#jace lasek

[nofatclips]

A Bright Resemblance and Chapel Of The Snows by Light Conductor from the album Sequence One

[chrisryanspeaks]

New Remix and Tour Alert: Bodywash Elevates 'Kind of Light' with Khotin's Touch

Bodywash, a duo from Montreal comprising Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter, announces a new remix by Edmonton's electronic artist Khotin of their 2023 track "Kind of Light," from their album I Held the Shape While I Could. This release comes ahead of their upcoming North American tour with Airiel and Blushing this June, marking their first tour since the album's release. The band shared that Khotin's Release Spirit was a constant companion on their recent tour, inspiring them with its sounds that ranged from the rugged Pacific Northwest to the bustling NJ Turnpike. They were eager for Khotin to reimagine "Kind of Light." His remix elevates the song's original tension and catharsis into a state of blissful euphoria, making it perfect for early morning play in a chill-out room at a rave, reminiscent of West Coast rave psychedelia and ambient influences. Additionally, here's a visualizer for "Kind of Light" (Khotin Remix): Steward and Long Decter, who met in college in 2014, initially did not connect musically. Steward, a London native, was influenced by British dream pop and classic shoegaze, while Toronto-born Long Decter grew up with folk and Canadiana. They found their unique sound through a blend of airy vocals, intricate guitar work, and atmospheric synths, launching their debut EP as Bodywash in 2016, followed by their first album, Comforter, in 2019. During the lead-up to Comforter, both members experienced significant personal changes, feeling a sense of dislocation that fueled their next creative phase. Their music took a darker, more experimental turn, yet became more invigorating compared to the mellow dream pop of Comforter. In 2021, they brought these new songs to the studio, collaborating with their longtime drummer Ryan White and recording/mixing engineer Jace Lasek of Besnard Lakes. The resulting album, I Held the Shape While I Could, explores themes of decay and renewal through its sonic landscape. The album reflects the concept of home as a shifting notion, an ever-changing place that remains tangible and intangible. Throughout I Held the Shape While I Could, the interplay of Steward’s abstract guitar work and Long Decter’s fluid vocals creates an ambient soundscape that blurs the line between digital and organic, crafting an auditory world that is simultaneously familiar and uncharted. Bodywash Tour Dates: Wed. June 19 - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s Thu. June 20 - Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right Fri. June 21 - Boston, MA @ Deep Cuts Sat. June 22 - Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground Sun. June 23 - Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz Mon. June 24 - Toronto, ON @ The Garrison Read the full article

[audiofuzz]

New Remix and Tour Alert: Bodywash Elevates 'Kind of Light' with Khotin's Touch

Bodywash, a duo from Montreal comprising Chris Steward and Rosie Long Decter, announces a new remix by Edmonton's electronic artist Khotin of their 2023 track "Kind of Light," from their album I Held the Shape While I Could. This release comes ahead of their upcoming North American tour with Airiel and Blushing this June, marking their first tour since the album's release. The band shared that Khotin's Release Spirit was a constant companion on their recent tour, inspiring them with its sounds that ranged from the rugged Pacific Northwest to the bustling NJ Turnpike. They were eager for Khotin to reimagine "Kind of Light." His remix elevates the song's original tension and catharsis into a state of blissful euphoria, making it perfect for early morning play in a chill-out room at a rave, reminiscent of West Coast rave psychedelia and ambient influences. Additionally, here's a visualizer for "Kind of Light" (Khotin Remix): Steward and Long Decter, who met in college in 2014, initially did not connect musically. Steward, a London native, was influenced by British dream pop and classic shoegaze, while Toronto-born Long Decter grew up with folk and Canadiana. They found their unique sound through a blend of airy vocals, intricate guitar work, and atmospheric synths, launching their debut EP as Bodywash in 2016, followed by their first album, Comforter, in 2019. During the lead-up to Comforter, both members experienced significant personal changes, feeling a sense of dislocation that fueled their next creative phase. Their music took a darker, more experimental turn, yet became more invigorating compared to the mellow dream pop of Comforter. In 2021, they brought these new songs to the studio, collaborating with their longtime drummer Ryan White and recording/mixing engineer Jace Lasek of Besnard Lakes. The resulting album, I Held the Shape While I Could, explores themes of decay and renewal through its sonic landscape. The album reflects the concept of home as a shifting notion, an ever-changing place that remains tangible and intangible. Throughout I Held the Shape While I Could, the interplay of Steward’s abstract guitar work and Long Decter’s fluid vocals creates an ambient soundscape that blurs the line between digital and organic, crafting an auditory world that is simultaneously familiar and uncharted. Bodywash Tour Dates: Wed. June 19 - Philadelphia, PA @ Johnny Brenda’s Thu. June 20 - Brooklyn, NY @ Baby’s All Right Fri. June 21 - Boston, MA @ Deep Cuts Sat. June 22 - Burlington, VT @ Higher Ground Sun. June 23 - Montreal, QC @ Bar Le Ritz Mon. June 24 - Toronto, ON @ The Garrison Read the full article

