PIERRE KWENDERS PRESENTS NEW VIDEO / SINGLE FROM UPCOMING LP

February 23, 2022

WATCH / SHARE “HEARTBEAT” (FEAT. ANAIIS) HERE
BUY / STREAM “HEARTBEAT” (FEAT. ANAIIS) HERE

**NEW ALBUM, JOSÉ LOUIS AND THE PARADOX OF LOVE, OUT APRIL 29, 2022 ON ARTS & CRAFTS**

**PRE-ORDER JOSÉ LOUIS AND THE PARADOX OF LOVE HERE**

“ 'Papa Wemba' adds electronic clout to the soukous beat — it sounds like it’s being punched out on a Teletype — and stirs up a rhythmic vortex with echoing guitars, gruffly sung and chanted vocals and a twin-saxophone riff that approximates the horns saying 'Papa Wemba.’” — The New York Times

"Since his 2014 debut LP Le Dernier Empereur Bantou, Pierre Kwenders has been an invaluable force in Canadian music with his experimental and playful approach to Congolese rumba.” — The FADER

Photo Credit: Kim Yang // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Congolese-born, Montreal-based musician, songwriter, and DJ Pierre Kwenders presents new single, “Heartbeat” (feat. anaiis), from his forthcoming album, José Louis and the Paradox of Love, out April 29, 2022 on Arts & Crafts. Following lead single, “Papa Wemba”, praised by The New York Times as “a rhythmic vortex with echoing guitars, gruffly sung and chanted vocals,” “Heartbeat” features French-Senegalese artist anaiis, and is an infectious sequel to the Branko-produced “Amours d’Éte” which Kwenders performed for the preeminent music platform COLORS. The melancholic “Heartbeat” pivots sonically and aesthetically, illustrating Kwenders’ emotional and stylistic breadth. His captivating multilingual chorus is bolstered by anaiis’ lithe vocal accompaniment.

“‘Heartbeat' represents the paradox of love,” says Kwenders. “Love can manifest itself in many and the most unexpected ways. I've been a fan of anaiis' for a while now. The tenderness that breathes through her voice was the perfect match to this story. While our hearts are beating hard, we're surrounded by the beauty of nature which keeps us calm and happy. All in tenderness, on a farm of love!”

The song’s striking music video was made by BLANGUAGE and directed by Daniel Omoakoh, the same team that created the video for lead single "Papa Wemba".

WATCH / SHARE “HEARTBEAT” (FEAT. ANAIIS) HERE
BUY / STREAM “HEARTBEAT” (FEAT. ANAIIS) HERE

Following MAKANDA at The End of Space, the Beginning of Time, Kwenders’s 2017 sophomore album, and Le Dernier Empereur Bantou, his 2014 debut – both of which earned Kwenders nominations for Canada’s prestigious Polaris Music Prize – José Louis and the Paradox of Love finds the artist arriving at a new juncture: a moment of resonance, carefully wrapped in freewheeling tapestry, hinged in reverence to its diverse heritage, yet reveling in the inventive combination of its elements.

WATCH / SHARE “PAPA WEMBA” HERE
BUY / STREAM “PAPA WEMBA” HERE

Seamlessly working across Congolese rumba, contemporary electronic music, pop-R&B, and jazz-infused progressions with a range of global collaborators including Tendai Maraire (Shabazz Palaces), Branko (M.I.A., Buraka som Sistema), Win Butler (Arcade Fire), Michael Brun (J Balvin), and Uproot Andy (Poirier), José Louis and the Paradox of Love is both an embrace of African musical tradition and an evolution of it. Singing and rapping in Lingala, French, English, Tshiluba, and Kikongo, Kwenders similarly weaves his stories across the boundaries of language and geography. Written and recorded while traversing the globe with his Moonshine Collective — holding nearly 100 lunar-based events including a Boiler Room party in his native Kinshasa or performing for COLORS in Berlin — Kwenders has taken his Afro-electronic soirées from Los Angeles to Santiago to Paris and beyond, building a truly international grassroots community of fans and peers.

