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

Event Description

Kathryn Calder returns to the Copper Owl this time she brings with her The Burning Hell.

Tickets are $12 at the door. No advance tickets at this time.

Kathryn Calder
It’s easy to forget that Kathryn Calder is a music industry veteran. From her first band Immaculate Machines, to the New Pornographers and her solo works Kathryn has released 10 albums over the last 10 years, toured around the world, and solidified herself a career in music before she was thirty. She recorded her first solo album, Are You My Mother in her family home while she was taking care of her mother as she lost her fight with ALS. Shortly before the release of her sophomore record,Bright and Vivid her father suddenly passed away. This bittersweet whirlwind of success and tragedy is certainly reflected in her first two albums and presumably could have provided several more albums worth of material.

Yet rather than jump into writing after touring Bright and Vivid, Kathryn stopped to finally take a moment and take stock of her life. “I love being on the road,” she says, “but there’s a side of me that is definitely a homebody and I was ready to settle into a solid base free of trauma and drama.” After some unwinding and reflection she found herself coming back to the same thought, “How am I going to approach my life seeing as how it’s so short?” Part of the answer was to write songs that had a sense of authenticity. With this goal in mind she sat down with her guitar and began to tease out melodies and craft songs. A year later she had a full album recorded. She threw it away and started over.

Listening back, Kathryn found the songs felt too much like going through the motions – they sounded like work. It wasn’t until she found herself experimenting with synths that she found the spark and began to write again, except this time from a producers chair in the new Vancouver Island studio built by her husband and co-producer Colin Stewart. Each song began not with lyrics or melody, but with an atmosphere built from manipulating synths and loops.

From these soundscapes arose the ten songs of Kathryn Calder to be released on File Under: Music on April 14. A collection striving to be both vulnerable and timeless, the album ranges from the get up and move of “Take a Little Time” and “Only Armour” to the delicateness of “Song and Cm” and “Arm and Arm”. Featuring guest vocals from Dan Mangan, Jill Barber, and Hannah Georgas, Kathryn Calder demonstrates Kathryn’s limitless creative potential as she transitions from a songwriter reacting to the world to one who can capture her own moments and create one.

The Burning Hell
The Burning Hell is the alter-ego of Canadian songwriter Mathias Kom, and the band has been on the road in one form or another since 2007, playing everywhere from festivals like Glastonbury and Dawson City to bars, living rooms, abandoned bunkers, and a mental asylum in rural France. Musically, The Burning Hell runs the gamut from introspective folk to hyperactive rock and roll, and so the band can adapt to its surroundings like a karma of anthropomorphic chameleons, taking the audience on a supermarket-cart ride through hooky, upbeat pop songs, dark ballads about pet euthanasia, and anthems for barbarians, economic conferences, and love.

On occasion, Mathias goes on the road as a duo with clarinetist Ariel Sharratt, and their debut album “Ariel Sharratt & Mathias Kom: Don’t Believe The Hyperreal” came out in November 2015. More often, Mathias and Ariel are joined by bassist Nick Ferrio, drummer Jake Nicoll and guitarist Darren Browne. The Burning Hell will release Public Library, a new album of distorted story-songs, in April 2016, and they’ll spend the better part of the spring and summer in their natural habitat: the tour van.

KATHRYN CALDER ONLINE:
http://www.kathryncalder.com/
https://twitter.com/kathryncalder
https://www.facebook.com/kathryncalder
https://www.instagram.com/kathryn_calder/

BURNING HELL ONLINE:
http://www.wearetheburninghell.com/
https://www.facebook.com/theburninghell
https://twitter.com/theburninghell