[chaospanics]

no. 10: The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are The Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings (2021)

The first gatefold :D Oh, and the sides are named as follows-- A: Near Death; B: Death; C: After Death; D: Life

BANDCAMP | WEBSITE

I saw this album on Suuns' instagram story in 2021 - and this is basically the only reason why I keep my instagram account. Seeing what my favourite artists are listening to is another of my preferred ways to get recommendations. I also forgot to mention on the post for The Witness that it was engineered by Jace Lasek, and after listening to The Besnard Lakes once you start seeing them pop up in every Canadian album ever. lol.

...Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings is just massive, epic, psych-prog-post-rock mastery. It's hard to describe this album as anything but "huge." Watch the trailer!!!

I notice that the music I listen to tends to skew more recent as I'm usually seeking out releases within the year and often these are from artists that are debuting or have been around for fewer than 5-10 years. Discovering a band who at this point have been around for 20 years is an incredible experience where I get to meet them at a very refined and established point in their lives - and this was illustrated even better getting to see them live last year. They were so cohesive on stage and really it's just nice and hopeful to see people enjoying themselves so much while performing! It was one of the best shows I'd been to (even though they didn't perform the 13 minute drone outro to the title track of this album... 😝).

Favourite Tracks: "Blackstrap" "Raindrops" "Our Heads, Our Hearts On Fire Again" "Feuds With Guns" "Last Of The Great Thunderstorm Warnings"

[daggerzine]

Bodywash- I Held the Shape While I Could (Light Organ Records)

Montreal duo Bodywash are back. It’s been three years since their last full-length album. I kind of forgot about them, but it was well worth the wait.  Rosie Long Dector contributes vocals and synths. Chris Steward also adds vocals, but also guitars, bass, and synths. Add Ryan White on drums and there you have it. Besnard Lakes’ Jace Lasek produced this time for a great album filled with ambient dream pop. 

“In As Far” starts as a building ambient instrumental, leads into trumpet synths with angelic vocals, and then the drums kick in. “and after you’re in as far; holding it seems better; holding your way to falling out.“  Track 2, “Picture Of,” is a great transition into a song that could easily be found on a Pure Bathing Culture album. Throbbing bass, steady beats, swirling guitars. What’s not to like about that? “days get tight; i watch the bloom; it all grows sideways; and covers up the room; i decide to lie and wait; picture of desire in a frame.”  The next track, “Massif Central,” has an intricate, fast-paced joyride of guitar that leads into sonic bursts. Classic shoegaze here. Chris takes on the lead vocals here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26krIBARn10 “Bas Relief” is a beautiful instrumental filled with organs sounding like airplane engine sounds and distorted, somber piano.  The next song, “Perfect Blue,” is a perfect transition to sonic power chord shoegaze filled with Chris’s hazy vocals. The drums come off as a barn door flapping in the wind with an occasional punch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH-1nCgbhmM With “Kind Of Light,” organs blast with Rosie’s heartfelt vocals along with an eerie, yet beautiful, pulsing beat.  “oh darling; you didn’t have to come; and meet me; we breathe; and lose it at the same time.” The song ends with a beautiful Japanese melody. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbB2lSN5tao

“One Day Clear” could easily be called “One of These Days,” as it’s repeated in the song. Strong, repetitive, building synths with heavenly vocals leading into spoken word. “one of these days it might all; seem like paint; chipped off your nails; like an envelope or a bad night; you were saving for later.“  Track 8, “Sterilizer,” my favorite track, smacks you out of your seat with its jangly guitar dreampop and great harmonies. A summer jam to blast in the car with the top down. Lovely guitar solos with outstanding drum touches.  The next two songs appear to be a two-part piece. “Dessents” captures Cocteau Twins’ (maybe even Frankie Rose?) style with its repetitive, whispered vocals building and building. Again, those are great bands to be compared to.  “Ascents” transitions as part two of the previous track. Here, marching drums kick in with Rosie’s vocals added by an amazing lead bass. It’s a bouncy hypnotic dreampop gem.  “Patina” has repetitive, but intricate guitar work with angelic vocals. Beautiful jangle shoegaze. Lasek’s production really shines on this one.  The last song, “No Repair,” contains rhythms that splash, heavenly guitar and Rosie’s layered vocals that create a gorgeous finish to this album. It eventually fades out to a single guitar with vocals. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR3IFjv-YgA  

