. The concept focuses on Katie as a heightened version of herself, sequestered inside a barren mansion that resembles a cage of her own spiralling thoughts. She resists moving on, yet as time persists and the outside world thrives, it eventually forces itself upon her.”

Katie Austra Stelmanis has been better known by her middle name for three albums, ten years, and countless tours. She wrote, produced, and performed all her own records, occasionally sharing the spotlight with a band to tour live. From the outside, things were going really well for a while: she built a devoted fan base and sold out shows all around the world. However, on the inside, Stelmanis was beginning to feel stagnant and uninspired. “I was losing faith in my own ideas,” she explains. Without realising it, she’d got caught up in a toxic relationship that was tearing her apart.

WATCH AND SHARE “RISK IT” HERE

BUY / STREAM “RISK IT” HERE

It wasn’t until Stelmanis was ready to face her insecurities that she was able to see a way forward: “My creative and personal relationships were heavily intertwined, and I knew the only answer was to part ways with all of the people and comforts that I’d known for the better part of a decade and start again.” Alongside making changes in her personal life, HiRUDiN saw Austra taking an entirely different, free-spirited approach to making a record. Seeking out all new collaborators, she booked three days of sessions in Toronto with improv musicians she’d never met before. They included two thirds of contemporary classical improv group c_RL, the cellist and kamanche duo Kamancello, kulintang ensemble Pantayo, and a children’s choir.

Accumulating a vast and vibrant mass of source material, Austra then holed up in a studio in the Spanish countryside and took a collage approach to sampling, arranging, writing and producing to reveal the songs that would form the album. “I found myself really enjoying the role of producer for this record,” she says, “directing and arranging a very disparate array of parts and people and feeling strong in my own conviction for what I wanted it to sound like.”  HiRUDiN additionally saw her work alongside co-producers for the first time, Rodaidh McDonald and Joseph Shabason, and she brought in David Wrench and Heba Kadry to mix and master the record respectively. “It was incredibly liberating and a huge learning process to work with so many different people,” she says. “I felt completely revitalized.”

While Austra’s third album, Future Politics, was concerned with the external power structures that shape society, HiRUDiN points inward. It traces a deeply personal journey towards regeneration, dealing with the fallout of toxic relationships, queer shame, and insecurity along the way. Named after the peptide released by leeches that is the most potent anticoagulant in the world, HiRUDiN is about the importance of healing the self, letting go of harmful influences, and finding the power to rebuild through exploring your innermost desires. It reaps the rewards of Austra’s leap into the unknown, in her most introspective yet inventive statement to date.

PRE-ORDER HiRUDiN HERE

DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

HiRUDiN TRACKLIST
01 Anywayz
02 All I Wanted
03 How Did You Know?
04 Your Family
05 Risk It
06 Interlude i
07 It’s Amazing
08 Mountain Baby feat. Cecile Believe
09 I Am Not Waiting
10 Interlude ii
11 Messiah

TOUR DATES
May 5 - Longboat Hall - Toronto, ON
May 7 - The Sultan Room - New York, NY | Sold Out
May 12 - Hoxton Hall - London, UK | Sold Out
May 13 - Le Badaboum - Paris, FR | Sold Out
May 14 - Mil.Leni Festival - Barcelona, ES
May 16 - Mallorca Live Festival - Palma de Mallorca, ES
May 18 - Theater Im Delphi - Berlin, DE | Sold Out
May 20 - Niebo - Warsaw, PL
May 21 - WUK - Vienna, AU
May 22 - Tomavistas Festival - Madrid, ES

TICKETS : https://austra.lnk.to/websitePR

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SAMEER CASH SHARES VIDEO FOR NEW SINGLE “DRIVEWAY MOMENT”

WATCH AND SHARE “DRIVEWAY MOMENT” HERE

BUY / STREAM “DRIVEWAY MOMENT” HERE

PERFORMING MARCH 12 AT TORONTO’S BURDOCK

Photo Credit : Vanessa Heins // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Written in between bar shifts and soundchecks and recorded in a garage behind a Chinese restaurant in downtown Toronto, Sameer Cash’s new single “Driveway Moment” is the result of the kind of heartbreaking, and redemptive work that compels us to be better. Produced by Matthew Bailey, engineered by Chris Stringer (Timber Timbre), mixed by D James Goodwin (Kevin Morby, Craig Finn), and mastered by Philip Bova Shaw (Feist, Andy Shauf), “Driveway Moment” is Cash’s first single since his rebirth as a solo artist. 

"Driveway moments are the small glimpses between the big adventures,” says Cash. “They are the moments that I have lived in most of my life. Those are the times where you really grow and learn. When you’re not thinking so much, but merely existing, and feeling the weight of everything in front of you, and all the things you’ve left behind."