**PRE-ORDER JOSÉ LOUIS AND THE PARADOX OF LOVE HERE**

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JOSÉ LOUIS AND THE PARADOX OF LOVE TRACKLIST
1. L.E.S (Liberté Égalité Sagacité) (Feat. Win Butler, King Britt)
2. Your Dream (Feat. Ngabo)
3. No No No
4. Imparfait (Feat. Sônge)
5. Papa Wemba
6. Religion désir
7. Makambo Ya Gaga (skit)
8. Heartbeat (feat. anaiis)
9. Kilimanjaro
10. Coupé
11. Sahara
12. Radio trottoir (interlude) (Feat. Babel Bukasa)
13. Church (Likambo) (Feat. Africa Intshiyetu Choir)

PIERRE KWENDERS LIVE
May 4 - Toronto, ON - The Music Gallery | Tickets
May 6 - Montreal, QC - Phi Centre | Tickets
July 30 - Montreal, QC - Osheaga Festival

PIERRE KWENDERS ONLINE
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SUNGLACIERS REVEAL NEW VIDEO FOR “OUT OF MY SKULL”

February 22, 2022

WATCH / SHARE “OUT OF MY SKULL” HERE
BUY / STREAM “OUT OF MY SKULL” HERE

**SECOND LP, SUBTERRANEA, OUT MARCH 25, 2022 VIA MOTHLAND**

**PRE-SAVE SUBTERRANEA HERE**

CANADIAN TOUR DATES BEGIN MARCH 3, 2022

"Sunglaciers are already criminally underrated and a must add to your playlist [...]" - Sidewalk Hustle

"Calgary psych-pop quartet Sunglaciers [share] the twinkling "Draw Me In," a new single co-produced by Chad VanGaalen." - Exclaim!

"A sweat-slicked fever dream of an album, Sunglaciers’ first full-length release reverberates with an electric intellect that shimmers like a sunset reflecting off a skyscraper." - BeatRoute

"In the studio, [Sunglaciers] finds a nice balance between feverish fits of experimental noise and more traditional songcraft." - Calgary Herald

"Sunglaciers’ songs are complex but never fussy, maintaining a healthy display of instrumental dexterity and structural sophistication [...]" - Stagehand

Press Photo : Haley Gunn // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

In just one month, Calgary’s post-punk meets psychedelic pop outfit Sunglaciers will be releasing their new album Subterranea via Montreal imprint Mothland. Today, the band is sharing the video for “Out Of My Skull” which arrives with a new video from director and songwriter Evan Resnik.

"Out Of My Skull" is “dark but it's lively.” says Resnik. “I shot in black and white to lend a bit of a classic, noir vibe to the video, which also helped bring out some of my innate 90s influence.

“The lyrics loosely reference Miles Davis and a few moments from his life: his hiatus from 1975-80, a shooting in 1969, being assaulted by a cop outside Birdland in 1959. I watched a lot of music documentaries in early 2020 when we began writing this record. Miles was a mysterious and brooding artist, and that initial inspiration helped me get into that mindset during songwriting and throughout the video production. The video is intimate but detached, with close-up faces in contrasting, unreal environments. We're in your face, but we're not really there. We had a lot of fun shooting, and I think that comes through in the video and adds a bit of levity.”

WATCH / SHARE “OUT OF MY SKULL” HERE
BUY / STREAM “OUT OF MY SKULL” HERE

“Out Of My Skull” Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

MORE ABOUT SUBTERRANEA
Subterranea is anchored in strange realities from our times. This new effort from Evan Resnik and Mathieu Blanchard (the pair behind Sunglaciers) is also laced with a certain optimism, perhaps the work of well-calculated psychedelic elements and headbanging rhythms, making for a most-rewarding listening experience.

Like their name might suggest, Sunglaciers’ music blurs the boundaries between dazzling indie-rock melodicism and icy post-punk experimentation. On the Calgary quartet’s sophomore album, Subterranea, co-produced by hometown hero Chad VanGaalen and mixed by acclaimed engineer Mark Lawson (Arcade Fire, Yves Jarvis, The Unicorns), they carve out new sonic spaces with laser focus. While past releases found the band exploring a maximalist approach, these 13 songs emerge and vanish in rapid succession, never outstaying their welcome.

