HELENA DELAND SHARES NEW VIDEO / SINGLE FOR “SWIMMER”

WATCH / SHARE “SWIMMER” HERE
BUY / STREAM “SWIMMER” HERE

WORLD TOUR DATES WITH THE WEATHER STATION AND ANDY SHAUF BEGIN FEBRUARY 17

Photo Credit : Tess Roby // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, Montreal’s Helena Deland shares the intimate, heartfelt, chilling new single “Swimmer”. The song is dedicated to her mother who sadly passed away last year and comes accompanied by a video that Helena filmed and directed using footage taken while flying over the St. Lawrence River via helicopter.

WATCH / SHARE “SWIMMER” HERE
BUY / STREAM “SWIMMER” HERE

Helena shares: “A little while after finding out that my mother was sick and that our days together were numbered, I went through a fundamental change, faced as I was with the need to reconsider things I had taken for granted. Growing older with her was now an impossible scenario, but I was being offered a suspension, some time to understand and try to change patterns that had been detrimental to our relationship, and to love her how I wished for her to be loved. I feel that we are in a similar predicament with the world, faced with the climate crisis.

Some losses are too big to wrap our minds around. Here, I am on the beach, watching my mother swim, faced with the immensity of the ocean, of our fragility, riding the troughs of magical thinking and crests of acceptance.” 

‘How detailed and hopeful,
how exact
everything is in the light
on the rippling sand, 

at the edge of the turning tide —
its upheaval —
its stunning proposal —
its black, anonymous roar.’

-Mary Oliver, "Clamming", Dreamwork

“Swimmer” Single Artwork by Jack Bool // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

The release of “Swimmer” follows the celebrated debut full-length, 2020’s Someone New (Luminelle) and comes just before Helena embarks on an extensive tour which begins next week and includes headlining dates in Los Angeles and New York City, along with dates supporting The Weather Station and Andy Shauf, the latter of which will continue on with an overseas run that will keep Helena on the road through May of 2022. 

2022 TOUR DATES // TICKETS HERE
2.17.2022 Los Angeles, CA @ Moroccan Lounge 
2.19.2022 Salt Lake City, UT @ The State Room *
2.21.2022 Denver, CO @ Globe Hall *
2.23.2022 Minneapolis,MN @ Turf Club *
2.24.2022 Madison, WI @ High Noon *
2.25.2022 Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall *
2.26.2022 Toronto, ON @ Longboat Hall 
3.01.2022 Quebec, QC @ Le Pantoum 
3.03.2022 Montreal, QC @ Le National 
3.05.2022 Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right
3.13.2022 San Francisco, CA @ Bimbo’s 365 Club ™
3.15.2022 Seattle, WA @ Neptune Theatre ™
3.16.2022 Portland, OR @ Aladdin Theater ™
3.25.2022 University City, MO @ Blueberry Hill Duck Room ™
3.26.2022 Louisville, KY @ Zanzabar ™
3.29.2022 Richmond, VA @ Richmond Music Hall ™
3.30.2022 Washington, DC @ Black Cat ™
3.31.2022 Philadelphia, PA @ Union transfer ™
4.18.2022 Düdingen, CH @ Bad Bonn ™
4.19.2022 Lyon, FR @ Epicerie Moderne ™
4.20.2022 Bordeaux, FR @ Krakatoa ™
4.21.2022 Paris, FR @ Le Trianon ™
4.22.2022 Rouen, FR @ Le 106 ™
4.23.2022 Luxembourg, LU @ Kulturfabrik ™
4.24.2022 Utrecht, NL @ TivoliVredenburg ™
4.25.2022 Rotterdam, NL @ Rotown ™
4.26.2022 Nijmegen, NL @ Doornroosje ™
4.28.2022 Copenhagen, DK @ Loppen ™
4.29.2022 Oslo, NO @ Ingensteds ™
4.30.2022 Stockholm, SE @ Nalen Klubb ™
5.02.2022 Hamburg, DE @ Knust ™
5.03.2022 Berlin, DE @ Silent Green ™
5.05.2022 Brussels, BE @ Les Nuits Botanique ™
5.06.2022 Cologne, DE @ Luxor ™
5.07.2022 Genk, BE @ Little Waves Festival ™
5.09.2022 Birmingham, UK @ Castle and Falcon ™
5.10.2022 Edinburgh, UK @ Summerhall ™
5.11.2022 Glasgow, UK @ Drygate ™
5.12.2022 Manchester, UK @ Gorilla ™ 
5.13.2022 Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social ™ 
5.14.2022 Bristol, UK @ Fiddlers ™
5.15.2022 Brighton, UK @ Chalk ™
5.16.2022 London, UK @ Shepherds Bush Empire ™ 
5.18.2022 Belfast, UK @ Empire ™
5.19.2022 Dublin, IE @ Button Factory ™

