LEE PARADISE

LEE PARADISE & CO.

Toronto’s Dan Lee steps out of the spotlight and into the producer’s chair on the new collaborative Lee Paradise LP, Lee Paradise & Co.

This is Dan Lee in producer mode, veering away from the pursuit of a singular musical direction rooted in personal vision, towards of a process rich in collaboration, emotional expansion and tonal exploration.

JAIRUS SHARIF

WATER & TOOLS

The passionate and unclassifiable work of Calgary-based improviser Jairus Sharif embraces the definitions of freedom, strictly on its own personal and idiosyncratic terms.

Water & Tools is a dense, contradictory statement with a blustery surface that shelters a soulful heart. It's generous music, exuding profound vulnerability—grappling with the loss of one his mothers, Lisa—all the while brimming with electric wide-eyed wonder.

BADGE ÉPOQUE ENSEMBLE

Clouds Of Joy

Featuring three vocal-led compositions, three instrumentals and three choral arrangements, this new album presents the Ensemble’s most ambitious, mature and engaging material to date.

Clouds represents a shift from the group’s previous sonic excursions into the worlds of vintage soundtrack grooves and early electric jazz towards a more era-ambiguous, complex and all-encompassing approach to arrangement production.

FRESH PEPPER

SELF-TITLED

Toronto outfit Fresh Pepper, led by longtime friends André Ethier and Joseph Shabason (along with musicians Robin Dann, Felicity Williams, Thom Gill & Bram Gielen,) playfully recounts their culinary past lives across eight jazzy and benevolent tracks that exude their authors’ sheer enjoyment of the creation process.

Breathy, hushed tones via saxophone and vocals casually traverse their own annexed corridor between smooth jazz, exploratory avant-indie, and subverted adult-contemporary.