JEREMY DUTCHER SHARES NEW VIDEO, MOTEWOLONUWOK LP SHORT LISTED FOR THE 2024 POLARIS MUSIC PRIZE

WATCH A POWERFUL NEW BEHIND THE SCENES VIDEO WITH WICIW CHOIR

WATCH / SHARE WICIW CHOIR VIDEO HERE

MOTEWOLONUWOK AVAILABLE NOW VIA SECRET CITY RECORDS

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(Still Image From WICIW Choir Video)

Jeremy Dutcher’s sophomore LP, Motewolonuwok – his defiant, healing and queer exploration of modern indigeneity – has been shortlisted for the prestigious Polaris Music Prize 2024, alongside Elisapie, Charlotte Cardin, Allison Russell and more. The winner will be announced during the gala in Toronto on September 17. 

As a previous winner of the Polaris Music Prize (2018), today, Jeremy is thrilled to share a moving new video to celebrate his nomination and unveil some of the processes behind the astonishing Motewolonuwok.

“There are lessons you’re taught and ones you come to know experientially — some are both.  The lesson is that ‘there is no better medicine than singing together’. Something I was told from a young age but didn’t truly internalize until the process of creating this last album, Motewolonuwok,” explains Dutcher.

“Bringing this album to fruition and insisting on its vision was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done — and it was only through the collective support of this amazing group of singers that it came to pass. The WICIW Choir was built from every corner of my life, bringing together the voices I admire most, and is made most beautiful by its inclusivity, truly an ensemble for every voice type. Getting to share some wolastoqey latuwewakon with these dear collaborators was a transformative experience for me; we can learn so much from teaching. From my depth, I give gratitude to each of these singers who gave this record it’s truly voice: the spirit of collectivity,” he concludes.

The WICIW Choir is : James Baley, Meghan Jamieson, Teiya Kasahara, Keith Lam, Jonathan MacArthur, Marion Newman, Lydia Persaud, Alex Samaras, Karen Weigold, Alanna Stuart, Katrina Westin.

 WATCH / SHARE WICIW CHOIR VIDEO HERE

Currently on tour, Dutcher recently performed at the International Montreal Jazz Festival, the Riddu Riđđu Indigenous Festival in Olmmáivággi, Norway, and the Vancouver Folk Festival.

He headlined Servant Jazz Quarters in London, England and played the Cambridge Folk Festival last week. Jeremy will be back on the road in Canada in August and September and will be performing with the NAC Orchestra in Ottawa on September 13, as well as opening for Feist at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in St-Catharines on September 18. Tickets are on sale here.

MORE ABOUT JEREMY DUTCHER
With his most recent release – Motewolonuwok – Jeremy Dutcher was crowned in the UK as the MOJO Rising Artist for its September issue, with the record receiving ★★★★ from the magazine, stating, “there is real weight behind these songs, and Motewolonuwok carries it with sombre grace.” Rolling Stone France also shares the ★★★★ status calling the album “a total and captivating success,” while Télérama adds, “richly orchestrated, his intimate ballads unfold an intense dramaturgy to transcend the pain of oppression and express the soothing beauty of resilience.”

BUY / STREAM MOTEWOLONUWOK HERE

Dutcher originally vaulted himself into the upper echelons of Canadian performance with his 2018 debut, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa. Since winning the Polaris Music Prize and JUNO Award, performing for NPR Tiny Desk, and collaborating with Yo-Yo Ma and Beverly Glenn-Copeland, in 2023 Dutcher returned with Motewolonuwok, a moving and radiant exploration of contemporary Indigeneity and his place within it, presenting his most expansive work yet. The new album also marked Dutcher’s first time writing and singing in English. A powerful invitation for collective healing and understanding, “Shared tongue is a beautiful gift, with a complicated reason,” Dutcher explains. “These new English songs are also a way of singing directly to the newcomer, or settler, in their own language — a direct line of communication that seeks to platform his community’s stories of healing, resilience, and emergence to all that may hear.”

Motewolonuwok heaves with dynamic orchestration and the inherent drama of grand piano, recalling a long line of artists who have turned the classical establishment on its head to deliver compositions that are doubly ecstatic and modern — luminaries such as Julius Eastman, Perfume Genius, Arthur Russell, Beverly Glenn-Copeland, and Merce Cunningham. More intimate and expansive than anything Dutcher has created before, Motewolonuwok hedges the line between storytelling and composition as both a transcendental protest record and an exploration of self. This is experimental pop as corrective medicine: a defiant, healing, and queer experience that fills any listener with power and wisdom.

