Kevin Drew, co-owner of the Arts and Crafts label and a Broken Social Scene founding member, was recently here The Banff Centre to deliver a public lecture, and work on recording tracks for a new album. Images © Jesse Senko, courtesy Arts and Crafts.
When I first admitted indie music – more precisely bands from Toronto’s Arts and Crafts label – into my playlists, I was otherwise doing my best to become a classical music snob. Whatever affections I assumed, I earnestly and passionately loved Bach. In his music, I could escape to a world of sublime logic and immaculate forms. But in indie music, I found a world that felt a lot more like the one in which I was living. The post-millennial explosion of indie acts like Canada’s Arcade Fire and Broken Social Scene (BSS) established a new soundtrack for being young, hip, and underemployed. And they forged a musical palette that was fresh, while also appealing to my taste for the instrumentally rich sound that had inspired my love of baroque music.
I’ve continued to follow Arts and Crafts, whose acts and alumni read like a who’s who of today’s indie scene. So, I was excited to learn that Kevin Drew, co-owner of the label and a Broken Social Scene founding member, was coming to The Banff Centre to deliver a public lecture, and work on recording tracks for a new album (with members of BSS and Do Make Say Think) – a somewhat mysterious project that might be labeled a solo album, a BSS album, or who knows what. And thanks to this Inspired assignment, I even got to pick Drew’s brains after the group’s all-hours week-long recording schedule wound down.
“I believe there’s something very sacred about The Banff Centre, and about its history,” says Drew. “And that was something I wasn’t taking lightly.” Continue Reading →
