BeatRoute Magazine AB print e-edition - April 2017

BOOK OF BRIDGE
WINT
lo-fi post-punk trio expels new releases
WINT has released two new albums thus far in 2017.
Brandon Saucier is the mad scientist behind
Lethbridge’s new lo-fi post-punk band, WINT.
Anchored by a forceful, sturdy rhythm section,
the band utilizes an ultra-harsh layer of melodic
guitar tones that’ll have you dishing with your music-nerd
friends for days after attending their show.
The trio currently has three EP’s available on
cassette and Bandcamp. Their self-titled debut was
released in April 2015; two years later we received
Revelation and New Content in rapid succession.
“The whole crux of the operation is just to be recording
all the time. So, I try and record songs every
day. At least one,” explains Saucier.
“Most of it’s stuff I’d never want to use but doing
it so often, gems just come out. Then, when there’s a
string of gems, I’ll just put them together and release
them.”
Saucier writes and records alone and has been
experimenting with oddball music equipment since
his teen years. His bandmates, bassist Hope Madison
and drummer Rebecca McHugh, say they usually
don’t learn the songs until they’ve already been
recorded and are up on Bandcamp.
The trio are a collection of friends with similar
likes in sound.
“My roommate/partner [Madison] wanted to
be in the band – I was like, ‘yep!’ Rebecca is just the
drummer in Lethbridge that I like and am friends
with. I played with her in another band [Participation]
that was great. So, it was just super easy.”
After performing vocals and noise in different
versions of the group during 2016, Madison suggested,
“Maybe I should just learn to play bass because
we don’t have a bass player.” Two weeks later, WINT
played their first show with the current incarnation.
January release Revelation gained attention from
local show-goers just as the new year rolled in. The
recordings are a firm balance between aggressively
by Curtis Windover
photo: Courtney Faulkner
lo-fi and GET-OUT-OF-MY-HEAD-catchy (refer to
track six, suitably dubbed “soft spoken”). Although
Saucier’s vocals sit low and his lyrics can be tricky
to decipher, a handful of poetic images jump out
in each song. The EP critiques modern life vaguely
enough to invite listeners to form their own interpretations,
and therefore to ponder their own place
in the modern world.
“I tend to just have these inspiration bursts that
last for weeks where I’m writing every day. Then I
have it all written down in a big binder full of lyrics.
If I’m recording a song I just pull something out and
use that,” says Saucier of his lyric writing process.
Creative bursts were pertinent to the March
release, New Content, but Saucier admits they
won’t be performing a couple of the new tracks live
anytime soon.
“Some songs from the new one were written only
month or two ago,” says Saucier. “And now we’re trying
to learn them but I forgot a bunch of the stuff.”
His focus shifts quickly forward, which gives
one more reason to get your hands on the
cassette before the tracks become lost artifacts.
The simplistic (yet bouncy and industrial) drum
fill in the opening song “Movement” will launch
you into the WINT experience without restraint.
The aesthetic is cohesive, bare bones, and
shouldn’t leave you with many questions, save
one: is there anything the world should know
about WINT?
“All I want them to know is that it’s all about the
music,” says Saucier.
That’s it?
“That’s it.”
Catch WINT live at Vangelis Tavern in Saskatoon on
April 15th. Visit wint.bandcamp.com for their latest
releases and future tour dates.
POP UP YOGA LETHBRIDGE
words and photo by Courtney Faulkner
creating accessible space for yoga
The foundation of Pop Up Yoga Lethbridge
is a collaboration between music and
movement, practice, and community. The
organization makes yoga accessible outside of the
traditional studio setting.
“There is no need for a studio,” explains founder
Fabiola Petre in her mission statement for the organization,
which has grown and flourished over the past
three years.
“We believe in yoga as a lifestyle; it´s about taking
yoga into urban spaces, parks, art galleries, retail
stores, coffee shops to hair salons and bars, there is
no limit!”
“Fabiola, the founder, she’s done some work in the
community with bringing live music, like live drumming
and that, to some of the classes,” says Shonna
Lamb, the yogi who has taken on the role of guiding
the organization since Petre moved to Vancouver
this past fall.
“We’ve got a series going on right now, it’s
our second round, and we tie it in with music,
so it takes place at SAAG [Southern Alberta Art
Gallery], so this series is called Vinyasa to the
Visionaries, so vinyasa is a type of yoga, you link
your breath to your movement, you flow, feels a
bit dancey.”
“I’m a product of music for sure, there was always
music going on in my house growing up, so my taste
is super diverse,” says Lamb. “I dreamt this up a long
time ago, but it took a while to get the courage to
put it out there.”
“Now we’re on week eight, and we’ve rolled
through Beastie Boys, Sublime, Nirvana, Pearl Jam,
Black Keys, Florence and the Machine, Led Zeppelin
and we wrap it [up] with [the Red Hot Chili Peppers]
Shonna Lamb and company offer Pop Up Yoga by donation in Lethbridge.
tomorrow. And the group’s grown. We cap out the
hallways at SAAG at about 36 people.”
“It’s this niche that I’ve never really seen before.
There’s a lot of art, you can just tell these are art
folk, it’s like they’ve got their soul on their sleeve,
you know you could just tell. Music, right on,
open-minded, kind. I mean, generally people you
meet on the mat do share those characteristics, but
you can tell these folks have some art to them.”
A part of creating community is also giving back
to that community, which the non-profit organization
consistently strives to do.
“What’s beautiful is that half the proceeds go
to the art gallery,” says Lamb of her Vinyasa to the
Visionaries series.
“Which is fantastic because I don’t know if much
of Lethbridge knows how highly regarded our
contemporary art museum is in Canada, we’ve got a
gem in our midst.”
“Things like this [Pop Up Yoga] help pull people
out of that studio setting and realize there’s so much
more in the community than just the conventional
sense of taking a yoga class,” says Lauren Hart, a Pop
Up Yoga teacher and founder of Lauren Hart Yoga as
well as Hawk + Harvest Market.
“It’s a discipline, but it’s also a community, and
I think that when people start seeing those same
people around it’s going to create this little family. It
already has. It’s amazing. It’s beautiful.”
Classes from Pop Up Yoga are offered weekly and
entry is by donation. They occur on Sunday mornings
at 10:00 a.m. at Casa, the Community Arts Centre
in downtown Lethbridge, as well as Wednesday evenings
at 5:30 p.m. at Southminster United Church.
28 | APRIL 2017 • BEATROUTE ROCKPILE