“We tried to write vertically instead of horizontally,” explains multi-instrumentalist Blanchard. “Our last album Foreign Bodies and the EPs that came before it had lots of long songs with different parts drifting back and forth. For this album, we decided to strip our songs down to two or three minutes with only a few ideas in each of them.”

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

Sunglaciers initially came together in 2017 as a collaboration between Blanchard and lead vocalist Resnik, both of whom handle an array of instruments and co-production duties on Subterranea. As Blanchard completed his studies to become a doctor working in family medicine and addiction, and Resnik returned from a hitchhiking trip through France, the duo decided to form a new musical project. The past five years have found them steadily growing in popularity, sharing stages with acts such as Omni, Preoccupations, and Daniel Romano, while topping the charts of campus radio stations in Western Canada.

When COVID-19 put Sunglaciers’ tour plans on pause, they shifted their focus to songwriting, dedicating 40-plus hours per week to music in the early months of 2020. Subterranea was recorded in the unusual location of On Air Studios, a professional voiceover studio owned by former member Bruce Crews. This extended timeframe taught them skills in engineering, while also allowing for experiments such as swapping the instruments that each member typically plays (an oblique strategy used on Portishead’s Third and David Bowie’s “Boys Keep Swinging”). Chad VanGaalen fleshed out the songs further with vocal and instrumental contributions, while the band welcomed other guests such as harpist Jennifer Crighton (Hermitess) and hip-hop / black metal vocalist Louis Cza (Roman66, The Black Greek God).

The result is an urgent and cohesive full-length statement, drawing on influences from the high drama indie-rock of Deerhunter, Total Control’s post-punk tenacity, and the woozy grooves of BEAK>.

WATCH AND SHARE “DRAW ME IN” HERE
BUY / STREAM “DRAW ME IN” HERE

The ‘90s rock sound of “Glue” shows off an entirely different side of Sunglaciers’ sonic personality, merging triumphant Walkmen-esque trumpets with a ripping guitar solo from VanGaalen. “Draw Me In” toys with the formula to the greatest degree, as a sputtering Of Montreal-inspired dance beat propels Resnik’s vulnerable lyrics about untying the noose of depression during his darkest days

“The bulk of this album came together during the pandemic and the changing of gears that we had to do,” says Resnik. “I was out of work and Mathieu was working half as much as usual, so we had lots of time on our hands. We flipped a switch and started playing music everyday. It’s a good indicator of how we were writing at the time while we wrapped our heads around some new gear and saw what came out of it. Essentially, we took all of our favourite musical tendencies and put them together. We were listening to a lot of McCartney II at the time and loved how eclectic it was, which led to us mirroring that vibe.”

**PRE-SAVE SUBTERRANEA HERE**

TOUR DATES
Mar 3 - Toronto, ON - The Baby G
Mar 4 - Montreal, QC - L’Esco
Mar 7 - Saratoga, NY - Desperate Annie’s
Mar 8 - Troy, NY - No Fun
Mar 9-12 - New York, NY - New Colossus Festival
Mar 13 - Washington, DC - Pie Shop
Mar 15 - Pittsburgh, PA - Mr. Roboto Project
Mar 16 - Cincinnati, OH - TBD
Mar 17 - Indianapolis, IN - Healer
Mar 19 - Windsor, ON - Phog Lounge
Mar 26 - Calgary, AB - Palomino
Apr 8 - Edmonton, AB - Aviary

DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

SUBTERRANEA TRACKLIST
1. Negative Ways
2. Avoidance
3. Out of my Skull
4. Order
5. Subterranea
6. Thought Maps
7. Stayed
8. Glue
9. Draw Me In
10. Best Years
11. No Horizon
12. Cause/Effect
13. Roundabout

SUNGLACIERS ONLINE
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COLA (EX-OUGHT) ANNOUNCE DEBUT LP, SHARE NEW SINGLE

