You Are My Symphonic

Halloween's Weekend

2011-10-29T17:05:00.005-04:00

Well in the usual last minute movements just before a Halloween party, I was scouring the streets and my mind for costume ideas. My morning meditation session yielded only visions of prop-driven costumes that had me carrying an inflatable anvil or round ended weights & a tattered and inverted umbrella. Props are usually my friends at Halloween. Last year, Mar & I went to the park and gathered up some leaves and branches while keeping watch for the cops as unsure criminals. Lots of tape later & with a stuffed toy owl sitting in my shirt, I was instantly a tree. Several thumbs up from constant judging tied to Halloween told me that I had pulled it off. But with a tight spaced party in the future plans for this evening, I figured I better tighten things up. A gorilla suit had a hold on me, but the heat would prove to be unbearable and the crucial drinking hole in the mouth was missing. A wig, curly moustache, a doctor's coat & a big novelty foam finger will make me some kind of weirdo proctologist, even to be confused with Borat. Fall forgive me, but wish me luck.

Best,

Vish
(You Are My Symphonic)

CBC Radio 2 Airplay & SCQ Review

2011-10-29T16:52:00.009-04:00

It was by chance that I checked Laurie Brown's CBC Radio 2: The Signal playlist on my way out from work & I was thrown back in my seat when I saw You Are My Symphonic in the first hour of the broadcast. I started on with the social media & texting various friends and family. My sister, Ro, even called my mother, who's birthday was the same day, to help her dial into the CBC station out of Toronto. It was an extremely fulfilling moment to hear those first few scattered notes of "Autumn Will Fall in Love" hit the airwaves. A beautiful moment to be played, especially with the autumn theme of the broadcast. If that wasn't enough, the highlight description of The Signal Podcast #66 featured the uneasy history of I Found Your Faces of Montreal. Then, to cap it off, "I Traveled Home" was put into the rotation on Monday. Take the podcast with you in your autumn walks and don't be surprised to discover new contemporary experimental music with The Signal.

CBC Radio 2 The Signal Podcast #66 (First hour which features YAMS)

CBC Radio 2 The Signal (Full Broadcast Stream)

Exploring through the independent & experimental music scene can result in adventurous sea stories of the times you stumbled upon growing musical collectives, all-star mixers & masters and microlabels putting out handcrafted keep-sakes. Ryan Pratt, who is at the helm of The Skeleton Crew Quarterly (SCQ), has a well earned reputation for truly understanding and keeping up with the steady flow of albums, both personal and promotional, that land at his doorstep, giving the attention these albums deserve. With his endless support, Ryan has written a review for ABOA & had asked me to contribute to his Year End Review Feature back in 2009. This week, IFYFOM was featured in his Quarterly Feature which explores music tied to the natural growth or decay of a season. It's a great honour to have the album rated at 88% & to be at home with other autumn tones. Enjoy the review & the depths of music where SCQ is continually steering us towards.

SCQ Review of IFYFOM (Autumn Records Feature)

Best,

Vish

(You Are My Symphonic)

The October Turn

2011-10-10T16:07:00.009-04:00

Busting the 20 degree celsius mark over a holiday weekend in the middle of a Canadian October is about as strange as finding imagery of change on a Caribbean beach where the temperature and sun beams flirt within a very tight and predictable margin. Two weeks away with Mar alongside the still turquoise waters & white sands gives a seemingly infinite set of moments to feel connected in some way. It's a side of me that isn't unlocked very often in this northern climate, and emerges when I drift closer towards the humid sun of my birthplace, Trinidad.

My father enjoys telling me stories of his past, navigating the oceans and seas of the world, the ebb & flow of the currents & tides. I spent so much time in the water that even in the night, I could feel the frequent movements of the sea from my abdomen to my grown sea legs. Waves traverse the globe and crash into the shores, pulverizing some ancient rocks into fine beach grains. The horizon is cut straight by the blue sky at the unattainable distance. I found out later that our minds give into the illusion, believing its much farther away than the 3 miles where it actually lies. It's true you can never catch it after you start running towards it, but then again, the possibilities are much closer than we'd like to think. It's funny to imagine that the Flat Earth Society put all their chips into a belief bet that could have been revealed, merely 3 miles out.

Monica Farago is a personality you'd love to meet. Her's is a character that has grown to fill all the seams of her spirit. Multi-faceted & energetic, I was honored when she decided to write an article about You Are My Symphonic's two releases: ABOA & IFYFOM. She speaks of my love affair with aviation & goes as far as to call me a "musical master chef". A great friend & music lover, thank you Monica for all your support. You can check out her article at the following link:

Toe Jam Mondays: You Are My Symphonic Blends Intelligence & Beats

I remember to one year ago this weekend when I shot the footage with Mar, Vas & Kelly at Le Massif mountain in Quebec, Canada. David Woodford edited those images into this beautiful piece. If you haven't already seen it, I trust this will help wrap you in the colors of the season.

Leaning into the turn through October,

Vish (You Are My Symphonic)

YAMS Featured by No Ripcord & Interviewed by Nanolog

2011-08-14T19:23:00.008-04:00

Well the start of August has been a furious push forward for the release of "I Found Your Faces of Montreal" (IFYFOM). Within the span of a week, I was delighted to hear such positive feedback on the album which was accompanied by some very exciting requests!

First off, the highly acclaimed online indie music & film magazine, "No Ripcord", has featured You Are My Symphonic in their monthly "Your New Favorite Band" feature where they profile two under-the-radar acts. That in itself was highly rewarding for me, but, it turns out this is also a competition! The artist whose profile article receives the most 'Tweets' and Facebook 'Likes' will win the title of No Ripcord Readers New Artist of the Month along with one month's worth of free banner advertising and a coveted spot on our monthly podcast, The No RipCast. So, check out the link below! I hope you enjoy the article & please vote!

Your New Favorite Band #6: You Are My Symphonic

Simultaneously, the heart-on-sleeve photography & music blogger behind "Nanolog" has reviewed the YAMS catalogue from "Afternoon Birds of Arima" (ABOA) to IFYFOM. Those albums seem to come along at the right time in a very sunny Scotland & I thoroughly enjoyed reading this personal take on the albums. He also asked me to participate in his "Seven Questions With..." series which is an open-ended conversation starter to find out what makes artists tick.

Nanolog's 'You Are My Symphonic' Post

Seven Questions with Vishal Kassie AKA 'You Are My Symphonic'

Onwards With August,

Vish (You Are My Symphonic)

IFYFOM Release Party at The Loyola Chapel: Filled With Good Souls

2011-07-15T20:57:00.011-04:00

It was truly expected, given the long, vast & troubled story of the last four years, that the moments leading up to June 25th echoed the writing of "I Found Your Faces of Montreal". For several weeks, I had been searching for the right venue to both host my friends & family and to mirror the mood that I had envisaged for this album's first showcase. On a chance evening drive to a comedy club in the western Quebec countryside is where Paris-mate Stu & Helen fell into a conversation about multiculturalism & artistic possibilities, centered around The Loyola Chapel. This once Catholic stone church with high arched ceilings had been handed over to the University and it's up-keep & personality was being groomed daily by Helen. A few afternoons later, we sat on the side-door steps and charted out the initial ideas for the release party.

Over the coming weeks, I had the pleasure of rehearsing through the night in this ancient space, becoming familiar with her lights, shadows, acoustics & rustic smells. Like the strongest thread of "I Found Your Faces of Montreal", this first and most special show was pulled forward with the hands of my friends & family.

Truest thanks to Mar for sitting at the center of the chapel & listening for the right mix balance, Roshini for sacrificing 24 hours on a bus to only spend 24 hours in Montreal which most were filled with frantic preparations, Davy for stitching together & projecting the places that we've visited, My dear Toronto friends who made the trip to this city, The many friends that helped move pews & kept the energy flowing, Matei for preserving these moments through photographs, Helen & her crew for their support and extremely gratifying atmosphere, The passersby that walked in & enjoyed these moments, All the souls, both in body & spirit, that couldn't be at the Chapel, your support and love took a seat among us in the intimate cluster of pews.

The night surpassed all of my desires & my fingers felt nimble on the guitar and piano. I had the opportunity to speak with each of you after the performance about your reactions & feelings. I sensed your deep kinship with the music, visuals, atmosphere & their encircling stories. The success of the evening was revealed in those telling moments, when you felt how much you all are intertwined with this 8-song personal diary.

Your incredible generosity through the evening led to a total possible donation of 110$ towards charity. As many of you know, I have been a volunteer with the Canadian Red Cross and I have taken part in various relief efforts. Half of the donation has been given to the Canadian Red Cross to continue to support the victims of the Quebec flooding which began during the spring-thaw. My sister has spearheaded a few programs on behalf of the Lung Association aimed at enhancing our air quality & health. Breath is one of the basic & simple elements of life which is also directly linked to our emotions. The remaining half of the donation has been given to the New Brunswick Lung Association to help contribute to clean air initiatives.

