Praise for Vancouver Sleep Clinic:
"I love this music, and I want to learn more about who Vancouver Sleep Clinic is...a notable gem" - NPR Music
"Here's hoping there's plenty more where ['Mercy'] came from." - Complex
"Standing at the intersection of chillingly ambient and deeply emotive, ['Closure' also doubles as Bettinson's promise to weather the storm and re-enter the music world full force." - Pigeons & Planes
"Heavenly and harmonious layers are woven together in a cohesive and unassuming fashion, often united by a steadying though subtle pulse heard on nearly every song." - Billboard
"dreamy ambience" - The Line of Best Fit
"['Vixen' has] an ambient groove that finds the type of balance between R&B and folk...Though its skittering beat and airy production lean closer to modern R&B, gentle acoustics throughout keep it all very grounded." - Consequence of Sound
"calling his music 'ethereal' is not nearly enough. With the amount of energy and emotion that's exuded from his efforts, we need more intense adjectives to describe his sound, and, to be honest, there's never going to be enough to accurately and justifiably detail what he creates." - Hilly Dilly
Twenty-three year old Australian artist Tim Bettison recently announced his incredible sophomore album as Vancouver Sleep Clinic, and today he shares its second single. A quintessentially gorgeous track from an artist who is known as an essential voice in ambient music, "Summer '09" is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking, as the song is about the sudden loss of a close friend. Listen to the song and watch its incredibly music video now via Wonderland, and read more about the meaning behind the song from Bettison below.
"At the end of 2017, I got the call that one of my closest friends had died completely out of the blue.
We had grown up inseparable; always playing sport and music together all the way to playing on stage together with me for the first Vancouver Sleep Clinic shows.
My world was flipped upside down and it took days to think properly and months before I could even stomach the idea of writing again.
It wasn't until a year later, when I was in Bali with my friends and it was raining outside. My friend Luke started playing these chords on his guitar, and everything that had been bottled up inside of me since my friend passed suddenly flooded onto the page. That song became "Summer '09," my way to forever immortalize our special connection and those memories from our youth.
"Summer '09" has been with me everywhere since--in my headphones, in the car, in the park, in my room, and anywhere there is a guitar. Now the time has come for it to be in the world. Although it is difficult for me to let go of it, it gives me peace to know that something that was a source of healing & refuge for me for so long can now be yours, too."
Pre-order Onwards To Zion, out October 18th, HERE.
Listen to the first single "Bad Dream" HERE.
Vancouver Sleep Clinic released his debut project to critical acclaim in 2014 when he was just seventeen years-old. Now--following years of major label purgatory and a concerted effort on Bettison's part to reclaim his music for himself--Vancouver Sleep Clinic will release its transcendent sophomore album, Onwards to Zion. Written during a period of isolation in Bali with his friends in the fall of 2018, this record will be out on October 18. In a purposeful departure from his forays into electronically driven song construction, Bettinson wrote much of the album on a $100 nylon guitar bought at one of Bali's only music stores. "I'd started getting used to making three-and-half-minute songs with a beat and a hook-but the thing is that I don't really come from making beats," he says. "I used to busk: that's where I came from. The whole direction of this album changed for me once I realized I wanted to put the focus back on guitar again."
Despite the relative simplicity of its origins, Onwards to Zion bears a distinctly collagic sonic palette, encompassing everything from ethereal atmospherics to psychedelic synth tones to hazy samples of '60s jazz-pop records. Not only a return to the self-reliance of Vancouver Sleep Clinic's early material, Onwards to Zion also marks a deliberate tonal shift from his multi-part project Therapy 1 and Therapy 2 in 2018 "The Therapy songs mostly came from a place of frustration-just me complaining about the situation I was in back then," says Bettinson. "When I sat down to think about the new album, I realized I don't want my discography to reflect bitterness: I want to put something positive into the world. So even though it's got some darkness, and it's a bit of an emotional rollercoaster at times, the album is very much coming from a place of love. I'd love for it to leave people feeling re-energized, and ready to just keep pressing on in their own lives."
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