KEN YATES RELEASES POWERFUL NEW TRACK “FAIRWEATHER”

“FAIRWEATHER” SINGLE ART // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

This week Ken Yates releases “Fairweather”, his first single since the release of his June 2022 album Cerulean (Soundly Music). He describes the track as “b-side” to his recent album, and notes that “the song is about what happens to relationships when someone puts their dreams ahead of the people who love them. Ambition is what drives us to get up every day, but if we don’t nurture our relationships with friends, family, partners, etc., they may not be there for you in your darkest moments.”

The single follows up his acclaimed fourth album Cerulean, which was recently nominated for Contemporary Album of the Year and Contemporary Singer of the Year at the Canadian Folk Music Awards. “Fairweather” is the first release of a series of “b-sides” Yates will be releasing this spring. 

LISTEN / SHARE / BUY / STREAM "FAIRWEATHER" HERE

MORE ABOUT CERULEAN
Cerulean meets Yates at his darkest and most vulnerable, as he transforms the pain of grief, fear and loss into an 11-track quest towards hope, light and peace. A crucial vehicle out of the depths of darkness and bitterness for Yates, Cerulean serves as a powerful reemergence filled with his signature remarkable vocal intimacy as well as a profound yet candid peek into the universal human experience.

Over the last decade, Ken Yates has solidified himself as a prolific musician, combining heartfelt lyricism, genuine authenticity and hypnotic guitar strums. After studying at the Berklee College of Music, Yates released The Backseat EP in 2011, followed by his full-length debut Twenty-Three in 2013. He won the Colleen Peterson Songwriting Award in 2014 for his song "The One That Got Away" and released his second album, Huntsville, in 2016, produced by Jim Bryson. By 2017, Yates was making waves in folk with his poignant songwriting, winning the awards for Canadian Folk Music Award for both Songwriter of the Year and New Artist of the Year. Now, with a fresh perspective and renewed sense of self, Yates brings honesty, growth and profound peace to his latest work, Cerulean. Nonetheless, Cerulean feels like a hard reset on Yates’ art and artistry. Reuniting with producer Jim Bryson, the album firmly steps into indie folk and alternative territories – he cites Big Thief, Andy Shauf, and The War On Drugs as a few of his inspirations.

READ THE FULL BIO HERE

PRAISE FOR CERULEAN

"It’s another lyrical vessel of yearning and emotional reckoning matched up with strummed acoustic guitar, further setting the scene for what Cerulean has in store." - FLOOD

"Cerulean is more astral than backroads, a soundscape that gives Yates room to ruminate, approaching the concert hall atmospherics of The War on Drugs, Andy Shauf, and Big Thief." - The Creek 100.9

“Yates has now asserted himself as one of Canada’s most unique folk artists with a true knack for effective songwriting.” - Canadian Beats

"An enchanting song of acceptance and resolve, Ken Yates’ “The Big One” is a soothing and stirring apocalyptic lullaby that finds refuge in the face of life’s fragility." - Atwood Magazine

"Ken has earned a strong reputation as a bona-fide composer who combines his emotionally charged storytelling with some incredible and unforgettable melodies.” - Great Dark Wonder

LISTEN / SHARE "DON'T MEAN TO WAKE YOU" FEAT. STEPHANIE LAMBRING

WATCH / SHARE “THE BIG ONE” FT. KATHLEEN EDWARDS

WATCH / SHARE “CONSOLATION PRIZE” FT. KATIE PRUITT HERE

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KRISTI LANE SINCLAIR SHARES NEW SINGLE/VIDEO VIA RED MUSIC RISING

KRISTI LANE SINCLAIR JOINS RED MUSIC RISING, SHARES NEW SINGLE “BREAK FT. KELLY FRASER”

WATCH / SHARE “BREAK FT. KELLY FRASER” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BREAK FT. KELLY FRASER” HERE

Photo Credit : Francesca Ludikar // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

The beautiful, brash, and bold Haida/Cree artist Kristi Lane Sinclair is today sharing the new single, “Break ft. Kelly Fraser”, her first new music to be released Red Music Rising. Sinclair’s well-polished, brutally honest songwriting delves into far too common experiences of violence, surfacing to breathe with softness and grit. She describes her songwriting approach as “visceral,” with music and lyrics written together in the moment. Her songs combine severity with symphony, weaving sharply gorgeous string sections alongside the howl of heavy riffs. 

On the new single, she says “‘Break’ is a very different kind of arrangement. It doesn’t really sound like anything I’ve ever done before, there’s mostly just this pulse, this heartbeat of drums and of voices chanting. This is one example of a song where I asked the girls in the studio to portray ancestral voices in their singing within the song’s narrative. It was our chance to incorporate the amazing voice of Kelly Fraser, whose throat singing runs throughout the track.”

WATCH / SHARE “BREAK FT. KELLY FRASER” HERE
BUY / STREAM “BREAK FT. KELLY FRASER” HERE

“Break Ft. Kelly Fraser” Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Sinclair released her first album, the self-produced I Love You, in 2010, and followed it with 2013’s By The Sea Alone. In 2015, she released Dark Matter, which earned the Best Rock Album honour at the 2017 Indigenous Music Awards. The making of that album was documented in a six-part APTN series, Face The Music. Her last record, The Ability to Judge Distance was released in 2018. Be on the lookout for more new music in the very near future.