PRAISE FOR MOTEWOLONUWOK

“Motewolonuwok” pulls from the sounds of renowned song carrier Maggie Paul, the flamboyant musicality of Jeff Buckley and the political sensibility of Nina Simone. Across 11 songs, Dutcher stares down the horrors of violence against Indigenous women and the suicide crisis, while drawing strength from the writings and music of his ancestors and peers." The Toronto Star, Best Music of 2023

“Jeremy Dutcher's follow up to his Polaris Music Prize-winning debut is a work equally stunning in its beauty and raw emotional power. The arrangements complement a vital storytelling voice that's impossible to absorb without being brought to tears." - Exclaim!, Best of 2023 

★★★★ – Rolling Stone France

“There is revolution in this album… Motewolonuwok is about people rising up in the streets, about unity and community, about identity. Dutcher, who is a member of Neqotkuk (Tobique First Nation), shares an operatic timbre with Anohni, his songs transmitting a similar sense of spiritual commitment. There is real weight behind these songs, and Motewolonuwok carries it with sombre grace.” ★★★★ – MOJO

"While Motewolonuwok doesn't shy away from the painful experiences of Indigenous peoples Dutcher's gentle approach — to "rise in beauty" and forge a path forward with grace — is a powerful beacon of hope during these dark, divisive times" - CBC Music, Best Albums of 2023

“A captivating set, with Dutcher’s extraordinary and expressive vocals underpinned by orchestral arrangements... Mesmerising, magical and often deeply moving.” ★★★★ - The Morning Star

“Dutcher yearns earnestly in a powerful voice that lands somewhere between Anohni and Curtis Stigers, doling out lush soul ballads, which deal with land sovereignty and queerness” – Uncut

"After expanding the boundaries of sampling with the award-winning debut Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa the classically trained tenor’s own range expands on Motewolonuwok. With flickers of jazz and pop and the occasional full orchestra, the composer sings in both Wolastoqey and English, inviting listeners to “take my hand / walk with me.” - The Globe and Mail, Best Albums of 2023

“As powerful as his lyrics, though, is Dutcher’s performance style.” – Vogue

“[Jeremy Dutcher] Brings forward the spirit of his people on this beautiful record.” — NPR Music

"Motewolonuwok is a landscape of rolling hills, gullies, open horizons and bright stars. It’s a defiant, gorgeous, collective taking-up of sonic space.” - RANGE Magazine, Best of 2023

“Richly orchestrated, his intimate walks unfold an intense dramaturgy to transcend the pain of oppression and express the soothing beauty of resilience”. - Télérama

“The song [Skicinuwihkuk] is tender and lyrical, but also takes flight on a wave of orchestral sound that amplifies the song’s emotional content” – WNYC “New Sounds” 

Digital album artwork for Motewolonuwok // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

JEREMY DUTCHER TOUR DATES // TICKETS HERE
Aug 2-4 – Canmore, CA @ Canmore Folk Festival
Aug 8-9 – Lunenburg, CA @ Lunenburg Folk Harbour Festival
Aug 20-21 – Bonne Bay, CA @ Writers at Woody Point
Sep 13 – Ottawa, CA @ NAC *performing with the NAC orchestra
Sep 18 – Ste-Catharines, CA @ FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre
Sep 20 – Kingston, CA @ Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts
Oct 25-26 – Halifax, CA @ Rebecca Cohn Auditorium


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CLOTHESLINE FROM HELL RELEASES DEBUT EP

Photo Credit : Lauren Armstrong // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Today, Clothesline From Hell, the Toronto based songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adam LaFramboise, releases his new EP, Soon We’ll All Be Smoking. Fusing songs written and performed on acoustic guitar with programmed drums and samples, the result is imaginative, energetic and full of color. 

On the EP, LaFramboise says, “I’d like to say the title is a reference to a Delillo novel or something cool, but I actually stole it from season 2 of The Bear. I only saw the scene once but if I remember correctly, the staff is getting overwhelmed by a dinner rush or whatever and someone shouts something to the effect of ‘don’t worry, soon we’ll all be smoking’. It struck me immediately and I started thinking about the trickiness of living oriented toward rewards. It’s always like ‘once I do this, then I’ll have this’ and a lot of the time, the reward is the least interesting part. Something as banal as a cigarette; something as toxic as a cigarette. I feel like not getting caught in this loop is the whole battle of living. But, I’d be lying if I acknowledge that I probably named this EP after that line as a way of promising myself and others that if we get this done, rock stardom awaits us. I’m still daydreaming about that sort of thing and smoking even though I know it’s really bad for me.”

