Photo by Ruth Beauchamp
Canadian orchestral avant doom collective GATES — featuring members of Uxvae, Blood Ceremony, Musk Ox, and more – will release a limited-edition “Threads Bound In Lapis” seven-Inch January 15th. The track serves as the first single from the band’s forthcoming new full-length, Vas, slated for release this Spring.
GATES is an undefinable musical entity emerging from the heart of modern experimental composition. The long-running ensemble project of guitarist and composer Bryan W. Bray (Uxvae, Cetacea, Jugurtha) has been growing and developing for many years across more than a dozen releases, wielding abstractions harvested from the idioms of drone, doom, and black metal to create a musical passageway into the realms of the unconscious. Bray’s most recent compositions cultivate a wide range of inspirations from the outer worlds of prog, jazz, and neo-classical music, embedding them within an amalgamation of avant-garde approaches to texture, noise and ambience, while still embracing its roots of slow, heavy metal. The result is the cinematic, psychedelic, and highly experimental musical journey known as GATES.
Many iterations of the GATES cast — mostly based on and around the electric guitar and synthesizers, though a great diversity of strings, voices, percussion and electronics — are often found on any one recording. In order to bring to life the inspirations for GATES‘ upcoming album Vas, the newest iteration of the ensemble enlists an expanded lineup of players each with their own diverse backgrounds. The foundational electric guitar and electronics of Bray are this time joined by the drums and synths of Joel David Beauchamp (Deep Shift, Jugurtha), bass and double bass by Lucas Gadke (Blood Ceremony, Völur), violin and viola performed by Laura C. Bates (Völur), cello by Raphael Weinroth-Browne (Leprous, The Visit, Musk Ox), synths and electronics by James Beardmore (Cares), clarinet and saxophone by Karen Ng, and trumpet by Nicolas Buligan (NicBul). The rich and layered instrumentation, along with the insights and instincts of their players, offer an exciting and distinct aesthetic and sound.
GATES’ upcoming album Vas (meaning “vessel”) features the nine-piece band on record fleshing out many of these inspirations using a creative practice that melds compositional themes and structures with strict improvisational movements, reflecting the Jungian process of individuation, an integration of unseen unconscious processes of the shadow self with ego-conscious awareness. Vas deals with the theme of a psychological plane of existence becoming corporeal and the structures of the music itself convey a direct expression of this. The sounds produced are as abstract, unexpected, and emotionally compelling as such an experiment might predict.
In celebration of the release of the “Threads Bound In Lapis,” the band is pleased to unveil a stunning Costin Chioreanu-created visual companion to the track, now playing at Treble.
Comments Bray, “‘In the story of the album ‘Threads Bound In Lapis,’ an allusion to the lapis stone of alchemy, the philosopher’s stone, follows from the divine consciousness – ‘the soul.’ ‘Threads Bound In Lapis’ is the awakening of awareness about this form and what may come with it. The stone here represents the knowledge that is acquired in this awakening. Filled with joy yet aware of the struggles that will follow.”
Adds Treble of the track, “The track is a gradual, yet epic journey of a composition through chilly instrumentals, Low-like slowcore guitars and graceful strings, only to erupt into a heavy, cinematic climax that transforms the group’s gentle movements into heavy metal thunder.”
View GATES’ “Threads Bound In Lapis,” now playing at Treble, at THIS LOCATION.
Order the “Threads Bound In Lapis” lathe cut seven inch – limited to twenty-five copies – at the GATES Bandcamp page HERE.
Stay tuned for further info on Vas to be unveiled in the coming weeks.
GATES Ensemble:
Bryan W. Bray – guitars, baritone guitar, synth
Joel David Beauchamp – drums, synth, percussion
Lucas Gadke – bass
Laura C. Bates – violin
James Beardmore – synths, electronics
Raphael Weinroth-Browne – cello
Karen Ng – clarinet
Nicolas Buligan – trumpet
Sean Pearson – additional synth
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