YVES JARVIS SHARES VIDEO FOR “EMBLEM”

ACCLAIMED NEW ALBUM SUNDRY ROCK SONG STOCK OUT ON VINYL TOMORROW VIA FLEMISH EYE

WATCH AND SHARE NEW VIDEO FOR “EMBLEM” HERE

GET SUNDRY ROCK SONG STOCK ON VINYL HERE

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“Canada’s next great folk star.” - Atwood Magazine

“Undoubtedly one of Canada's most underrated singer-songwriters” - CBC Music

“curling up to pleasure points like a soulful, psychedelic cat.” Exclaim! 9/10

“kaleidoscopic dreamscapes.” - New Feeling

“Gorgeous … Jarvis’ sound is one of a kind.” – Under the Radar

“evokes uncovered recordings from an obscure spiritual retreat” - The Fader

“Wispy, wavery, deliberately ambling low-fi psychedelia.” – Jon Pareles, The New York Times

“a gently effervescent bliss.” – Bandcamp

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Artist // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

On Sundry Rock Song Stock, Yves Jarvis continues to refine his creative approach to the core of his being, where music and life intertwine in harmonious fashion. Out now everywhere digitally and tomorrow on vinyl via Flemish Eye (and ANTI outside of Canada), this latest album from the Montreal-based musician fuses genre elements into a symbiotic relationship where wistful folk, tender R&B, pastoral prog, and musique concrète experiments feed into one another to grow lush new forms. Though he maintains an air of mystery with his lyrics, Jarvis’s whisper-soft words can be interpreted as both deeply personal and politically motivated in ways we haven’t heard from him before.

Yves Jarvis has shared a new video for the song “Emblem” in anticipation of tomorrow’s album release on vinyl.

WATCH AND SHARE NEW VIDEO FOR “EMBLEM” HERE

As a pre-teen street corner busker, some of Jarvis’s earliest performances took place outside. He returned to an open-air environment for Sundry Rock Song Stock’s creation, setting up a makeshift studio to lay down its foundation of guitar, Nord synth, and Rhodes electric piano. Recording on a reel-to-reel tape machine, he experimented with various off-kilter techniques including a softly tapped steel drum drenched in effects, or melodies played on a wine glass meant to mimic a flute. 

“I want my recordings to be naturalist, so from that sense I am ideally making them outside,” says Jarvis. “More than a musician or a singer, I’m a producer, and any studio I’m in will become my bedroom. Creation is my life and I don’t compartmentalize it at all.”

GET SUNDRY ROCK SONG STOCK ON VINYL HERE

BUY / STREAM SUNDRY ROCK SONG STOCK DIGITALLY HERE

WATCH AND SHARE “SEMULA” HERE

WATCH AND SHARE “FOR PROPS” HERE

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SUNDRY ROCK SONG STOCK TRACKLIST
1. Epitome
2. In Every Mountain
3. For Props
4. Ambrosia
5. Emerald
6. Victim
7. Semula
8. Notch In Your Belt
9. Emblem
10. Fact Almighty

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LUKA KUPLOWSKY SHARES NEW VIDEO, LIVE AT THE GOLDEN LION

WATCH AND SHARE LUKA KUPLOWSKY AND THE STARDUST PLAYERS LIVE AT THE GOLDEN LION

NEW LP STARDUST OUT NOW ON NEXT DOOR RECORDS

“Kuplowsky does wonderful things with jazzy, folk-rock sounds and offbeat philosophy … sublime” The Globe and Mail

"Delivering his poetic musings with a tender voice and unhurried pace, Kuplowsky’s music is an oasis of calm with the quiet power to draw listeners together" Aquarium Drunkard

BUY / STREAM STARDUST HERE 

Today, Luka Kuplowsky is sharing the new video of his performance with the Stardust Players, live at The Golden Lion, a Ukrainian dining club in south Etobicoke. Directed by Colin Medley, the filmmaker found inspiration in the Finnish film director Aki Kaurismäki who “always seems to have at least one scene in all his films set in a bar or restaurant with a live band performing” says Medley. “Unlike other directors, who may just show a quick shot of the band playing to establish their presence, Kaurismäki lets these musical moments play out in full. Knowing that Luka, like myself, is a massive fan of Kaurismäki’s films, it made sense to try to place him and his band in one of these scenes.”

 “The Golden Lion is not too far from where I grew up,” says Kuplowsky. “I remember going there around eleven or twelve and being struck by how vast and ornate the space was. We were celebrating my Baba's birthday and my brothers and I were wearing stiff white dress shirts and black ties.

When Colin and I thought to film a live performance homage to Kaurismäki, The Golden Lion sprung to mind. It shares the dislocated time and place of his films and serves the European ideal of the dinner and disco; white tablecloth and beer. 