* Supporting The Weather Station
™ Supporting Andy Shauf 

PRAISE FOR HELENA DELAND’S SOMEONE NEW

“...spare, introspective... The most striking tracks on the record show Deland trying to locate herself—physically and emotionally—in relation to others.” - American Songwriter

“"Straddling the line between spare guitar folk music and ethereal synth-pop, Helena Deland stands out from the crowded field of similar artists by crafting music that maintains an unsettling aura, like the sort of sounds you’d hear emanating from the Bang Bang Bar in Twin Peaks. She still has a way with catchy, hummable melodies, but on this evocative debut album, the Montreal-based musician applies her breathy, youthful voice to songs that are just as likely to keep you up at night as soundtrack your end-of-week masked trips to the liquor store."” - The A.V. Club

“Montreal singer-songwriter Helena Deland doesn't waste a note on her long-awaited project Someone New. You'll be hard-pressed to find a debut album released this year with such rich compositional acumen and creative instincts that orbit the domain of pop.” - The FADER

"The hopes, misgivings, wariness and vulnerability of a new romance all play out together in Helena Deland’s 'Comfort, Edge.' The first seconds of the song take their time coming into focus, with whispers and muffled, low-fi instruments. Then the tempo drags its feet, but the grungy guitar chords push forward; the harmonies climb, but Deland’s vocal maintains its cool, with hints of the melody from John Lennon’s 'Jealous Guy.' She sets out her requirements — 'You’ll never make a fool of me' is the first — but she doesn’t necessarily expect them to be met." - The New York Times

“What I love about this record is that it spends time in the sometimes embarrassing or less desirable or presentable places that we find ourselves in. She sings about sometimes shrinking herself down, or not treating people well, or letting other people not treat her so well. And it feels really refreshing to hear that perspective in these songs, backed up by this really kind of polished, clever, adventurous music...This is feminist work in the same way that the films of Chantal Akerman are feminist work... It's not ‘manifesto’ as you say, it's not punk rock ‘lift-our-voices-up-and-scream’ - it's subtle. And I just want to shout out one more thing about this record - the sequencing is incredible! I encourage people to listen to it as an album, because it really takes you on a journey...This is one of my favorite {albums} of the week!” - NPR - All Songs Considered

"Stunning, intricate debut album...Someone New shudders with a digital glow… Her songs are like islands: self-contained, gorgeous little worlds where nothing is obvious—especially the genesis of love and its unsteady first steps." - Pitchfork

HELENA DELAND ONLINE
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JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS CELEBRATES LP RELEASE WITH VIDEO FOR “PASSEPIED”

WATCH / SHARE “PASSEPIED” HERE

AUBADES, THE POST-CLASSICAL ICON’S FIRST ENSEMBLE RECORD,
OUT NOW VIA ARTS & CRAFTS

BUY / STREAM AUBADES HERE

“From its opening notes, it whisks listeners away. On the new album from the esteemed post-classical pianist, Blais is in perpetual bloom, moved by life's beauty and nature's song.” - Exclaim!

“...aubades finds Blais conducting a 12-person ensemble, filling in his beautiful piano melodies with lush instrumentation that brings his music to new heights.” - CBC MUSIC ‘Albums we can’t wait to hear in 2022’

Photo Credit : William Arcand // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

In celebration of the release of his first ensemble LP, aubades, post-classical piano icon Jean-Michel Blais is sharing the new video from director Adrian Villagomez for “passepied”.

The video is a surreal trip into a teenager’s obsession with Baroque dance. With punchy colour and rawness, the film dives into the young man’s imaginative inner world, and follows his journey of self-discovery and self-expression through his fanatical love for the passepied, a historic French court dance. It shifts feverishly between his modern-day urban realities and his decadent Baroque fantasies – eventually spinning into one delirious, heady dance of escapism.

In docufiction style, Villagomez sets “passepied” to a film of vulnerable beauty and striking visuals, poignantly depicting reality and dream states through the pairing of 16mm (real-life documentary) and digital (dream) film. “This project is both documentary and fictional,” says Villagomez. “We embraced this idea by immersing an actor in the daily life of another. We started from a clear concept, mixing the old with the new and wanting the film to feel modern and raw.”

