Love Story

Joseph Shabason

Anne

Formed around interviews he conducted with his mother, and based on how she views herself through the lens of her Parkinson’s disease, at its core, the second album from Destroyer/DIANA saxophonist and electronic composer Joseph Shabason is an extremely personal rumination on the fragility of life. But there’s a persistent thermal capacity to the work, delivering that experience while avoiding any clichéd representations of illness and finding relief in what the present is able to provide.

More outwardly expressive and emotionally forthcoming than Shabason’s 2017 debut, Aytche, the compositions on Anne patiently reflect the unsettling grounds for this undertaking and the weighty accumulation of sadness at its root, with decompressive lyrical bursts that were absent on Aytche. The subject is never mentioned explicitly, instead sublimated in the face of deeper questions like marbled strands of a kaleidoscope image, its true nature shifting with time and exposure to light. As Shabason bends, stretches, and warps instrumentation, field recordings and interview clips alike, he’s working in neo-expressionist portraiture, mining the ambiguities of the abstractions to beautiful, evocative effect. ( Western Vinyl)

Did you approach this differently than how you approached Aytche?

I think the real difference is that I had an idea and I had the confidence to execute it, and then I was able to do it in a way that felt

unexpected turns and transitions are what keep listeners engaged and on edge. The most notable change in the band is Sean Arsenian’s approach to vocals. What was once mostly a brute force attack has flourished into an array of styles: Everything from soft brooding on “Brute Cortege” and spoken word on “Tax Season in Dreamland,” to the harsh howls on “Still Life with Maggots” give the album density and the option to go in so many more directions. Goodbye Audio is a heady album in all of the best ways, honouring the past while elevating the genre in unexpected ways. (No List) HIP- HOP MODERN COMPOSITION meaningful and complete. It feels like way more of a statement that is my own, rather than me trying to copy other people, and I think the difference was purpose. I don’t think that Aytche had a lot of purpose, whereas this, from start to finish, was a very purposeful effort.

What did you take away from the interviews?

So much of the time when people around you are sick, the overwhelming emotion is like, you feel bad for them and you want to be there for them and love them, but when someone around you is sick, it often puts a tremendous burden on the people in their life who are the caregivers. It gave us a platform to talk about that. I think I was able to work through a lot of things, because especially when I had stepped away from it, there wasn’t any dialogue anymore. It was just her saying things and me sitting with them and listening. ror (Fireworks)” and “Bag” mimic that sound, but also take on the essence of UK grime, while “Get Away” breaks into a free-forming house track, despite echoing the sinister sounds of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.” Much like their own song, Don II shows how Just John and Dom Dias are in their bag. These aren’t necessarily new sounds in hip-hop music, but this Toronto duo are putting the spotlight back onto lost sounds and are championing a new movement in Toronto. ( Warner) FOLK ROCK