BEN ROGERS SHARES VALENTINE’S SINGLE TO AID BATTERED WOMEN’S SUPPORT SERVICES

ACCLAIMED SONGWRITER BEN ROGERS SHARES NEW SINGLE “THE HIGHWAY OF TEARS” IN SUPPORT OF BATTERED WOMEN THIS VALENTINE’S DAY

ALL PROCEEDS FROM “THE HIGHWAY OF TEARS” WILL AID BATTERED WOMEN’S SUPPORT SERVICES' INDIGENOUS WOMEN'S PROGRAM.

PURCHASE “THE HIGHWAY OF TEARS” HERE

STREAM AND SHARE “THE HIGHWAY OF TEARS” HERE

 

PHOTO CREDIT : Ronnie Lee Hill // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

As a valentine to those who often need love the most, Ben Rogers is releasing “The Highway Of Tears” in hopes of raising awareness about the ongoing issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women throughout Turtle Island. “My hope is that the song will inspire listeners and fans to take action,” say Rogers. Through sales of the song Rogers’ will be providing financial support to Battered Women's Support Services in Vancouver and specifically to Indigenous Women's Programs.

“I have been fortunate enough to witness the beauty and strength of native culture through my wife's Swampy Cree family. They are survivors, all of them. They are the bravest people I know and I admire their courage greatly. The time for autonomy, sovereignty, acknowledgement of ancestral land claims, treaty rights, human rights, and equality for Indigenous people must be attained. The lives of the women affected by these acts of violence must not be forgotten. Their families and friends must have answers. We must stand with them. I plan to do just that with my life and my music so long as I have breath in me and a song to sing. Or as some have said, ‘As long as the sun shines, the river flows and the grass grows’.”

A longer statement from Ben Rogers on the initiative can be found here.

PURCHASE “THE HIGHWAY OF TEARS” SUPPORTING BWSS HERE

STREAM AND SHARE “HIGHWAY OF TEARS” HERE

 

DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

The single, “The Highway Of Tears”, is a sample of things to come from the Vancouver songwriter. In the near future Rogers will follow up his latest album, The Bloodred Yonder, with a new LP. This summer Rogers will also be performing a tour of house concerts along The Highway Of Tears in British Columbia. More details to come shortly.

The Bloodred Yonder was produced by JUNO Award nominated big brother Matt Rogers (The Harpoonist & The Axe Murderer), and features some of western Canada's finest musicians with Matt Kelly (City and Color) on pedal steel and keys, Erik Nielsen (Rich Hope) on bass, John Sponarski (Portage and Main) on lead guitar, and Leon Power (Frazey Ford) on drums.

Based in Vancouver, Rogers is also an accomplished actor whose recent credits include Motive, CBC's Strange Empire, and a supporting role in dark comedy The Driftless Area starring Zooey Deschanel, Anton Yelchin, and John Hawkes that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. He has also penned songs with other artists including "Rise Up" for No Sinner, "Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To" and "Cry A Little" with The Harpoonist & The Axe Murderer, as well as their latest single “Get Ready”.

PRAISE FOR THE BLOODRED YONDER

“a kind of independent roots-rock mini-masterpiece … sets the bar for future artists to
strive to attain” The Winnipeg Free Press

“plenty of shiver-inducing moments thanks to an album that taps into a timeless essence usually found in the voices of more seasoned veterans.” Vancouver Sun

“gorgeous and tragic … Rogers's strong songwriting should not be ignored” Now Magazine

“a loving tribute to the golden age of country while bringing something new to the table. …swinging easily from bourbon-hazed ballads to gun-smoke folk to
paisley-dipped Americana” The Georgia Straight

“a real talent … twangy, rockabilly-tinged numbers and brooding country ballads” Exclaim!

