Happy Holidays – Dean’s Year End List

My answer to a question in a recent online interview pretty much sums up what we’re up to right now:

We released a new full length album called Darker Lights, completed an East Coast tour, played CMJ music festival and released a video for our latest single, “The Hedonist.” Now that it’s Winter we’re taking a break from playing live and concentrating on more ethereal means of promotion – like more videos and interviews like this! I think the live shows will start up in earnest again in Spring of 2014 after the album’s been out there and germinating for a bit. That’s the great thing about music it lives in the æther and there are so many ways of discovering it beyond going to live shows. Going to live shows is still the best, but going to your favourite record store, reading zines or even randomly surfing places like youtube, bandcamp or rdio are great ways to find new music.

###

In other news:

Darker Lights is admittedly our least radio-friendly album to date and so we are especially appreciative of all the radio support we received this past year.

Listen for our our song “Poor City” on CBC Radio 3.  Those musical early-adopters found the very deep cut  (track 8 on Darker Lights) and liked it enough to add it to rotation without any push from our record label or anything.  What does it mean?  CBC Radio 3 is curated by folks who actually listen to entire albums, that’s what!  That’s refreshing news to me.  All in all I would like to send out a special thank you to our supporters at CBC Radio3.  “The Hedonist,” charted in their top 30 chart (The R3-30, determined by listener votes) for 8 consecutive weeks.  Darker Lights was nominated for a prestigious Bucky Award for best artwork (D. Kleiser) and “The Hedonist” was named #19 of the top 103 songs of 2013.

You can listen to CBC Radio3 throughout North America on Sirius XM radio (ch. 162) and anywhere on the world online.  Meanwhile, we’ll be working on a new music video for our next single (which is not “Poor City”,” BTW).

We would also like to thank all our  friends and supporters at Canadian Campus Radio (nation-wide) especially CJAM, CIUT, CRFE, CKDU,  CHMR, CIOI, CFOU, CIVL, CFMH, CFMU, CAPR, CHSR, CILU, Radio Laurier, CFBX, CFCR, CFMH, CJUM, our friends and supporters at Sirius XM radio, The Verge and ICEBERG radio and all the independently-minded FM stations across this country who gave us a feature or a spin (especially Indie88, Live 88.5, The Wolf Regina, The Wolf Nanaimo, CIFM , and Rock95)  – enough to keep us in the charts for many weeks. I’m sure we’ve missed a bunch of supporters but we thank you all the same!

Extra year-end kudos to Cara and Ashley at With A Bullet, Jonas and Maude at Edvinsson and all at Sparks and Universal Music Canada.

We would also like to send a big shout out to David Kleiser (album art design) and Kerry Shaw (band photos and videos) for their help on the visual end of things.

###

And now for the 4th annual Year End List. These are vinyl albums I purchased that were released in 2013.  For several reasons (not all of them musical) 2013 was a relatively slow record-buying year for me. I think I purchased more used classic vinyl and online/digital music in 2013 (which I don’t include on this list). Hopefully, 2014 will prove a better year.  Anyway, here it is (in no particular order):

Silence Yourself – Savages
Trouble Will Find Me – The National
m.b.v. – My Bloody Valentine
Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO – The Besnard Lakes

I can’t believe I haven’t grabbed Fade Out by Dog Day! I need to grab that one before 2013 ends!!!

Happy Holidays!

Darker Lights Live at the Verge (Update)

Hi All,

Our performances and interviews will air tomorrow morning (Wednesday, Dec 11) at 6AM and tomorrow evening at 7PM ET on SiriusXM The Verge (ch. 173) and SiriusXM The Iceberg (ch. 161).  We hope you will tune in!   File under Holiday Fireside Listening!

***UPDATE ***

Since first writing this post the special aired again on Friday December 13, both morning and evening and will air again tonight (Sunday, Dec 15) at 9PM ET!!! This will probably be your last chance to catch (and possibily record) the special.  Please bootleg, thank you.

Cheers!