I remember feeling awkward when answering that almost generic question when you meet new people: "So, what do you do?". Standard responses include listing the top line of your resume. Momentum gathered from the immense journey of "I Found Your Faces of Montreal" & this very special evening showcase with you all has solidified that my pool of words to draw from should always begin with musician, artist & to wherever that leads.

The Very Best,

Vish (You Are My Symphonic)

Photography by Matei Dragutescu Photography Alex and Matei

www.alex4d.deviantart.com & www.alexwedding.deviantart.com

From I Found Your Faces of Montreal

I Found Your Faces Of Montreal

2011-06-18T13:15:00.034-04:00

Mastered by Mark Beazley of Trace Recordings

300 Limited Edition CD & Digital

Total Running Time: 52:18

Release Date & Launch Event: June 25th, 2011

The Loyola Chapel, Montreal, Canada

Live Set, Visuals, Cocktails for Charity

Event Details Click Here

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://youaremysymphonic.bandcamp.com/album/i-found-your-faces-of-montreal"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;I Found Your Faces Of Montreal by You Are My Symphonic&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Press Release:

It seems almost fated that You Are My Symphonic’s love-letter to Montreal would be usurped by his previous stomping-ground but that’s what happened when, during a Toronto stay in 2008, Vishal Kassie’s laptop was stolen. For fans well aware of how location often shapes this songwriter’s muse, the symbolism was particularly treacherous; that the near-finished recordings – which chronicled the forward-thinking changes in Kassie’s Montreal life – managed to evaporate mere hours after he’d stepped foot onto Toronto concrete suggested he’d never left, or grown, at all.

A complete do-over, then, but one Kassie doesn’t lament for a second. In fact, the robbery set the gears in motion for a better album. “It took that moment to shake my guard and help me write some of those lyrics that I truly love now,” Kassie writes from his in-home studio. With the support of his friends and family already tied into the record’s narrative, I Found Your Faces Of Montreal suddenly swelled with new purpose. The record jumped from six songs to eight, while its title track – originally an instrumental – transformed into a lyrical centerpiece. “The aftermath of that whole experience was when I put down the lyrics to the title song,” Kassie remembers. It would be but the first of countless revisions, with each alteration adapting to the promise that one can never truly go back.

Re-recorded over a three-year span, I Found Your Faces Of Montreal also recounts a gradual shift from the electronic apex of 2009’s stopgap release Afternoon Birds Of Arima back to the folky CD-Rs Kassie began handing out nearly a decade ago. Organic instrumentation provides an anchor to You Are My Symphonic’s romantic sensibilities, allowing the lilt of an acoustic guitar (on ‘Meet Me In Trinity’) or a grizzled harmonica (‘My Father And His Sister’) to share space with Kassie’s now trademarked beds of ambience. Driving many of these compositions beyond their electro-acoustic loveliness are Kassie’s vocals, which convey yearning in a way that sharpens the album’s melodious veneer.

By romancing both the city (‘Autumn Will Fall In Love’) and, occasionally, its citizens (‘Rooftop’), these instances act as intersections to the rich, emotional geography of I Found Your Faces Of Montreal. Bracing our nomadic steps with wide-eyed meditations on love, ancestry and distance, You Are My Symphonic has inadvertently written the ideal companion disc for traveling alone. “As painful as it was to restart I Found Your Faces Of Montreal, I wouldn’t trade this new version for anything,” Kassie states, “It sounds right.” And as someone who has worked so hard at rediscovering his sound, it’s befitting that You Are My Symphonic also found home in the process.

Available At:

& &

Great Lake Swimmers - Lost Channels

2011-06-15T00:04:00.002-04:00

My collegues were all surprised of my intention to hop onboard a Via Rail train and settle into a seat for 14 hours towards the heart of New Brunswick. To them, the over-night train promised to be a rocking wagon with the windows pointing out to the black depths of the Canadian sky. To me, the thought of this trip danced in my head for too many reasons. Seeing my sister in her element under the late spring air and to polish out the finishing touches of my longest musical project, I Found Your Faces Of Montreal.

I wanted a window seat but learned that they pushed the sales until they were sold out, so I had to take an aisle. My grumbling faded quickly when I stretched out on the seats and with a walk around the cars by going through an Apollo style automatic airlock. My seat mate for this dusk to dawn cycle was a gentle old man buttoned up in red flannel. Packing has always been a rush and following that trend of normalcy, I had only my cellphone with one of the lowest megapixel counts. I cocked my arm up against the seat and attempted to stretch the tiny lens to capture the scenes speeding by. I caught his face in fifteen photos looking over the Quebec countryside warmed by the sun, in the the dying light, covered by a blanket in the late hours, at morning alongside a river and a pine forest and squinting to see through the foggy salt water bay and her towns. In the last five minutes before I was to step off at the station in Miramichi he told me that he had lived in St. Catharines, Ontario, for 40 years, the small city where I spent my high school years, and he never could call it his home. It wasn't until I pulled on the strap to my shoulder bag resting on a luggage cart that I realized those photographs I took of his perspective were actually of mine.

Ro picked me up and we drove down the Miramichi River Route and watched the landscape blend the rolling hills and pines with the small towns hugging the river beds each with their own white church steeples. Machinery and trucks sprawled across the lawns and driveways of homes were jagged contrasts to the countryside that I wanted to visit and urged me to keep Ro on the pedal. After a burningly hot dinner at a Caribbean restaurant, of all places, we walked the river front trail where showboat steamers would break from their nightly push with travelers and class acts to be moored along these shores. The preserved old government house was shielded by windows and the glow of orange candle lights that reflected onto to paint the shivers all of all things haunted. The sun disappeared when we crossed past a hedge which marked the house's property and entered the ancient Native Indian land and an erected monument. A cat ran out of the shadows towards us and I jumped, but passed it off as excitement to my sister.

The next morning brought Ro's Birthday and she put me to work by building two barbecues and a patio table. In the late afternoon we stepped into Jubilee Chinese Buffet which had a strong likeness to a converted hockey arena. Out of mind was the ad-laden paper placements and our focus shifted to the chasoo pork. We drove in the fading light into Saint John to pick up with Amy on our way to Churchill's to have a few beers and spinach dip with pita chips. The constant level of bar chatter and laughter carried me upstairs to the bathroom hallway where I found old browned photographs of train yards. We slept at Leah's place, where Amy was squatting, which in turn made us second level squatters. I curled up on the long couch of the living room which housed a fireplace and joked about ghosts, but half expected them to appear when called for by the creaky floors when I woke up to go to the bathroom.

We picked up Kel & Cath in the morning and toured around uptown Saint John. Duke street corner buildings with a view down the hill to the harbour, a mansion listed at $750000 ready-to-buy, Germainia and to the market for soaps & picnic items. Descending from the Hollywood sign hill to cross the harbour bridge with 50 cents, pushing on the lower shore towards the Maine border and St. Andrews. The tide pulled out to let us walk out on the sea bed with the unseen rocks that rest on the bottom. Kelly nicknamed Catherine after her boots, but she was the only one dry and comfortable. She later acknowledged her strong packing decisions by wearing all the shoes she carried for the trip. We put our feet in the water with the same personalities of our younger selves, touch-tank starfish and sea cucumbers.

Feet running along the river trail towards the lighthouse of safety. Unpacked the supplies & found ourselves staring at a mirror reflecting our parents - I manned the BBQ & Roshini was posted to the kitchen & Kel woke up just in time. Pictures in the garden backyard brought flashes of kelly and I on a patio, with a boy she can't control, running out to see cool uncle Vish. Ro cracked an old 2006 Vintage that she stored in her apartment cellar and we toasted with Auntie Diane's choir practice tape, full of scales. Clocks turned and the garden party evolved from day to midnight, "Stealing Tomorrow" by breezes carrying that long weekend feeling.

At the airport, the four of us stood for photos that would be tucked away into nostalgic boxes, awaiting to be discovered. A Westjet employee attempted to guilt us into thinking we would make the plane late. We squeezed a said goodbye and watched the plane take off on the far side of the field. The road to St. Martins descended to an expansive salt marsh, the turns sharpening, left then right, following the trail past an inlet cove harbour and across a covered bridge towards the rock beach with both awarded-winning chowder and the world's best chowder. We settled on award-winning but surprisingly the fries tasted like they were pinched from KFC. The distant shoreline mountains were touched by fog and I put my feet in the Fundy Bay waters and froze to death while Ro struggled to find the capture button on my cell camera.

