KIWI JR. SHARES OFFICIAL VIDEO FOR “MAID MARIAN’S TOAST” FROM ACCLAIMED NEW ALBUM

WATCH AND SHARE “MAID MARIAN’S TOAST” HERE

ACCLAIMED NEW ALBUM, COOLER RETURNS, OUT NOW VIA KIWI CLUB IN CANADA (SUB POP EVERYWHERE ELSE)

BUY / STREAM COOLER RETURNS HERE

"Packed with golden hooks and subtle weirdness" - [8/10] Exclaim!

“What sets Kiwi Jr. apart from their peers though is their madcap view of the world and Cooler Returns establishes them as a band too confident to conform; a band who have all the skills to match their lyrical smarts” - [8/10] Line Of Best Fit

“Cooler Returns is all hits, a baker's dozen of ridiculously catchy three-minute pop nuggets that deliver massive sing-along-choruses...” - Brooklyn Vegan

“...The accomplished successor to this band’s promising 2019 debut finds Kiwi Jr having their cake and eating it.” - ★★★★ The Observer/TheGuardian

Photo Credit: Johan Arthurs

Kiwi Jr. has delivered an official video for “Maid Marian’s Toast”, a standout from their just released Cooler Returns, their new album out now on Sub Pop/Kiwi Club. Jeremy Gaudet says of the video, "Footage was compiled from behind the scenes filming of the Cooler Returns recording sessions during the pandemic. Shot in July by director Sean Egerton Foreman and Johan Arthurs, the studio was sweltering and shorts were the only option.” 

WATCH AND SHARE “MAID MARIAN’S TOAST” HERE

Cooler Returns and it’s singles have also seen international praise and notices from the likes of The Observer/The Guardian, MOJO, CLASH, Uncut, Les Inrocks (France), Visions (Germany), OOR Monthly (Netherlands), The AV Club, Exclaim, Under the Radar, The Line of Best Fit, All Music, So Young, Brooklyn Vegan, Pitchfork, NME, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, and more. Cooler Returns is also BBC 6Music’s “Album of the Day” today, Thursday, January 28th. 

BUY / STREAM COOLER RETURNS HERE

THE RETURNS ON KIWI JR’S COOLER RETURNS

“Sustaining momentum near-flawlessly across 13 songs…  Kiwi Jr. have the skills to match their smarts" -  ★★★★ MOJO 

"Canadian absurdists’ return is a lyrical delight" - Uncut 

"Kiwi Jr. songs unfold like the aisles of a cluttered curio shop, their retro-rock melodies overflowing with non sequiturs and hyper-specific scraps of story." - The AV Club

“The band rattle through a seemingly inexhaustible supply of hooks and melodies” - ★★★★ DIY 

“Crammed full of wry, observational wit and pop smarts in taut fashion” - [8/10] CLASH

"...still light and agile, basking in the sunlight as their vivid guitar work and straightforward vocals do the talking. They love a good hook as much as they love a charismatic, illuminating one-liner." - PASTE

"The band's knack for simple but sticky melody is in even clearer view on Cooler Returns." - ★★★★  All Music

[“Cooler Returns” is] “a jangly, indie rock earworm that’ll lodge itself in your brain” - NME 

"Shambolic yet catchy songs are loaded with fractured riffs and lyrical non-sequiturs" - Uproxx

"Ook de referenties zijn dik in orde: the Chills, The Strokes, The Kinks, Pavement en de vroege R.E.M. ‘Fonkelende gitaarplaat die refereert aan heden en verleden.” - [Best Albums of the Month”] OOR 

"...Another mighty fine record." - Under the Radar

"An impressive set of ‘90s-influenced slacker-rock with jangly guitars, rollicking piano and occasional organ, harmonica, and other instrumentation, along with observational, often-sardonic lyrics and an abundance of catchy song hooks. - KEXP 

"A bloody good album full of vivid charm" - ★★★★ NARC 

“They understand sarcasm, can write clever, funny lyrics and don’t take themselves completely seriously."  [9/10] - God Is In The TV

“Perfect pop-songs” - Louder Than War

“Cooler Returns is everything you might expect from a band like Kiwi Jr., and so much more.” - [4/5] Stereoboard 

