Photo: Frank Schemmann

FYEAR is a Montréal-based supergroup of sorts led by electroacoustic composer Jason Sharp and poet/writer Kaie Kellough, and currently featuring poet, writer, and activist Tawhida Tanya Evanson (director of the Banff Centre Spoken Word program), violinists Josh Zubot and Jesse Zubot (Tanya Tagaq, Darius Jones, Joshua Hyslop), pedal steel player Joe Grass (Tim Hecker, Patrick Watson), drummers Stefan Schneider (Bell Orchestre) and Tommy Crane (The Mingus Big Band, Aaron Parks). The nine-piece have announced the release of their self-titled debut album, a 45-minute work fusing spoken word, out-jazz, post-classical, drone, ambient metal, avant-rock and modular synthesis.

Thematically the upcoming record was written against the backdrop of our political and social state of affairs and it “interrogates our present and future post-capitalist polycrisis, invoking collective anxieties, emotions, and critiques”, as the press release describes. FYEAR, it adds, express and embody these themes sonically on an album where “contemplative, disquieted, and visceral readings of our struggles, fictions, shackles, desires, neuroses and freedoms unspool through a fervid artistic lens that brims with thought, feeling, and urgency.”

FYEAR arrives on April 5th through Constellation and ahead of it we can hear a first mesmerizing taste in the shape of ‘Pt I: Trajectory’. The single is offered with a video made by Kevin Yuen Kit Lo. Watch it below.