Today, Clothesline From Hell is sharing one last track from the EP, “The Way It Goes”, of which LaFramboise says he “wanted to make a quiet song about the paradoxes of living in the city as a student. It’s like smoking cigarettes outside the bar talking about Byung Chul Han, noticing someone nodding out or sleeping on the street next to you, and feeling incredibly stupid for dedicating your energy to pure intellectualization. It’s mostly a condemnation of myself, as I don’t want to tell anyone else that their endeavours are pointless, but I do think that there is a healthy amount of guilt to be felt about this sort of thing. I could reference virtue signalling or namecheck Instagram stories, but that does not seem like the root of the problem to me; it’s simply tragic to witness the disparity of wealth and opportunity, while feeling incapable of saying anything worthy of the pain. We threw drums on it and these looming electric guitars that sort of degrade as they ring out, and now all I see when listening to it is people marching and things burning. But, I also hope that it goes down easy for others and is read as a pop song, as the conclusion is positive. It’s just a process of assessing the world, losing the will to live and then finding that will again and loving the people you do. Though, I say it better in the song.”

LISTEN / SHARE “THE WAY IT GOES” HERE
WATCH / SHARE “YOU DON’T KNOW” LYRIC VIDEO HERE

The first single from the EP, “Open Up!" features additional writing and production from Matty Tavares (Matty, BADBADNOTGOOD). The song is inspired by outsider songwriters, the post-grunge aesthetics of nu metal and the breakbeats that drove classic hip hop and Detroit house. Additional EP collaborators include Josh McIntyre (Thermal, Prince Innocence), Nathan Burley (Young Clancy) and Platinum engineer Lars Stalfors (The Dare, Mars Volta).

“I wanted to take the radical honesty of lo-fi acoustic music and cross it with the ugly, sometimes funny extremity of something like the WWE,” LaFramboise explains. “At some point I felt like the only way to keep making new music was to be influenced by nothing, but inspired by everything that has ever changed culture.”

WATCH / SHARE “OPEN UP!” LYRIC VIDEO HERE

“This was the first song recorded for the EP and in many ways a skeleton key that unlocked a the new sonic path for the project,” he continues. “I can remember us taking a breather and pulling up tracks like Filter’s ‘Take A Picture’ or Third Eye Blind’s ‘How’s It Going To Be’, trying to inspire the creation of what we saw as an Alt-Rock smash. We both tried to play some drums on the track, but ended up preferring the placeholder drum break I had put in, which lead me to use breakbeats on every track for a while. As always, it came out different than we had pictured. It’s like they say in sports, ‘this is why we play the games’. Everything for me starts with just an acoustic guitar and vocal, but eventually becomes a very different thing I can never accurately predict. Through this collaboration, I felt like a part of me internalized for so long finally burst, ushering in a new era of creativity.”

BUY / STREAM SOON WE’LL ALL BE SMOKING HERE

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SOON WE’LL ALL BE SMOKING TRACKLIST
01 Open Up!
02 You Don’t Know
03 Take This Water
04 The Way It Goes

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GHOSTKEEPER ANNOUNCES UPCOMING LP, CÎPAYAK JOY, SHARES NEW SINGLE

GHOSTKEEPER’S CÎPAYAK JOY SET FOR RELEASE AUGUST 28, 2024
VIA VICTORY POOL RECORDS

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

PRE-SAVE CÎPAYAK JOY HERE

CANADIAN FESTIVAL DATES CONTINUE THIS SUMMER

Photo Credit : Jared Sych // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Cîpayak Joy is the new album from Ghostkeeper, the ever-evolving project of Métis pop experimentalists Shane Ghostkeeper and Sarah Houle. The new LP follows their critically-acclaimed 2023 Polaris Music Prize long-listed album Multidimensional Culture, and is set for release via Victory Pool Records on August 28.

In recent years, the band has been operating as a full five piece band – and they still are – but this particular missive from Ghostkeeper offers a new take on their sound; it's at once a bold step forward and also a return to some of the band's earliest roots. 

The album is replete with strangely inviting, otherworldly noises and a raft of sounds, rhythms, and textures that borrow liberally from trap music and reveal a sly interest in sounds and rhythms from the futuristic-sounding sonic architecture of contemporary R&B acts like FKA Twigs, Doja Cat, Vince Staples, and Rosalía. From the chirping, digitized cicada sounds that open first single “Lipstick” and the minimal beats and floating, effected vocals of “Sleep Dream” to the auto-tuned vocals and celestial synthesizer environs of “Dark At The Helm”, the album is a bold new sonic language for the band. And when one does hear a familiar sound, such as the acoustic guitar that snakes through album opener “Astum Ota”, it's filtered through a pleasingly psychedelic lens. Elsewhere, minimal synths, playful hi-hat syncopations, and dub-like snare hits radiate into the background, samples of speech intermingle with hallucinatory shifting textures and smeared voices. 

