We Are Busy Bodies is celebrating its 20th anniversary with a five-day festival. This celebration coincides with the label’s 200th release: the third album by Saskatchewan ambient jazz group, Peace Flag Ensemble, set to be released in March 2025. The album, titled Everything Is Possible, is a fitting reflection of the label’s journey and achievements.
“We Are Busy Bodies has always been a labor of love,” says founder Eric Warner. “I’ve always believed that I could find an audience—whether a few hundred, a thousand, or more—that shares my passion for discovering new music."
Stefan Gnyś (pronounced G'neesh) recorded what would have been his first album Horizoning, at Heidebrecht Recording Services in St. Catherine, Ontario, Canada on April 21st 1969. Ten tracks were cut in a day-long session that Stefan had perfected over the previous 12 months, with the songs Horizoning and English Oaks having been inspired by a trip to the UK and Europe during the eventful summer of 1968.
Recorded less than a year after Funky Africa, South African guitar wizard Almon Memela returned under the release name Soweto to issue Broken Shoes. The album features two fifteen-minute songs that saw Memela backed by none other than Soweto's Pelican Club house band.
Lauded by The Wire as having made “two of the most beguiling electronic albums of recent years,” and described by The Guardian as “something of a virtual one-man Radiophonic Workshop from Vancouver”, Kristen Roos returns with a third volume of his Universal Synthesizer Interface series, to be released November 22nd.
Pioneering Scottish-Canadian animator Norman McLaren (1914-1987) – creator of seminal short films Dots, Neighbours, Synchromy and many more – as founder of the animation studio at the National Film Board of Canada is remembered in first ever release of soundtrack works, self-composed from the 1940’s to 1970’s and forecasting the following half-century of electronic music.
Photo Credit: Wilfried Good Eyes Following on from his self-titled 2022 debut, Togolese singer and guitarist Dogo du Togo introduces his new Lomé-based Alagaa Beat Band with the album Avoudé Recorded in less than 48 hours with help from renowned engineer Patrick Jauneaud (Elton John, Kate Bush, Queen), Avoudé represents a new evolution of ...
Annarella and Django’s debut album is a sublime, often dream-like musical tapestry that links West Africa & Scandinavia, featuring Swedish jazz flautist Annarella and ngoni harp master Django, from Mali, cousin of the late and great Toumani Diabate. Referring to the album’s tender production touch (by Annarella), transcendental grooves and jazz improvisations and harmonies, Jouer, meaning ‘play’ in French, was recorded between Dakar and Stockholm.
Can machines sing? With his Synthetic album cycle, Rich Aucoin answers that question with a resounding, exuberant “yes.” The four-part project sweeps listeners through a gallery tour of synthesis history, giving voice to a chorus of specimens from the past century of electronic sound. On Season 3, Aucoin deepens his dive into the variegated genealogy of dance music, charting a joyful course through the many flavors of rave euphoria.
Music For Horses is Christo Graham’s 10th album and third to be released on October 4 by We Are Busy Bodies. The album is a bit of a return to Graham’s 2020 record Turnin’s sensibilities. He had written those songs over a year and recorded them all to tape within a month and took a similar approach with these songs.
Michael Scott Dawson’s latest offering, The Tinnitus Chorus, is an album of wide-eyed collaborations. He is joined by an inspired cast of revered friends and kindred strangers including Suso Saiz, M. Sage (Fuubutsushi), Eli Winter, K. Freund, (Trouble Books / Lemon Quartet), Dasom Baek, Lina Langendorf (Langendorf United), Vumbi Dekula, Jairus Sharif, Yutaka Hirasaka, and his bandmates in Peace Flag Ensemble...
Today, Canadian-Algerian multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, producer and DJ, Aladean Kheroufi announces Studies In A Dying Love, his debut album out June 7th via Toronto-based label We Are Busy Bodies. A stunning and cathartic portrait of a relationship’s collapse, Aladean looks to classic soul, forgotten Chicano rhythms and dreamy folk-rock for an emotional dive into ...