Acrpost: A Project of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres

Event Description

VILA Presents
Graham Van Pelt (Miracle Fortress) with Outback, Crying High

Saturday, January 4th
10pm doors // 19+
Copper Owl, 1900 Douglas St.
$15 adv / $17 door
Tickets available now at
http://bit.ly/GVP-VIC

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Graham Van Pelt || Toronto, ON ||
BC: https://grahamvanpelt.bandcamp.com/releases

“I’d like to be as un-mysterious as I possibly can,” Graham Van Pelt says. He’s about to release Time Travel, his first record in the four years since he moved from Montreal to Toronto, and he’s no longer Miracle Fortress, or Inside Touch, or any of the aliases he’s used to record over the years. He’s just Graham Van Pelt.

With the perspective of leaving a longtime home, of watching old friends change and familiar places become unrecognizable, came a recommitment to an emotional honesty in Van Pelt’s songwriting. Time Travel’s eight songs are a tangle of friendships and feelings. Moving backwards and forwards in time, they occupy a space of elegant melancholy.

Immersing himself in the work of house music legends like Larry Heard, Vincent Floyd and Maurizio and the fragile disco of Arthur Russell, along with contemporaries like Jessy Lanza and Kelly Lee Owens, Van Pelt built the album from the bottom up, rooting every track in the crude sequencer of the Roland SH-101 synth, a decades-old dance music totem. The result are melodies that are simple but affecting, anchored to deep, wandering basslines. Time Travels was engineered by twin brothers Mark and Matt Thibideau, whose techno roots deepened the grooves throughout the record.

There’s a comfort to operating in the world of dance music, which is, in Van Pelt’s words, more of a “team sport” than the competitive atmosphere of indie rock. “I feel like one person participating in a community,” he says, “and less of a person trying to rise above.” The album is also Van Pelt’s first release on Arbutus, which he describes as his “dream outcome” for the record. “Their catalog intersects at a place that feels like home to me,” he says. “Music for late night, atmospheric music, really honest and unvarnished truthful stuff that never compromises.”

Time Travel is a renewal of Van Pelt’s vows with dance music, and with the genre’s pulse of synthesized melancholy. It’s a heartrending rush, as emotionally direct as a sweaty, jaw-clenching 3am hug.

Outback || Victoria, BC ||
SC: https://soundcloud.com/jasper-miller/

Crying High || Victoria, BC ||
BC: https://cryinghigh.bandcamp.com/album/-

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Please approach one of the show organizers if you feel unsafe or uncomfortable by any behaviour at the show.

This event will take place on unceded Coast Salish Territories, specifically of the Lekwungen and WSÁNEĆ peoples. As we focus on building artistic and cultural bridges, we acknowledge the rich cultural history of the many peoples and rituals that have been affected by the ongoing process of dispossession and colonialism. We hold this understanding in our interactions and engagements with this land and its people.

Unfortunately, Copper Owl is not a wheelchair accessible venue.