“Angular, catchy as hell, revved up power-pop racket” ★★★★ Shindig

"L'année 2021 ne pouvait mieux commencer qu'avec cet excellent disque a l’entrain communicatif, d’une inspiration jubilatoire, veritable rayon de soleil au cour de l’hiver”- [4/5]  Rock & Folk (France)

"Les quatre musiciens de Toronto ne changent pas leur formule gagnante et livrent une guitare jangly élégante et efficace." - Les Inrocks (France) 

"...Timeless, memorable, beautifully crafted pop songs" - Echoes and Dust

"Cooler Returns is an impressive achievement" - Our Culture

"...A jangle-pop delight filled with tight hooks and creative tales" - The Revue

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CHAD VANGAALEN ANNOUNCES UPCOMING ALBUM, SHARES VIDEO FOR “SAMURAI SWORD”

WATCH AND SHARE “SAMURAI SWORD” HERE

WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER OUT MARCH 19, 2021 VIA FLEMISH EYE IN CANADA (SUB POP REST OF THE WORLD)

PRE-ORDER WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER HERE

ENTER THE SAMURAI SWORD SCAVENGER HUNT CONTEST - DETAILS BELOW

Photo Credit: Sebastian Buzzalino // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Multimedia auteur Chad VanGaalen has delivered a phenomenal animated video for “Samurai Sword”, the first single from World's Most Stressed Out Gardener, his new album — out on CD/LP/DSPs March 19, 2021 in Canada from Flemish Eye (and worldwide through Sub Pop). The thirteen track effort, which also features “Nightwaves”, “Starlight”, “Where Is It All Going?”, and “Flute Peace”, was written, performed, recorded, and mixed by VanGaalen at his Yoko Eno Studio in Calgary, Alberta, and mastered by Ryan Morey in Montreal, Quebec.

VanGaalen says of “Samurai Sword”, “I had just ripped a bunch of old leaking copper pipe out of my basement in a reno job that I jumped into willy nilly. Realizing how magical the pipes sounded, I put them on some dirty styrofoam and banged out the janky beat that introduces the song! Garbage is life.”

He continues, “It just spilled out in a couple minutes. I didn’t try to stop it because I was smiling like I was just cruising through my neighbourhood. Simple like a sandbox. An ode to the simplicity. It’s hard to let things be simple. But simple is easy on the mind, and being jovial in song is something I find really difficult. Why? What?”

As for the “Samurai Sword” video, he elaborates, “I was drawing black and white plant backgrounds for this song because of the great old samurai movies of the past. I like how nature sometimes takes the lead. I was getting all knotted in my mind about the sky. I looked at my dad’s watercolor paintings of a sky, and felt like I couldn’t get the feel right. So, I just borrowed his sky for a scene and then I realized that my dad’s paintings were perfect and already full of real life energy. I used them to finish the video and felt like we got to go on this quest together. In my mind. Fuck time.”

The video for “Samurai Sword” gives viewers a peek into VanGaalen’s surrealistic world, expanding the 2:04 album version to a gloriously weird extended version with a 3:39 run time, and can now be viewed via VanGaalen and Adult Swim’s YouTube channels. The video will also see its broadcast television premiere on Adult Swim’s Toonami, the network’s popular weekly anime programming block, on Saturday, January 30th.

WATCH AND SHARE “SAMURAI SWORD” HERE

VanGaalen has also created the “Samurai Sword Scavenger Hunt” contest, with Easter eggs hidden throughout the video. He’s sharing a list of some of these hidden objects every week, and challenging fans to find them. He says, “To stop myself going squirrely over the last few months, I started hiding things as I animated this video.” 

Every week for the next three weeks (through February 18th, 2021), one lucky person will win a prize pack of stuff from VanGaalen, including a copy of World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener, as well as some unique personalized items made by VanGaalen himself. At the end of the contest one person will be awarded a grand prize (You need to enter all three phases to win the grand prize!). To enter, please visit https://chadvangaalen.com/samuraisword.

World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener is now available for preorder. LPs purchased through, Flemish Eye (Canada), megamart.subpop.com, select independent retailers in North America, in the U.K. and in Europe will receive the album on orange gold vinyl with blue/red trails (while supplies last). There is also a new T-shirt design available!

