Tiptoes’ bring dreamy lo-fi pop to town
Tiptoes’ have a free-form ambient sound, with hushed vocals and multiple guitars resulting in dreamy, semi-shoegaze music, as if filtered through a delicate aural gauze.
Angel Scorcia of the Torontobased lo-fi bedroom-pop trinity began playing guitar at the age of 12.
“I was into alternative and grunge music because my uncle brought me a guitar and that was the music he grew up with. Nirvana, Soundgarden and Weezer — they were pretty big,” says Scorcia, adding he discovered a wider range of music through the years. He studied jazz guitar at Humber College, exploring the sonic vistas of jazz masters John Coltrane and Miles Davis, then moved into more free-form music.
Tiptoes, who describe their music as “grown-up nursery rhymes,” is comprised of Scorcia on guitar, Ivan Ostos on bass, and Ben Fukuzawa on drums.
Videographer Brandon Caswell Douglas of Quiet Bedrooms, who films artists playing soft music in their home environment, recently shot a video for Tiptoes’ song “Fog.” Douglas also has a cassette label of the same name and put out the band’s self-titled cassette/CD release.
“Fog” features Scorcia’s very light breathy vocals with a delay on them which results in a whispering effect.
“That was the first song that I recorded with a real microphone,” notes Scorcia. “I guess “Fog” represents a bit of maturing. With that song I was starting to push what I could do sonically a little further.”
“For “Fog” the big thing was the rhythm,” he explains. “The rhythmic guitar part is two nylon guitars playing the same part in stereo and then electric guitar with a little bit of saturation and compression around the middle. That created a hypnotic sound. Some of the lead guitar is me playing slide guitar and then processing that backwards,” he says.
Scorcia became a producer out of necessity.
“To get my music out there I had to figure out how to record it,” he says. “There was a lot of extra experimentation in the production realm.”
Scorcia listens to a lot of Acadian songstress Julie Doiron’s spare and elegant music. On Tiptoes latest release there is a cover of Doiron’s song “Sweeter” from her 1997 album “Loneliest in the Morning.”
Previously released track “Hungry Tummies” is also included on the EP.
“That song is very simple in its form,” says Scorcia. “The bed of the song is a strumming guitar part. It was a very simple vocal and melodic idea. Then I tried to contrast the vocal part. There’s a lot of guitar improvisation contrasting with the singing, without getting in the way of it.”