February 22, 2022

WATCH / SHARE “SO EXCITED” HERE
BUY / STREAM “SO EXCITED” HERE

DEEP IN VIEW OUT MAY 20, 2022 VIA NEXT DOOR RECORDS

"A gorgeously obsessive guitar groove...'Blank Curtain' is more than just a beautiful tune — it’s a graceful way to mark the transition from one stage of life to the next." - Rolling Stone

“'Blank Curtain,' a song that seemingly alludes to the myriad of possibilities the band now faces, stacked with oblique imagery and tethered to a driving groove." - FADER

"A hypnotic debut outing, leveraging minimalist instrumentation into propulsive, droning post-punk." - Paste

Photo Credit: OK Pedersen: // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

In November, the Montreal band Ought announced their break up after three critically-acclaimed albums and 9 years together. This news came with a silver-lining though, as Ought members Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy simultaneously announced a new project with U.S. Girls/The Weather Station drummer Evan Cartwright called Cola. This coincided with the announcement of the new band's signing to Next Door Records and the release of their debut single "Blank Curtain" which generated immediate excitement, earning praise from outlets like Pitchfork, NPR, FADER, Stereogum, Uproxx, Paste, BrooklynVegan, Consequence, Clash, NME and Rolling Stone who described their sound as being "like a streamlined version of Ought" and highlighted the track's "gorgeously obsessive guitar groove."

Today, Cola are back to announce their debut LP Deep In View, which will be released via Next Door Records on May 20, 2022 and share its first single "So Excited". Built around Stidworthy's agile bass playing and Cartwright's insistent shuffle, "So Excited" conjures a sense of constant motion from minimal building blocks. Meditative but dynamically structured, it was the song around which the beginnings of this new project initially coalesced, as Darcy explains:

"We would talk about this track as the ‘capstone’ of the Cola record. It was that song that we would warm up with and get tight on since it was one of the first to really come together, plus it’s fun to play. There are Cola songs of mine that predate this one but this was the one I was working on when Ben told me he was going to come back from grad school and we talked about jamming together. It clicked when we played it out with Evan and from there we decided to work on songs for a new project.

The first song Tim showed me, I had this special bassline which I had been playing at Ought soundchecks and was saving for the right moment," Stidworthy adds. "It fit perfectly in the first phrase of the chorus and felt like it was a sign."

WATCH / SHARE “SO EXCITED” HERE
BUY / STREAM “SO EXCITED” HERE

MORE ABOUT DEEP IN VIEW
Deep In View is the debut album from former Ought members Tim Darcy (vocals, guitar) and Ben Stidworthy (bass) alongside Evan Cartwright (drums). Titled after philosopher Alan Watts’ anthology of the same name, the record is built on a foundation of elegant guitar grooves and knotty rhythms, offering commentary on modern life and technology through curious lyrical vignettes, where quotidian objects and scenes are never just as they seem. Deep In View is equally a product of introspective songwriting as it is a consideration of the abstract landmarks of an increasingly media-mediated society. It also presents the most concise and melodic songs Darcy and Stidworthy have written to date.

“I love when I find a record that has many different angles from which it can be approached,” Darcy explains. The band’s affinity for polysemy is first-and-foremost a chord struck in the name Cola, which most obviously is the fizzy beverage that Darcy deadpans is ”bound by laws older than man to poison most ordinary life on earth” in closing track “Landers”, but also can be traced back to a term in poetics as well as an acronym about social security that refers to “Cost of Living Adjustment”. Cola is also about drinking in the endless crispness of a streamlined (and streamed) world, and the often unsettling sense of satisfaction and emptiness that subsequently sets in. Fundamentally, this record is about passion and what happens to a person when they find themselves increasingly encountering a passionless landscape of consumption. This peeling back of layers is integral to both Cola’s mindset as well as their worldview, which despite a claustrophobic time in the making sees them joyfully exploring new realms as musicians.

