AUSTRA SHARES NEW SONG, “MOUNTAIN BABY”, FROM UPCOMING LP

LISTEN AND SHARE “MOUNTAIN BABY” FT. CECILE BELIEVE HERE

BUY / STREAM “MOUNTAIN BABY” FT. CECILE BELIEVE HERE

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

POSTPONED TOUR DATES RESCHEDULED FOR FALL - FULL DATES BELOW

PRE-ORDER HiRUDiN HERE

Photo Credit: Virginie Khateeb // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

As the release of Austra’s fourth album HiRUDiN moves closer, due May 1 via Pink Fizz, today Austra (aka Katie Austra Stelmanis) shares new song “Mountain Baby” feat. Cecile Believe.

Oddball pop masterpiece “Mountain Baby” is the third song to be shared from Austra’s new LP, following “Risk It” and “Anywayz”. Alongside Cecile Believe (LA/Montreal artist and the “voice” and co-writer on SOPHIE’s Oil of Every Pearl's Un-Insides), “Mountain Baby” also features a kid’s choir - students from Wilkinson Public School in Toronto where Katie’s mother is a teacher. The dichotomy of the choir and Cecile’s vocals reflect the song’s intentions. Katie explains further: “Mountain Baby explores the different stages of a breakup. Surrounded by a feeling of unknown and grounded only by a hidden sense to move forward (the choir), we’re also reminded through flashbacks of both the uncertainty and resistance we experienced in the relationship (katie), as well as the pure, unbridled joy (cecile).”

LISTEN AND SHARE “MOUNTAIN BABY” FT. CECILE BELIEVE HERE

BUY / STREAM “MOUNTAIN BABY” FT. CECILE BELIEVE HERE

While Austra’s third album, 2017’s Future Politics, was concerned with the external power structures that shape society, HiRUDiN points inward, tracing 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.

WATCH AND SHARE “RISK IT” HERE

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Recorded between Spain, London, and Toronto in early 2018, Stelmanis, who has been the sole producer for Austra in the past, was joined by co-producers Rodaidh McDonald and Joseph Shabason for the first time. The resulting album reaps the rewards of Austra’s leap into the unknown, in her most introspective yet inventive statement to date.

Austra’s May tour dates have been postponed to the same or an alternative venue, with the exception of London, Paris and Madrid which have been cancelled. New dates have been added for those cities (listed below). In addition a fully expanded tour will be announced and on sale in May. 

WATCH AND SHARE “ANYWAYZ” HERE

BUY / STREAM “ANYWAYZ” HERE

PRE-ORDER HiRUDiN HERE

TOUR DATES
Sep 16 - Great Hall, Toronto, ON
Oct 9 - The Sultan Room, New York, NY
Nov 4 - Niebo, Warsaw, PL
Nov 12 - Flex, Vienna, AT
Nov 15 - Metropol, Berlin, DE 
Nov 26 - La Machine Du Moulin Rouge, Paris, FR 
Dec 2 - EartH, London, UK 
Dec 4 - Mil.Leni Festival, Barcelona, ES 
Dec 5 - Cool, Madrid, ES 

More Dates TBA

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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

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RICH AUCOIN SHARES VIDEO FOR NEW PROTEST SINGLE, “HOW IT BREAKS”

WATCH AND SHARE “HOW IT BREAKS” HERE

“HOW IT BREAKS” AVAILABLE TO STREAM EVERYWHERE APRIL 17, HERE

Photo Credit : Jessica Jameson // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, celebrated artist Rich Aucoin shares the video for new single “How It Breaks”. Written in Arcosanti, Arizona while Aucoin was cycling across the United States on a tour for mental health charities, “How It Breaks” is a call to action and references several classic songs of protest. “After listening to David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’, I got into the idea about referencing a song which is also referencing a song as that song’s bridge references The Beatles’ ‘A Day In The Life’,” says Aucoin. 

The song references Aretha Franklin, Rage Against The Machine, Funkadelic, Rolling Stones and the production of Rihanna. “I thought this would be a great track to re-purpose the beat from ‘Umbrella’ as I weaved other ideas of the familiar. I was thinking about the connection between the past and present on this song. I thought the referential spirit would be an interesting thing to play off while attempting to write a protest song in the lineage of protest songs.” 

WATCH AND SHARE “HOW IT BREAKS” HERE

“How It Breaks” Single Artwork // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

“How It Breaks” was recorded in Toronto at Taurus by Thomas D’arcy (TWRP/Yukon Blonde) with an all-star vocal group: Kyla Charter (Patrick Watson/July Talk), Simone Denny (Love Inc.), James Baley (U.S. Girls), Maylee Todd, and Tarik Henry. 

