Let's Not Pretend

SWERVE

Finding culture through sounds, meeting ideas in people, and exploring communities by conversation.

Episodes

  1. 04/14/2023

    Sauf les Drones

    Three Sauf les Drones members Barbara (trombone), Christophe Rosset Balcer (drums), and Charlotte (violin) help form this 6-piece Montreal post-rock band. These musicians create calm and delicate instrumental epics. Gentle, soft, but powerful in its essence, Sauf les drones' music incorporates a warmly piercing violin, an elaborate piano, an accordion, a beautiful harp, drums, bass, and a vibrating trombone. Their music is self-described as "experimental, dronistic and cinematic, while remaining uplifting, fragile and strong". Building landscapes, finding communities, using zines, immersing poetry, and performing with happiness, Sauf les drones explains the history of their work, past influences, and new directions. Get real on: Rethinking scheduling, structure of practice, and recording sessions due to Covid-19 Understanding the necessity for respect and communication to work as a healthy band. Montreal's music scene vs Toronto Playing in a church while its ceiling was falling Mixing spoken word, post-rock, and drill beats Making zines with other artists Redefining post-rock as a happy genre Details on their new album - which includes more detours, electronics, ambience, and experimental sounds. It will be longer than their previous albums: "Lieux anonymes" and "chercher le trouble", Their new album release show happening on May 25th Explication on previous albums that explore themes of community, how community is tied to landscapes, finding those communities in different places. and so much more! All members of Sauf les drones: Charlotte Sansfacon: violin Cassandre Henry: piano, accordion Coralie Gauthier: Harp Christophe Rosset-Balcer: drum Chlo Rivest: bass Barbara : Trombone past member: Étienne Dubé (bass) Socials: https://sauflesdrones.bandcamp.com/music/ https://www.instagram.com/sauflesdrones/ https://www.facebook.com/sauflesdrones https://www.instagram.com/abele.kildir/ https://www.instagram.com/rosser_baker/ https://www.instagram.com/borb.bross/

    Sauf les Drones
  2. 02/07/2023

    LOCRIAN

    Based in Baltimore and Chicago, André Foisy, Terence Hannum, and Steven Hess form a vigorous three-piece experimental metal band. André Foisy plays a variety of guitars, tape loops, and electronics. Terence Hannum provides vocals, synths, and tape loops. LOCRIAN's dummer Steven Hess contributes emphatic, powerful rhythmic alignment with occasional electronics. A 10 year span means this band has many interpretations on their most entrenched themes centered around humanity's extinction, environmentalism, dystopia and its relentless conditioning of desolate drain. LOCRIAN transforms sounds by bringing an emotional and contemplative landscape to settle with these harsh realities. By mirroring society's external doom, LOCRIAN weaves specific narratives that journey into long paths of drifty improvisation. In the eventual unfolding, a structure is then built; intros turn into songs and the chance for novelty slowly or quickly develops as they destroy expectations. When you would predict the entrance of screams, Terence may whisper instead. LOCRIAN takes these important moments of scarcity as a lesson that the invisible is still known, it just has to be discovered. LOCRIAN naturally rejects people's cultural biases against metal standards and stereotypes. They do not do this on purpose, it just so happens that while they are still coined as metal, LOCRIAN conquers other categories in an equally infectious way. This trio forces you to sit with a sonic palette you were not prepared for. Through lingering, steady drones, prolonged atmospheric and drawn out melodies to industrial aggressiveness, electronic abrasiveness and noisy ambience, even "eclectic" and "forward thinking" are true understatements. For example, in their latest releases New Catastrophism and Ghost Frontiers, LOCRIAN takes that brooding, minimalistic hypnosis and turns it into complete stillness at times. Contrast that to the utter screech and gristle throbbing of past releases like their 2010 album Territories, you are consequently confronted with an internal conundrum as to how one may straddle the juxtaposing lines so fiercely, so delicately. Much like their attitude on Earth as a planet versus society as a possibly doomed, and certainly overpopulated successor, LOCRIAN brings detail to our environment in a completely holistic way that includes real, hard truths. Yet society lies dormant, harboring disconcerting apathy towards geological preservation and in return self-transformation. Can the latter save the former? Can seemingly unrelated sounds co-exist to feed the same solutions? https://locrianofficial.com

    LOCRIAN
  3. 12/11/2022

    The Coward Robert Ford (Sam Glass)

    This episode features Jacksonville, Florida based alternative, shoegaze musician Sam Glass - who goes under the name The Coward Robert Ford. Throughout a 12 album-length discography, Glass completes sounds that breakthrough the mesmerizing style of shoegaze by fusing elements of slowcore, emo, experimental, and alternative music. Each release crystallizes a new boundless version of experimental shoegaze by creating layers of acoustic, at times noisy, depth with stammering, hollow, but lush design. Glass's torn and airy vocals make for a genuine sense of distant, but relatable pain. Whether you are processing current emotions or its simply a nostalgic experience, The Coward Robert Ford is reliably visceral. Some topics of discussion: Growing up listening to blue's artists like BB King, performing with his high school punk band Cat Turtle at Newport music hall in Ohio, being homeless moving from Indiana, PA, and CA, working at a juvenile detention center, music's ability to expound on the intricacies of mental health, fooling around with unique tunings, using reverb as a tool instead of a crutch, selling his old squier telecaster for a ticket to Riot Fest, classifying Title Fight as shoegaze, the story of Robert Ford who idolizes one of the greatest outlaws, his criterion selection and our love for Charlie Kaufman, explaining album art, creating Black Manifestations as a means of processing his father's death, listening to music as a time for reflection of where you are at or remembering where you were, why Bandcamp is a preferred choice for artists, his parody Tinder profile going viral on Reddit, and so much more! TCRF socials: https://linktr.ee/thecowardrobertford

    The Coward Robert Ford (Sam Glass)

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Finding culture through sounds, meeting ideas in people, and exploring communities by conversation.