Victoria and Vancouver Island have a lot of musical talent, and Victoria Buzz wants to highlight some of the best and brightest local artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a fresh ‘New Music Monday’ article to help people find and support local artists and bands that are up-and-coming, well established or hidden gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Buzz has partnered with our good friends at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to find and select the musicians and bands for this regular column.
This week, A Recorded Dawn is the New Music Monday highlight!
A Recorded Dawn is a newer band in town that has been making waves in the punk/emo scenes with their unique style and approach to live shows.
They play a blend of slowcore, emo and screamo music which is evident in their dark, melancholic debut EP, Faceless Vignettes, Withered Outlines.
At the time of recording this EP, the four-piece band was comprised of Josh Ohler on guitar and vocals, Chris Theodoropoulos on guitar, Evan Winther on bass and James Mutch behind the drum kit, although Winther has recently left the project and was replaced by Matt Engelsman.
Ohler told Victoria Buzz that the project started when he ended up selling a guitar to Theodoropoulos and the two got to chatting and found they were both newer to town and decided to jam together.
“We started playing, nothing serious, just messing around and jamming,” Ohler explained.
He added that a friend of his was crashing with him for a while and got behind the drum kit for the jam sessions. Together, they laid the foundations for what A Recorded Dawn would be and sound like.
However, the drummer they had been jamming with wasn’t that serious about the project and so Ohler started putting feelers out for a new drummer to join. He was soon connected with Mutch through a mutual friend and tattoo artist.
“That’s when we actually, seriously started writing,” Ohler said.
Faceless Vignettes, Withered Outlines is the product of the early days A Recorded Dawn was writing, along with another two songs that have yet to be released but will be released on a split record with another local Vancouver Island band.
Ohler says that while writing this EP, the band was being influenced by classic 90’s slowcore projects such as Codeine, Bluetile Lounge, Hum and Love, Claire.
The songs came together usually with Ohler and Theodoropoulos finding guitar riffs that worked. One would play more melodic lead parts while the other played heavier, muddier, and distorted tones—giving the sound a dynamic range that lends itself well to the slowcore style the band embraced.
Lyrically, Ohler says he pulled a lot from the way the band Human Hands structures their songs.
“They’re a UK band that fits that hybrid of screamo and slowcore perfectly. They do a lot of spoken word and screaming for their vocals and I kind of just wanted to replicate that,” Ohler explained.
A Recorded Dawn chose to highlight the song “Maintain the course, old friend” off of the three-song EP for this New Music Monday.
Ohler said that writing this song felt like a turning point for the band.
“It started with a riff that Chris brought to the band with our first drummer. He kind of came up with the main riff when it gets really loud, so we just jammed on that and decided to start the song with a quiet buildup,” he explained.
“But, that was a very different song at the start and took many different forms over time, and I think the way that song took form was sort of symbolic of all the pieces of our band falling into place.”
He noted that was the first song that was properly written and finished once A Recorded Dawn had found all of its original members.
“I just love how that song builds to a climax at the end. I like it because it shows our patience as a band. It’s a six and a half minute song and the entire song is just building to the last minute,” Ohler added.
“That’s what I like about a lot of slowcore music is how it savours the buildup and the slow moments really accentuate the loud moments.”
Preview “Maintain the course, old friend” and the rest of A Recorded Dawn’s debut EP Faceless Vignettes, Withered Outlines below:
To listen to the song in its entirety, as well as the rest of the EP, check out A Recorded Dawn on Bandcamp, Spotify and Apple Music.
Ohler says that this first EP was just the beginning and the band is already building upon their momentum with heavier, more contemporary songs being brought into their setlists.
They have a house show coming up which will be invite-only due to capacity concerns.
To find out about that show, or any future shows, follow A Recorded Dawn on Instagram.
They have two unreleased songs that will be released soon on a split with Duncan band Mourn Recif.
Related:
- New Music Monday: Taha releases debut dance-pop anthem ‘Something We Laugh About’
- New Music Monday: Tyger Jackson releases raw debut album ‘Survival of the Weakest’
- New Music Monday: Conjure Hand’s latest single tells story iconic Black Canadian cowboy
CFUV is a non-profit campus and community radio station that plays a ton of local music of all kinds across Vancouver Island. If you like to support local music they are an amazing resource with a plethora of new local tunes in their arsenal.
Ohler says that he loves how willing CFUV is to bring atypical, non-mainstream music into UVic events, which shows how fulsome their support for all local music scenes really is.
“I thought it was really cool that they were willing to have a screamo band play to all these university students on the first day of class,” he laughed.
“Troy [Lemberg] from CFUV has always been really nice to our band, he’s invited us to play a couple shows now and we’ve been invited to come play his radio show and that’s something we’re doing in March.”
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of A Recorded Dawn in the comments below.