MORE ON CHAD VANGAALEN BY SEAN MICHAELS

2020 was a terrible year for gardening. It was terrible for peppers, it was terrible for tomatoes, it was terrible for the condition of the soul. But Chad VanGaalen somehow raised a garden all the same: carrots and sprouts and broccoli and a revivifying new album, all of them grown at home. He likes to eat directly off the plant, he says—"I get down on my knees and graze. It's nice to feel the vegetables in your face"—and the 13 songs on World's Most Stressed Out Gardener were harvested with just such a spirit: in their raw state, young and vegetal, at the very moment, they were made. 

What that means is that the Calgary songwriter's new album is a psychedelic bumper crop. A collection of tunes that does away with obsessiveness, the anxiety of perfectionism, in favor of freshness and immediacy — capturing the world as it was met while recording alone at home over a period of years. "Don't overthink it," VanGaalen told himself again and again, despite the push/pull love/hate of his relationship with songwriting. "I'm always trying to get outside of the song—but then I realize I love the song."

This is a record that gleams with VanGaalen's musical signatures: found sound, reverb, polychromatic folk music that is by turns cartoonish and hyperphysical—like ultra magnified footage of a virus or a leaf. Apparently, the LP began life as a "pretty minimal" flute record. (There's only a vestige now, on "Flute Peace"—one of three instrumentals.) Later it became an electronic record "for a while" and finally, "right at the last second," it "turned into a pile of garbage." The good kind of garbage: glinting, useful, free. Music as compost—leaves, and branches ready to be re-ingested by the earth, turned into a flower.   

Throughout these 40 minutes, VanGaalen floats from mania to solace to oblivion, searching for zen in all the wrong places. "Turn up the radio / I think we’re dead," he sings on "Nothing Is Strange"; or, on the inside-out rocker "Nightmare Scenario": "You’re stressed out when you should be feeling very well." The singer's mental landscape is rotting and redemptive, beautiful in spite of itself—and his soundscapes reflect this fertile decay. He has been influenced by his instrumental work on TV scores (Dream Corp's third season began this fall), but still "nothing can really replace the human voice,” he admits. Like Arthur Russell or Syd Barrett, it’s VanGaalen’s vocals that shine a path through the swampland—from the cello-lashed “Water Brother” to “Starlight”’s krautrock pipe-dream. 

These days, VanGaalen cherishes the privacy of the studio, the capacity to wander around, get distracted, and "move at the speed of life." Whereas once he would obsess over mic techniques, now he puts the microphone in the same place every time—trying to capture a song quickly, the idea at its heart. He'll act on his infatuations—for the flute, a squeaky clarinet, his basement's copper plumbing (remade into xylophones for "Samurai Sword")—and then he'll try to get out, "veering away from responsibility," before he overdoes his stay. 

In the end, it's like gardening. You have to live with your horrible decision-making; the weather's going to fuck you if it wants to; and if you plant a hundred heads of broccoli, "now you gotta eat a hundred heads of broccoli—or watch them go to seed." But mostly VanGaalen just tries to be a deer: "I remember seeing some deer come out in the Okanagan Valley once," he says, "watching them wait for a sunbeam to hit a perfect bunch of grapes—and then eating them right out of the sunbeam. I'd recommend that."  You can do it too—taste the sun-swabbed grapes—when World's Most Stressed Out Gardener is released on March 19, 2021. 

PRE-ORDER WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER HERE

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WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER TRACKLIST
1. Spider Milk 
2. Flute Peace 
3. Starlight 
4. Where Is It All Going? 
5. Earth From a Distance 
6. Nightwaves 
7. Plant Music 
8. Nothing Is Strange 
9. Inner Fire 
10. Golden Pear 
11. Nightmare Scenario 
12. Samurai Sword 
13. Water Brother 

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EDWIN RAPHAEL SHARES NEW SINGLE “TIME TO SINK” FROM UPCOMING EP

LISTEN /SHARE / BUY / STREAM “TIME TO SINK” HERE

STARING AT CEILINGS EP OUT FEBRUARY 26, 2021 VIA DINE ALONE RECORDS

“'Sea of Things' feels primal, mimicking the ocean with cyclical, crashing movements, patiently building itself up and washing itself back out." - FLAUNT