The title of Jean-Michel’s piece “passepied” references the lively, fast-paced dance popular in the 17th and 18th century French court. Composer Claude Debussy composed his own version of the dance in his Suite bergamasque for piano. Inspired by Debussy, Jean-Michel writes a new passepied for the 21st century. “I wanted to see how a ‘passepied’ would work today,” says Blais. “Using this historic dance form which originated from Breton and then popularised in Baroque courts, I wanted to declassify classical music – democratise it for new listeners. Adrian's docufiction represents for me this swing of the pendulum, making classical music accessible again to the modern viewer and listener. The music video follows a teenager escaping his urban reality through a forgotten dance in an anachronistic dream. For me, this reflects my own journey – a country boy travelling back in time through something seemingly “uncool” and old-fashioned as classical music. The perfect analogy to anyone's odd dream to be pursued without getting caught into it.”

WATCH / SHARE “PASSEPIED” HERE
BUY / STREAM AUBADES HERE

MORE ABOUT AUBADES
aubades marks the Montreal-born musician’s transition from pianist to composer, as he writes for an ensemble for the first time in his career. Written during the pandemic and following a breakup, Blais has used his distinctive musical voice to create a defiantly uplifting record with glistening instrumental textures and warm major tonalities. The album’s title refers to the “aubade”, a Middle Ages morning love song about lovers separating at daybreak, a dawn serenade. 

Jean-Michel Blais has been a celebrated figure in the post-classical piano world since the release of his critically-acclaimed debut album II in 2016. He attended Quebec’s prestigious Trois-Rivières Music Conservatory but left after two years of study, exhausted by the restraints of the traditional music curriculum. Blais then travelled widely before retraining as a special education teacher. Whilst working as a teacher, he returned to music on his own terms, rediscovering his passion through improvising on the piano. These improvisations formed the basis of a recording career that has earned him two Polaris Music Prize nominations, a #1 on the Billboard Classical chart and a Time Magazine top ten album of the year. 

Despite the difficult global and personal backdrop, Blais described the time writing this album as a “fruitful moment of creativity for me. We started having hares in the park, beautiful butterflies flying everywhere. It was a time of lots of blossoming, and also a moment when I blossomed from being a pianist into a composer.” Musical ideas captured in over 500 recorded piano improvisations were transformed by Blais into 11 compositions performed by a 12-person ensemble. During the composition process, Blais collaborated with Alex Weston, former music assistant to Philip Glass. The musicians were recorded with close-up microphones, creating a richly intimate atmosphere that captures the human behind each instrument, from the mechanics of the woodwind keys to the snap of a double bass string. 

Blais also consciously found himself leaning towards major tonalities, which he believes are surprisingly rare in modern classical piano music. “With this album, I was definitely responding to certain trends,” Blais reckons. “For example, the fact that the solo piano tends to sound melancholic. That’s good, but I’ve done that already, I wanted to go beyond that.”

In aubades, every instrument is given moments of expression to an extent that took the players by surprise. Blais says, “there’s often been this dominant idea in classical music that one instrument is the chief, the king of all the instruments, and the others are in the background merely supporting.” He was inspired by more democratic musical textures from the Renaissance and Middle Ages, as well as the social democratic artistic ethos of the English 19th century poet, designer and activist William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. 

Jean-Michel Blais will be taking aubades on the road in 2022. Full tour dates can be found below.

BUY / STREAM AUBADES HERE

DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

AUBADES TRACKLIST
murmures
passepied
nina
flâneur
ouessant
if you build it, they will come
amour
yanni
absinthe
carrousel
doux