I Held the Shape While I Could is the welcome return of Bodywash. I missed their free show at Chicago’s Empty Bottle. I would love to hear this performed live. Hopefully, they will make it through the area again. I love the alternate mixing of ambient, dream pop, and shoegaze. It’s definitely an album to check out with headphones. Thank you, Rosie and Chris!  (REVIEW BY ERIC EGGLESON)

https://bodywashmtl.bandcamp.com/album/i-held-the-shape-while-i-could

https://lightorganrecords.com/

[bappychaps]

The Besnard Lakes - ‘The Besnard Lakes are the Roaring Night’

CD - 2010 Jagjaguwar

[spaceintruderdetector]

Light Conductor | "Far From The Warming Sun"   2019

https://cstrecords.com/pages/light-conductor

Light Conductor is the twilight slow-burn modular synthesis duo of Stephen Ramsay (Young Galaxy) and Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes). Light Conductor make nighttime/sunrise music in widescreen high-fidelity at their vintage-equipped Breakglass Studios in Montréal, pinning the pre-amps with stately, slowly shifting synth tones, stereophonic squelches, and pink noises. 

[dustedmagazine]

The Besnard Lakes — Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings (Flemish Eye)

Photograph by Joseph Yarmush

The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings by The Besnard Lakes

Canadian space-rock band The Besnard Lakes have always trafficked in epic, flowing, long-form music, but on their latest album, a double no less, they’ve truly pushed the boat out. Are the Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings is a 72-minute opus split into four themed sides (“Near Death,” “Death,” “After Death,” “Life”), apparently honoring the lives of Prince, Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis, and Jace Lasek’s father, all of whom passed away in recent years. Thankfully, when you’re a band adept at painting in bold brush strokes, crafting such ambitious musical scenery doesn’t feel like a stretch.

Inevitably, such a large-scale approach rewards the patient listener. Single “Feuds with Guns” is the most concise offering at 4:21, while the side-long title track clocks in at a whopping 17:53. Never a band to shy away from sounding huge, The Besnard Lakes have gone full prog-rock this time round, matching their rich analog sound palette with a concept to match (including a song entitled “The Father of Time Wakes Up”). Even after several weeks of listening to this thing, I still don’t feel like I’ve truly got a handle on it. Prepare to immerse yourself in order to tap into its mysteries.  

Thankfully there are abundant rewards to be found amid the surges of widescreen sound. On opener “Blackstrap” a pleasingly skewed guitar line and vocal melody weaves through the glimmer and hum of stacked analog synths, a phone occasionally ringing in the mix that will have you checking if you’ve accidentally pocket-dialed. Single “Raindrops” see-saws between brooding verses and falsetto-spiked choruses, like the Beach Boys wading through honey. Things really get molasses-slow on “Christmas Can Wait,” an exercise in sustained tones, pitch-shifted voices and organ texture, before punchy drums and bright guitars kick the song out of the doldrums during its final stretch.  

The nine-minute “The Dark Side of Paradise” would have sounded right at home on The Flaming Lips’ soundtrack to their homemade movie Christmas On Mars, as the slo-mo rhythm section moonwalks around drifting synthscapes. In fact, aside from its sense of scale, another of the album’s distinguishing features is the prominent deployment of synthesizers, alongside the band’s ongoing predilection for waves of effects-heavy guitars and stomping glam-rock-in-a-wind-tunnel riffs.  

While 2013’s fantastically titled Until in Excess, Imperceptible UFO remains my favorite Besnard Lakes record, it’s heartening to witness the band continuing to evolve their already sky-scraping sound.  

Tim Clarke

[thepermanentrainpress]

SUUNS RELEASES NEW ALBUM

Hailing from Montreal, Suuns has released their fourth studio album, Felt. The 11-track album is an opaque escape of unpredictable audio-engineered sounds, giving listeners a direct look at their conscience. Stream the album below.