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BODYWASH ANNOUNCES NEW ALBUM, I HELD THE SHAPE WHILE I COULD, SHARES NEW SINGLE

I HELD THE SHAPE WHILE I COULD OUT APRIL 14, 2023 ON LIGHT ORGAN RECORDS

WATCH / SHARE “MASSIF CENTRAL” HERE
BUY / STREAM “MASSIF CENTRAL” HERE

PRE-ORDER I HELD THE SHAPE WHILE I COULD

"A feast of layered synths and glorious textures" - Get Some Magazine on “Kind Of Light” single

"A dreamgaze masterpiece" - The Revue on “Kind Of Light” single

"A lush, throbbing, dream-pop track mingled with enough gaze to make any fans of bands like My Bloody Valentine and Cocteau Twins take notice" - 3hive on “Kind Of Light”

"Noise rock shot-through with moments of incredible beauty..." - Clash on Comforter LP

"A seamless amalgamation of celestial melodies, balmy textures and ambitious left-turns" - Exclaim! On Comforter LP

Photo Credit: Kristina Pedersen // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Bodywash — the Montreal duo of Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter — announces its new album, I Held the Shape While I Could, out April 14 on Light Organ Records, and shares the lead single/video, “Massif Central”. Over I Held the Shape While I Could’s twelve tracks, Steward and Long Decter reflect on their separate and shared experiences of losing a sense of place, the way something once solid can slip between your fingers, and their attempts to build something new from the fallout. On lead single “Massif Central”, stark guitars and relentless drums accompany Steward’s whispered vocals as he recounts an experience of bureaucratic purgatory: a typo in a government letter caused Steward to lose his legal work status in Canada. 

“After eight years living in Canada, in the Spring of 2021, a government clerical error caused me to lose my legal status here,” Steward explains. “As a UK national, I lost my right to work. My savings trickled away during months where I could do little but pace the corners of my apartment. I was prepared to pack my bags and leave as the life I’d hoped to construct for myself seemed to vanish into a bureaucratic abyss.”

“‘Massif’ is the sound of wailing into a cliff and not knowing if you’ll hear an echo,” continued Steward. “The spoken word is inspired by a squirrel that was trapped in the wall behind my bed, clawing its way to salvation. With the help of friends, family, music, and a few immigration lawyers (and the rest of my savings), I’m now a permanent resident here. But this song remains as testament to my experience with an exploitative institution.”

The accompanying video by Jordan Allen is a stunning collage of live footage, distorted visuals, and eerie graphics. “With ‘Massif Central,’ we wanted to encapsulate the panic and urgency that Chris experienced, and have the abstracts portray the anxiety and hopelessness one can feel at the hands of bureaucracy,” Allen adds. “I chose graphics that heavily leaned into feelings of being lost in a maze, with towering structures and horizon lines pulling you into them. The idea was that the camera would be both a CCTV view of the band, but also glitching to reveal the more emotionally internal visual aspects.”

WATCH / SHARE “MASSIF CENTRAL” HERE
BUY / STREAM “MASSIF CENTRAL” HERE

Steward and Long Decter met in college in 2014, but didn’t immediately share a musical language. Chris grew up in London listening to British dream pop and classic shoegaze; Rosie was raised in Toronto on folk and Canadiana. Working toward their own blend of airy vocals, intricate guitar work and atmospheric synths, they released their debut EP as Bodywash in 2016 and their first full-length, Comforter, in 2019. 

As they prepared to release Comforter, Long Decter and Steward both experienced alienating shifts in their personal lives, leading to a mutual sense of dislocation. They began writing new material that was darker, more experimental, and at the same time more invigorating than the soothing dream pop on Comforter. In 2021 they took these songs into the studio, sharing them with longtime drummer Ryan White and recording/mixing engineer Jace Lasek (Besnard Lakes). The resulting I Held the Shape While I Could is a record that lives in the sonics of decay and renewal: breaks that burst forth from a squall of fuzz guitars, drones that glitch and stutter like ice willing itself to thaw. 

There are many places like home, and on I Held the Shape While I Could, home is a mutable thing; a location that is fixed until it isn’t. Across the record, Steward’s abstract guitars and Long Decter’s cascading vocals act as ambient throughlines, blurring the digital and organic, gesturing toward something intangible, just out of reach. Home is a process — the back and forth of guitar riffs and vocal hums, of files sent and received across the ocean. A world imagined and sculpted together. 

PRE-ORDER I HELD THE SHAPE WHILE I COULD

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I HELD THE SHAPE WHILE I COULD TRACKLIST:
1. In As Far
2. Picture Of
3. Massif Central
4. Bas Relief
5. Perfect Blue
6. Kind of Light
7. One Day Clear
8. Sterilizer
9. Dessents 
10. Ascents
11. Patina
12. No Repair

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