Contact:
Artist
https://darkskysociety.bandcamp.com/
Label
Mar Sellars | mar@envisionmanagement.com
Tour Dates
“Dark Sky Society came out of a spirit where making something with friends became the point.” - co-leader William Hesselink
Not to do anything halfheartedly, Montreal’s newest artist collective Dark Sky Society announce their existence as a band, project, artist ensemble and society today with a debut single, album & live show announcement all at once.
The album, As Above So Below, is a massive 57 minute composition / visual album / audiovisual experience created, composed and directed by the members Dark Sky Society. The album and film explore simultaneous multiple perspectives: the cosmological and the microscopic, hand-made and computer generation, digital and analog, large ensembles and individuals, multiple tonal centres and multiple rhythmic timeframes.
Dark Sky Society is led by Vid Cousins and William Hesselink, supported by Ryhna Thompson, and is made up of 14 musicians and 5 filmmakers. While the artists involved have collaborated in many different forms over the years, As Above So Below is the debut work of the Society as a whole.
The idea of the society has been in the making for a decade. Its origins are the product of the early 2000s Montreal music scene. The city’s music community had this incredible energy and urgency and was a magnet for all kinds of creatives. There was this amazing anti-corporate DIY ethos embodied by artists like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Constellation Records that made it feel like groups of friends making art for art’s sake was a viable pursuit. Society leaders, Vid & William, would go to shows and watch Sam Shalabi’s 20+ member Land of Kush play these incredible, bizarre, long-form compositions at the Masonic Temple or Nicolas Caloia’s massive Ratchet Orchestra pack the stage and room at the Sala Rossa and it always felt like a family reunion.
Dark Sky Society came out of this spirit where making something with friends became the point. It began as ideas from Vid and William and then quickly turned into a fun way to hang out with friends (Keiko and Nathan) and then snowballed as they started recording. Recording led to more ideas, which led to more recording, which led to more ideas. That core was surrounded with acoustic instruments like guitar, double contrabass, harp, brass, bass saxophone, flute and vintage mono and polysynthesizers.
The songs would start from some sketch of a part that was fun to play because of its challenge and because it was meditative in some aspects. Often that was because it was polyrhythmic and you would have to be 100% present to be able to perform it. When you lock into that with a group of friends, time stops and you can feel incredibly fortunate, like you have been given this gift of communication on a secret, rare frequency.
The visuals extended from that. Hours spent hanging out and recording and mixing were often accompanied by great books on Cosmigraphics and The Liberal Arts (in particular The Quadrivium, which are the ancient arts of numbers: (Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy and Music). When the pandemic forced them apart they dug into the idea of extending their sound project into the visual realm. This wasn’t a new idea for them, as both of them had been involved in projects where a film component was at the core and it was very common in Montreal with many people doing inspiring work.
They reached out to four artists whose work they loved who worked in contrasting media: Tracy Maurice (Chemical macrophotography), David Barlow-Krelina (3D digital animation), Cielle Graham (Hand-drawn illustration) and Corinne Merrell (Miniatures and Maquettes) and together developed a process they called “circular generation” to mirror what they felt they were doing musically. Ideas would be passed around and combined and built. The hope was that, in the end, they would get to participate in the creation of something much grander than anything they could have made on their own.