WATCH AND SHARE “DRIVEWAY MOMENT” HERE

BUY / STREAM “DRIVEWAY MOMENT” HERE

“Driveway Moment” Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Sameer Cash was raised on a diet of Rock & Roll records and Hindu fairy tales. His father, born to a large family in the deep suburbs of Scarborough Ontario, spent years shedding his catholic upbringing for the ungovernable religion of 1980’s post-punk. Cash’s mother, born among the mango trees of Kenya, by way of India, clung to her own upbringing through childhood memories and her mother’s cooking, seeking comfort and closure through many Canadian Prairie winters.  

Watch for more new music and performance from Sameer Cash in the near future.

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TOPS SHARES NEW SONG AND VIDEO "COLDER & CLOSER"

WATCH AND SHARE “COLDER & CLOSER” HERE

NORTH AMERICAN TOUR DATES BEGIN APRIL 3

NEW ALBUM I FEEL ALIVE DUE APRIL 3 VIA MUSIQUE TOPS

PRE-ORDER I FEEL ALIVE HERE

"Indie pop bliss." - Pitchfork

"One of the most riveting and peerless acts in indie rock" - Stereogum

"One of Canada's most consistent musical exports" - NYLON

Photo Credit : Justin Aranha // DOWNLOAD HI-RES

On the heels of their latest single "Witching Hour", Montreal four-piece TOPS are sharing a new song and video. "Colder & Closer" is a shimmering yet lean pop production with lyrical meditations on the social isolation that often plagues casual intimacy. The Mashie Alam directed visual artfully represents this by following singer Jane Penny through an alternating lens of thermal and normal vision.

Speaking on the video, Alam says: "Jane had this really amazing vision where she hoped to convey the feeling of being immensely close to someone. The choice of using thermal footage was made because we wanted to see, feel, and immerse ourselves into the varying temperatures of the body as it heats up, cools down, responds to touch, and feels alone. We created a movement composition that travels between a live action world and a thermal world! The idea was to visually explore the dynamic of being far (in the live action world) and being close (in the thermal world)! Eventually the juxtaposing jumps between the two worlds merge into an immersive thermal universe to evoke a climactic sense of closeness from where there is no return."

WATCH AND SHARE “COLDER & CLOSER” HERE

"Colder & Closer" is the latest offering from TOPS' new album, I Feel Alive, out April 3 via their own label Musique TOPS, following the aforementioned "Witching Hour" and the album's title-track. The song also arrives ahead of TOPS' tour this Spring. Beginning April 3 in Las Vegas, they'll make stops in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, and more. They'll be joined by Honey Harper, Sorry Girls, and Better Person on select dates. Tickets are available on their website.

MORE ABOUT I FEEL ALIVE

The artwork for TOPS' fourth LP sets the tone for the music enclosed. Inspired by the work of photographer Thomas Ruff, TOPS' vocalist Jane Penny stares bare-faced down the lens-simple and un-posed, yet striking with starkness and vulnerability.

The image captures the fraught nature of being alive, which the 11 tracks on the album explore. Penny's remarkably expressive voice is front and center. On this record more than any other,she sings with passion and energy, without sacrificing the honesty and introspection that gives her voice its depth. The songs cover a range of experiences but at it's heart I Feel Alive is a record about resilience, the ways we can grow from for our pain and the strength that comes from learning to stand on your own as an individual.

LISTEN AND SHARE “WITCHING HOUR” HERE

I Feel Alive is TOPS' fourth full-length, following 2017's Sugar At The Gate and follows singles "Echo of Dawn" and "Seven Minutes" from last year. Their trademark sound of beguiling melodies over soft-rock grooves, with touches of '80s sophisti-pop and a contemporary experimental palette is intact, but bolder and more expansive. The songs manage to be both immediately catchy and deceptively deep, with Penny's literary lyrics adding an extra dimension to the pure pop hooks. Satisfying yet far from predictable, this is a record to be savored, revealing itself slowly, gaining power and poignancy with each listen.

For I Feel Alive, the band members convened in a basement studio in Montreal, recording for the first time with keyboardist Marta Cikojevic who joined the band as a live member in 2017. "From the first time we practiced with her it was clear that we were in sync musically, and we found ourselves improvising together at the first rehearsal" says Penny. "Having Marta manning the keys allowed me to reach for my flute, and gave me the chance to integrate my flute playing with the writing process, using it as an expressive instrument rather than more production element which it has been in the past." 

She continues: "We'd spent a lot of time apart, not working on new stuff or touring, just living life, all in different cities," says Penny. When we went to make I Feel Alive we all had a good sense of what we were trying to do and a renewed energy towards playing together. The goal was to get in a room together and play, not holding anything back."