Today, they share another new single “Raven”, which Shane describes as “a mantra written to manifest a life together in which we walk, talk and breathe in a good way with nature and all her realms. Living in the realm of the raven and embracing that medicine keeps us in solidarity and committed to each other’s well-being. May the spirit of the raven keep us well as we walk in the realm of rock n roll.”

WATCH / SHARE “RAVEN” HERE
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Single Art // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

MORE ABOUT CÎPAYAK JOY
Cîpayak is a Cree term that translates as 'the ghosts are dancing' and it is often used to describe the Northern Lights. Originally in the running as an alternative to the Ghostkeeper band name, Shane and Sarah finally adopted it as the moniker for their collective visual art practice, which had its debut at Contemporary Calgary in April of 2020 with their interactive piece Four Words Challenge. That show included a few pieces of music the two had spontaneously cooked up with tech wizard and longtime engineer Brad Hawkins, and following this initial jolt of inspiration, the three began descending to the basement for a string of collaborative, off-the-cuff sessions. These sessions quickly became defined by new working methods that were the direct inverse to those that have produced the ‘Ghostkeeper sound’ to date, and the three uncovered some truly fresh new sonic territory for the band.

“Brad would come down to the basement, Sarah would work up a drum beat, and I'd start improvising, coming up with different vocal ideas and other melodic parts, finding the songs in the sounds,” Shane recalls. “It was all about being immediate, with no premeditated ideas.” This 'no songs first' approach of Cîpayak Joy was a radical reinvention of their creative process, but more than anything else, this project represents a return to that core band trajectory that Shane and Sarah originally laid down in their halcyon days. And, possibly in keeping with this sense of coming full circle with the band, Shane and Sarah decided to reach out to Jay Crocker, one of their oldest musical associates, to bring his highly unique perspective to the album. 

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

Jay Crocker is a multi-faceted composer, producer, and musician living on the south shore of Nova Scotia. He's well-known in experimental music circles for his run of JOYFULTALK albums on the venerable Constellation Records, and has co-produced the last three albums for Sackville-based songwriter Jon McKiel, including the critically-acclaimed Bobby Joe Hope. And perhaps more crucially, Crocker also played guitar in the one of the earliest Ghostkeeper band lineups, which led to him recording and producing their albums Ghostkeeper (2010) and Horse Chief! War Thief! (2013).

While the band initially approached him with the idea of mixing a few tunes, Crocker, as he often does, saw the project from another angle, and the band eventually gave him carte blanche, as producer, to re-imagine the album as only he could. “I wanted to see what was in there,” Crocker says, and with an arsenal of samplers, drum machines, and synths, he dug in. Once he began excavating the songs' innards, he compared his working method at times to collaging; with his keen eye for detail and almighty hook, Crocker would locate an element of interest (a vocal riff, a drumbeat, a synth sparkle), pluck it from its original context – sometimes literally stretching, inverting, or otherwise wholly manipulating the existing material – and put it back together in new and unexpected ways. Even Crocker himself was surprised at how radical some of the reinventions were, admitting “I don't know if I've ever taken it as far as this, just stripping the whole thing back to the vocal and re-building the song around that.” He likened the process to “building a digital sculpture of something that was,” but ultimately he viewed his role in the classic producer/artist mold; “I tried to give the songs whatever they needed - or didn't need.” The end result is endlessly engaging, singular, and, as both Ghostkeeper and Crocker insist, impossible to create without the other.

This record does indeed foreground the core duo of Shane and Sarah, but they are highly aware of the fact without the tech savvy and good vibes that Brad Hawkins brought to those initial basement production sessions, this project would not have materialized (and the record also benefits from a few remote contributions from live band members Eric Hamelin and Ryan Bourne, who supplied drum sounds and synth samples at various stages). And despite the fact that Crocker's role in the birth of Cîpayak Joy is crucial enough to have part of his band name added to this album's title, he is also quick to point out that “it doesn't happen without Shane and Sarah. I just try to contribute whatever magic I can. It's just good to be a part of it.”

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CÎPAYAK JOY TRACKLIST
01 Astum Ota
02 Lipstick
03 Raven
04 Phantom
05 Dark At The Helm
06 Sleep Dream
07 Storm Chaser
08 Maps

TOUR DATES:
August 3-5 - Canmore Folk Fest

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