Photo Credit: Colin Medley |
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LISTEN & SHARE: MOONRIIVR - Volume 1StreamWATCH/LISTEN & SHARE: MOONRIIVR - "10,000 Suns" Spotify | YoutubeWATCH/LISTEN & SHARE: MOONRIIVR - "Flowers On The Fire Escape" Spotify | YoutubeWATCH/LISTEN & SHARE: MOONRIIVR - "Blonde Hair Now" Spotify | YoutubeWATCH/LISTEN & SHARE: MOONRIIVR - "The Hypnotist" Spotify | YoutubeWATCH/LISTEN & SHARE: MOONRIIVR - "Bachelor Nation" Spotify | YoutubeWATCH/LISTEN & SHARE: MOONRIIVR - "Midnight at the Garden Hotel" Spotify | Youtube |
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Following the release of MOONRIIVR's debut album, titled Volume 1, the quartet of vocalist Gavin Gardiner (The Wooden Sky), guitarist "Champagne" James Robertson (Lindi Ortega), bassist Ben Whitely (The Weather Station), and percussionist Lyle Molzan (Kathleen Edwards) are releasing a video for their track, "10,000 Suns".
Crafted with a Tascam 388 tape recorder, Vol.1 is representative of an idiosyncratic brand of exotic indie-folk, laced with sweetly reverberating slide guitars, wonky string synths, and nimble percussive environments that Rolling Stone DE said, "Sounds as if Buddy Holly and Chris Isaak made a record with Damien Jurado."
Discussing the contents of the track, Gardiner said, "10,000 Suns addresses the weight of the past. How one can be crushed by shame, anger and regret. I’m not searching for answers within the song, but simply living in the present and looking towards love & forgiveness."
MOONRIIVR's knack for creating sonic worlds that are at once lightly trippy and wholly inviting means that, as much as Volume 1 draws on inspirations from decades past, it maintains a pleasing, distinctly out-of-time feel. The band's album rollout included tracks like, "Midnight at the Garden Hotel," "Bachelor Nation," and "The Hypnotist," which all released alongside their own videos.
Check out the official video for, "10,000 Suns", and check out the full LP, Vol. 1 out now via Victory Pool! |
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 | | MOONRIIVR - "10,000 Suns" [OFFICIAL VIDEO] |
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MOONRIIVR Bio:
The songs on MOONRIIVR’s aptly titled debut, Vol. 1, came together on an old analogue tape machine, laced with sweetly reverberating slide guitars, wonky string synths, and nimble percussive environments. MOONRIIVR's knack for creating sonic worlds that are at once lightly trippy and wholly inviting means that, as much as Vol. 1 draws on inspirations from decades past, it maintains a pleasing, distinctly out-of-time feel. The band half-jokingly likened the album to “Buddy Holly meets Krautrock”, and strange as it sounds it's not far off the mark.
Thematically, the songs are wide ranging, providing a winning contrast to the laser focus of MOONRIIVR's sonic architecture. Running the gamut from personal reflections on finding pleasure in the minutiae of everyday life on “Blonde Hair Now” to meditations on some of the more disturbing and inescapable developments in world politics over the last few years (“Midnight at the Garden Hotel”, “Flowers on the Fire Escape”), Gardiner deftly addresses these seemingly disparate thought-poles with a balance of opacity and directness. While not beating the listener over the head, Gardiner doesn’t shy away from uncomfortable topics, be it climate change or navigating friendship schisms that developed around divergent pandemic politics. It's the kind of record that can thrum warmly in the background but also pays dividends for those listeners willing to dig a little deeper.
In the spring of 2020, early days of the pandemic, Gavin Gardiner – best known as the front person for Juno-nominated indie-folk mainstays The Wooden Sky, and as a producer & engineer at All Day Coconut studios for artists such as Fiver, Jason Collett, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson – visited his friend “Champagne” James Robertson at the Robertson family farm north of Toronto. After years touring as lead guitar with acts like Lindi Ortega and Dwayne Gretzky, Robertson was similarly adrift during those strange early pandemic days. The two had been circling around each other in the Toronto music scene when the chance to collaborate landed in front of them. Armed with a vintage Tascam 388 tape recorder, mellotron and a nylon string guitar the two got stuck in and quickly realized they had stumbled onto something special.
After this initial round of writing and recording sessions at the farm, the two decamped back to Toronto where they roped in first-call bassist Ben Whitely (The Weather Station, Basia Bulat, Julia Jacklin) and percussionist extraordinaire Lyle Molzan (Kathleen Edwards, Corb Lund), and continued tweaking and refining their sound during weekly sessions at All Day Coconut. The two added a new layer of depth to the proceedings, with Whitely's tasteful, earthy bass playing providing a warm anchor to the music, and Molzan largely eschewing a standard drumkit in favour of triangles, congas, and other sundry percussive items.
Finally, MOONRIIVR returned to the farm to pull the whole thing together. They set up shop in the garage, placing guitar amplifiers in cars and opening and closing the car doors to adjust sound leakage during recording. The 30 degree July heat made it necessary to keep the garage doors open, letting the natural ambient sounds of their rural environs seep into the background of the songs. Gardiner in particular delighted in this refreshing change from the status quo, re-setting himself with this open-ended, at times magical creative process, which he says “really opened up a whole new musical world to me that I had heard in the music I loved.”
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| MOONRIIVR Tour Dates: Jan 25 - Bo's Bar and Grill - Red Deer, Alberta - Winterruption
Jan 26 - Rocky Mountain Ice House - Edmonton, Alberta - Winterruption |
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Vol.1 LP Tracklisting
01. Blonde Hair Now
02. Midnight at the Garden Hotel
03. Flowers On The Fire Escape
04. No Turning Back
05. The Hypnotist
06. Let The World Turn
07. Mother To Me
08. Bachelor Nation
09. 10,000 Suns
10. Run
11. Only The Lonely Know How
12. Let's Tell Everyone We Know |
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