Cola started collaborating in fall 2019 when Darcy and Stidworthy, both formerly of Ought, reached out to their friend Cartwright, who they had frequently met on the road while he was drumming with various other projects. “It wasn’t the post-Ought band right off the bat,” Darcy says, “we really just took time to enjoy the process of collaborating and writing songs together.” The band’s organic chemistry solidified quickly after a few sessions of jamming in-person. Then, as the pandemic began, they were forced to decamp and write songs separately. Working in solitude ended up becoming a “defining color as well as a barrier” to the album, says Darcy. He notes that he wrote the lyrics to “Fulton Park” as a “dream landscape”, a sort of alternative to the frustration and depression he was experiencing at the time.

LISTEN AND SHARE “BLANK CURTAIN” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BLANK CURTAIN” HERE

The imposed isolation of writing at home led Stidworthy (who helped compose the album’s guitar parts and plays the piano on “Landers”) to “create little worlds with the songs”. The keen brushstrokes of all three members combined feels languidly tactile, replete with profound meaning that is almost archeological in its sense of economy and personal touch. This sense of relaxed exploration could only occur because of the mutual trust between the trio: Stidworthy adds, “I could go really far in cultivating a mood for a demo and send it to them and know that it could only improve.” Meanwhile, Cartwright (who also plays guitar on the project and coded Supercollider synth parts in the studio), found that he was subliminally incorporating drum ideas and patterns from when he first started playing as a teen, embedded deep in his muscle memory.

The resulting record delights in its aversion to superficiality. Although Darcy’s characteristically wry voice remains front-and-center, shifting from decisive to distressed and detached, his lyrical invocations remain only the first key to a much more intricate universe of sound and longing. Individual tracks often feel like small revelations, and each element contributes to a streamlined and yet poetically expansive set of meanings, as the rhythms of the punchy and exuberant guitar parts, urgent basslines, and unexpected drum patterns all tangle with each other in an elegant dance. Much greater than the sum of its parts, Deep In View is an album of artful and energetic post-punk that sparks novel interpretations with every listen, like an object that takes on new shape with each angle from which you hold it.

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DEEP IN VIEW TRACKLIST
1. Blank Curtain
2. So Excited
3. At Pace
4. Met Resistance
5. Degree
6. Water Table
7. Gossamer
8. Mint
9. Fulton Park
10. Landers

TOUR DATES
03.12 - Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
06.20 - Winooski, VT @ Monkey House
06.21 - Boston, MA @ Sonia's
06.22 - Kingston, NY @ Tubby's
06.23 - Brooklyn, NY @ Baby's All Right
06.24 - Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie
06.25 - Washington, DC @ DC9
06.27 - Raleigh, NC @ Cat's Cradle (Back Room)
06.28 - Atlanta, GA @ The Earl
06.29 - Nashville, TN @ DRKMTTR
07.01 - Dallas, TX @ Ruins
07.02 - Austin, TX @ The Parish
07.05 - Phoenix, AZ @ The Rebel Lounge
07.06 - San Diego, CA @ Soda Bar
07.07 - Los Angeles, CA @ The Echo
07.08 - San Francisco, CA @ Rickshaw Stop
07.10 - Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios
07.11 - Vancouver, BC @ The Biltmore
07.12 - Seattle, WA @ Tractor Tavern
07.14 - Boise, ID @ Neurolux
07.16 - Denver, CO @ Hi-Dive
07.18 - Omaha, NE @ Slowdown
07.19 - Minneapolis, MN @ 7th St. Entry
07.20 - Milwaukee, WI @ Cactus Club
07.21 - Chicago, IL @ Sleeping Village
07.22 - Detroit, MI @ Magic Bag
8.20 - Crickhowell, UK @ Green Man Festival
8.23 - Brighton, UK @ Prince Albert
8.24 - London, UK @ Moth Club
8.25 - Birmingham, UK @ Hare & Hounds
8.26 - Bristol, UK @ Rough Trade Bristol
8.27 - Birkenhead, UK @ Future Yard
8.28 - Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
8.30 - Edinburgh, UK @ Sneaky Pete's
8.31 - Glasgow, UK @ Broadcast
9.1 - Newcastle UK @ The Cluny 2
9.2 - Nottingham, UK @ Rough Trade
9.3 - Manchester, UK @ Manchester Psych Fest (Yes)
9.4 - Salisbury, UK @ End of the Road Festival

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