CHAD VANGAALEN SHARES A NEW VIDEO FOR “STARLIGHT”, NEW LP OUT TODAY

NEW LP, WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER OUT TODAY VIA FLEMISH EYE

WATCH AND SHARE “STARLIGHT” HERE

BUY / STREAM WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER HERE

GET A TICKET FOR CHAD VANGAALEN’S UPCOMING LIVE RECORDED PERFORMANCE AVAILABLE ON APRIL 8TH GLOBALLY AT 7PM LOCAL TIME.  TICKET LINK

"No idea is too strange and nearly anything can be used as a musical instrument... Is it incoherent? Absolutely, but that's all part of the fun." [8/10] - Exclaim

“An expansion of VanGaalen’s cult audience is sorely overdue.” [8/10] - Uncut 

“A tour de force of all the things that make the Canadian singer-songwriter great, from the kaleidoscopic psychedelia of ‘Starlight’ to the hazy, laid back pop of the single ‘Samurai Sword’.” [8/10] - Loud & Quiet

                Photo Credit: Sebastian Buzzalino // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

World's Most Stressed Out Gardener, the majestic new album from multimedia auteur Chad VanGaalen, is available today on CD/LP/DSPs worldwide through Flemish Eye in Canada (and Sub Pop in the rest of the world). In celebration of this release, VanGaalen has created a video for the single “Starlight”. The song is a “celebration of our cosmic origins” shares VanGaalen, who fused old Super 8 footage of his family from the ’50s and ’60s, circular photos that were taken in his studio, and quick sketches to stylistically create a visual fusion unique to VanGaalen’s body of work. 

On the video VanGaalen says, “I started by re-filming some old footage of my fam in places like Banff and Sylvan Lake. I combined that with photos of anything circular in my studio. After that, I started to panic, and sat down and drew whatever came to my burned out mind hole overtop of those backgrounds. A lot of fruit. A lot of Lamborghini Countach. I have a button on my computer that morphs the drawings together. It’s very satisfying and trippy. Go out into nature instead of watching the video.”

WATCH AND SHARE “STARLIGHT” HERE

On Thursday, April 8th, VanGaalen has scheduled a live stream performance from his Yoko Eno studio that will be broadcast through NoonChorus. The show will be available for viewing in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia at 7 PM (local time). Viewers will see and hear things that VanGaalen has historically been unable to incorporate into his in-person live show experience -- a heavily modified D-85 Electone organ, his prepared piano, various homemade instruments, and perhaps a shot or two of the skateboard ramp he built in his basement. Even more enticing? A psychedelic flute solo will be performed. Whatever the outcome, the show is guaranteed to be unforgettable. Ticket holders will be able to stream the performance for 5 days following and will also be able to buy merch. You can purchase tickets for this event here. 

World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener LPs purchased through megamart.subpop.com, Flemish Eye (Canada), select independent retailers in North America, in the U.K, and in Europe will receive the album on orange-gold vinyl with blue/red trails (while supplies last). There is also a new T-shirt design available.

BUY / STREAM WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER HERE

PRAISE FOR WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER

“The Alberta-based genre jumper has been marching to the (slightly off) beat of his own drum for the last decade, and it’s always a pleasure to hear what he’s been brewing up in his bunker.“ - Monster Children 

“Chad VanGaalen‘s mind must be cavernous, where behind every nook and corner a whimsical idea is being generated.” - The Revue 

"Tantalising glimpses into his adaptable, genre-fluid musical outlook." - DIY

“A dreamy, psychedelic folk concoction.” - NARC

"A melody-flecked indie rock jewel" [“Samurai Sword”] - CLASH 

"Pure genius."  [“Samurai Sword”] - Folk Radio 

"Never anything but beautifully, eccentrically candid." [“Nightwaves”] - Backseat Mafia 

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WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER TRACKLIST
1. Spider Milk 
2. Flute Peace 
3. Starlight 
4. Where Is It All Going? 
5. Earth From a Distance 
6. Nightwaves 
7. Plant Music 
8. Nothing Is Strange 
9. Inner Fire 
10. Golden Pear 
11. Nightmare Scenario 
12. Samurai Sword 
13. Water Brother 

CHAD VANGAALEN ONLINE
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CHAD VANGAALEN SHARE NEW SINGLE, “NIGHTWAVES”

BUY / STREAM “NIGHTWAVES” HERE

WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER OUT MARCH 19, 2021 VIA FLEMISH EYE IN CANADA (SUB POP REST OF THE WORLD)

PRE-ORDER WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER HERE

GET A TICKET FOR CHAD VANGAALEN’S UPCOMING LIVE RECORDED PERFORMANCE AVAILABLE ON APRIL 8TH GLOBALLY AT 7PM LOCAL TIME.  TICKET LINK

Photo Credit: Sebastian Buzzalino // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

On March 19th, multimedia auteur Chad VanGaalen will release his latest offering, World's Most Stressed Out Gardener on Flemish Eye (and Sub Pop for the ROW). The thirteen-track LP, which features the first single, “Samurai Sword” and other jams like “Starlight”, “Where Is It All Going?”, and latest single “Nightwaves”, was written, performed, recorded, and mixed by VanGaalen at his Yoko Eno Studio in Calgary, Alberta, and mastered by Ryan Morey in Montreal, Quebec.

