THE ELWINS SHARE VIDEO FOR “HUNG UP”, NEW LP OUT TOMORROW

NEW ALBUM, IV, OUT TOMORROW VIA PINK EYE RECORDINGS IN CANADA AND ANTIFRAGILE GLOBALLY

WATCH AND SHARE “HUNG UP” HERE

BUY / STREAM “HUNG UP” HERE

“Newmarket quartet the Elwins unleash prolific and high-energy indie-rock sounds in their new single “Take Me All The Way.” The band combine guitar riffs straight from ’70s classic rock with modern powerhouse vocals to create a unique blend that’ll make you feel like a seasoned rock fan. Fans of the Black Keys will find much to love with these up-and-coming rockers. The catchy single will appear on their fourth studio LP due this fall.” - Alt Press

“’Take Me All The Way’ channels the best of various rock and roll elements found through different decades. Its catchy guitar hook is reminiscent of The Beatles and The Kinks, two of the bands biggest influences on their latest work.  The release is also accompanied by a throwback-style video directed by Wyatt Clough and filmed with retro lenses to give a film-noir classic rock feel.” – Earmilk

‘“Take Me All The Way” is a hard-hitting rock number…” – American Songwriter

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Photo credit: Wyatt Clough // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

With The Elwins ready to release their new LP, IV, this Friday via Pink Eye Recordings in Canada and AntiFragile globally, the band are celebrating by releasing the new video for album cut “Hung Up”. “When we started talking about video vibes we liked the idea of interpreting the song in a different way,” says Francesco Figliomeni. “We were chatting with our friend/collaborator Wyatt Clough (who has filmed all of the videos released so far and also took the album cover photo) and he mentioned he had been researching certain cult practices and we thought that would work really well for this song, being ‘hung up’ in something that may not be good for you - no disrespect to any of our fans who may be in cults, please still buy our album. Initially we thought we would hire an older actor to play a kind of the cult leader but with everything going on we decided that maybe we should just be the cult experimenting with our crystals and getting in touch with the astral plane/praying to catch a glimpse at the astral man. We shot the video in about a day and a half at this cute little cabin near Kingston. If you haven’t spent a day running around digging up crystals from the ground I would highly recommend it.”

WATCH AND SHARE “HUNG UP” HERE

BUY / STREAM “HUNG UP” HERE

The Elwins, have made a decade-long career touring the world, selling out shows, and stealing fans’ hearts. Since the release of their first full-length release And I Thank You in 2012, the Toronto four piece band has become a staple at home and abroad. 

Back with their fourth LP, IV, band members Matthew Sweeney, Francesco Figliomeni, Feurd, and Travis Stokl recorded the new album in a handful of studios across Toronto. 

Produced by Feurd and mixed by JUNO award winning Jay Dufour, the latest collection of music is more direct and vulnerable than their previous releases. Now backed by their own independent label, Pink Eye Recordings, the band utilized their new freedom to play with different sounds and abilities. Leaning on each other, the band embraced new environments and methods, like renting out an old church, writing in the dark, and switching up instruments. The outcome is their most emotional and sweeping record to date. 

WATCH AND SHARE “WEIGHT OF THE WORLD” HERE
BUY / STREAM “WEIGHT OF THE WORLD HERE

The thirteen track album is haunting and heartbreaking in the best way possible. With sharp songwriting, classic tones. and creative textures, IV is a polished evolution that takes listeners back to the band’s roots. “Something Is Happening Here” kicks off the record with smooth harmonies and unflinching lyrics. Sweeney describes the song's origins as “someone helping you out when you’re in a rut, and making you believe in love again.” The first single from IV, “Take Me All The Way” is a classic rock anthem you can’t help but sing along to. Sung from a place of desperation, the infectiously melodic and emotional single is a glimpse into the rest of the album. “Weight of the World” is an eerie and introspective track, the heavy drums, ethereal vocals, and a stripped down chorus will leave you with goosebumps. Figliomeni’s voice shines in the album’s stripped-down track “Daughter Song”

WATCH AND SHARE “TAKE ME ALL THE WAY” HERE

BUY / STREAM “TAKE ME ALL THE WAY” HERE

The cinematic, yet delicate string ensemble is loaded with tender heartache alongside raw vocals. Crafted to be listened to from start to finish, Each track on IV serves as a part of a larger narrative that has you placing the puzzle pieces together one-by-one. Described by Figliomeni as a “labour of love”, IV is not just an album, but an unique experience that sinks it’s hooks into your heart and doesn’t let go

BUY / STREAM “DAUGHTER SONG” HERE

WATCH / SHARE “DAUGHTER SONG” VISUALIZER HERE

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IV TRACKLIST
01 Something Is Happening Here
02 Take Me All The Way
03 Rockin’ The Horse
04 Let Her Be The One
05 Giving Up On Yourself
06 I Will
07 Weight Of The World
08 Slow Motion
09 Backyard At My Mom’s
10 Hung Up
11 1971
12 Daughter Song
13 Hold On To Love