BEN ROGERS ONLINE
WEBSITE
FACEBOOK

CFCF & PIANIST JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS ANNOUNCE COLLABORATIVE EP

CASCADES OUT MARCH 15 VIA ARTS & CRAFTS

LISTEN TO AND SHARE “HYPOCRITE” HERE

CFCF & JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS TO PERFORM AT SXSW MARCH 15

PRE-ORDER CASCADES HERE

“[CFCF’s] own records are stunningly variegated…His influences are both esoteric and familiar. [His arrangements are] not designed to add danceability and bombast, but arranged to coax out emotional qualities... [His] songs are both breezy and cinematic.” - The New York Times

“Jean-Michel Blais strings together stunning improvisations and composed pieces that harken back to Chopin, Satie, and modern minimalists like Harold Budd... The music breathes, and it invites you to take a moment and recognize there’s still plenty of beauty left in the world’
- TIME Magazine, #10 Album Of 2016

PHOTO CREDIT: Dan Wilton // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Neo-classical pianist Jean-Michel Blais and Grammy Award-nominated electronic producer CFCF have announced Cascades, a collaborative EP due out March 15 digitally on Arts & Crafts. The album will be released on LP on April 14.

Building off their sold out performance during the globally-celebrated 2016 Red Bull Music Academy, Cascades is a stunning 5-song, 30-minute meeting-of-minds that navigates the spaces between the artists’ respective crafts and tendencies toward playful minimalism. Featuring reworkings from the duo’s catalogues, a reworking of John Cage’s “In A Landscape”, Cascades is a celebration of the traditional and experimental, dissolving the old into the new.

“Hypocrite”, a collaborative composition by both musicians, is out today. On the track’s genesis, Blais says, “Sitting in my studio / room, I modestly played the four cheesy chords that open “Hypocrite”. Mike’s genius idea was to take it as far as possible from its classical / pop roots, we ended up blending it with the 90s trance-era sound. At first we thought “we can’t do that, it’s way too weird,” then we started loving it, probably surprising the listener as much as ourselves.”

LISTEN TO AND SHARE “HYPOCRITE” HERE

PRE-ORDER CASCADES HERE

Mike Silver (aka CFCF) also reflected on the desire to challenge conventions: “Jean-Michel sent me a zip of some of his unreleased compositions, and this one stood out to me because it had a kind of baroque, sad, romantic quality to it, but it was slightly poppy despite its unusual chord structure. At first I suggested making it a trance song almost as a joke, but the concept took hold and it just made sense. I think the intensity of the super-saw synths shocked us, and hopefully the listener, out of a certain complacency about what constitutes an ‘appropriate’ approach to classical music.”

CFCF and Jean-Michel Blais will perform at SXSW, on the day of Cascades’ release, March 15. This will be their first collaborative performance outside of Montreal.

DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

CASCADES TRACKLIST
1. Hasselblad 1
2. Two Mirrors
3. Spirit
4. Hypocrite
5. In A Landscape (Rework)

MORE ON JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS
Jean-Michel Blais is a 31 year-old pianist from Montreal, Canada. His enchanting instrumental compositions pair the melodic pop sensibilities of Amélie-era Yann Tiersen and Arts & Crafts alumni Chilly Gonzales with the breathtaking technical skill of classical minimalists like Philip Glass and Erik Satie. Il, his debut album of original compositions was released on October 7, 2016 by Arts & Crafts.

Blais grew up in a rural French Catholic town in Quebec absent of Culture save for a giant Encyclopedia he’d read feverishly as a child. At age 9, Blais began tinkering on his family’s organ, improvising, and at age 11 started to write original compositions and taking piano lessons. A natural talent, by 17 he was invited to the Trois-Rivieres Music Conservatory and began training as a classical pianist. However, Blais was entering the throes of teenage rebellion and found the constraints of formal training cumbersome rigid structure. Gravitating towards experimentation, Blais wasn’t content to be told how to play, and not to improvise or compose. Read Jean-Michel Blais’ extended bio here.

MORE ON CFCF
Michael Silver (aka CFCF) is one of those rare talents to whom pop sensibility seems to be second nature. The Montreal native has been making music in his bedroom since he was 12 years old, and over the past 6 years or so that the rest of the world has been able to share in his pop experiments. This wide scope of interest in genre and pop structure and mature melodic instinct allow him to shift gears effortlessly from Techno and House to Ambient and New Age; from Kate Bush- tinged pop to the melancholy micro-genre known as ‘Night Bus’ (of which Silver has been a pioneer), and everything in between. His pop music can be sweetly sad or creepily disturbing, but it is always fundamentally Pop. Read CFCF’s extended bio here.