Of his latest offering, “Nightwaves”, VanGaalen shares that it “is about the endless news feed. Giving in to your digital calendar, when all that’s on your to-do list is checking the online updates. Like a William Gibson waking nightmare, boring marketed as sexy.” 

BUY / STREAM “NIGHTWAVES” HERE

On April 8th, VanGaalen will perform a live stream from his Yoko Eno studio via NoonChorus. The show will be available for viewing in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia at 7PM local time. Ticket holders will be able to stream the performance for 5 days following and will also be able to buy merch. You can purchase tickets for this event here.

World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener is now available for preorder. LPs purchased through the Flemish Eye shop (Canada), megamart.subpop.com, select independent retailers in North America, in the U.K. and in Europe will receive the album on orange gold vinyl with blue/red trails (while supplies last). There is also a new T-shirt design available.

For more on World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener, read the whole bio written by Sean Michaels at www.killbeatmusic.com/chadvangaalen

PRE-ORDER WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER HERE

DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER TRACKLIST
1. Spider Milk 
2. Flute Peace 
3. Starlight 
4. Where Is It All Going? 
5. Earth From a Distance 
6. Nightwaves 
7. Plant Music 
8. Nothing Is Strange 
9. Inner Fire 
10. Golden Pear 
11. Nightmare Scenario 
12. Samurai Sword 
13. Water Brother 

CHAD VANGAALEN ONLINE
WEBSITE
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
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CHAD VANGAALEN ANNOUNCES UPCOMING ALBUM, SHARES VIDEO FOR “SAMURAI SWORD”

WATCH AND SHARE “SAMURAI SWORD” HERE

WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER OUT MARCH 19, 2021 VIA FLEMISH EYE IN CANADA (SUB POP REST OF THE WORLD)

PRE-ORDER WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER HERE

ENTER THE SAMURAI SWORD SCAVENGER HUNT CONTEST - DETAILS BELOW

Photo Credit: Sebastian Buzzalino // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Multimedia auteur Chad VanGaalen has delivered a phenomenal animated video for “Samurai Sword”, the first single from World's Most Stressed Out Gardener, his new album — out on CD/LP/DSPs March 19, 2021 in Canada from Flemish Eye (and worldwide through Sub Pop). The thirteen track effort, which also features “Nightwaves”, “Starlight”, “Where Is It All Going?”, and “Flute Peace”, was written, performed, recorded, and mixed by VanGaalen at his Yoko Eno Studio in Calgary, Alberta, and mastered by Ryan Morey in Montreal, Quebec.

VanGaalen says of “Samurai Sword”, “I had just ripped a bunch of old leaking copper pipe out of my basement in a reno job that I jumped into willy nilly. Realizing how magical the pipes sounded, I put them on some dirty styrofoam and banged out the janky beat that introduces the song! Garbage is life.”

He continues, “It just spilled out in a couple minutes. I didn’t try to stop it because I was smiling like I was just cruising through my neighbourhood. Simple like a sandbox. An ode to the simplicity. It’s hard to let things be simple. But simple is easy on the mind, and being jovial in song is something I find really difficult. Why? What?”

As for the “Samurai Sword” video, he elaborates, “I was drawing black and white plant backgrounds for this song because of the great old samurai movies of the past. I like how nature sometimes takes the lead. I was getting all knotted in my mind about the sky. I looked at my dad’s watercolor paintings of a sky, and felt like I couldn’t get the feel right. So, I just borrowed his sky for a scene and then I realized that my dad’s paintings were perfect and already full of real life energy. I used them to finish the video and felt like we got to go on this quest together. In my mind. Fuck time.”

The video for “Samurai Sword” gives viewers a peek into VanGaalen’s surrealistic world, expanding the 2:04 album version to a gloriously weird extended version with a 3:39 run time, and can now be viewed via VanGaalen and Adult Swim’s YouTube channels. The video will also see its broadcast television premiere on Adult Swim’s Toonami, the network’s popular weekly anime programming block, on Saturday, January 30th.

