Ghostkeeper, photo by Kaytlyn Turner, Justin Skrundz
By Will McGuirk
"’U Kin Be the Sun’ explores the vast and eternal within us, the reoccurring ancient mythology of the individual as the universal, as light, as the sun..” - Frazey Ford
“What is to live, if not to eat and drink and breathe and to love.” - All We Are
"Love is Love! When you saw someone and fell in love with them, it did not matter what their sex is. Love comes from the heart. The soul only demands love and takes peace from it.” - Ehsan Matoori
By Will McGuirk
To have hope but not faith. To continue although experience says other. To build, to make, to write, to sing, to continue. forward . . even as 2020 becomes a year of looking back and accepting we collectively took the wrong fork in the road. Will we ever learn? Look to the artist as they forge ahead, voyageurs on the stream which engulfs the rest of us.
“At the moment, living in a complicated quarantine surrounded by invisible (and not-so-invisible) plagues upon us, fragmentation is palpable: a splintering of social ties, of nature's capacity to regenerate, of something vague that once felt stable and now feels unreal...... All of these things hover between us and within us.” - Peter Burr, Austra art collaborator
“I have this idea in my head that our music generally feels out of place against the backdrop of summer, but the dynamic of the city in its current condition really captured the solitude and confusion behind the song in a way that feels compelling.” - James Thomson, Nation of Language
“‘The Swans’ is a present day, apocalypse-era reply to Springsteen's ‘Dancing In The Dark’ or Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’. I wrote it before the pandemic, but in anticipation of the need to live above and against the fire and brimstone, to forever fall in love with the natural world. “ - NYSSA
Moscow Apartment
By Will McGuirk
Pause. Do you recall when we paused. Not that long ago. Have you forgotten in your rush to go back before the pause. Pause again and recall the pause. Time to contemplate, take the time to reimagine what you want the future to look like and importantly to sound like. What voices do you want to hear, whose voices do you want to hear from? Pause again and listen.
“The song, with its slow atmospheric build and sombre lyrics, is a reflection on a city undergoing massive change: influxes and exoduses; appropriations and dispossessions, caused by intentions that range from the benevolent to the unkind.” - Ketch Harbour Wolves
“The celebration of the positive things was our focal point with this record. We could never have known what sort of world we’d be releasing this record into but our goal was always to try to bring people joy amongst the sorrow”. - Richard O’Flynn, All We Are