"The track seemingly blooms from a spacious and rustic folk sound into something far more lavish." - Under The Radar

"Tranquil melodies flow over electronic and acoustic instrumentation." - American Songwriter

"Weightless and ethereal" - Indie Shuffle

"The instrumental and harmonic components provide the same floating-in-space feeling we love from Fleet Foxes." - Culture Collide

Photo Credit: Gaelle Leroyer // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today singer/songwriter Edwin Raphael shares his new single “Time To Sink” off his forthcoming EP Staring At Ceilings due out February 26 via Dine Alone Records. The track begins softly, advanced by layered textures of peaceful vocals, sharp horns, refined guitars, and crisp drums. “Time to Sink” embraces stillness even when life continues to shift back and forth with light.

 Edwin Raphael shares this of his new single: “Difficult to write about this song as it’s probably one of the darkest but honest songs I’ve written. This came from a place of hopelessness and bitterness at oneself. However the song also reflects an openness to see it for what it is. It’s a void you’ve been avoiding, it’s an answer you always knew but were scared to dive into. ‘Time to Sink’ is really a tipping point of finally looking under the veil that was most obvious. In many ways I’m glad I wrote this song, I signify it as a moment in time that’s very important to me. I think there’s a lovely and beautiful weightlessness to that last second you feel before hitting the water in a dive, I think this song encapsulates that split second.”

LISTEN / SHARE / BUY / STREAM “TIME TO SINK” HERE

“Time To Sink” Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

In December, Edwin Raphael shared his single "Sea of Things" accompanied by its music video. On “Sea of Things” Edwin gives off Jeff Buckley vibes by bearing the same soulful intensity. It's a gorgeous, striking piece of work attributed to Edwin’s innate talents and sheer efficiency with instrumentation. On the narrative front, “Sea of Things” is an ode to existence and dissociation catalyzed by anxiety. “Sea of Things” is a testament to the chaotic and often times, perplexing nature of the ocean and of living without control.

WATCH AND SHARE “SEA OF THINGS” HERE

BUY / STREAM “SEA OF THINGS” HERE

This past fall, Edwin released his first single off the EP “Mild Sanity (feat. Juletta)”. Deeply absorbing and incredibly cathartic all at once, Edwin’s languid vocals and atmospheric melodies take listeners’ minds outside the cruelties of the world’s relentless wreckage. “Mild Sanity” is also elevated by NYC pop singer-songwriter Juletta’s ethereal cadence. The track was lauded by Under The Radar, American Songwriter, EARMILK, Culture Collide, Indie Shuffle, and was included on Spotify’s Folk & Friends playlist and NPR’s New Music Friday playlist.

LISTEN AND SHARE “MILD SANITY” FT. JULETTA

Staring At Ceilings is a 5-song EP produced with Marcus Paquin (Arcade Fire, The National, Local Natives) that reflects the spectrum of human indulgence and the cost of our anxieties.

MORE ABOUT EDWIN RAPHAEL

“You can't win if you don't play” is a quote that lives within singer-songwriter Edwin Raphael. Ditching a career path carved out by his father, Edwin is headstrong on finding his own way in a world no longer concerned with archaic traditions. The 25-year-old artist, living in Montreal, Canada, uprooted from Dubai, creates music instilled with spiraling emotion, which resonates on both the shattered and enriching moments in life.

Edwin released his debut LP Will You Think of Me Later? in 2019. Prior to that, he released a pair of EPs—Ocean Walk in 2015 and Cold Nights in 2017. With over 14M+ cumulative streams spanning ~175,000 monthly listeners, he’s been featured on Spotify’s New Music Friday Canada, indie pop & chill, Indie Chillout, Lush + Ethereal, Chill Singer-Songwriter, and Folk Favourites playlists.

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 STARING AT CEILINGS EP TRACKLIST:
1. Time To Sink
2. Sea Of Things
3. Mild Sanity (feat. Juletta)
4. Staring At Ceilings
5. The After

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