WATCH AND SHARE “SAMURAI SWORD” HERE

VanGaalen has also created the “Samurai Sword Scavenger Hunt” contest, with Easter eggs hidden throughout the video. He’s sharing a list of some of these hidden objects every week, and challenging fans to find them. He says, “To stop myself going squirrely over the last few months, I started hiding things as I animated this video.” 

Every week for the next three weeks (through February 18th, 2021), one lucky person will win a prize pack of stuff from VanGaalen, including a copy of World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener, as well as some unique personalized items made by VanGaalen himself. At the end of the contest one person will be awarded a grand prize (You need to enter all three phases to win the grand prize!). To enter, please visit https://chadvangaalen.com/samuraisword.

World’s Most Stressed Out Gardener is now available for preorder. LPs purchased through, Flemish Eye (Canada), megamart.subpop.com, select independent retailers in North America, in the U.K. and in Europe will receive the album on orange gold vinyl with blue/red trails (while supplies last). There is also a new T-shirt design available!

MORE ON CHAD VANGAALEN BY SEAN MICHAELS

2020 was a terrible year for gardening. It was terrible for peppers, it was terrible for tomatoes, it was terrible for the condition of the soul. But Chad VanGaalen somehow raised a garden all the same: carrots and sprouts and broccoli and a revivifying new album, all of them grown at home. He likes to eat directly off the plant, he says—"I get down on my knees and graze. It's nice to feel the vegetables in your face"—and the 13 songs on World's Most Stressed Out Gardener were harvested with just such a spirit: in their raw state, young and vegetal, at the very moment, they were made. 

What that means is that the Calgary songwriter's new album is a psychedelic bumper crop. A collection of tunes that does away with obsessiveness, the anxiety of perfectionism, in favor of freshness and immediacy — capturing the world as it was met while recording alone at home over a period of years. "Don't overthink it," VanGaalen told himself again and again, despite the push/pull love/hate of his relationship with songwriting. "I'm always trying to get outside of the song—but then I realize I love the song."

This is a record that gleams with VanGaalen's musical signatures: found sound, reverb, polychromatic folk music that is by turns cartoonish and hyperphysical—like ultra magnified footage of a virus or a leaf. Apparently, the LP began life as a "pretty minimal" flute record. (There's only a vestige now, on "Flute Peace"—one of three instrumentals.) Later it became an electronic record "for a while" and finally, "right at the last second," it "turned into a pile of garbage." The good kind of garbage: glinting, useful, free. Music as compost—leaves, and branches ready to be re-ingested by the earth, turned into a flower.   

Throughout these 40 minutes, VanGaalen floats from mania to solace to oblivion, searching for zen in all the wrong places. "Turn up the radio / I think we’re dead," he sings on "Nothing Is Strange"; or, on the inside-out rocker "Nightmare Scenario": "You’re stressed out when you should be feeling very well." The singer's mental landscape is rotting and redemptive, beautiful in spite of itself—and his soundscapes reflect this fertile decay. He has been influenced by his instrumental work on TV scores (Dream Corp's third season began this fall), but still "nothing can really replace the human voice,” he admits. Like Arthur Russell or Syd Barrett, it’s VanGaalen’s vocals that shine a path through the swampland—from the cello-lashed “Water Brother” to “Starlight”’s krautrock pipe-dream. 

These days, VanGaalen cherishes the privacy of the studio, the capacity to wander around, get distracted, and "move at the speed of life." Whereas once he would obsess over mic techniques, now he puts the microphone in the same place every time—trying to capture a song quickly, the idea at its heart. He'll act on his infatuations—for the flute, a squeaky clarinet, his basement's copper plumbing (remade into xylophones for "Samurai Sword")—and then he'll try to get out, "veering away from responsibility," before he overdoes his stay. 

In the end, it's like gardening. You have to live with your horrible decision-making; the weather's going to fuck you if it wants to; and if you plant a hundred heads of broccoli, "now you gotta eat a hundred heads of broccoli—or watch them go to seed." But mostly VanGaalen just tries to be a deer: "I remember seeing some deer come out in the Okanagan Valley once," he says, "watching them wait for a sunbeam to hit a perfect bunch of grapes—and then eating them right out of the sunbeam. I'd recommend that."  You can do it too—taste the sun-swabbed grapes—when World's Most Stressed Out Gardener is released on March 19, 2021. 

PRE-ORDER WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER HERE

DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

WORLD’S MOST STRESSED OUT GARDENER TRACKLIST
1. Spider Milk 
2. Flute Peace 
3. Starlight 
4. Where Is It All Going? 
5. Earth From a Distance 
6. Nightwaves 
7. Plant Music 
8. Nothing Is Strange 
9. Inner Fire 
10. Golden Pear 
11. Nightmare Scenario 
12. Samurai Sword 
13. Water Brother 

CHAD VANGAALEN ONLINE
WEBSITE
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
INSTAGRAM