The salt ocean retreated from battering the caves, opening a view of the land that used to be tropical sea beds, it's layers giving us a surfaced insight at ten stories high but still hiding thousand more ancient secrets in between it's pages. Newfoundland's 'Black Rock' came crashing down under harsh Atlantic currents. New Brunswick's sandy rocks are carefully pulled away by the gentle hand of the tides. I tasted the brackish water, half-salt half-fresh. Kids on holidays came towards us slowly, zombie-like, spread apart & stumbling on the rock beach. Reversing our turns through the windy road, we found the harbour cove dry, fishing boats rested on stilts on the muddy floor. If you took a day off, the bay would steal your boat or leave it to die.

We drove the Fiddle Head route, around the peninsula to Grand Bay, marsh land coves, connected by the river crossing ferries that the people fought hard to keep. My sister was confident with her hands on the wheel, flowing down, up & around the shorelines, only one season after her crash on the icy main highway. We talked for hours and agreed to knock down some trees in this valley to build her a home on the hilly farm lands kept rich from the river marshes.

Gord Downie And The Country Of Miracles - The Grand Bounce

2010-09-11T17:54:00.015-04:00

A couple of hours before we left the apartment, I told Mar about the countless times that I had listened to the Kingpin's "Let's Go To Work" in high school and romanticized living in Montreal. Summer day rays must have blanketed these people and their streets differently. The allure of catching the "Last Train to Expo '67" to lay hands on the promise of new life beneath the futuristic canopy in a city truly special, something pulled against the grains of time.

"Yellow Days" greeted us when we entered LaRonde on the island dreamed from the documentary stock footage that came to life with the passing of the covered monorail that toured the amusement park. We rode the plot driven named rides like how we must have in our younger years. Le Monstre was the fastest wooden rollercoaster I think I've ever let take control of my life. In line at the haunted house rollercoaster that was intended for children mostly, but not advised for pregnant women, we enjoyed chats about birth's from women who didnt' even know they were pregnant. We screamed a few laughs when the operator put us through the ride twice in a row and we left when the sun was peaking through the July skies. Beneath the LaRonde tower, The Pirate, swung back and forth until at the top you felt your seat fall from under you slightly and you could have sworn for a second, you had flown. I got the courage to wait until the cusp to turn to my left and towards the Montreal skyline underlined by my growing chest that Montreal was where I belonged. The night brought a fireworks display carefully choreographed with the background vocals exploding minature powder flashes in the sky.

The gates shared a view with the iron Jacques Cartier bridge and it's abandoned supporting building gave off an expression of being mostly haunted. I imagined that this may have been where hundreds of people went to work everyday for the port, under the boom of the bridge and the fleuve. I've crossed that bridge once before, near the end of that long bus ride back from la Beauce with Len which was the first long trip for me at 15 years of age. In the middle of the night, the iron structure took us well above the island and I looked down at LaRonde for the first time. We were incredibly hungry when we stumbled into some fast food and ate before the final leg of the journey back to Ontario. My personal landmark of that Burger King is nowhere to be found today.

At work that week, we had gotten an email with the dashboard of the Delorean from "Back to the Future" with the date Jul 6 2010 on the time circuit. This was dubbed the year when Marty McFly arrived into the future of hover cars and pizzas that grow from the size of a dollar to an extra large in 30 seconds of microwave time. A co-worker promptly told the email chain that this date was lifted from another scene and, in fact, it was 2015. So, we survived meeting up with the future for another five years. The magic of moments in the summer with great imagination can put too much promise and importance into the future. We'll never stop romanticizing it and hoping for the best, and in some way, we always end up living it.

Fair Day from Jun Kang on Vimeo.

Afternoon Birds Of Arima

2010-08-27T23:08:00.016-04:00

Last summer, my good friends Richard and Keisha asked me in their casual way to write the notes that would start their lives together. The character of the next three seasons found their way into Afternoon Birds of Arima which was played at their wedding at Santa Rosa Catholic Church in Arima, Trinidad and Tobago on May 16th, 2009. This album also marks the 22 years it took for me to return to my birthplace and to explore a life that I once knew.

The Northeast trade winds that we felt pass through the curtains recaptured those childhood images that became faded and helped paint the lines of the pages that you'll write together.

For Richard And Keisha.

released 26 June 2009

All music written and produced by Vishal Kassie

Vocals on Rainfall In Arima (Closing Credits) by Anna Farago

Former Ghosts - Fleurs

2010-08-09T17:18:00.006-04:00

It seemed like clockwork that my Swedish car would develop fall into a broken bone and her walk taunted me like a vicious lover's cycle. On her good days, whatever gentle pressure was needed for the road to followed her wheels was never felt in my in lungs or in my hands that held it steady. Her mood shifted in the clutch and we enjoyed and I hated the times we made up before we fell into it all again. One week before my April birthday, I drove the 401 route to Toronto for the last time with the SAAB. The catch was that I had to extend my drive to Brampton to visit my long winded cousin that can evaporate hours and your breath. He told me to meet me at a bar called "Tracks" which was behind the banks and in the lot beside the train track overpass. We shared a few beers and enjoyed our conversations. We stayed later than intended as he brushed off our need to return to Kel's place at a decent time. None of this was a surprise. One o'clock brought us to Kel's and she greeted us at the door half asleep and we exchanged updating conversations until she was too tired to stay up.

My cousin was to take my car and prepare it for sale and at the same time rid me of the social requirement to have a car and collect a 10% commission. The nostalgic orange sky drive from earlier that evening didn't resurface and I felt no longing saying goodbye to that car. When I walked back into her to house, Kel immediately woke up and put ideas on the table that included late night drinks as she pulled a party favour from behind her ear. She offered me a Bud Light Lime and I could taste the freshness in my tongue during her description. Some time ago, her and Cath visited me in Montreal and got me hooked on So Nice, a soy based milk beverage, but conveniently omitted the fact that it had been linked to impotence. In the same sentence as the Lime beer she offered me a So Nice slushie and we added vodka - I was destroyed with laughter.

The next day, Cath, Kel and I headed towards Greektown for lunch at my aunt's and our favorite restaurants, Mezes. We drove past Cath's soon to be father-in-law Mr. Donahue on the corner of Danforth and a side street. The car slowed and I rolled down the passenger windown and said "good afternoon Sir". He laughed and was surprised, but before we could say another word Cath hit the gas to take the corner and we drove onwards to find a parking spot at the side of the road with the past due bananas in the backseat for Kel to make her bread.

That night Dani and David took me out for an early birthday dinner at a sushi restaurant close to our old haunts. Most of my vision of the night is blurred but I remember Dani gave me an amazing card with flying saucer with a little boy inside shaded in brown with a crayon. The cover brought a laugh but her words were of the most special and still sits on my bedside table.

Reverend Niles has been around their families for years and gave the service when my aunt celebrated her musical life and when she moved on from it. Cath naturally visited him in that familiar Markham church to ask him to be at the center of Cath's wedding atop the Manulife center surrounded by a panorama of the city that breathed life into their childhoods, their own lives and my shaping in the shadows of the buildings in University years. Her satisfied drive home demanded a nostalgic soundtrack and she searched that old beat up green Corolla but found nothing except for an ancient tape deck with a working spool inside. Without a though the play button was pressed and rising a falling scales sung by her mother and her vocal coach crackled and strained the speakers. The loop of this tape played for her mother to hear the depths of her tone for the many choir shows they and I attended.

Cath asked me to write some notes for her wedding and urged me to use this tape filled with the Former Ghosts that will carry us from the August Sunday afternoon light to the neon flicker of the nightly city. Riding the elevator, we'll use these moments to tell our Mother the new moments we've shared and our excitement for the ones to come.

Ry told me his first listen to Former Ghosts involved walking the rainy Thanksgiving streets of his hometown in a neighbourhood, somewhat foreign, where his parents had moved. He later read that "Fleurs" was so reverb laden that if you strung out all of its spools, it would drift on for years.

Epic45 - May Your Heart Be The Map

2010-07-21T22:48:00.012-04:00

Nico was a good friend of mine who showed me around the city when I first arrived in Montreal. He introduced me to his French friends, their parties and their lives while trying to make jokes in two languages against a backdrop of a single red painted wall per apartment in the Plateau.

A Sunday morning in the summer, we had a breakfast of crepes and shared a window pane with a backyard terrace whose stones were darkened by the rain. I hesitated everytime the waitress stood by with her pen and pad listening for my order of french pastries. In the car ride home, I watched the glued rain drops on the window pane and said a brunch goodbye to Nico, his Mom who was visiting from La Reunion and Laurent and Caro.

I swung open my door and grabbed my umbrella without a second thought and turned around towards the direction pointing to where I had just been. It immediately started to rain as I walked the stone streets which were forced upwards and delicately torn apart over the years under the falling water. Alongside Parc Jeanne Mance on the asphalt path with giant trees standing as fence posts, the rain turned and confronted me head on to keep me out. After falling miles, the sheets of rain pushed me under a tennis court overhang. Afternoon rivers formed and they walked down the concrete stairway and it's falls spilled into the sidewalk. My pant legs were soaked and I waited in the crisp air with delayed rain drops crashing and finding eachother all around me. I closed my eyes and I could hear their wide texture.

