RUBY SINGH’S VOX.INFOLD OUT TODAY, SHARES NEW VR DANCE VIDEO

WATCH / SHARE “CODES OF THE FALLEN | C.O.D.” HERE

VOX.INFOLD, AVAILABLE EVERYWHERE TODAY

BUY / STREAM VOX.INFOLD HERE

“Mesmerizing, vibrant…Singh isn’t just crossing genres, he’s straddling astral planes….Vox.Infold is an immersive experience of looped beats, breathing and vocals that deserve placement on a Dune soundtrack.” - Globe and Mail

"Ruby Singh keeps on dropping dynamic sonic experiments. The cross-cultural a cappella project brings together vocalists from Indigenous, Inuit, Black and South Asian backgrounds to unite myriad musical traditions in new and unique ways." The Vancouver Sun

“Lush polyphonic worlds…atmospheric, haunting, ethereal” - Stir Vancouver

“Truly immersive, exciting experience…wildly experimental..fresh and vital.” - The Manitoban

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Vox.Infold, the new album from Ruby Singh, is an a cappella offering, composed and (remarkably) recorded at a time when singing together was something that could kill us. Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic and amidst potent social unrest, this powerhouse vocal ensemble of Indigenous, Inuit, Black, and South Asian voices, reimagined how to sing together. The resulting work is so much more than a convergence of diverse vocal traditions but a complex rendering of what’s possible when we can hold each other's humanity. The album dives into a full bodied, resonant and sensuous expression housed in polyrhythm, lush harmonies, mimicry, and polyphonic poetry.

To celebrate today’s release of Vox.Infold, Singh is sharing the new video for “Codes Of The Fallen | S.O.S.”, a song which leans into “the grief we’ve all been feeling through the Covid 19 pandemic - grief for the loved ones we’ve lost, the ones we miss, the disconnected lives we’ve lived,” says Singh. “Sorrow drenched melodies rise from the opening of the song, collecting voices that carry our individual and collective sorrow (you can hear a haunting “help me” coming from the edges of the chorus). Injustices perpetrated on Black and Indigenous kin, the climate crisis ravaging our planet, the opioid epidemic laying siege to the most vulnerable and ongoing economic inequities entwine together to inform the symphonic, wailing crescendo. As the song builds, embracing the pains of this world, it offers the saltwater tears of our ancestors. Gently, gently we remember to breathe. Respite. It’s important to lean into grief and pain - it gives us the opportunity to expand our humanity, our empathy and our understanding. ‘Codes Of The Fallen | S.O.S.’ is an urgent call to expand into possibility, stretching us to reach for a just world.”

The song’s VR Dance video features new media/dance artists Sammy Chien and Caroline MacCaull of Chimerik 似不像 and is accompanied by a binaural spatialized version of the song. Shot in both the beautiful west coast of Turtle Island on Galiano Island and the ancient temples in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Chimerik 似不像 integrates their dance project We Were One, investigating the invisible interconnectivity between our souls and beyond what seems to be tangible in this physical reality. In this dark time may light shine the brightest, as an ongoing human experience of suffering and grief that reminds us to cherish true joy, love and kindness, these are some of the greatest powers within us.”

WATCH / SHARE “CODES OF THE FALLEN | C.O.D.” HERE


MORE ABOUT VOX.INFOLD
The resulting sonic landscape encompasses a non-linear journey in which we may find and care for each other. Evoking loneliness, joy, the mysterious and supernatural, Vox.Infold brings together musical luminaries, Dawn Pemberton, Inuksuk Mackay and Tiffany Ayalik of PIQSIQ, Russell Wallace, Tiffany Moses, Shamik Bilgi and Ruby Singh. They remind us that the human voice is an adaptation of the metabolic activity most crucial to our existence – breathing. This is how the atmosphere enters our beings and how we know we are intimately connected to our world. 

WATCH AND SHARE “NAKSHATRA” HERE



“Not only the pandemic but the severe racial inequities faced by the Black community and the genocidal origins of Canada were really coming to light in the mainstream media and that takes a real toll on those racialized communities,” says Singh. “I wanted to see what it might mean to make music outside of the lens and influence of white supremacy and capitalism. This work is really a testament to how these incredible artists came together to lift each other's spirits in these challenging times.” Brewed in uncertainty this crew held steadfast to their callings, protected by shields and masks, distanced over 20ft, armed with microphones, loopstations and studio space at the Western Front in Vancouver to create a complex, potent and innovative album. The album was recorded and mixed by John Raham at AfterLife Studios on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh Nations.

