Kilometre Club

Toronto’s Daniel Field (he/him, b. September 6, 1984) first used the moniker Kilometre Club in 2012, creating folksy electronica with limited instruments. A short EP and one live performance followed, and then the project went silent, with Daniel focusing instead on writing folky indie music, his family of three young children, and his full time job as an elementary school teacher. 

Daniel has been making music and recording since he was 12 years old, writing hundreds of folky songs, recording using just about any method possible – usually with limited fidelity or attention to detail – playing sporadic shows solo and with friends and family. 

In mid-2020, Daniel entered the dual rabbit holes of synthesizers and guitar pedals. After a period of limited creativity due to just a few of the world’s events, he began a vast and ambitious project to create a song for every subway station on Toronto’s TTC, with tracks timed and themed to the distances between each, released under the reincarnated Kilometre Club name. With press from local and national organizations, Daniel used the momentum to further explore electronic sounds and textures.

Kilometre Club’s early music was mostly electronica on the experimental side, culminating in the bizarre and slightly silly ‘Symphony for Funeral Kazoo’, which featured synthesized voices reading nonsense or public domain content over cacophonies of synths, guitars, kazoos, and more. 

Ambient music has been a genre that has found a home in Daniel’s life for many years, playing the background to many report cards written, assignments marked, and silence filled. Soon, Kilometre Club evolved to become an almost exclusively ambient project. As the eight album TTC project completed in September 2021, very few of Daniel’s songs would use percussion. 

With increased focus on textures and tones, Kilometre Club’s ambient music began gaining traction on streaming services, especially Spotify. The majority of Kilometre Club’s music has been released independently, though he has released music on Mare Nostrum Label, Valley View Records, Slow Echo, Intraset, and Sound Meditation. 

Kilometre Club’s sound often features layers of synthesizers, guitar swells and loops, ethereal textures that often evoke nostalgia, and on some tracks, field recordings of nature, cities, or household items.

With over 300 tracks released since September 2020, Kilometre Club has been extremely  prolific in exploring a variety of themes, sounds and concepts. Some highlights include:

Kilometre Club’s TTC (2020-2021) – eight albums and 76 tracks timed and themed to every Toronto subway station

Spooky Season (2020) / Spooky Season 2 (2021) / Spooky Season 3 (2022) – Halloween themed dark ambient

Lost Signal (2021) – an astronaut loses touch with earth, far from home

Let Us Paint a Better World (2021) – a three-song suite exploring hope and possibility

Then (2022) – field recordings of a walk on a busy street just after a snowfall coupled with textured and subtle drones

Futures (2022) / Presents: Futures Reworks (2022) / Pasts (2023) – imaginary soundtracks to dystopian Canadian novels; a remix album by Canadian artists and a sparse reimagination the tracks followed

Minus Time (2022) /  Dream Gopher (2023) – tracks composed as quickly as possible with strict time parameters for completion

Memory Canvas (2022) – tracks inspired by long-defunct stores in southern Ontario, with sounds designed to evoke nostalgia

In May 2022, Daniel launched the ambient label Imaginary North, focusing on high concept compilations and releases from Toronto and beyond. With almost monthly releases, it culminated in the June 2023 release of Today Until Tomorrow, a 24-hour-long album of longform ambient and experimental music calling attention to climate change.

Kilometre Club is continuing to make music, collaborating with local and international musicians, beginning to put together live performances of his music, and finding new ways to share his sounds to the world.