It's intensity slowed and I jumped over these new landscapes and walked up towards Laurier. I found myself at the cafe, looking in through it's window to her and her workmates in the brunch closing hour. Standing beneath the neighbour's overhang, I planned my move inside and I delayed it. She emerged and walked the other way with her black umbrella open. I ran after her across the abandoned main street and down a house filled road.

In my broken french I tried explaining that I was at her cafe earlier and that I didn't have the courage to linger around her smile and that if we could over a coffee. I told her my name and Alexandria told me hers in an auburn french accent. She told me she was sorry and that she was taken, in the rain, she was late in meeting him. She gave me thanks and I was convinced she embraced the warm gesture. My urgency left with the empty wet streets. The sparse and floating keys of "The Balloonist" carried me back down towards my home but never once broke my smile of tasting what a morning after summer brunch could have been and the reasons why this was the last day I wasn't going to tell you that I've gone ahead and fallen for you.

Midway into the summer and in between parting ways with Nico after a party to take a walk with my headphones down my brick lined street and phoning me up that Sunday morning, he learnt that this was the week he was going to quit his job in the city, leave for the islands and pursue his dream of being a pilot. Then he casually invited me to brunch. It was the same weekend in June, when I first moved to Montreal, that he left after seeing me through the year.

Sitting with friends, chatting over brunch, to try and capture the last night and day, May your heart be the map.

Riding Rails Through Fields

2010-05-18T22:52:00.003-04:00

I've packed my bag full of clothes and managed to squeeze in my laptop the night before I board the train bound for the East Coast. I'm expecting the purple-red sky to greet me as we say goodbye to the Montreal cityscape and begin carving new lines in the country fields and worn pathways of the pine forests. I won't step off until Miramichi to meet my sister and the few days before Kel and Cath meet us for the holiday weekend. I imagine I'll have my headphones on most of the time, finishing off the last pieces of I Found Your Faces Of Montreal, which will be scattered along the coast of New Brunswick.

There are many hopes and desires for this new record which have been bounced off a few characters which you may have read about here. Be sure to check back in a few weeks for more much needed stories, album release news and promises of videos.

Rolling through the night to a morning,

You Are My Symphonic

Plastik Joy - 3:03

2010-02-27T03:40:00.012-05:00

I took a flight for Newfoundland that Wednesday morning and the seatbelt sign illuminated but our view was obscured in the immense fog. I felt that familiar turn over Signal Hill towards the airstrip at St. John's when the ceiling hung low and the rock appeared at almost the same instant that our feet touched the ground. Jennifer met me and we drove down the Trans-Canada and she slid her into neutral to coast down to the firehouse in Holyrood on the way to Betti's wake.

Funerals are unbearably final but wake's breathe light and provide a celebration that is desperately needed. I got to see all the usual family and friendly characters from past visits and the overwhelming presence of the community that spread across the entire bay and over the four wakes dotted by old photos, flowers, laugher and genuine eyes. A remembrance vigil that ended in her best friends singing at the casket and the girls hitting the demo button on the keyboard to play along with pre-programmed classics. Heaven isn't up in the white clouds but it begins when all of you walk in through those doors to share where she awakes. Sara kept it inside with a single band-aid over her heart.

He later told me that the grey clouds broke away for a few minutes as they descended into Avondale. We didn't see that blue sky again until Sunday. We woke up and the entire house started making brunch together with Mom's kitchen radio set to Newfoundland traditional and all the leftovers from the fridge that had been packed by the town's cooked hams and countless salads. The family left for the funeral home and I stayed behind to play with the kids. I transformed from a cat to a dog and then finally to a rabbit who got his paws bitten off as we ran around the lawn and took a drink from the sprinkler.

We drove up to Assumption cemetery and crossed the gate to the overgrown old section that hid headstones among the trees. I put my feet in the water at Black cove and I tried counting to ten.

We returned to find that everyone had decided to take an afternoon nap and we decided to follow. Karen and I went into the front meadow and she layed on a blanket while I stretched out on a chair beside her pointed towards the afternoon sun. I played through 3:03 and as I reached the back end, my nose was tickled by my allergies and realized if I continued to stifle my body, I would stop my breath. Marie was on the hammock behind me trying to sleep and I was facing the sun trying to breathe. I let out a giant sneeze at the end of that very track and woke her. I used the long pauses in between the guitar riffs on "Asynchrony of Lives" to calm down that late afternoon and sealed it as my favorite song of the year. I closed out "Imperfect Diarchies" at the edge of the front meadow looking past the clothes line towards the Blue Hills.

Sitting in the airplane on the tarmac full of rain and fog, I overheard a father asking his daugher one row in front of me what she thought we would see when we took off. I could see his excitement in telling her that once we break through the clouds the sun and her blue sky would be there waiting for us.

James Holden - Balance 005

2010-02-09T22:39:00.005-05:00

On another December, we were driving on the highway towards Montreal. The weak electronics of my Swedish car let my speakers down and left us with nothing for the 5 hour night-time ride. Luckily, Vas had the last minute idea to take advantage of a suburban big box store's return policy by renting the largest iPod dock they had on the shelves with the intention of dropping it off at the end of our trip with the explanation that it wasn't to our taste - full refund.

The freezing rain fell over the dark road to be churned up in the wheels of transport truck and were split into fractions arranged shoulder to shoulder creating a blanket of mist. Vas told me that he's at his most comfortable when his driver is confident, so I put the pedal down and the iHome with it's eventual busted Balance 005 speaker played us through the tense moments without knowing where we were pointed and if our exit would make us cry or scream but it always made us laugh with excitement.

Davy, Vas and I crossed to Parc Jean-Drapeau on the islands for Piknic Electronik that Labour Day Saturday evening. The sun began setting over the last moments of the summer and James Holden opened with that unmistakable MFA track. The four-corner speakers pointed towards the centre of the metallic assembly that was the Place De L'Homme bound together by giant rivets and lap joints. We stood watching and felt the swells rise and fall.

Vas and I were under the scattered spotlights that shone towards the dance floor spires just outside the sandy area where smokers and hoola-hoopers mingled. We related those landmarks to Davy by text message so that he could try to locate us and our glances caught a hoola-hoop that spun off her hands, flew upwards and fell perfectly around the shape of a lady standing by who was refreshingly excited that this plastic ring accidently fell from the sky. Davy texted back that he was down the wooden staircase near the water's edge.

Below the path at the rocks that touched the water, two bridges acted as bookends to the view of the city with the waves wiping left to right with a swift current. We joked that we lived at the centre of the Earth and decided to come out for the Labour Day festivities. We climbed up on rocks, roots, soil and grass to the surface. Davy looked up at the giant structure and told me that his mother came here during Expo '67 and it triggered her excitement to visit the world. I wondered if the passport that had to be presented and stamped each time she would enter a country's Expo display was tucked away to be found later.

Loving Labour Day is hard and sometimes it can feel like we're waiting it out. The strong feeling of being able to see through your eyes of younger years, to catch the crisp smell of the fall and to soak in the light of August is where Labour Day resides, spot in the middle, to single handedly set the clock for your next story.

That Labour Day Sunday we cracked open the bottles of champagne with a side of vodka and smokes and Balance 005 blasted in my living room. Davy flicked the lights and picked up the microphone and sang the lines to "Do What You Want" and Vas, Mar and I cheered on and danced like he was on stage.

Tell Me How You Loved The Year, SCQ!

2009-12-12T17:13:00.005-05:00

SCQ just revealed a year-end feature designed to celebrate this year's diverse line-up of artists. I was equally thrilled and surprised when SCQ contacted me with interest for my contribution. You can read my answers to his email interview and those of the other artists, producers and label-heads that were placed together across five days of musical stories

YAMS' Answers

Skeleton Crew Quarterly's Year-End Review

Nico Muhly - Mothertongue

2009-12-12T16:13:00.005-05:00

The slightly out of sync "s"'s from the congregation that were pronounced at the Catholic churches of both Arima, Trinidad and Newfoundland, Canada cascaded from the alter to the back pews with the same speed and sincerity. Their backdrops included a wedding with distant steel pan echoes soaked in tropical breeze and an entire town's overflowing heart that would follow the hearse slowly down the road.

On a Saturday in the fall, some friends and I hiked to the top of a mountain an hour away from Montreal to see the autumn colours. Every few minutes we'd turn around to take a break from the climb and be surprised by the new hills, lakes, trees and homes that would reveal themselves. At the summit, my girlfriend told me she might be starting to understand me. Onward with love, death and life.

