Blinker The Star

Jordon Zadorozny, a Toronto native then aged 22, launched Blinker the Star as a solo endeavor in his basement once a fire at his parents’ music shop required that instruments and recording gear be relocated to his cellar. He cultivates a deliberately lo-fi sound by deploying every inexpensive effect and makeshift technique he can devise in the moment. The band’s self-titled debut, issued in 1995, preserves those unaltered basement recordings because Zadorozny declined to rerecord them in a studio, worried that spontaneous accidents and unrepeatable effects would be lost. Bourgeois Kitten appeared the following year, and August Everywhere, Blinker the Star’s first album for Dreamworks, surfaced three years after that.