Andre Ethier, Def3 & Late Night Radio, and N0V3L
Andre Ethier
Further Up Island // Telephone Explosion
Andre Ethier continues to dish out the spring vibes with gentle, mesmeric, and moving tones in the final album of his trilogy of solo albums with Sandro Perri. It’s a fitting end and perfect companion in “a series using the same palette.” Just as the albums that preceded it, Further Up Island is overflowing with hazy but comforting concepts, but this time we’re left with some sense of closure.
Ethier is the former frontman of the Deadly Snakes, but since he moved on from them he has developed a taste for other mediums and new approaches to his music. Ethier’s solo work feels like it’s coming from an artist who has grown up a bit. On its face, his solo sound is the version of Mac DeMarco that calls his mom and doesn’t stick drumsticks up his ass on stage, but just as Ethier’s sound feels like the grown-up version of DeMarco, so does the content of his work. With these three albums he gives us a trove of mature and beguiling tunes that are as comforting as they are charming. His sound mirrors Demarco’s in its laissez-faire approach, but that’s where the similarities end. Each piece of the puzzle that makes up the trilogy is casual yet calculated, every single piece placed precisely.
Further Up Island is the continuation and culmination of a hero’s journey, but where the hero ended up or how they got there is not totally clear. Just as the songs in each album feel as though could be mixed, matched, and moved anywhere within the anthology, so does the story lack chronological order or even a clear narrative connection. Instead, Ethier and Perri guide us gently through emotions so expertly that we are left with an overarching but hazy sense of liberation and closure without really knowing how we got there. Atmospheric instrumentals, gentle guitars, Joseph Shabason’s unusual saxophone, pulsing but subdued drum machines – all of these ingredients and more are skilfully inserted just where they need to be. Despite the myriad of elements, Perri never makes a misstep, and nothing feels misplaced.
Regardless of the hazy concept that surrounds it all, the sounds, samples, textures, and ideas that drive the music are playful and sanguine – whether it be wild blueberries on a summer afternoon or waves lapping underneath B.C. Ferries, many of the samples and themes evoke comforting sensory memories and slowly build a sense of carefree liberty. If you have enjoyed Ethier’s first two offerings with Perri, Further Up Island will provide the familiarity and closure you’d expect and want from the final piece. I just hope this isn’t the end of the road for Ethier and Perri because their chemistry is palpable.
It would do us all some good to grab a bowl of blueberries and sit back and find liberation Further Up Island. Let Andre Ethier take you there.
- Clay Geddert
Def3 & Late Night Radio
Weddings & Funerals // Urbnet
Weddings & Funerals is the second release by Def3 in collaboration with Denver-based electronic producer Late Night Radio, and his third full-length project overall. A welcome addition to a discography that is already eclectic and well-recognized both in and outside of Canada, Weddings & Funerals is varied in it’s sound and consistent in its energy. In a similar vein to the Blue Scholars and Atmosphere, this collaboration will make anyone want to grab a couple forties and turn on the barbeque.
Like all good Hip-Hop, Def3’s writing is intensely conscious of family and friends as the only thing that can really get you through life’s inevitable trials and setbacks. Aptly named Weddings & Funerals, the project is loosely based on Def3 attending the burial of his grandfather and his own wedding in the same week. The album goes beyond that starting point, however, as it also celebrates the birth of Def3’s daughter, past experiences, and “juxtaposes the rush of togetherness and new life with loss and grief.”
Sonically, Weddings & Funerals makes no attempt to hide that it’s a collaboration between an electronic producer and a rapper who, until recently, was based in Saskatchewan. The first hook on the first track, “Just Wait”, sets the scene with something approaching what you might hear on a DJ Screw tape before immediately dropping into a dancey soul sample and a beat that simultaneously evokes boombap and pop. Far from being jarring, the end result is instead something consistently different and more potent for its experimentation. Late Night Radio expertly peppers a tendency towards dancey and upbeat composition (like on “Lift Off”), with more classical Hip-Hop additions such as vocal chops and the occasional harder-hitting drums. For his part, Def3 seems content to do his thing over just about any sound, singing hooks and having fun, while making sure to prove he can get serious when it’s called for, like on the single for the project, “Drowning”.