Ruby Singh’s Vox.infold album will be pre-released in traditional stereo and in a special binaural mix on Bandcamp on January 31, 2022 and will be released on all major DSPs on February, 18, 2022. You can hear it presented at the PUSH festival in Vancouver BC running from January 20-30, 2022 at the groundbreaking LOBE spatial sound studios. An array of speakers run across the ceiling and under the floor in conjunction with custom-designed vibroacoustic floor panels, entirely surrounding the listener in an immersive and haptic listening experience. Using 4D sound technology, their voices ebb and flow, forming sonic environments holographically and without perceivable sources. LOBE studios is one of three of its kind on the planet and the only one in North America. 

WATCH / SHARE “HORIZON” 
FEAT. PIQSIQ, TIFFANY MOSES, DAWN PEMBERTON, RUSSELL WALLACE

Ruby Singh is a multi award winning composer and producer that has been a longtime beloved member of the Vancouver artistic community. His creativity crosses the boundaries of music, poetry, photography and film, engaging with mythos, memory, justice and fantasy. Singh is an artist whose work is informed by sound found all around us, from the whirling planets and stars of distant galaxies to percussion of an umbrella under coastal rains, to the perpetual moving birdsong of the never ending dawn chorus, constantly circling the globe. The richly imaginative visual textures to his sound design have found kinship in the theatre, film and dance worlds, where he has been celebrated by multiple Jessie and Leo Award nominations. He believes in art’s ability to reimagine futures, to repurpose aesthetic freedoms toward civil and environmental justice. His distinct approach uses traditional and emergent sonic practices to create compositions that express the vast spectrum of the human experience. Singh’s artistic impulses gravitates in many directions, his previous works range from the ambient audio-visual worlds of the Polyphonic Garden to Jhalaak, a Sufi hip-hop album made alongside Manganiyar musicians recorded in the clay huts of the Thar desert in Rajasthan India, reinterpreting 13th century Sufi poetry.

BUY / STREAM VOX.INFOLD HERE

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VOX.INFOLD TRACKLIST
01 Hyphae
02 Horizon
03 Soar Sore
04 Nakshatra
05 Rhizome
06 Codes Of The Fallen | S.O.S.
07 Corv.us
08 Shapeshift
09 Plica
10 Allium Redux
11 Moon Of Open Hands

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KATIE TUPPER’S DEBUT EP OUT TODAY, SHARES NEW SINGLE "MISBEHAVIN'”

WATCH / SHARE “MISBEHAVIN’” HERE

BUY / STREAM TOWARDS THE END HERE

“Saskatchewan's Katie Tupper makes the kind of soul-stained folk that feels instantly familiar, but it's her complex writing — vividly capturing the sights and smells of her home province, like the "fields of butter" on "How Can I Get Your Love?" — that makes her debut EP so anticipated, further calcifying the singer/songwriter's distinct and subtle touch.“ Exclaim!

“Tupper's smooth, neo-soul delivery is paired with a minimalist sound, often letting her honest songwriting shine in the forefront; definitely recommended for fans of Charlotte Day Wilson or Loony. .Her music helps us challenge the way we look back at events or people in our lives, always in search of ways to move forward with a set path and a clearer mind.” CBC Music

"[Katie Tupper] strikes a narrow balance between the vivid romanticism of soul and the hushed confessions of a folk singer/songwriter." - Under The Radar Magazine

"Katie Tupper pairs hard truths with soft sounds." - FLOOD Magazine

Photo Credit: Thomas Van Der Zaag
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Beneath the painted hues and infinite prairie skies of Saskatoon – a city in the heart of Canada – lies a soulful, creative spirit that proves there’s much more to the so-called ‘fly-over states’ than grassland and grain silos. Katie Tupper, a 23-year old neo-soul musician, embodies that spirit and is determined to show there’s an entire world of boundary-pushing, genre-defying artists at work within the often overlooked region. Central to that mission is her new EP Towards The End – a sultry, glittering debut that showcases Tupper’s mastery as a musician, writer and producer. 

Towards The End, co-produced by Connor Seidel (Charlotte Cardin, Matt Holubowski), is an ode to love, identity and the inextricable ways the two entwine. “It’s about navigating young love. About how we adapt and change with new people,” Tupper says.

