MRG Concerts West presents... Jordan Klassen with Megan Bonnell
Date/Time: Apr 27 2016, 8:00 pm to 11:59 pm
Vancouver, ImperialCost: $14.00
Find tickets: here
From Vancouver, folk-rock singer songwriter tours in support of his sophomore album, “Javelin”, out February 19th via Nevado Records.
Jordan Klassen returns with Javelin. On his sophomore album the Vancouver based songwriter dissects his struggles, embraces his demons, digs up old ghosts, and comes out with his hands clean on the other end. Forced to process his mother’s breast cancer diagnosis and to work through the throws of anxiety and writer’s block, Klassen chose to document specific life events through song – particularly events that he had deemed as his failures. Speaking about Javelin he states, “It's an exploration of re-examining these failures and looking at them in a different light, finding hope and choosing forgiveness, admitting my own weaknesses, exposing weakness as strength.”
The self-produced LP was recorded at Sonic Ranch in El Paso, Texas. Klassen lived at the ranch for two weeks, working day and night with engineer Jerry Ordonez on the songs and eating extravagant amounts of authentic Mexican food. The ten song affair was mixed by Jonathan Anderson (Andy Shauf, Aidan Knight) and mastered by Harris Newman (Wolf Parade, Frog Eyes).
Musically the album skates effortlessly from dense and orchestrated to sparse and intimate, but its inspiration may come as a surprise. Klassen’s keen sense of mood and atmosphere date back to his youth. “I wanted to give a nod to a genre often overlooked but that shaped me thoroughly as a kid - 80s/90s new age music. Most emphatically Enya. I think I've always utilized a sense of etherealism in my songs and I wanted to engage with it all the way.”
MEGAN BONNELL:
In dreams, the real and the surreal interweave in a dizzying dance; elements of one exist within the context of the other. Indeed, the foiling of these forces is and has always been truly fascinating, and because of the parallels they share, so too is Hunt & Chase, the debut long-player from Ontario’s Megan Bonnell.
The challenge inherent in Hunt & Chase isn’t enjoying the experience; that comes quite naturally. Instead, it’s trying to tell where you’re being transported in time or in space; whether you’re awake or dreaming. But really, the journey is so charming and captivating that you quite simply won’t care.
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