Basement Revolver
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In 2020, the world stopped but Basement Revolver never really did: songs were written and recorded, a band member left, and another came to replace them. But, they…
Basement Revolver
In 2020, the world stopped but Basement Revolver never really did: songs were written and recorded, a band member left, and another came to replace them. But, they couldn’t tour or rehearse or record in the usual way. The gap between making work, and being alone, resulted in serious introspection for the band. Their new album is full of the tension in a world that is shut down, but which expects productivity. This resulted in a deeper understanding of what kind of message the band wanted to present, and which stories they wanted to tell.
Basement Revolver, the indie dreamgaze band from Hamilton, Ontario have been playing together for more than six years. Their co-leads Nimal Agalawatte and Chrisy Hurn-Morrison, have known each other for much longer. Their career started with a bang, being signed by the UK label, fear of missing out on the strength of their 2016 break-out single, “Johnny Pt 2.” They followed this up with three EPs in quick succession–an eponymous one in 2016, Agatha in 2017, and Wax and Digital in 2019. A full length, Heavy Eyes, was released later that same year. This punishing schedule of releases was supported by concerts throughout Southern Ontario, the US, the UK, and Germany.
2020/1 was supposed to be the same–a new full length album, Embody, and touring dates to support it. The pandemic meant less touring, and different ways of being in the world. But, there was also reconsideration of who the band was. Nim talks about how they found themself in the midst of creating an album under these strange circumstances. They planned on making the album last year. They waited, and worked out what to do, eventually changing what they wrote. “The world was shifting around us – and there was some global trauma – with that, we decided we wanted to fully express ourselves. So far we had kind of held off sharing political views, but we were realizing that our silence was actually just violence. We realized that to be who we are fully and authentically, we needed to share our voice.” That voice includes making explicitly public identities that were previously private.
That voice discloses stories about sexuality, mental health, and religious trauma, expressing, in the midst of this global moment of anxiety, the difficulties and joys of being fully-formed. Nim came out, Chrisy came out, but they came out against what Chrisy describes as homophobic and transphobic enviroments. One of these environments is the private Calvinist college Redeemer. The college has provided the origin of many Hamilton musicians of their generation, and this year Redeemer’s ideology has been made clear. Chrisy talks about these revelations caused “While we were in the studio, the CBC released an article about Redeemer University, and their homophobic and transphobic policies. I realized then and there, I had to come out. I had to share my experience with being bi.”
Coming out in the middle of pandemic means that embodiment has to take new forms, and this album is one of those ways forward. This record, with its complex sonic landscapes, sometimes lush and sometimes stark, is of a piece with their earlier work, but it’s deeper and more self-aware. Embody is the sound of freedom, especially in the midst of such pain, both locally and globally. Trading tracks virtually, rehearsing online, and the isolation of that means that the album is full of hopeful waiting—to tour, of course, but also to engage these new understandings in the physical world.