The latest single, out today, is the self-assured “Misbehavin’”, with Tupper finally having arrived at a place in which she feels in control. It’s a song of many colors, with luling strings and playful horns scoring her call to arms. She’s taking the wheel, letting a lover know just what it is she needs, and that if they can’t provide it, she’ll be just fine without them. “Maybe you could be there for me, give me what I never thought I’d want from you,” she considers, but above all, she knows one simple truth: “I won’t miss misbehavin’.” Take it or leave it, Katie Tupper is laying it all out on the floor both with this track and her new collection of songs overall. Even in a quick burst that hardly passes a quarter of an hour, she takes the listener on an emotional journey that comes full circle.

"'Misbehavin’ is a song I wrote for my partner," Tupper shares. "I realized when we first started dating that I had a lot of bad habits that I had built with previous partners and I was ready to break them for him. This song is super special to me because I think sonically it's the closest to myself I’ve ever felt in a song. Connor Seidel and I spent a really long time perfecting the sound of this song and placing everything intentionally. I also love all the live horns that we got to have in this song - it felt luxurious to have a real musician play horns but it really does add so much to the song."

WATCH / SHARE “MISBEHAVIN’” HERE
BUY / STREAM TOWARDS THE END HERE

MORE ABOUT TOWARDS THE END
Towards The End opener “Live Inside” starts with a drum kick, quickly joined by distant, emotive guitar and Tupper’s own omnipresent voice. An anthem for the COVID era, she sings, ‘Now that I live inside / I think I can have some peace of mind’. There’s a truth to it, both saddening and freeing: we’re more isolated than at any time in our lives, but have more time than ever before for self-reflection and realization. Refusing to be boxed into an anxious corner, Tupper instead opts for the wisdom and self-reliance she’s discovered from spending so much time in her own company.

“Danny” rapidly pulls in another direction, finding Tupper lost in her thoughts over a lover that should have been more than they were. With delicately tapping percussion and her own soothing backing harmonies, the song lures you into a world of regret and longing. She knows she’s left behind someone that simply needed leaving, but it doesn’t make the healing any easier. It coaxes you into a sense of security with its layered vocals and twinkling keys, only to yank that very shield away in the face of her direct, even frightened lyrics: ‘what’s the worst some words can do to me now?’ The potential power of the words is consciously undermined by Tupper’s own inner-battle. The worst that can be done, she’s doing to herself, and it’s a feeling anyone who’s suffered the end of a love that they thought was “it” can immediately understand.

WATCH / SHARE “DANNY” HERE

Rolling off that very idea is “How Can Get I Your Love?”. With slow, serene strumming, more than any track on Towards The End, it calls towards the plains of her home. “I grew up in fields of butter,” she sings, but the dominant theme here is grasping and scrambling back towards a love long gone, albeit one she simply can’t accept has passed. If they were the one, how could they leave her, after all? “I know you got another lover, but being honest that don’t matter”, she utters in a bruised tone: words relatable to anyone who still sees themselves as the primary aspect of another’s life, in spite of all facts to the contrary. Sometimes, there’s simply no letting go, and “How Can I Get Your Love?” encapsulates that very feeling.

WATCH / SHARE "HOW CAN I GET YOUR LOVE?" HERE

 “Cost Of Loving You” is equally wistful, albeit towards an entirely different destination. With delicate strings and gentle percussion, it unfurls into a tapestry of acceptance and regret intertwined. For anyone who’s invested time - time after time - into a relationship that ultimately went nowhere, there’s some serious acceptance that must be done. There are days, months, even years of hurt, but one has to arrive at a pragmatic place: it just is what is. “Cost of Loving You” is the anthem for just such a moment of conclusive acceptance.

BUY / STREAM TOWARDS THE END HERE

MORE PRAISE FOR KATIE TUPPER

"Her ethereal sound and husky vocals are phenomenal." - EQUATE

"Drenched in guitar plucks and elegant melody lines." - Earmilk

"Katie Tupper sounds like Canadian meadows and memories of old love." - Fizzy Mag


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TOWARDS THE END TRACKLIST
01 Live Inside
02 Danny
03 How Can I Get Your Love?
04 Cost Of Loving You
05 Misbehavin'

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SAM JR. (BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE) SHARES “SWEET FACE” FT. TESS PARKS FROM UPCOMING DEBUT LP

WATCH / SHARE “SWEET FACE” FT. TESS PARKS HERE
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SAM JR.’S SELF-TITLED DEBUT LP OUT MARCH 10, 2022 VIA ARTS & CRAFTS

Photo Credit : Britt Lucas ​​// DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Last year, Sam Jr. (aka, Sam Goldberg Jr.) shared his self-titled debut album’s first single, the Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips/MGMT/Tame Impala) mixed “You Lock The Door, I Broke The Window”, and at the top of this year revealed album track “Keep It Buried”. With less than a month to go before the album is released into the ether, today Sam Jr. is sharing yet another new track from the LP.