2022 TOUR DATES
11/02/22 Sorel-Tracy, QC - Salle Georges-Codling
19/02/22 Trois-Rivières, QC - Salle J.-Antonio-Thompson
22/02/22 Drummondville, QC - Maison des arts Desjardins
24/02/22 Lac-Mégantic, QC - Salle Montignac
25/02/22 Sherbrooke, QC - Théâtre Granada
28/02/22 St-Jérôme, QC - Théâtre Gilles-Vigneault
01/03/22 Gatineau, QC - Maison de la culture - Salle Odyssée
03/03/22 Québec, QC - Grand Théâtre de Québec - Salle Louis-Fréchette
06/03/22 St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC - Théâtre des Deux Rives
09/03/22 Laval, QC - Salle André-Mathieu
11/03/22 Ste-Thérèse, QC - Théâtre Lionel-Groulx
13/03/22 Sainte-Geneviève, QC - Salle Pauline-Julien
15/06/22 Joliette, QC - Centre culturel Desjardins - Salle Rolland-Brunelle
09/07/22 Montréal, QC - Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier (Festival International de Jazz de Montréal)
01/09/22 Victoriaville, QC - Le Carré 150 - Salle Les Frères-Lemaire
08/09/22 Gaspé, QC - Salle de spectacles de Gaspé
09/09/22 Carleton-sur-Mer, QC - Studio Hydro-Québec du Quai des arts
10/09/22 Rimouski, QC - Salle Desjardins-Telus
12/09/22 Sept-Îles, QC - Salle Jean-Marc Dion
13/09/22 Baie-Comeau, QC - Centre des arts de Baie-Comeau
15/09/22 Saguenay, QC - Théâtre Banque Nationale
16/09/22 Dolbeau-Mistassini, QC - Salle Desjardins Maria-Chapdelaine
17/09/22 Alma, QC - Salle Michel-Côté
22/09/22 Rivière-du-Loup, QC - Centre culturel Berger - Salle Alphonse Desjardins
24/09/22 Terrebonne, QC - Théâtre du Vieux-Terrebonne
26/09/22 Amos, QC - Théâtre des Eskers
27/09/22 La Sarre, QC - Salle de spectacles Desjardins
28/09/22 Rouyn-Noranda, QC - Théâtre du Cuivre
30/09/22 Val-d’Or, QC - Théâtre Télébec
02/10/22 Shawinigan, QC - Centre des arts de Shawinigan - Salle Philippe-Filion
04/10/22 Brossard, QC - L’Étoile Banque Nationale
05/10/22 Longueuil, QC - Théâtre de la Ville - Salle Pratt & Whitney
07/10/22 Beloeil, QC - Centre culturel de Beloeil
08/10/22 Baie-du-Febvre, QC - Théâtre Belcourt
14/10/22 St-Eustache, QC - Le Zénith Promutuel Assurance

JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS ONLINE
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PONDERCAST : ATTICS AND BASEMENTS

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GET ‘THE SIGNAL’ EXPERIENCE EVERY MONTH WITH ‘PONDERCAST RADIO’ - SPECIAL CONTENT FOR
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SUBSCRIBE TO GROUND LEVEL - THE NEW PODCAST FROM LAURIE BROWN

LISTEN TO PONDERBEAT EPISODE 10 HERE

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“Looking around the house and found some stuff in the attic and basement I think you’ll be interested in,” says Laurie Brown on the latest episode of Pondercast, Attics And Basements. “Beyond being places where we put stuff to get it out of our way, attics and basements are the perfect metaphor for the stuff in our heads. Both the things we run away from and what we want to return to.

Personally, I prefer attics to basements…but I know there’s something here for everyone. Make me an offer.”

LISTEN TO PONDERCAST : ATTICS AND BASEMENTS

For Season 5, a few new things are happening while some others are getting their own spotlight. First, the Pondercast team is bringing you something entirely new yet a little reminiscent of times past. Pondercast Radio uses an innovative hack of streaming technology to bring you a once a month ‘radio show’ which you can stream at any time. The show will include a new playlist of music and Laurie’s introductions for your dining and dancing pleasure.  The episodes play out exactly like radio, feel like Laurie’s old show The Signal - and you will get a 2 hour show of new music for you to fall in love with every month.

Pondercast Radio is available only to those who support Pondercast via Patreon at any level. Supporters must also have a paid Spotify or Apple Music account to access Pondercast Radio. If you have a paid account on Apple Music or on Spotify, then you can get our monthly ‘radio’ shows delivered to your inbox.

SUPPORT PONDERCAST VIA PATREON HERE

The other big news is the new podcast Ground Level which is out now. Pondercast is moving all of their weekly guided meditations to a brand new podcast. So if you have been meditating with Laurie, subscribe to Ground Level wherever you get your podcasts to be sure you don’t miss an episode. Look for interviews and other content to help navigate these strange days. 

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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 ninth episode of Ponderbeat is live now, featuring music from Charlotte Cornfield, Ouri, Andy Shauf, Cots, Absolutely Free, Homeshake, and more.

LISTEN TO PONDERBEAT EPISODE 10 HERE

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