Felt by Suuns

Posted by: Si Jia Wen

[findasongblog]

Find A Song about the chaotic entity that inhabits you when you take the leap of faith in order to create something

Riches - Spirit

Catherine McCandless (formerly of Montreal duo Young Galaxy), announces her debut solo project.

An immersion into the “contortions and repetitions” of creative rituals, McCandless describes the spirit within the song as “a kind of demon, the chaotic entity that inhabits you when you take the leap of faith in order to create something.”

The song’s writing stemmed from a change in McCandless’ creative process, seeking a more conceptual approach after her and her husband, Stephen Ramsay, decided to place Young Galaxy on hiatus in 2018 after releasing six critically acclaimed albums in 11 years.

McCandless spent the next year immersing herself in folk horror films, occult poetry, hauntology, and sample-based music. In the process, she deconstructed her creative identity by exploring questions on the nature of creativity itself.

Her conclusions, that the repetitive function of art is a form of witchcraft, and that a lifetime devoted to creativity is inherently monstrous, have resulted in her new project, Riches.

As a result, Riches’ debut single, “Spirit,” is darker, more urgent and hypnotic than any of her previous work. Produced by Ramsay, with additional production by Jace Lasek of The Besnard Lakes, the song was recorded at Montreal’s Breakglass Studios.

At the time of writing “Spirit,” McCandless explains:

I had been feeling like my career as a recording musician was threatened and unsustainable, and stepping into our home studio to lay down the vocal felt like it had this fear still fresh in me. Beginning to really sing it made me feel like I could run it off, fly away from it, and be totally washed over by my love of singing – completely possessed.

I wanted to create an antidote to combat that feeling of being helplessly swept away by the tides of commercialism, among other things. I had to create the thing that would drive me to unfamiliar, challenging and exciting places.

Riches will continue to release music through 2019 into 2020. (press release)

[nofatclips]

Light Conductor by Light Conductor

[thejoyofviolentmovement]

New Audio: The Besnard Lakes Share an Expansive and Meditative Ode to Lost Love

New Audio: The Besnard Lakes Share an Expansive and Meditative Ode to Lost Love @BesnardLakes @auteurresearch

https://open.spotify.com/track/6C0SFPz5Q37IRmjmKqYBXH?si=62928939dfc440fd Deriving their name from Besnard Lake, which is about 230 miles north of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, the acclaimed, multi-Polaris Music Prize-nominated, Montreal-based shoegazer outfit The Besnard Lakes — currently, husband and wife duo Jace Lasek (vocals, guitar, bass, drums, keys) and Olga Goreas (vocals, bass), along with…

[bringinbackpod]

Interview with Besnard Lakes

We had the pleasure of interviewing The Besnard Lakes over Zoom video!

The Besnard Lakes have passed through death and they're here to tell the tale. Nearly five years after their last lightning-tinted volley, the magisterial Montreal psych-rock band have sworn off compromise, split with their long-standing label, and completed a searing, 72-minute suite about the darkness of dying and the light on the other side.

The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm  Warnings is the group's sixth album and the first in more than 15 years to be released away from a certain midwestern American indie record company. After 2016's A Coliseum  Complex Museum - which saw Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas attempting shorter, less sprawling songs - the Besnards and their label decided it was time to go their separate ways;  with that decision came a question of whether to even continue the project at all.

Ignited by their love for each other, and for playing music together, the sextet found themselves unspooling the most uncompromising recording of their career. Despite all its grandeur. The  Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings honours the very essence of punk rock: the notion that a band need only be relevant to itself. At last the Besnard Lake have crafted a continuous long-form suite: nine tracks that could be listened together as one, like Spiritualized's Lazer Guided  Melodies or even Dark Side of the Moon, overflowing with melody and harmony, drone and dazzle, the group's own unique weather.

Here now, the Besnard Lakes finally dispensed with the two/three-year album cycle, taking all the time they needed to conceive, compose, record and mix their opus. Some of its songs were old, resurrected from demos cast aside years ago. Others were literally woodshedded in the cabanon behind Lasek and Goreas's "Rigaud Ranch" - invented and reinvented, relishing this rougher sound.

The Besnard Lakes Are The  Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings is a double LP. "Near Death" is the title of the first side. "Death,"  "After Death," and "Life" follow next. It's literally a  journey into (and back from) the brink: the story of the  Besnard Lakes' own odyssey but also a remembrance of others', especially the death of Lasek's father in 2019.