For the album’s third single, “Sweet Face”, Sam approached Tess Parks as he felt the album already had “too much me,” he says. “I knew her work but was reluctant to message her because I’m just a drip making my first solo album and she’s made records with all these cool people and I’m just me with my little song but I emailed her and she wrote back ‘Hey!! this song rules instantly - i am so down !’ So that made my day. Her voice is so unique. Low and raspy with so much character. She makes the song.”

On the track itself, Sam says he’s not sure he “needs to explain any further but my sonic mixing notes to Dave Fridmann we're ‘Keep it cool and sexy. Make it sound like you're driving a stolen car at night after you've robbed a bank and you pull over to a bar at the side of the road for a drink to contemplate your next move. While you've been sipping your drink you've been also locking eyes with someone across the room. On your way out the door you stop by their table and after a few words you both make a run for it!’”

WATCH / SHARE “SWEET FACE” FT. TESS PARKS HERE
BUY / STREAM “SWEET FACE” FT. TESS PARKS HERE

“Sweet Face” Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES


MORE ABOUT SAM JR.’S DEBUT LP
Fuzzed out guitars with psychedelic laced wah wahs and bongos?? And flutes? rock oozing buzzed out hippie rock ? Evil nihilist ooze-rock slacker fuzz? There’s a lot of play within that framework of Sam Jr.’s new self-titled debut so we’ll leave it to you to decide for yourself what Sam Jr. is all about when the appropriate moment comes. 

“My concept for awhile making this record was actually ‘What would the Dude’s band from The Big Lebowski sound like?’” laughs Goldberg, the titular architect behind this long-overdue solo stepping-out. “I’m not sure it landed there at all, but I think I was trying to harness the easygoing nature and spirit of that character. I’m a hardwired optimist and a mellow person overall, and I wanted that to come across in the songs.” 

Meantime, you’re probably wondering how such a confident ‘debut’ could pop out of nowhere. Well, that’s because it didn’t. This Samuel Goldberg, Jr., chap looks oddly familiar, right? And that name… it rolls off the tongue nicely, yes, but it also rings a bell. So where exactly have you seen this guy before? Because you know you’ve seen him before. 

You have indeed seen Sam Goldberg before. And you’ve seen him pretty much everywhere, that’s where. If you’ve kept even a casual eye on the Canadian pop landscape for the past 25 years or so, in fact, Sam Goldberg, Jr., has been hiding in plain sight the whole time as a vital member of an uncanny number of bands with whom you’re either already acquainted or – and no judgement here – should perhaps be ashamed of yourself in hindsight for previously failing to get acquainted with. 

WATCH / SHARE “KEEP IT BURIED” HERE
BUY / STREAM “KEEP IT BURIED” HERE

There’s the globetrotting group hug known as Broken Social Scene, of course, which has counted Goldberg as a stable conscript since 2007 and whose ranks have over the years helped launch the likes of Metric, Stars and Leslie Feist to a modest form of indie-rock greatness. But there’s also Uncut, a truly formidable noise-rock “guitar band’s guitar band” that made evangelicals of its far-flung followers but never quite grasped as a whole how huge it could have been to properly follow through on its generous promise. There’s Bodega, whose subtly transfixing 1997 debut album Bring Yourself Up got gobbled up and murdered by an international major-label deal gone wrong and remains to this day one of the best Canadian records of all time (“That first Bodega record is fucking great,” concurs Goldberg) that pretty much no one has ever heard. There’s Bionic, a punk-rock pseudo-supergroup originally of combined Doughboys, Change of Heart and, yes, Bodega extraction that could reliably melt your face from the get-go but ultimately proved too volatile to survive for long in any consistent form. There’s Hawaii, a duo whose eponymous 2003 one-off LP will easily satisfy your next desire for a late-night (Slow)dive into (Mazzy)stardom if you bother to sleuth it out. And there’s Yardlets, another duo that was so sardonically ‘meta’ in its expert appropriation of au courant 21st-century ‘psychedelic goth shoegaze punk’ trends across two albums released in 2012 and 2015 that it actually managed to make you feel uncomfortable for enjoying its own music. 

