What is "Corners" exactly…
In a few words Corners is my first EP. Its songs are a synthesis of loneliness, desire, happiness, loss, sadness and hope in 2020. In January 2020, my plan for the year was to write and release an album or a 6 song EP of my latest music. I felt I started off 2020 on the right foot and was performing new songs in local Montreal bars but then came the first COVID-19 quarantine…
I can’t say that I despise solitude. In order to create I am alone most of the time. In fact, before the quarantine lockdown, I used to dream about leaving Montreal to write music and possibly an anthology of short stories. This dream involved isolating myself somewhere along a Scandinavian archipelago to create something of genius (life dream). I thought first and foremost about escaping to Sweden because I have long admired the depth of late film director Ingmar Bergman and the way he was able to display the complexity of human emotion in his films. I somehow always think of both him and Nick Cave when I write anything that I am proud of.
During the month of March I wrote the first song of the EP called Getting By. It was a little upbeat, a little sad and truly got me thinking about being in absence of things. March was also that same time where I started to record for some of the collaborations released this year that I wrote about in my other blog posts. However, come April 2020 and deepening myself into extreme periods of “non-social/ non-human contact” I began to look deeper into myself and thought that it would be interesting to write music about this “exploration”. Now I wonder if I need to make that trip to Sweden as I see loneliness and seclusion differently after this personal experiment.
From April onward, I put my New Year’s plan of a full-length album into question because I wanted to write music that was entirely composed during the COVID-19 quarantine. I wanted to see what I could do in my apartment, how I could do it and in a sense push myself to places in my mind I could only go from spending what is possibly an “unhealthy” amount of time alone for me. I knew I had to make use of the instruments that I have in my apartment (guitar and keyboard) so I purchased a guitar pedal that I felt could help me better communicate musically a certain state in which I felt at times. The song Broken Dreams on Corners uses this pedal and has an organ like effect.
So that is what Corners is. It is a sort of exploration while being isolated within the 4 corners of my apartment for reasons of quarantine and creation. Musically each song holds its unique atmosphere which is a representation of my state of mind. It also explains why the EP cover looks the way that it does as it visually conveys the emotional states/personas of myself writing each song. All images on the cover were also shot in my apartment by Alex Kasyan and I filmed myself for Isolation’s music video (YouTube November 20th) on my iPhone in my home studio.
There are 4 songs on Corners: Getting By, Isolation, Broken Dreams and Before it Begins. I chose 4 because there are four corners in the little room in my apartment that I like to call my home studio and the place in which I wrote, composed, recorded and dreamt up this EP.
I worked once again with producers Zach Ezickson and Scott Jacoby at Eusonia studios but this time remotely via video call. Many thanks to Scott and Zach for helping me better communicate my vision and for embracing my at times eccentric writing style.
The first release Isolation, will premiere on YouTube, Apple Music and Soundcloud on Friday November 20th.
Corners will be released on all platforms December 4th and a CD will be available for purchase on my recent Bandcamp page.
I look forward to having you hear this EP.
littleuniverses