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.

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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.

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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!

The Hedonist On A Screen Near You

Hello,
As many of you may already know our video for “The Hedonist,” has been live on Youtube for about a week but did you know that we have been added to the MuchLoud TV station as well? People with Satellite TV Boxes be warned! In all seriousness, I’d like to thank Kerry, the crew all of our friends who came out to help us make this video shoot happen!

So what’s our take on the video? Well, I can’t speak for everyone but I feel it’s a great example of juxtaposition – the band versus the revelers.

Cheers!

-d

New Music Video for “Nobody Gets It,” by Kerry Shaw

Since Monday (six days ago) our latest music video for “Nobody Gets It,” has been available for stream on Exclaim.ca. The video is now available on YOUTUBE for the rest of the world to see:

This video was envisioned and directed by the very talented photographer Kerry Shaw. We here in the PAPERMAPS camp love it! It’s hard to describe. Perhaps Kerry’s own words sum it up best:

Nobody’s perfect. A notion we tend to forget when we look at our partner, our colleagues, our family, ourselves. We are creatures of expectation and with that comes the tendency to overlook just how amazing the people truly are around us. Papermaps have compiled a song that explores the anger in desiring perfection, the frustration of someone not living up to our idea of who we think they should be. Perfect. I contradict these lyrics with a montage of appreciation. Specifically, images of women. The female form, movement and overall imperfections and actions of women. All kinds of women…This is not an in-your-face, socio-political “oh, look at how women are being over-sexuallised/distorted in media/over-beautied” kind of dialogue.  Rather, this is a study of the female face, body, hair, movement, etc. A slightly dark celebration.

For us in the group it was a fun and simple video to make.  We each only had to be there a few hours or so. The bulk of the video was done over several days in Kerry’s studio with the many lovely models.  We are thankful to all the ladies who volunteered their time and image for this video – you are the real stars! This clip features all the members of PAPERMAPS lip syncing the song, including Wendy and Todd who had officially left the group before  filming but gracefully agreed to participate.  This video is not only a celebration of beauty in diversity but is also, on a more personal level, a celebration of PAPERMAPS’ former lineup.

Have a look and let us know what you think!

-d