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BADGE ÉPOQUE ENSEMBLE SHARE CLAYMATION VIDEO FOR “UNITY (IT’S UP TO YOU)” FROM UPCOMING LP

SELF HELP OUT NOVEMBER 20, 2020 VIA TELEPHONE EXPLOSION

WATCH AND SHARE “UNITY (IT’S UP TO YOU)” FEAT. JAMES BALEY CLAYMATION MUSIC VIDEO HERE

BUY / STREAM “UNITY (IT’S UP TO YOU)” FEAT. JAMES BALEY HERE

PRE-ORDER SELF HELP HERE

“Max Turnbull’s jazz-funk ensemble is back with its sophomore album. Like the last, it’s full of lush grooves from its many members,, shape-shifting through psych, prog, R&B, heady hip-hop production touches and yacht rock.” NOW 

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Photo Credit : Meg Remy & Colin Medley // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, Toronto’s Badge Époque Ensemble are sharing the new video from director Alex Kingsmill for “Unity (It’s Up To You)” from their upcoming sophomore LP, Self Help. The soul shimmer of the single lets the players pool their R&B chops into something fluid and serpentine while, on guest vocals, the musical performance artist James Baley issues urgent declaratives: “Water must pool, as a rule, before tasted/Or else the water is wasted.” The words throughout the song complement the ensemble music while riffing on the precarious nature of unity itself. 

"The appeal of writing a song about 'unity' is its slipperiness as a concept,” says Max Turnbull. “It can be used as a dividing line, giving form to the particularity of things defined in opposition of one another, or we may zoom out wide enough to find all matter and all energy under its purview. It is a word which requires a frame. A recorded song is sympathetically flexible in its compression. We can single out a lead vocalist (easy to do on this song with returning BÉE guest, the incomparable James Baley) or soloist (guitar from Chris Bezant), or, as I am inclined, we can choose to hear the song as one sound. As the song says, ‘it's up to you’."

Of the video, Kingsmill says : “‘Unity’ is an exploration into correlation, symbiotic cohabitation, and the relationships that are an essential part of being in a sensory world. The video probes the ways in which we imagine, invent and impart meaning onto these interconnections- an immersion into systems, layers, sensations, emotions and feelings that we navigate everyday in our lives, and that sometimes overwhelm us. Inspiration is drawn from the visual language of “The Midnight Gospel”, Jan Švankmajer, “The Adventures of Mark Twain”, and the comic absurdity of Monty Python. This project brings to life ideas I've been eager to explore with clay for a number of years, guided by the stunning music of Badge Époque Ensemble.”

WATCH AND SHARE “UNITY (IT’S UP TO YOU)” FEAT. JAMES BALEY CLAYMATION MUSIC VIDEO HERE

BUY / STREAM “UNITY (IT’S UP TO YOU)” FEAT. JAMES BALEY HERE

PRE-ORDER SELF HELP HERE

Out November 20, 2020 on Telephone Explosion Records, Self Help was recorded live in the months before lockdown, Self Help is an exploratory record that dances across time and genre, guided by fidgety miniatures and jazz inflected collage. While constructed from the inspiration of soul, funk and film music, BÉE mediate those influences having first digested them through the productions of Madlib and the RZA. Throughout, the band pool together their instrumental chops, moving from fluid and serpentine R&B to meditative, minimalistic piano, evoking a contrast of virtuosity and self-surrender. 

A sticker on the sleeve tells us Self Help “combines jazz-funk and mysticism,” a signpost to where its musical and spiritual concerns align. The jazz-funk component translates to arresting hooks in sideways song forms: echoes of Gainsbourg spooled through Azymuth-style Brazilian jazz and punctuated by the whip and snap of Steely Dan. “The Sound Where My Head Was”, the instrumental centrepiece, exemplifies present-wave jazz but also ancient sounds, giving off the mothballed air of a Hiroshi Yoshimura record in a library-music archive.

Self Help’s mysticism emerges in broad and specific ways, denoting not only a search beyond cliché and intellect but also an inquiry into the beat, the spirit, the one will. This isn’t new territory for them: Turnbull – the artist formerly known as Slim Twig, who writes and performs with U.S. Girls and various other Toronto concerns – named the group’s Nature, Man & Woman EP after the Alan Watts book. Building these songs from his drafts over three weekends at Toronto’s Palace Sound studio, the ensemble was free to tap out of the city and into some other place, taking up residence in a collective mind maze. 

The album produces, in equal measure, familiar surprises and the surprisingly familiar. Intoxicated jazz riffs swerve left at phantom intersections. Rhythms cut loose and tie you in knots. But wired into each song is a sense of gentle accumulation, making every featherlight flourish weigh a ton. 