The end result is a project driven first and foremost by its intention and energy: summer-y, enjoying life for what it is, and thoughtful in equal measure. Aside from the fact that the two artists worked in very close collaboration on the project, the cohesiveness of Weddings & Funerals seems to be an example of what happens when two talented musicians each gives their own skillset to their vision, as opposed to vice versa.
- Devon Acuña
N0V3L
NON-FICTION // Flemish Eye
It is with much anticipation that N0V3L returns with a sophomore their full-length. In 2019, the Vancouver-based post punk group had outshined the airwaves with their debut album, which had a jazzy and disco-influenced approach to the genre while still sticking closely to the influences of sounds like Joy Division and DEVO. This time, the group returns with NON-FICTION - a record written between 2017 and 2020 by Jon Varley and recorded on a Tascam-388 in the band’s (since-torn-down) rental home and mixed and produced by Bryce Cloghesy (Military Genius, Crack Cloud).
The album returns to much of what constitutes the band’s well-established sound. The introductory track “Untouchable” reflects this while featuring some sequencing and instrumental choices that stress a more intentional understanding of what the band is doing - for instance, when the track strips down to the bass and a vocal whisper, or when the subtle strings add significant force to the groove of the song. Thematically, tracks like “En Masse” offer a skeptical question over what constitutes freedom in a circumstance that has commodified freedom, while performing this on top of catchy vocal hooks to that effect and leaving the matter in suspense with a jazzy saxophone-led fade out. Mass psychology, populism, and alienation are themes that come up again and again in tracks like “Group Disease,” “En Masse,” and “Falling In Line;” each of them with their own aesthetic portrayals of the monotonic sense of perspective that orients these conditions. “Group Disease” has a melancholic affection to its portrayal of loud powerful voices speaking only to their consumptions. “Falling In Line” has a chorus groove captivating a sense of an assembly line marching (not to mention that crisp bass and saxophone breakdown). The intro to “Apathy” is such an effective change in pace from the track before it, building the song’s energy into an spastic rhythmic groove that deconstructs itself with each half time and double time moment along the way - and the end of the track remains one of the most powerful and effective moments of record.
“Interest Free” takes a very atmospheric approach to its songwriting, with the constant synth being the basis of every other spastic moment in the track. Each time the drums, guitar, bass, and vocals interject at each other’s gaps - and later in the song structure, the atmosphere gets turned over into an ingenious build-up that culminates into a dynamic breakdown led by the drums. “Stranger” returns to a more somewhat familiar song structure with a scatter-brained rhythm that gets highlighted by piano and saxophone that lead up into some strong bridges, captivating the band’s disco and jazz influence in a snapshot vignette - and the final section of the song expands on this teaser into a full, blown-out instrumental that lets itself shed away. “Violent & Paranoid” has a krautrock groove highlighting a sound collage of samples that make way for a disco post-punk rhythm as the vocals start kicking in, but by and large the instrumental jam-out’s shine the brightest. “Pushers” reflects on the opioid overdose crisis with an aggressive instrumental filled with arpeggiated keys adding a unique and captivating texture that leans into the band’s electronic sound. “Status” focuses on the abstract judgments of social values upon personal senses of worth; and while most of the track is grooving along the same rhythmic vibe, the instrumental interplay between the guitar and piano create an incredible ambience to linger into the song’s haunting fade out. And lastly, “Notice of Foreclosure” closes off the record with a nostalgic depiction of the indifferent processes of adaptation under modernity, a process unable to provide any sense of decisive closure and resolution to any one subject into it - the vocal hook captivates this sense of droning repetition while the looping instrumental opens up to the album’s end with a saxophone solo faded out.
N0V3L’s NON-FICTION builds on every foundation that their self-titled album had already established, while narratively taking a focused orientation on the different real crises that shape contemporary modernity (thus the “non-fiction”) the band also advances its vision of post-punk with jazz and disco experimentations. The album is quite upfront with its themes - describing itself as “late-capitalist disco,” the band tries to articulate the haunting echoes of postmodernity and capitalist realism as they are reflecting on intimate senses of solitude as well as the banality of systemic violence. NON-FICTION is a strong follow-up that sticks to its foundations and further sharpens the sound N0V3L have developed so far.
- Simone A. Medina Polo