Rameses III - I Could Not Love You More

2009-12-12T16:07:00.005-05:00

I must have passed by the open field that divides the provinces of Ontario and Quebec a thousand times. This Thanksgiving was no different when I looke out the passenger window towards the edge of the field where the tree line begins. My mind could probably play a slideshow of all the ways I've seen that highway-side in full bloom or with blowing snow. I later asked friends what they would call the small patch of trees or miniature woods that you would find stranded in the middle of a countryside field. I'm still in search for that perfect word.

Farr - Silent Sorrow EP

2009-12-12T16:00:00.003-05:00

My discovery of Summer Rain Recordings was purely accidental but turned out to be one of the most unexpected and refreshing finds by googling some key words that I thought would be appropriate for an album's first listen. "Summer", "Rain" and "Records" gave me a link to the diversely moody electronic/experimental label and who's artists each donate a percentage of their revenues to NextAid or a charity of their choice. My documentary-travelling had recently shifted to the South Pacific's "Last Nomads" and coincidentally I stumbled upon Farr who hails from Jakarta.

Telefon Tel Aviv - Immolate Yourself

2009-12-12T15:56:00.002-05:00

At 11pm Saturday night, we stepped out of my apartment to go to the corner store and as she turned to me I could feel that I would have answered no when she asked if I had brought my keys. We spent the next hour calling the landlord and trying to break-in through my back door without the neighbours calling the cops - which they didn't and it has me worried now. We had to spend the night on a futon at my friend's place and it wasn't until 6pm on Sunday when my landlord called me back. We whipped open the blinds, cranked "Helen Of Troy" and became excited to plan the rest of what that weekend had to offer.

Toro Y Moi - Blessa b/w 109 7"

2009-12-12T15:47:00.002-05:00

I was nearly sticking my head out my window with my laptop trying to hold on to a unknowing neighbor's WIFI connection so that we could check the message board calendar to find a show for the night. Skimming through their myspace's, we stopped on this artist who's name we still don't know how to properly pronounce. Blessa was the best fit for this summer night but the calendar lied and apparently he had played the night before. Fast forward to early November and Toro Y Moi was returning to Montreal. After a load of confusion, it seemed he must have had troubles preventing him from crossing the border. As I was disappointingly handing in my coat check ticket to leave, my friend Vas shouted out in the nick of time from the staircase: "Vish! He's Here!". The first couple of songs were shaky with the soundcheck being adjusted as we went but it smoothed out within those 25 minutes he stood on stage. When I met Chaz and his good buddy whom I recognized as the LP lover from his blog, I was shocked to hear that the last song he played filled with countless vocal layers and swimmingly nostalgic beats was actually an improv session after he had car troubles and his appearance was in severely in doubt. February is circled for Toro Y Moi's full length release...

Last Days - The Safety Of The North

2009-11-19T23:28:00.004-05:00

Mathieu asked me for some help moving some old furniture one weekday evening at the old family cottage he bought midway through this year. We shared laughs and drove nearly to the end of the province before we took the exit for St. Zotique. Years before, this was a seasonal town where all the homes were limited to one floor and had canals for lane ways that served as a gateway to the fleuve. We stopped the car at the only cottage from that time - squeezed in between the neighbor's aspirations for a mega-lot.

The front door led us into darkness which revealed itself as a spare bedroom at our feet. The tight hallway shared a wall with his Uncle's room that still held a mirror on the wall with fishing photos tucked under it's frame. A catamaran mast connected the far corners of the living room and a white bench at the kitchen counter where the young cousins would sit to play cards and eat breakfast before rushing out the door to jump into the water. He rummaged for an old baseball board game and found it in its usual spot. The faded paper scorecard was still inside which showed that the initials M&M had won 14-10. He told me how the docks carried them like a giant sidewalk along the edge of the shallow bay to a small island which they'd visit by paddle boat. Now we stood overlooking the fleuve under a blanket of stars and to that island where a house now sits and we wondered how they got to work everyday.

The smell of those Last Days were soaked into the walls, shag carpets, and the wooden cupboards with all the glasses you'd expect to see. I caught a photo of him washed in the kitchen light coming out of the back screen door. We moved in a couch and a coffee table which are the first items to stay in that stubborn old house in preparation of the next generation's visit next summer.

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Beware

2009-10-09T14:23:00.007-04:00

The truth is no one really understood what happened back in 2006 rings in my head like the opening line from a narrator who was ready to tell some epic story. That thought would come back in various ways through drunken evenings or during the times farthest from. Near the tail end of the second year, that inner battle to piece together events still had no end and the truths were distorted through time and shifts in cityscapes. Some images took the entire passing of two years to become painfully clear with its scars that run deep. Day-to-day emotional falls play out like the complexity of a war and it's recurring theme of history repeating and the warnings they bring.

Three years later, I was trying to fight the feeling that I had put Mar through the awfulness I had experienced at the hands of my first love. Waiting for the train on a Saturday night before the final fireworks show in the summer, I watched a a girl and her man dance on the metro platform to "Heart's Arms" which was playing on my headphones. The approach of 5:30 am brought a walk through Parc Lafontaine listening to Beware which grew my senses and elation of knowing the painful things I may have done in a life other than my own wouldn't follow me when I returned home. The sun rise brought me back to the first night with Mar on the heels of January and the toes of February. This time it was warm and "Without Word, You Have Nothing" played as I walked in the middle Duluth's stone street glancing over to the nightly lovers saying goodbye at the sidewalk. I remember I planted a maple key earlier in the year that I had picked up on one of the parc's hill's and buried it in a small pot with little optimism. I was surprised when it grew from the soil without the perfect conditions or mixed up magic that I had trained myself to expect. Simple and mysterious: the earth, sun and water, the love, laughter and memories. I phoned Mar that evening with a quiver in my voice but full of purpose.

Tuesday night, I walked out of my apartment on my way to the movies when I noticed people on their four storey balconies all fixed towards something over the tops of the buildings that stood across the street. I followed their sight to the breathing of an orange ball that shot up its small children into the air. The embers faded away or fell behind the brick to where I could not see. Rounding the corner, sirens blared and truck after truck converged to this street corner shared by a stone church and a fruit market. With every step toward the gathering crowd, the fire breathed stronger and reached farther into the night sky. Mar phoned me at that moment asking me if I was playing a practical joke while she was home alone because a scary voice mail was left on her phone but it was hilariously obvious the culprits were her girlfriends or pranksters from far away. I tried to grasp this conversation while continuing to make sense of the street corner and the fire glow that loomed past the next laneway. No movie tonight.

The steady walk back to my apartment was filled with the checking my phone for the eventual call from the Red Cross. 150 firefighters were circling the five alarm blaze when I met with another volunteer and passed police, news reporters and the awe struck crowd into the blocked off area to get more information to relay to the inquiring evacuees that they may or may not be affected. White lights illuminated the street matching an unnerving movie set. We pushed through a wall of smoke that was billowing across the street and got showered by the crossfire of water. Endless hoses bordered the block and lined the roads and alleys that led from somewhere on the outside to the surreal centre of town. I felt on-edge to spot another set of motionless firefighters behind the smoke and darkness taking a rest from the heat. I explained a "what-to-do" list to a girl in her twenties and in my broken French, these words sounded alot like a recommendation for a new hairstyle. She started fixing up her hair and we shared a laugh when I caught on. Genuine moments continued on until 3am.

The quiet walk home was a mix of exhaustion and adreneline. It was then I read an email from my old friend Em from 2006 who wanted to hear the new stories and adventures of "Old Vish".

Peter Broderick - Home

2009-09-21T21:12:00.001-04:00

We left Arouca and crossed paths with the wedding reception hall during our left hand turn towards the white cement wall that surrounded all of the cemeteries in Trinidad. We followed a map my Father had sketched out drawn from his 20 year old memory and squeezed beside a burial ceremony that shared the entrance way with the cars. We asked the cemetery keeper if he knew the Kassie plot and surprisingly he connected the name with Curepe, where my father and my grandfather lived. Even though those details came to him quickly he had to call over the second cemetery keeper that was sitting on the porch with a his feet up and hands behind his head. He didn't budge and told us to get out of the car and come over to him - then we'd talk.

The Presbyterian and Muslim sections were nearly touching eachother and made it difficult to locate my family's plot. After a while, we decided to call the map maker and within a couple of minutes my father was speaking with the cemetery keeper reacting to the blueprints that my father stored in his head. "Yes, the water stand is still there", he said and walked down the road while relaying his steps to Canada until he stopped where the map ended and and where we found the once-white weather beaten monument and the grass forced yellow and brown from the strength of the dry season. This was this trip's first connection to family in Trinidad and I took photos to show my parents the cemetery, the northern range and the train overpass who's rails have been removed over twenty years later.