The video was edited by Aucoin from over a hundred videos of current news to historical footage. “I wanted to created a link between the protesting of the present and the past. The idea was to demonstrate that the protests happening now that one can still choose to get involved with or not will be what future generations look back on the same way we revere the importance of protests of the past. The protests of today are making history and will be remembered; already the Women’s March has aged with the understanding that it is amongst the greatest protests. I hoped that, watching the video, someone may feel inspired to join in the next time a call for action is made.” 

Aucoin has been long-listed for the Polaris Music Prize on two previous albums. His video for “Brian Wilson is A.L.I.V.E.” won the Prism Prize. Aucoin has built a reputation with energetic, interactive show and for the fact he's the only artist that writes the albums to sync to old movies in the same manner as Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon with The Wizard of Oz. He's performed all over North and South America, Europe and Australia at festivals including Osheaga, The Great Escape, Les Eurockéennes, Berlin Music Festival, Art Basel Miami, Luminato Art Festival, Iceland Airwaves, SXSW, Pop Montreal and more.

PRAISE FOR RICH AUCOIN

“A bold talent, his grasp of sonics is interlinked with a desire to express something, to challenge both himself and those around him.” - Clash Magazine

"’The Middle’ is an extremely earnest, charming-as-hell reflection on the self at the midpoint of life and death." - Noisey

"This is an anthemic collection of head nodding and foot tapping electro-pop" - PopMatters 

"Easily one of the most mesmerizing tracks we've heard so far this year." - CBC Music (2018)

“Aucoin, a characteristically ambitious artist” - Paste Mag 

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SATELLITE AND THE HARPOONIST (SHAWN HALL) SHARE VIDEO FOR FIRST SINGLE FROM NEW SUPERGROUP

WATCH AND SHARE “BALLET IN A PHONE BOOTH” HERE

SATELLITE AND THE HARPOONIST - THE NEW SUPERGROUP FROM HARPOONIST AND THE AXE MURDERER’S SHAWN HALL, FEATURING MEMBERS OF THE DEEP DARK WOODS, THE BOOM BOOMS, AND KING MISSILE III

NEW EP COMING THIS SUMMER

“Ballet In A Phone Booth” Single Artwork // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

As the great poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once stated, “The best thing one can do when it’s raining is to let it rain.” And so, in January 2020, as the city’s longest spell of precipitation in over five decades threatened to wash Vancouver into the Pacific, four musicians from disparate sonic territories did just that. Not that they had a say in the matter, they let it rain while gathering at Afterlife Studios to conduct an experiment as radical and historic as the weather outside. 

Shawn Hall of the acclaimed maverick blues duo The Harpoonist and The Axe Murderer was the progenitor, his notion being to assemble three talented friends with whom he had previously worked, yet that had never met each other. Then, during an intense three-day exploration of alchemic creative collaboration within a self-imposed pressure cooker environment, they would record a 6-song EP – all under the gaze of a film crew. So, as the rain smashed down on the City of Glass, Satellite and The Harpoonist was birthed, with every labour pain and its exhausting entry into the world captured on celluloid.

Joining singer/harmonicist Hall in this extraordinary project – his “people that want to play in the sandbox” – are Geoff Hillhorst (Hammond organ/piano/synthesizers) of award-winning alt-country-folk dreamers, The Deep Dark Woods; Theo Vincent (percussion/congas/vocals) from Vancouver’s funk-soul powerhouse The Boom Booms, and on drums and Pencilina, Brooklyn’s Bradford Reed, of out-there art-rockers, King Missile III. The Pencilina, an incredible double-necked zither-like contraption, is Reed’s own one-off invention, making Satellite and The Harpoonist the world’s only band to feature it.

WATCH AND SHARE “BALLET IN A PHONE BOOTH” HERE

Today, the band shares the first glimpse into those sights and sounds with the video for the new single “Ballet In A Phone Booth”, the trippy, groove-heavy, rock ‘n’ soul lead single featuring a guest appearance from Royal Canoe’s Matt Peters.

“Ballet In A Phone Booth” is a direct reference to Terry O’Reilly’s ‘Age of Persuasion’ referring to the art of making commercials in 30 seconds and the absurdity of our short attention spans in these times. “I wrote it at the Banff Centre on one of their 106 pianos,” says Shawn Hall. “To me it reflects the spiralling of our current predicament and how easy it is to be lost in our collective mad descent, while still being lovingly engaged and aware of our situation.”

Director Peter Ricq said of the video, “I had this idea for a video using vintage animated landscapes as a theme. When I started editing all these images together, what kept popping up was ‘Man vs. Nature’. We are really losing the beauty that our world has and even had to offer. You'd think that after all these decades, we wouldn't need to be reminded by now, but it's obviously never-ending. Also as a bonus, I'm trying to hypnotize the audience to get on the dance floor and shake their booty.”

Be on the lookout for more new music from Satellite and The Harpoonist coming in the near future. 

In the meantime, tune in on April 27 to watch Shawn Hall perform Satellite And The Harpoonist songs for National Arts Centre Canada Performs Live Stream Series.

Photo Credit: Kelsey Vansickle // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

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