Good company and a consistently high – indeed, often too-good-for-its-own-good – standard of quality all around, then. Goldberg even notched a high-profile Felix Prize nomination for “Producer of the Year” in Quebec in 2014 for his work on Kandle’s In Flames. But while one hates to invoke the “always a bride’s maid, never a bride” metaphor because Sam is a damn good catch and would look splendid in peach chiffon whether he was headed to the altar or not, there’s always been a sense amongst his friends, acquaintances and admirers that Sam Goldberg, Jr. hasn’t properly received his due. 

LISTEN / SHARE “YOU LOCK THE DOOR, I BROKE THE WINDOW” HERE
BUY / STREAM “YOU LOCK THE DOOR, I BROKE THE WINDOW” HERE


So here you have Sam Jr., which is Goldberg taking a undiluted and unfettered deep dive into the black buzz-bin catacombs of the soul and having a bit of a laugh at his own expense while doing it, in much the same manner the Jesus and Mary Chain or Suicide were always kinda winking at you while they were wallowing. And it’s all Sam Jr., for the record, save some bongo-mad percussion work from Miles Dupire-Gagnon of Elephant Stone and Anemone, guest vocals from Toronto chanteuse Tess Parks and a sprinkle of cornet, sax and flute (yes, flute) here and there. Goldberg handled the rest of the instrumentation himself, observing a strict palette of sounds otherwise limited mainly to fuzz- and wah-wah-afflicted guitars, bass and a bit of synth. And he kept things strict for a reason. 

“I’ve played with bands my whole life and I’ve been working with other artists or producing other artists forever and, y’know, I’ve had people for years asking me ‘When are you gonna make your own record?’ I just kept getting that. So finally I just went ‘Why not? I should just start a record,” says Goldberg. “So I started a record in 2018 that I finished at the beginning of the COVID pandemic. And I hated it. It took me quite a while to finish and by the time it was done, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the sound of the record, I was singing out of my register like Mariah Carey and there were just too many ideas - a zillion ideas - going on. And I didn’t like the songs. The songs just weren’t there for me, weren’t doing it for me.” 

Despite suffering “that deep, disgusting feeling” of investing a lot of time and money and effort into something he couldn’t even trick himself into standing behind, Goldberg sucked it up, shelved the record and “started from scratch again.” 

At least he’d deduced from that experience what he didn’t want to do the second time around. And so, after hearing from a friend with great interest about the amount of time Scottish electro-weirdos Boards of Canada would invest in deciding upon which highly specific set of sounds they would use for each recording, for Sam Jr.’s forthcoming “real” first album he decided he would take the same rigorously self-limiting approach. And that cracked the whole thing wide open. He had an entire record finished in months. 

“Once I found that palette of colours that worked it came together so quickly. I was shocked at how fast it came together,” Goldberg recalls. “For some reason, I was loving the sound of the wah-wah. And I loved the sound of ‘fuzz,’ a really fuzzed-out rhythm guitar. And that was kind of it. But I would also try to limit myself to, like, five tracks. It would always just be ‘I’m gonna record the rhythm guitar, there’s only gonna be one rhythm, there’s always gonna be a wah guitar happening.’ That sort of thing. I really made an effort to minimalize everything. There are barely any elements happening. There’s just the rhythm, the bass, the guitar, there’s drums and there’s lots of percussion. And you know what? I love the sound of bongos so there’s a lot of bongos going on. Which is kinda weird, but I was just really into bongos. 

“There are minimal elements, but when they happen they’re there for a reason. There’s no fluff there just to be buried in the mix. Everything’s there for a reason. I’m trying to keep people engaged, but I’ve also been listening to music and playing music my whole life so I just wanted to make something enjoyable for myself that, hopefully, other people might want to listen to, as well.” 

Read the full biography by Ben Rayner : www.killbeatmusic.com/samjr

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES
Mar 11 - Montréal, QC - Église St-Édouard
Mar 19 - Toronto, ON - Baby G


Album Artwork by : Walter Silver // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

SAM JR. TRACKLIST
01 You Lock The Door I Broke The Window 
02 Sweet Face (feat Tess Parks) 
03 Na Na Na Na Na
04 Keep It Buried 
05 Quarter To Apocalypse 
06 World Bangin On My Door 
07 Dippp 

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