After my return, I told these stories to my parents at our family home in Niagara. I took trail towards the lake which has grown to take back the earth we all wore down into mud. There with the rocks breathing for me, I recalled my mother showing me a scrapbook that was to be filled with Kushal's big moments until the age of 7. Photos of him in a bucket bath in the backyard and other poses where he was crying over those three months were tacked on the section intended for his first birthday and his favorite books. He layed in the casket and he peeked through his one eye like he was sleeping but checking to see who was around. It was the first time I saw a photo of the mangled yellow car.

After so many years, I'm beginning to understand my father and trying to absorb the new and strong narrations coming my way from my mother. We had watched one of my favorite documentaries last Christmas day where a son was trying to find his father and ended up finding his lost brother. The immense responsibility that accompanies a family was hung up in the climax of their meeting in a distant land of the Middle East. I know I set out to Tunapuna to find my lost brother but instead found my father of that time. Decades pass, families shift and now I try to listen through the static and grainy photos to my father telling my mother on the phone that he would be late because he had to visit the cemetery - where he'd share a few drinks with friends among his buried family.

On The Shoulders Of Friends

2009-08-25T22:41:00.020-04:00

With my past album's releases limited to my family and close friends, I've been overwhelmed over the last few weeks by the response to Afternoon Birds Of Arima. Thank you for feeling compelled to play it for others and for letting You Are My Symphonic be a part of your soundscape - I'd love to hear your stories.

This wedding album underwent transformations through each passing season of its creation and seems to continue on while traveling the world but only on the shoulders of the following friends:

Very special thanks to Interfase - PuroJazz and 4ZZZ FM for including YAMS in their playlists alongside some great electronic and ambient artists!

As always, sincere thanks to the Skeleton Crew Quarterly for their continuing support. Check it out and I promise you'll find something new and exciting. Caution: Albums everywhere - This may take you a while!

Skeleton Crew Quarterly

I Found Your Faces Of Montreal - Update

2009-08-22T16:48:00.010-04:00

I came to Montreal and my friends and family didn't leave the old city but kept appearing to me in the streets, on the metro or at a party. It turned into some kind of a game and I would laugh to myself when I would lock eyes with someone's certain features and bits of personality. I found the faces and the fragments of the people that I knew well while taking a walk with my friends - alone in Montreal.

Last spring, I Found Your Faces Of Montreal was nearly completed but was tragically lost during a daylight robbery. Today, I'm glad to say that its being re-written and has taken on a larger personality than its younger sister.

Some of the tracks are included in the player and stay tuned for further updates! Here is it's summer shape:

1. Meet Me In Trinity

2. Autumn In Summer

3. My Father And His Sister

4. Under Your Umbrella

5. I Found Your Faces Of Montreal

6. Rooftop

7. The Light Across your Face

8. I Traveled Home

9. Tell Me How You Loved The Year

The Woods - The EP Logue

2009-08-22T16:44:00.002-04:00

An old friend who used to live beside me in the University residence and who shared late night conversations sitting on my floor and leaning on my concrete walls, told me she was coming to the "Harvard" of French schools here in Montreal for three weeks in August. The music ladened night out come-down story that stuck the most included her finding a familiar face from her athletic childhood among the strangers of a house party who said her memory of this "Tall-Black Girl" back in those soccer days make it shocking to see how small Christina had become - Quite shocking. A couple of weekends before, my buddies Davy, Prattsy and I watched the fast-paced home movies that play like reality shows or music videos who documented our days through school and into the apartments, friends and our own faces which we had a hard time recognizing. I never knew that "Tall-Black Girl", but I knew the Christina on my floor and I hoped I'd recognize her.

I came out of the underground at Champ-de-Mars and she phoned to tell me she was going to be coming up those same steps. We talked with excitement as we walked up the hill towards the Vieux Port while seemingly ignoring the explosions of the fireworks happening off in the distance. We hopped an iron railing and by-passed the audience to give the lit the sky the attention it deserved and the reaching lights with their delayed booms over the massive LaFontaine bridge blew us away.

Her first weekend came at the same time my cousin with her boyfriend, visited the city. Along with them, their friends from their city and mine, showed up one after the other which seemed to give them all a grand entrance. I saw my cousin let loose for the first time in as many months as I can remember. Her constant warm smile was genuine and she was enjoying it as much as I was. The restaurant which had only one of its remaining stone walls played us through crowd-pleasing jazz music under the open air which must have still been filled by the clouds created by the fireworks. We walked out to the end of the port and crossed a wooden bridge to reach a night club who's multiple levels were their own patios. The bouncer mentioned that at 2am the cover charge would be dropped so we decided to wait and grab and ice cream cone from the shop below the top-40 dance floors.

It started to rain in sheets and some of the party go-ers were embracing the shower and the ones dressed in suits standing beside a bucket of ice and their ticket for the night weren't so happy I'm sure. We took refuge under the roof that covered a portion of the patio but the wooden planks had a space in between them in an attempt to keep our view of the stars grand. We made a dash for it when the rain slowed but half way through it dumped on us with laughter and we laughed right back. Tonight, I feel like a good person.

The next Saturday, Vas, Jonas and I left the park and went to a BBQ just outside the city where his dragonboat team were mixing the blueberries they had spent the day picking into crusts and cake pans. We pushed on Jonas' balcony and this lime green walls and looked over the street to the mouth of the Lachine canal. I caught a flash of my cousin and I, older and with our personalities splitting each time the children would come through the patio's sliding door - and it was funny. I know she would hold me for ransom, dangling stories over my head, just like our parents did.

We met up with Christina and her friends near 130 in the morning and waited in line at a bar only to see Jonas get tossed out by a jacked pony-tail door man for drinking a bottle of water. We left the bouncer's centre of the universe and jumped into different bars trying to find a good time before the house lights came on. We walked for what seemed to be miles and stopped on a grassy knoll halfway in our search for an after hours club that we found to be locked. Near 5 am, Jonas said goodbye to us and I realized that this was the first day I had met him.

7 am with Christina and friends and I could feel the others quietly watching their clocks because their time in the city was short and they remembered the list they had to check-off with the same sun that was rising out my window - we just ran out of time. We wanted more but that summers night and the 12 minute EP Logue felt bigger. Moments, friendships and romances seem to end too quickly and their soundtracks are abruptly cut-off to say that its best to say goodbye with the folding over of the back cover of your season's favorite album.

Electric President - Sleep Well

2009-08-22T16:07:00.003-04:00

Through the years my spring birthday has always signaled the start of something, coupled with the end of what had encompassed much of my recent life. Before, it was the end of a school semester and its overwhelming exam schedule. Its funny to imagine that everyone around me has hit a new high because of my anniversary but really we all know its because of the sun's timely wake.

This year's April birthday rolled in and I was looking forward to some time to soak and also to let time just slow down a little bit. Everyone that called to lend well wishes all seemed surprised to hear that all the different groups of people they thought were converging on my city, didn't in the end. They decided not to come because they figured the others were already well on their way and the more people that rang the more I realized everyone cancelled each other out in their worry of overcrowding. They felt sad to have missed a few days in Montreal but I let them know it was no worry and their voice across the line was all that was needed.

My girlfriend and I spent the day together and packed a basket to catch the afternoon and the failing light of my favorite hill at Parc LaFontaine. The sun set across the pond and so did we back at my apartment with the windows open listening half-awake to the nearby people walking with bottles of wine in their hands at the front door to their restaurant, half-dreaming of our summer nights to come.

We were in our own cities the night before I left for Trinidad and when she had already been back for three days from her beach escape. White sand has become part of her blood and I would search for mine at Maracas and if it wasn't found, the card she put up on her wall seasons ago with two sets of legs hanging out of a beached row boat would transport us from our separate trips to that unknown island which adorned its cover.

I caught glimpses of her while walking at Maracas, her smile standing in the water. Her ghost and her saltwater hands haunted and loved me through the day as the rains pushed by the hugging mountains quickly came and went. I fell for the beach and during the orange sun-washed ascent past cliffs that belong at the edge of the world, I told you of my love affair with the waves.

I made my Beach Baby a playlist for her walks to the man-made desert island she tells me is across the shallow cove. The Bon Iver song that shared her name turned the corner towards the evening and the blind sounds of the sea crashing into the sand. She bought me Sleep Well and the walking escalator took me across the airport terminal to its first sounds on the flight towards the south and also the last when I caught it's return. I slipped in and out of ghostly dreams until my seat mate nudged my arm and asked me to help her spot Niagara Falls out the window. We flew right on top of it and carried on past the wine field region where I spent most of my life to the far side of Lake Ontario and the late evening landing that the pilot stretched the city for.

I raced back and gave her warning that I would be at her door with genuine eyes and I planned how I would tell her that I loved her. I never did and weeks later, I forced her ghost away. I collapsed at my door and cried for her when we said our goodbyes and now 'Ether' haunts me to death on the summer evening's of his choice.

