Brasstronaut

Edo Van Breeman, a Miami native who had relocated to Vancouver and previously performed with the Clips, discovered several compositions that diverged from his band’s high-energy approach. He enlisted trumpeter Bryan Davis to develop the material, then added drummer Brennan Saul and bassist John Walsh to form a quartet that issued its debut EP, Old World Lies, in September 2008. Favorable notices secured the group a spot in the 2009 Banff Musicians in Residence program at Alberta’s Banff Centre. During the residency the lineup grew to six members with the arrival of guitarist Tariq Hussain and Sam Davidson on clarinet and EWI; together they wrote additional songs and tracked an album before embarking on a North American tour. Dissatisfied with the mixes, the musicians returned to Vancouver to overhaul the recordings and adapt them to their expanded palette. Their first full-length effort, Mount Chimaera, finally surfaced in March 2010. Though reviewers sometimes mischaracterized the record as indie-jazz rock, its fuller textures more closely echoed Arcade Fire and Tucson’s Calexico, resulting in a long-list nomination for the 2010 Polaris Music Prize.

Leaving the protracted sessions behind, the band entered the studio again in 2011, this time working with producer Colin Stewart at Hive Studios in Victoria, British Columbia. The sophomore album, Mean Sun, emerged the following year. After extensive touring across Canada, the United States, and Europe in 2012 and 2013, the six members turned to separate projects. With Van Breeman now living in New York, Saul based in Winnipeg, and the others remaining in Vancouver, they assembled the third album by each submitting a pair of songs to a shared pool. Favoring a leaner, more buoyant direction than Mean Sun, the group completed final recordings in New York and Vancouver and once again enlisted Stewart to produce. The self-titled release appeared at the close of 2016.