Being on your deathbed is perhaps the most psychedelic trip  you can go on: in Lasek's father's case, he surfaced from a  morphine dream to talk about "a window" on his blanket, with "a carpenter inside, making intricate objects." That experience pervades the album, catching fire on the song  "Christmas Can Wait"; elsewhere the band pays tribute to the late Mark Hollis and, on "The Father of Time Wake Up,"  they mourn the death of Prince.

In late 2020, as the world burns, there might be nothing less trendy than an hour-long psych-rock epic by a band of  Canadian grandmasters. Then again, there might be nothing we need more.

We want to hear from you! Please email Tera@BringinitBackwards.com.

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[upalldown]

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_ds Pee AT STATES END!

Seventh studio album from the Canadian post-rock stalwarts produced by The Besnard Lakes guitarist Jace Lasek

8/13

For the entirety of its existence, the Canadian post-rock group Godspeed You! Black Emperor has eschewed interviews, choosing instead to communicate collectively through terse, unsigned (and uncapitalized) statements.

“this record,” reads the one accompanying the band’s new album G_d’s Pee AT STATE’S END, “is about all of us waiting for the end.”

The truth is, Godspeed’s entire body of work over the past three decades has felt like a prelude to an end—an end that feels closer than ever before. It is surely no coincidence, then, that G_d’s Pee arrives now, its 52 minutes stuffed with forbidding drones, symphonic despair, eerie found sounds and vast swaths of epic, instrumental rock befitting the apocalypse and whatever comes after.

It’s good to have this side of Godspeed back. Since returning from a seven-year hiatus in 2010, the enigmatic ensemble has been creeping ever-so-slowly toward more conventional presentations of its hulking music. For 2012’s Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!, the band ditched the complex, multi-movement suites of its most revered work in favor of standalone compositions (that still sometimes stretched beyond 20 minutes). On 2015’s Asunder, Sweet and Other Distress, they reined in their songs and released their shortest album, clocking in at just over 40 minutes long. Then, when 2017’s Luciferian Towers came along, longtime fans were greeted with eight tracks averaging under six minutes each, plus a generous helping of memorable melodies. For this particular band, these were pop songs, relatively speaking—if a pop song can be titled “Bosses Hang,” at least.

Having zigged for a while, Godspeed zags (of course) on G_d’s Pee, bringing back some of the inscrutable elements that made the band so interesting in the first place. The 20-minute opening track—let’s call it “A Military Alphabet” because the full name is so long—surrounds a pair of heavy, anxious passages (“Job’s Lament” and “First of the Last Glaciers”) with cryptic spoken words from murky shortwave radio recordings, groaning stringed instruments and the unnerving pop of explosives. Together, these touches add a haunting quality that was in short supply on recent Godspeed releases.

The album’s other long track—“‘GOVERNMENT CAME’” for short—follows a similar formula, except this time, the mood is less aggressive, the strings are prettier and the crescendo collapses into static. Out of that static, then, comes “Cliffs Gaze / cliffs’ gaze at empty waters’ rise / ASHES TO SEA or NEARER TO THEE,” which spends the first half its eight-minute running time waking up, and the second half ascending into a triumphant lope that might just be the most hopeful-sounding four minutes in Godspeed’s catalog. Here, for a first-pumping moment, the band seems to outrun its feelings of anger, fear, disgust and disillusionment, and give in to the promise of a brighter future, no matter how distant that future may seem.

For those deeply steeped in Godspeed’s usual vibe, the sound and sentiment of “Cliffs Gaze” may feel like a hallucination, especially once it’s over. As if to reinforce the message of hope, the band follows it with a final, six-and-a-half-minute drone that sounds like the sun fighting to rise and shine over a callous and crumbling world. It’s called “OUR SIDE HAS TO WIN (for D.H.),” and it’s glitchy and mournful and beautiful. But most of all, it’s heartening, because it feels like reassurance that Godspeed You! Black Emperor isn’t just here to soundtrack the end, but the new beginning, too.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/godspeed-you-black-emperor/g-ds-pee-at-states-end-album-review/

[complexdistractions]

The Besnard Lakes : The Besnard Lakes Are The Last of the Great Thunderstorm Warnings

Montreal’s The Besnard Lakes have been the patron saints of grand psych rock for years now. They’re one of those bands that you’ve never heard of until you have, then they’re all you’ll listen to for weeks. With leader Jace Lasek at the helm, this psych/pop rock behemoth has made records that feel like dizzying dreams; fever-laced soulful sounds that combine the child-like wonder of the Beach…