Afternoon Birds Of Arima

2009-07-26T20:47:00.030-04:00

The Northeast trade winds that we felt pass through the curtains recaptured those childhood images that became faded and helped paint the lines of the pages that you'll write together.

For Richard And Keisha.

(Link Replaced by Bandcamp.com)

1. Afternoon Birds Of Arima (Opening Credits)

2. Almost Time (Flower Girls)

3. Painted Lines (The Bride)

4. Walk Out With Me (Leaving Santa Rosa)

5. Rainfall In Arima (Closing Credits) - Vocals By Anna Farago

Looking forward to your comments or email me at youaremysymphonic@gmail.com !

Skeleton Crew Quarterly Reviews Afternoon Birds Of Arima

2009-07-26T20:28:00.025-04:00

Many thanks to SCQ for reviewing YAMS' latest album Afternoon Birds Of Arima:

SCQ Rating: 80%

From the moment I hear the first lilting piano notes of Afternoon Birds of Arima, it’s a knee-jerk reaction for me to recall You Are My Symphonic (AKA Vishal Kassie)’s evolution to date. Moving from found-sound folk – at first traditional (Through the Forest With My Love), then more ambitious (Let Ring Indefinitely) – to laptop-based songwriting (often bordering on electronica and post-rock), Kassie’s is a discography that would tongue-tie most. Yet two years after This is January, the recording that found him toying with loads of synths and greater production, You Are My Symphonic returns with Afternoon Birds of Arima, a largely instrumental mood-piece written to soundtrack his friend’s wedding. As if it needs to be said, Kassie has thrown the ace of all double-takes.

If in doubt, listen to the opening title track; a fourteen minute splash of cinematic ripples all padding off the parameters of his piano-coda and cresting back into itself. With each pillow-soft collision and expertly timed six-string echo, ‘Afternoon Birds of Arima (Opening Credits)’ seems to puff out its chest, growing not out of pomposity, but out of grace. That its fourteen minutes feels like three is merely a footnote when ‘Almost Time (Flower Girls)’ ushers in, carrying those aforementioned piano arpeggios into a virtual cascade of saintly synths and low-end keys. As with the opening couplet from This is January, these tracks are halves to a whole; suites which together either invoke sweet memories or capture new ones. A much-needed reprieve is found in ‘Painted Lines (The Bride)’ as Kassie ditches much of his palette and lets silence play its key role in a bell-chiming aisle-walk that paves way for the album’s most emotional apex, ‘Walk Out With Me’. Whereas This Is January negated some of its impact by stressing its own presence with conflicting styles, Afternoon Birds of Arima’s singular focus gives credence to these occasional heaves of drama. In other words, we embrace the warmth and anticipation of these movements as if we’re at the chapel, hillside, beach or city hall; breathing in those moments of forever, whether they prove to last or not. If there’s a fracture in the focus, it’s last track ‘Rainfall in Arima (Closing Credits)’, which despite remaining true to the album’s tone and progression, seems like an unforeseen epilogue after the church-bell close of the preceding track. Maybe that’s just me getting caught up in the imagery though; after all, the track boasts an unexpected but smooth vocal performance by guest Anna Farago that wraps things nicely.

Now a word on weddings: we know nearly half of them fail, that they take up our weekends, that open-bar is the greatest draw and small-talk among extended family is tantamount to Chinese water torture. Yet we can also recognize that indescribable feeling of watching two people you thought you knew well, standing in front of each other as unnerved and flushed as first-date romancers. Whether it’s the cash-in expectations of twenty-first century matrimony or (hopefully) the thrill of actual wedlock, people behave as though it’s judgement day at weddings. And it’s that flirtation of permanence, that these two souls might spend their lives hopelessly grateful for one another, that keeps an honest-to-god magic to weddings. Afternoon Birds of Arima encapsulates that do-or-die romanticism and, for that reason alone, shouldn’t be considered exclusive to ceremonial soundtracking. At the very worst, this curious release boasts that You Are My Symphonic might be the best wedding DJ ever. At its best, Afternoon Birds of Arima is an ambient must-listen; Kassie’s first post-classical outing which finds him at home with his production and his muse.

SCQ Full Review of Afternoon Birds of Arima

Sigur Ros - With A Buzz In Our Ears We Play Endlessly

2009-07-16T00:12:00.006-04:00

On a July, Monday night I picked up the card I had written at the base of Mont Royal for Nina on the Rooftop and wrote the same words into another one. Tuesday afternoon I left work, picked up "With a Buzz in our Ears..." and got on the highway bound for Ottawa.

Years earlier, my first listen to "Takk..." took place in St. Catharines near our family home where I had been living since the end of my University days in Toronto. Returning home that summer was a relaxing and reassuring time when I couldn't land a job in something that I was passionate about. At midnight, I walked to the edge of Lake Ontario armed with the album to keep me company. There I sat on a park bench that faced across the water towards the Toronto lights and all my ambitions.

Leaving the island, driving towards the sun and carving through farmer's fields and tree lines, I suddenly got excited and pounded my hand against the steering wheel to "Within Me A Lunatic Sings". Only one album before I was unable to kick start what I truly yearned for. the push forward had brought me to Montreal. I must have raced the sunset all the way to Ottawa with my excitement because I surely beat it there.

We met and the laughter we shared was brought down from the rooftop and onto the downtown streets. There I gave her an envelope written "For Nina on the Rooftop" and I kept the one marked "I gave this to...", both with the lyrics of the year. We opened them together, for the first and the last time, as I unfortunately got my wish that we'd both have a keepsake to remind us from time to time, even though the rootop love story, that consumed the first seven months of the year, had ended.

Two weeks later, I returned to Newfoundland after first visiting the island two years earlier. This trip promised to be better with all the family and friend introductions and the shock of driving up, down, left or right but never straight was out of the way.

Some ridiculously good moments that were burned into my memory started with watching a fire until 11 o'clock in the morning, reading a story of moses and water at a baptism or trying to relive the moment when part of a cliff fell onto the beach below under the strength of the waves.

When they were younger, Davy and Jennifer used to chew on Sally Sucker weeds which he yanked out of the ground and told me to do the same. I had that bitter taste when we climbed a hill in Trinity and passed a small house, walking across the layers of tall grass, berries, soft earth and rocks, to find a kiss from the harbour's mouth. We sat down overlooking the calm harbour as the sun was falling behind the higher cliff behind us.

I played "Good Day", "Festival" and "We Play Endlessly" which pulled me into the 360 degree engrossing horizon and its stark contrast against where I thought the earth suddenly ended. I turned around and saw everyone sitting in the grass or on the rocks, scattered for the cast photo washed in the sun's backlight. Stacey accused me of hogging the view.

That night we walked the old train tracks in the dark, climbed a loose rock hill at the side of the road and locked ourselves out of the cabin. The heavy fog rolled in and I put those same three tracks on as i walked alone down the middle of the road. When I came back we all huddled around the old console TV like some strange and promising family. But thats how it always feels in the humility of Newfoundland.

The next day I put my feet in the ocean and stared out of the harbour's mouth to that vast world that I knew nothing about and wondered how that ship could calmly sail out. So much more to learn.

Sandro Perri - Tiny Mirrors

2009-07-15T00:39:00.005-04:00

I remember arriving at a lonely door on Fairmont road with my friend Sebastien in January holding a case of beer and waiting for directions. We entered into the telephone booth waiting room and called my friend who was supposed to bring us up to the apartment. In the meantime we went upstairs and exchanged laughs with our new friends about how he always promises to be there - in a minute. He came some two hours later and we took over the DJing as we usually do.

Somewhere between the thin living room dancefloor and the essential kitchen party, I met Nina. I got to know about her and the cat in heat she pulls out for a great story. In front of an old faulty door, she'd reassure them that we were standing guard just in case the latch caught but we stood by and watched all the people lock themselves in the bathroom. In desperation, somebody wanted to escape through the window. That was our cue to push over to the kitchen party. Beside the fridge, a pantry door led to a staircase that spiraled up to the rooftop. We spent the entire night under that moon as the cross on Mont-Royal shined onto the snow. If I never saw her again, we'd always have her cigarette on the rooftop.

A month later, before returning home from a family funeral, my apartment building was burning. On our shoulders my sister and I carried my guitars, keyboards and digital cables into hotel room put up by the Red Cross. I would string together sounds on one bed and sleep on the other. There I sent the lyrics I wrote down for Nina on the rooftop. She gave warm thanks but it felt like the end.

The early spring was opened by a visit from my best friends Davy, Dani and Ally. They came into town with another group while Ally extended her work visit and stayed with me in my new apartment which I moved into a week after the fire, during the heaviest snow fall that I think I will ever see.