We filmed the performance in early January of this year. The owners kindly allowed us to take over the space for an evening and within the span of three hours we had constructed our own Kaurismäki universe. To briefly revisit a childhood space and play a set of music through the lens of a Finnish director is a real trip.”

WATCH AND SHARE LUKA KUPLOWSKY AND THE STARDUST PLAYERS LIVE AT THE GOLDEN LION

Out now via Next Door Records, Stardust continues where we left off with Kuplowsky’s Judee Justin Arthur Mary, the reimagined covers EP from earlier this year. With many of the same players as the EP – Evan Cartwright (Andy Shauf, U.S. Girls) on drums, Thom Gill (Martha Wainwright, Sam Amidon) on electric guitar and organ, standout jazz player Josh Cole (Josh Cole Quartet, Sandro Perri) on fretless bass, Bahamas’ Felicity Williams (Bahamas) and Robin Dann (Bernice) for backing vocals, and Brodie West (Broken Social Scene, The Ex) on alto sax – Stardust sees Luka incorporating strings and horns to accompany the jazz-inflected folk sound that he explored on his EP. The album is truly a cinematic exploration of song by Kuplowksy, who works as an adjunct professor of film in Toronto. His narratives often twist and weave through realism and melodrama, romanticism and surrealism. Kuplowsky has an ability to create non-linear narratives that both feel complete and can leave your head spinning with a simple lyric; such as the standout line on the eponymous “Stardust”, where Luka sings, “Did I make an angel blush, with my suffering, my loss?”. Kuplowsky explains his heady vision for the new album, saying:

“In Stardust, the voice is a planet and the band, satellites in orbit.

The songs find their flow in this dance, finding balance not in cohesion but rotation.

Similarly, the lyrics are not necessarily narrative or linear, rather they are spheres of thought and contemplation.

Verses and choruses circle an idea rather than move towards a foregone conclusion. 

Let's extend this metaphor further in another direction.

Stardust is indebted to the creativity of Joni Mitchell, Arthur Russell, John Trudell, and Ryan Driver (among others).

Think of influence not as a mask or screen, but also an ORBIT.

You gotta create your own gravity, or else you're just drifting…

Forever an apprentice in song, 

Luka Kuplowsky”

LISTEN AND SHARE “NEVER GET TIRED (OF LOVING YOU)” HERE

With his wonderful new album Stardust, Luka Kuplowsky makes a refreshing argument for the relevance of acoustic music as a place to hold thought; an open space to place impeccably chosen words, ideas and images. A young songwriter with a calm, conversational delivery and an effortless, un-showy grasp of poetry; Kuplowsky humbly picks up the same threads of inquiry that did Cohen, asking the big questions about love, meaning and consciousness. Musically, Stardust triangulates between Hejira and Late for the Sky, finding connections between the purity of simple melody and the tangled modulations of jazz. Luka Kuplowsky makes a music of contemplation, a music alive to the everyday possibilities of epiphany and revelation, an unhurried music that moves with the gentle and curving rhythms of thought.

WATCH AND SHARE “STARDUST (REPRISE)” HERE  (CW: NUDITY)

From the first note, Stardust feels fresh and immediate, and this immediacy is no accident. The album was recorded in just two days, in a studio with almost no isolation, with an all-star band of musicians drawn from the rich jazz and improvisational scenes of Toronto. Vocals and nearly everything else was recorded live, in an act of pure trust, and the album truly captures a performance, an assembly of players discovering the songs in real time.

~ written by Tamara Lindeman (The Weather Station)

WATCH AND SHARE “CRAZY LOVE” HERE

Photo Credit: Melissa Richards // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

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BADGE ÉPOQUE ENSEMBLE REVEAL “JUST SPACE FOR LIGHT” FEATURING JENNIFER CASTLE

LISTEN AND SHARE “JUST SPACE FOR LIGHT” HERE
BUY / STREAM “JUST SPACE FOR LIGHT” HERE

SELF HELP OUT NOVEMBER 20, 2020 VIA TELEPHONE EXPLOSION

PRE-ORDER SELF HELP HERE

“spirals from jazzy sax-laden tropicalia into an easy listening guitar jam worthy of Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky without losing its eclectic undercurrent” Stereogum

“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 

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

Toronto’s Badge Époque Ensemble are today sharing “Just Space For Light” featuring Jennifer Castle from their upcoming LP, Self Help. The song “weaves a few BÉE themes together,” says Max Turnbull. “The collision of disparate moods between sections, lyrics which touch on the meditative experience, and collaboration with a distinctive vocalist; in this case Jennifer Castle, who's soulful presence on our album is a blessing.” 

LISTEN AND SHARE “JUST SPACE FOR LIGHT” HERE

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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.

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

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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

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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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