"It was a quick process," says guitarist and fellow song-writer David Carriere. "We would work all day writing a song and then demo them the same evening, relying on our natural chemistry as a band to let the songs come into their own." The band's line-up is completed by Riley Fleckon drums.

WATCH AND SHARE "I FEEL ALIVE" HERE

Title track "I Feel Alive" is a bracing pop gem with darker undertones. An ode to new love, Penny sings "I feel alive looking in your eyes" with the exuberance that comes with the early stages of romance, the discovery of a deep love. But love is complicated, and within the joy and happiness is the pain of leaving someone else behind. "When I saw you wanted to spend the night with someone else at home," she sings, "I knew it wasn't right." This honest admission that happiness can come at the expense of others adds another dimension to the song's ecstatic energy. True love defies us to overcome others expectations, and that's a good thing. People may be watching, but why should you care.

Opposing and it, "Colder and Closer" is a sonic departure, with programmed synths and metallic drumming, the song shimmers. A tribute to seeking meaning in an increasingly confusing world Penny sings "Searching constellations/seeing if the stars align." But she doesn't take comfort in the stars, rejecting fate as something arbitrary, though not quite meaningless. "Signs are myths like nations/shapes drawn over crooked lines."The song is swift and lean, a pop confection, but it's also ripe with meditations on the social isolation that plagues casual intimacy. It's a prime example of the way TOPS layer meaning within pop songwriting. Beneath the soaring melodies and crisp production, I Feel Alive balances the giddiness of a new relationship with the agony of leaving old things behind. It's an introspective record that you can dance to, music that hits in an immediate rush but sticks around, lingering like the memory of a perfect doomed love affair-both the joy and the pain, until it becomes a part of your life forever.

PRE-ORDER I FEEL ALIVE HERE

TOUR DATES
4/3 - Las Vegas, NV @ Bunkhouse Saloon*
4/4 - Tucson, AZ @ 191 Toole*
4/5 - Phoenix, AZ @ Valley Bar*
4/6 - El Paso, TX @ Lowbrow Palace*
4/7 - Marfa, TX @ Lost Horse Saloon*
4/9 - Austin, TX @ Mohawk*
4/10 - San Antonio, TX @ Paper Tiger*
4/11 - Dallas, TX @ Club Dada*
4/13 - Memphis, TN @ The Hi Tone Cafe*
4/14 - Atlanta, GA @ Terminal West*
4/15 - Asheville, NC @ The Mothlight*
4/16 - Washington D.C. @ Union Stage*^
4/17 - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda's^
4/18 - New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom*^
4/20 - Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall*^
4/21 - Montreal, QC @ Theatre Rialto#^
4/22 - Toronto, ON @ Adelaide Hall#^
4/23 - Detroit, MI @ Deluxx Fluxx#^
4/24 - Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle#^
4/25 - Minneapolis, MN @ Turf Club#^
4/28 - Vancouver, BC @ Imperial Theatre#
4/29 - Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile#
4/30 - Portland, OR @ Doug Fir Lounge#
5/1 - San Francisco, CA @ The Independent#
5/2 - Los Angeles, CA @ El Rey Theatre#
5/4 - San Diego, CA @ Music Box#
5/11 - Berlin, Germany @ Berghain Kantine 
5/12 - Hamburg, Germany @ Molotow
5/13 - Köln, Germany @ Bumann & Sohn
5/14 - Münster, Germany @ Gleis 22 
5/15 - Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso
5/16 - Paris, France @ Le Beau festival @ La Station
5/18 - Brighton, UK @ The Hope & Ruin
5/19 - Nottingham, UK @ Bodega
5/20 - Dublin, Ireland @ Whelan's
5/21 - Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
5/22 - Manchester, UK @ YES 
5/23 - London, UK @ All Points East Festival
5/24 - Bristol, UK @ The Louisiana
5/25 - Birmingham, UK @ Hare and Hounds
5/27 - Lille, France @ La Bulle Café
5/28 - Brussels, Belgium @ Botanique
5/29 - Groningen, Netherlands @ Vera 
5/30 - Utrecht, Netherlands @ Ekko 
6/1 - Barcelona, Spain @ Primavera Sound @ Sala Apolo
6/3 - Lyon, France @ Sonic
6/4 - Zurich, Switzerland @ Zukunft
6/5 - Milano, Italy @ Ohibo

* = w/ Honey Harper
# = w/ Sorry Girls
^ = w/ Better Person

DOWNLOAD HI-RES

1. Direct Sunlight
2. I Feel Alive
3. Pirouette
4. Ballads & Sad Movies
5. Colder & Closer
6. Witching Hour
7. Take Down
8. Drowning In Paradise
9. OK Fine Whatever
10. Looking To Remember
11. Too Much

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