Saturday night we all went out and tore it up like we always do. I thought my coat ticket was soaked on the club's floor when I went to the check desk to find out it was already traded in for my wool jacket and ipod within its pockets. It rained coldly as we found a cab. By the end of the night, a taped out hop-scotch board took over my kitchen floor and Dani was under the sink, deep inside my cupboards and pulling out strainers and pots.

Ally and I have known each other since our first year of University but have been falling steadily into a deeper friendship through big nights in Toronto and fashion show visits to Montreal. This Sunday, she tried to play the piano and asked me to write a song for us to sing. With the windows open and the vines touched by church bells on the wind, she slept on the couch, and I let Sandro Perri sing us through this "City of Museums" filled with drag queens and go-go dancers on pedestals.

On the edge of summer in May, I received a call from my friend who told me that the guy who lived on Fairmont was leaving for Australia and one final party was going on that night. Four months to the day, I was walking down towards the rooftop unsure whether I would see her there but I ran into some of her friends who asked me surprisingly, "You are the one who wrote that song for Nina?". At 2am, she finally arrived and after a few slow beginnings we found ourselves on the rooftop again. We joked about making friends with the landlord to let us in or having to knocking down the door and lock whoever lived there, to spiral up the stairs.

That Sunday evening, I walked to Parc Jeanne Mance and sat in the grass facing the cross on the mountain and wrote the old and the new lyrics for Nina on the Rooftop into a card. "Tiny Mirrors" played as the people passing with dogs, djembes and "The Drums" soaked in the final hours of the weekend. Straight through the summer, we held on tight to the warm Sunday nights as long as we could, until we did it all again in seven days.

Much Love.

The Woods - The Woods

2009-07-15T00:37:00.002-04:00

While crossing a street I wasn't sure when the raindrops and wind on the tape ended for my city's weather to take over. Maybe there was no division between the voices of my memory and those planted by The Woods telling me to "Wake up".

I stood on a small street corner with "Baleen Plate Lullaby" waiting for my friend, holding my umbrella in one hand and a case of beer in the other with the rain slowly soaking into the cardboard until i had to carry it under my arm.

We met up with his girlfriend down the street at a party and the three of us spent the night leaning against a coat closet drinking, talking and deflecting a statistician who was convinced my East Indian friend had squash skills that could rival Khan, a world champion player.

Later in the fall, I traced out a route that would take us deeper into the "foliage meter" which was a list of all the regions in Quebec and the percent coverage of the seasonal colours on their trees. Traveling from Montreal, 65%, to St. Donat at the Base of Mont-Tremblant, 85%, would prove to give heart attacks over every hill or through every turn that the highway gave us.

On the way home, my wiper blades couldn't brush off the nightly fog and received a sarcastic response that said "Welcome to the Woods". The story book album played on while she slept in the backseat and I secretly wished that my girl was there too.

M83 - Saturdays = Youth

2009-07-15T00:33:00.003-04:00

In the spring I decided to take a week long vacation to return to Toronto. Trips from Montreal happened pretty often but between Friday night arrivals and Sunday's unsure departure, it was always hard to see everyone. I had also been planning to record the voice of a friend for an album that was nearly completed. This trip was to make up for all that lost time.

On Tuesday, I visited my old friends in the assembly plant at deHavilland, shared food, told stories and realized that the "Thank You" card I had given them before my exit to Montreal, was still posted on the wall. After my long awaited visit, I returned to my cousin's apartment (The same building I used to live in), to find the front door pried open. Right away I looked over to the dining room table to find that my laptop and my gig bag were gone. Experiences and memories that came from an entire year of my life were suddenly pulled from me in an afternoon - My music was gone.

Thursday was my birthday and I became lucky, lucky enough to be in Toronto to spend it with my closet friends. On the patio at our old hang out bar, Fynn's, which we joked about buying in our old age, they gave me a card with cash pitched in for me to re-build my music and an old iPod filled with songs to keep me company.

On Sunday, I started "Saturdays = Youth" while boarding the ferry to cross over to the Island airport. On the plane, which coincidently I had help build at the deHavilland plant, I snuck on my earphones, hoping that the flight attendant wouldn't see and tell me to remove them for take-off. The plane accelerated down the runway and I kept the city scape in my window. we said goodbye and plowed through the clouds as "we own the sky" erupted halfway through.

Now in the winter, my album has been re-written, shaped and built on the pieces that my friends have given to me. On a grassy hill overlooking a mountain on the far side of a river in Beloeil, I realized that you'll never hear me say again that being robbed is the best thing that can happen to strengthen friendships.

Brael and Tokyo Bloodworm - Living Language

2009-07-15T00:29:00.004-04:00

I started writing music after high school which began with only me and a guitar. In a folk style, it reflected my walks and the seasons that carve a bit more into my life. Five albums later, written in four different places, the music has evolved and grown along with the music that I surround myself with.

Christmas time involves returning home to Ontario and shipping back and forth between St. Catharines and Toronto to visit the family and familiar friends and the ones I hardly get to see.

Earl Place has been my Toronto home since I left for Montreal. The day before new year's eve, I stayed there at Dani's apartment, which used to be Davy's but who now lives two floors down. Its hard to imagine of how a home lives on after you've breathed along with its walls. Her charm was spread all over the apartment and turned that space into something of her own. There are a few places I've lived in over the years that I wondered what new memories were born inside them and how it wouldn't resemble what I knew then. Its comforting to know that snapshot of my private life and memories will stay only with me and the apartment washes it's own walls for the next occupants tacked-on photos.

After a steady night, I went back up to Dani's couch while everyone was sleeping. Calm and wrapped in the Christmas mood that returns every year from my youth and under the yellow and blue glow of Dani's christmas tree in the corner of the room. "Living Language" became the year's finale.

Between "Living Language" and the year's end, Dani and I spent the day together and we walked the neighbourhood trying to find everything purple for our new years party. Our most fun and natural day of the year was only interrupted by the bitter cold wind on the street blowing in our faces. It took all our energy to fight it off so she told me she'd have talk to me later, which was when we got inside the mall across the street.

We said goodbye in style to the year, even though we missed the countdown by two minutes, with purple colours everywhere. My friends always make fun of me for saying obvious things or talking too much. Thats what friends do and even though I heard it the next day, or the next year, It quickly became one of my favorite new year's in as many years.

As the year's finale, "Living Language" put into perspective the incredible moments of the past four seasons shaped by family, friends and strangers. Albums always touch, but nothing like this year. They play common themes and help me dig deep to teach me something about myself. Like playing semi-tones until you reach the chord, laughing to myself and ecstatic that I've become somebody else or maybe more like myself. Either way, my Living Language evolves.

I decided to contact Brael and Tokyo Bloodworm to tell them the perfect way "Living Language" closed my year and my plan to contact all the artists that have truly touched my life. Along with the friends that I can touch and see, they are my closest friends. I received an incredible reply thanking me for sharing and also to say how much they enjoyed my music and hoping for a copy to listen to on the bus or on a walk. Either way, they told me I made their day - that compliment from them gave me encouragement. With each musician I contacted, the more I realized that I wasn't alone in my dreamy ways. Connections to emotions in time run deep in their music and it has always been the reason for mine.

Helios - Caesura

2009-07-15T00:20:00.004-04:00

With Fall fading from us somewhere in November under it's rains that washed away their colours to leave us with the skeleton trees soaked with yearning for the next season. While everyone around me seemed to be dreading the first snowfall, I was quietly planning an album for its welcome.

We moved in a friend of mine into his new apartment which was excitably close to parc lafontaine at the start of December and he asked me to lend my painting arm to turn his four walls into a contrast of cream and lowland grassy green. As we walked to his apartment, giant snowflakes began to cover everything on the street. That's when he turned to me and said that he would understand if I took my park walk now instead of painting back at his place. Of course I said no and continued on to the apartment while sending out wishes with each step that winter's welcome wouldn't end before I got there.

A few rolling lessons and four walls later I was out on the street. I could see the ground had a healthy coat of white as I made my way across the street to Parc Lafontaine.

I remember last year I listened to a phone message from my Aunt that had seen some photos I had taken on a walk through Parc Lafontaine. She said that she loved them and that my surroundings were exactly what I needed. I had no idea that those simple images of afternoon light on fall trees and Sunday walkers all against dark grey clouds would stay with her, but they did. I enjoyed many compliments and chats about those same parcscapes in her apartment and on her hospital bed where she lived her final days. 63 and 25, generation gaps say that we aren't supposed to connect, at least not in what i thought was my dreamy way of walking under trees. I knew this was why I tried my best to find an apartment close to the parc.

It took me nearly an hour with Caesura, but I walked it's entirety and I made sure to trace my steps to the same spots I had a year before and stopped and stood with the frame of a shot in my eyes without a phone message waiting for me at home.

I remember in those last minutes when I went in alone to say my goodbyes, I asked her that if this is your last day then let's talk about all the things that you'll find at home. Somehow I know that she agreed.