Album closer “Extinct Commune” finds Turnbull deserted at the piano, playing phrases of meditative minimalism taking after the composer Joanna Brouk. For all the record’s reach, it is these contrasting quiet moments that bring Self Help’s communal spirit into focus. 

LISTEN AND SHARE “SING A SILENT GOSPEL” FT. MEG REMY AND DOROTHEA PAAS HERE

BUY / STREAM “SING A SILENT GOSPEL” FT. MEG REMY AND DOROTHEA PAAS HERE

A note on personnel: Badge Époque Ensemble now has a seventh member in Karen Ng, the saxophonist and sometime collaborator of Do Make Say Think, Feist, and others. In BÉE, Ng joins Chris Bezant and Giosuè Rosati, her bandmates in the Andy Shauf live band, as well as U.S. Girls co-conspirators Turnbull and Ed Squires, and other Torontonian cross-pollinators listed below. Guest vocalists across Self Help include Meg Remy, who sings with Dorothea Paas on the opener, James Baley, and Toronto singer-songwriter Jennifer Castle on the remarkable “Just Space for Light”.

Words by: Jazz Monroe 

Badge Époque Ensemble is: 
Jay Anderson: Drum Kit / Chris Bezant: Guitar / Karen Ng: Saxophone / Alia O’Brien: Flute / Ed Squires: Conga, percussion / Giosuè Rosati: Bass / Maximilian ‘Twig’ Turnbull: Fender Rhodes, clavinet, synthesizers 

PRAISE FOR BADGE ÉPOQUE ENSEMBLE

“Nature, Man & Woman is an immersive trip in the spirit of Alice Coltrane. "Badge Theme" crackles for its entire 14-minute runtime, while "Zealous Child" turns nimbly on multiple tempo changes and a breezy vocal from Dorothea Paas" Exclaim! 8/10

"Drawing on prog, psych, and funk with flute at its forefront, the band sounds like a dusty dollar bin record with grooves scorching hot enough to melt unsuspecting minds." Bandcamp

"The jazzy, progressive instrumental sextet are experts in groove, building each one as a vessel for adventurous melodies that snake from restless funk to wild explosions of dramatic psych" - NOW Magazine

“Twig’s writing is sure to appeal to anyone who likes late-’60s prog from the Canterbury scene” - Vancouver Sun

“...trippy groovefest...that takes more twists and turns than a bag of pretzels” - Tinnitist

"Will throw you back into a time when pop orchestration was king" - Laurie Brown’s Pondercast

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SELF HELP TRACKLIST
1. Sing A Silent Gospel
2. Unity (It’s Up To You)
3. Cloud
4. The Sound Where My Head Was
5. Just Space For Light
6. Birds Fly Through Ancient Ruins
7. Extinct Commune

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PONDERCAST EPISODE 85 : HEART REPAIR

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There are many kinds of heartbreaks that life throws at us. Today’s episode of Laurie Brown’s Pondercast, Heart Repair, covers a few different flavours. Having our hearts broken is not something we can avoid...life is like that. They must be there to teach us something. 

Can we get better at having our hearts broken? Is that possible?

If you are soaking in a broken heart at this moment, or if your last broken heart was years ago..this episode will perform some amateur exploratory surgery on your tender heart. Fun!

LISTEN TO PONDERCAST EP 85 : HEART REPAIR HERE

New to Pondercast, every Monday morning Laurie Brown will post a new 20 minute Guided Meditation. Meant for everyone - no experience necessary. Great way to start meditating, and a great way to find support and encouragement for your practise.

Also new for season 4, every second Friday the Pondercast team are now posting a Grounding Thought. We started these during the intense days of lockdown and we’ve heard from you that they helped. So count on 10 minute podcasts to help shift your perspective when your world threatens to overwhelm.

LISTEN TO PONDERCAST GUIDED MEDITATIONS HERE

Pondercast is able to expand their offerings because of the support you have helped build on Patreon. We are really hoping that this new season will move you to become a monthly donor at www.patreon.com/Pondercast or, a one time donor on our website at www.pondercast.ca

For those of you who have already taken the Patreon plunge, thank you - your support has made this happen.

 SUBSCRIBE TO PONDERCAST ON ITUNES / SPOTIFY / YOUTUBE

Recently, Killbeat Music partnered with the team at Pondercast to bring you Ponderbeat, a series of special episodes featuring selections curated by Brown from some of Killbeat’s latest releases. The seventh episode of Ponderbeat is live now, featuring music from Rich Aucoin, TOPS, Liza Anne, Reuben and the Dark and more.

 LISTEN TO KILLBEAT’S COLLABORATION WITH PONDERCAST - PONDERBEAT EPISODE 07 HERE

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