JEAN-MICHEL BLAIS ONLINE
WEBSITE
TWITTER
FACEBOOK

CFCF ONLINE
WEBSITE
TWITTER
FACEBOOK

ARTS & CRAFTS
WEBSITE

BERNICE SHARES NEW SINGLE, ANNOUNCES SHOWS WITH CHARLOTTE DAY WILSON, ANGEL OLSEN

LISTEN TO AND SHARE “DON’T WANNA BE EUROPEAN” HERE

PERFORMANCES WITH CHARLOTTE DAY WILSON AND ANGEL OLSEN BEGIN FEB 23

“from the realm of low key bedroom pop to a strobe lit dancefloor - The FADER

"blends melodies reminiscent of artists like Sade with the playful sounds of artists like Deerhoof and Dirty Projectors." - Pigeons and Planes

“A real standard of musicality and musicianship” - Zane Lowe (Beats1)

“carefree and expansive experimental pop… we need music like this more than ever.”
- Stereogum (Best Songs Of The Week)

“a pulsing revelation of deconstructed dream pop...Bernice is stretching and molding the shape of pop music to come by turning melodies into 3D soundscapes.” - CBC Music


PHOTO CREDIT: Claire Harvie // DOWNLOAD HIGH-RES

Bernice, the Toronto-based project of vocalist / songwriter Robin Dann, shares the new single “Don't Wanna Be European”. "[The song] is written from the perspective of a bear,” says Dann. “Sitting up in a tree somewhere, she sees that she's about to be shot down, and both wonders why her life can't be spared, and also tries to accept her fate.”

Written at the Banff Centre while working with Grammy Award-winning producer Shawn Everett (Lucius, Alabama Shakes), Dann elaborates, “I wrote the song after a cub had to be removed from campus the day I arrived. We layered a melodyne'd version of my voice as a man underneath my own and also braided in some very slowed-down Vaporwave tracks from YouTube weather channel videos. I think both help to describe the woozy confusion that the bear feels.”

Bernice also announced a show with Angel Olsen and Charlotte Day Wilson on February 23 for Red Bull Sound Select's 3 Days in Miami. Bernice and Charlotte Day Wilson will also perform in Toronto during Canadian Music Week this April.

LISTEN AND SHARE “DON’T WANNA BE EUROPEAN” HERE

Born to a musical family, the daughter of a symphony harpist and the former Toronto Symphony Orchestra's principal violist, and a graduate of Goldsmiths' MA in Music, Dann's background, formal training, and experimental sensibilities developed into Bernice’s sparse arrangements and pop-minded songwriting, often following curious and unexpected paths.

Bernice’s members and collaborators including longtime Owen Pallett collaborator Thom Gill (keyboard/sampler) as well as Colin Fisher (guitar), Daniel Fortin (bass), Philippe Melanson (drums), and Felicity Williams (supporting vocals). All are professional musicians from Toronto's music community and members of Owen Pallett, DIANA, John Southworth, Bahamas, Martha Wainwright, The Barr Brothers, and many others.

Bernice have been performing actively since late 2010 and have released one full-length album (what was that, 2011), an EP (when I know how to climb, 2013), and a “cassingle” in 2015, all released independently. Bernice’s single “St Lucia”, released in November of 2016, received praise from Zane Lowe, Stereogum, and The Fader. The band’s upcoming album is co-produced by Grammy Award-winner Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Lucius) and Matt Smith (Owen Pallett).

WATCH AND SHARE “ST. LUCIA” HERE

BERNICE PERFORMANCE DATES
2/23 - Miami, FL - The Hangar (Red Bull Sound Select's 3 Days In Miami) *
4/19 - Toronto, ON - The Mod Club (Canadian Music Week) ^ - SOLD OUT
4/20 - Toronto , ON - The Mod Club (Canadian Music Week) ^

* w/ Angel Olsen, Charlotte Day Wilson
^ w/ Charlotte Day Wilson


“Don't Wanna Be European” Single Artwork by Sonia Beckwith Cole

BERNICE ONLINE
FACEBOOK
TWITTER
INSTAGRAM