VANCOUVER SONGWRITER JASPER SLOAN YIP TO RELEASE STRANGE CALM / BLUSHING AUTUMN - A DOUBLE EP, EACH WRITTEN WITH A DIFFERENT THEME - ON OCTOBER 26, 2021 VIA TINY KINGDOM
WATCH AND SHARE “STRANGE CALM” OFFICIAL VIDEO HERE
WATCH AND SHARE “SILVER LINING” VISUALIZER HERE
BUY / STREAM “STRANGE CALM” + “SILVER LINING” HERE
PRE-SAVE STRANGE CALM / BLUSHING AUTUMN AND GET INSTANT ACCESS TO JASPER’S PODCAST ‘STRANGE COMMENTARY’
PRE-SAVE STRANGE CALM / BLUSHING AUTUMN HERE
Photo Credit : Mackenzie Walker // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Today, Vancouver songwriter Jasper Sloan Yip is sharing two more tracks, “Strange Calm” and “Silver Lining”, from his upcoming double EP, Strange Calm / Blushing Autumn; two separate EPs, written and recorded at different times with different producers, each ruminating on a different theme.
The title track to the first EP reflects on the feeling that “it’s an overwhelming time to be alive,” says Jasper. “There’s too much information right now and I often don’t know what to do with what I know. It can be paralyzing, and I think ‘Strange Calm’ inhabits this feeling. It’s a song about those moments that exist outside of time, when you detach yourself from the world around you to retreat inward. I think a lot of us are doing that right now, it’s part of what it means to be alive and awake in 2021.
That’s bleak, I know, but in a way, ‘Silver Lining’ responds to that bleakness. It’s a song about the human soul. In 2017 my mom told me about the ghost that haunted her pottery studio and my bandmate Devon told me a story about an exorcism that happened over the phone. They were just casual anecdotes, but they had a profound effect on me. For reasons I don’t understand, these stories opened my mind to the possibility that some part of us goes, as the song puts it, ‘on forever’. I think about it all the time, and now, whenever I feel myself start to detach and float away, it helps me find the ground again.”
WATCH AND SHARE “STRANGE CALM” OFFICIAL VIDEO HERE
WATCH AND SHARE “SILVER LINING” VISUALIZER HERE
“Strange Calm” + “Silver Lining” Single Artwork // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES
Strange Calm / Blushing Autumn is available to pre-save today. Fans who save the EPs get exclusive access to Jasper's podcast, ‘Strange Commentary’, a collection of stories, interviews, and insight on the songs from the album.
PRE-SAVE STRANGE CALM / BLUSHING AUTUMN HERE
MORE ABOUT STRANGE CALM / BLUSHING AUTUMN
When he set out to record Strange Calm in early 2020, Yip was trying to say goodbye. “I was dealing with a lot of climate dread, and at the same time, I could feel my musical life being pulled apart by different but equally powerful forces,” says Yip. “The songs on Strange Calm reflected these anxieties, and somehow helped me make peace with them too. It’s a meditation on learning to live with the death process.”
Just as the recording session for Strange Calm wrapped, the pandemic had reached the shores of B.C. By the summer, Yip decided to record a second short collection of songs to release with Strange Calm, a decision that coincided with the start of a new chapter in his life: fatherhood. “I committed myself to recording more music, booking time at the studio before writing a single song. Almost immediately after doing that I learned that I was going to be a dad.” The result is the second EP, Blushing Autumn.
Jasper Sloan Yip and his band arrived at The Noise Floor on Gabriola Island to record their Strange Calm with producer Jordan Koop (Orville Peck, Wolf Parade, Rae Spoon) on March 14th, 2020, just as life on the west coast shut down. “It was surreal. On one hand, it felt like an isolated recording studio was the perfect place to make an album about the end of the world, but on the other, we also understood that at any moment one of us might start showing symptoms, or we may be ordered by the province to pack up and go home. This tension was infused into everything we did.”
Thankfully, the band left the studio the following week healthy and joined the rest of the world in lockdown with six completed songs. Their tentative plans to return to the Noise Floor the following month to complete the album were cancelled, and Jasper, like everyone else, started to wait.
WATCH AND SHARE “GIN FIZZ” HERE
BUY / STREAM “GIN FIZZ” + “HALCYON DREAM” HERE
With the album ostensibly finished and nothing else to do, Jasper began work on a six-episode liner-notes podcast titled ‘Strange Commentary’ to accompany the album. Spanning over 100 minutes, these audio liner notes paint an intimate picture that completes the songs on Strange Calm while extending far beyond them. “Strange Calm is shaped by its incompleteness. When I listen to these songs, I hear the music that isn’t there, and that’s ok. The podcast helped me let it be by giving me another way to finish the story,” says Yip.
Exactly one year after arriving on Gabriola Island to make a record about the end of the world, Jasper and his band were setting up at Afterlife Studio in Vancouver with producer John Raham (Destroyer, Tanya Tagaq, Frazey Ford) to record Blushing Autumn, four songs about Yip’s upcoming fatherhood and the promise of new life.
“We all spent a year inside. Not just in our homes, but inside of ourselves,” says Yip. “For me, it began with the surreal experience of life imitating art in a scary way. I was ready to accept certain fates... But it didn’t go the way that I expected, and now, the strange calm that I was struggling with for so long is gone, and the world feels new again.”
PRE-SAVE STRANGE CALM / BLUSHING AUTUMN HERE
STRANGE CALM / BLUSHING AUTUMN TRACKLIST
STRANGE CALM
01 Halcyon Dream
02 Gin Fizz
03 Strange Calm
04 Silver Lining
05 Oleander
06 On The Beach
BLUSHING AUTUMN
01 Blushing Autumn
02 August
03 Anew
04 Every Night, Beside You, I Lie Awake