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, AHRF is the New Music Monday highlight!
AHRF is a four-piece indie-rock band who began playing together back in 2015 while living together back in Ontario.
The band is currently comprised of Liam St. John on drums, Daniel Turenne on bass, Miles Lawlor on guitar and lead vocals and James Seschuk on guitar.
Slowly, these members began moving out to BC, but have been living in different cities throughout the province.
At one point, AHRF’s members were dispersed between Victoria, Revelstoke, Squamish and Vancouver.
Now, the band is split fifty-fifty between Victoria and Revelstoke, and they still make collaborating work, despite the distance.
Since being based out of BC, AHRF has been working at writing, recording and releasing a new album, which will be coming out in its entirety on August 30th.
“Post-COVID, we all ended up out west and decided to kind of re-start the project so I’d say we have been going strong in BC for around three years,” Turenne told Victoria Buzz.
“We played a house show in October of 2022 and that was kind of the rejuvenation of AHRF.”
Through making this album and navigating the distance between them, AHRF says that their sound has grown up a bit through the process.
“It’s an update for us as a band, I think, that really shows what we sound like as a band now,” said Lawlor.
“Our last album was recorded in university, so it’s a bit of a juvenile album about dudes in university and this one I think is an update—the songs are more mature. They’re different and a bit more unique, but still sounds like AHRF.”
On working together at a distance, they said it really isn’t that hard to set aside time for one another if you like the music and the people you play with.
Because Lawlor and Seschuk are based out of Revelstoke and had easy access to a local studio there, AHRF says that the bulk of the record was recorded there, with Turenne recording most of his bass in his room.
St. John contributed drum tracks to a handful of the 11-track album; however, because he plans to move to France soon, the band has recruited a Revelstoke local, Joel Nervais to join in and fill the void.
The first single that AHRF just released last week is called “Cave In.”
“Cave In” was written mainly by Seschuk, who says he was inspired by the urge to drop everything and pursue what meant the most to him.
At the time of writing the song, he was trying to balance working towards his passions with his job as a project manager for a government agency.
“The chorus goes, ‘you’re in limbo, you’re stagnant, you could get some if you cave in,’” explained Seschuk.
“So it’s essentially about a government worker sitting on the fence about caving in to doing something he really cares about.”
He added that he feels like that sentiment of wanting to drop everything can resonate with a lot of people who want to cave into what their true passion is.
One way AHRF made this song unique is that during recording, Lawlor and Seschuk started messing around with household items and found some sounds that would compliment the rhythm section on “Cave In.”
“We were in the garage having a beer and we had a microphone,” said Seschuk.
“We started hitting his argon tank for his welder and his canoe, and came up with this auxiliary backbeat to the track, which you can hear in the start, but you can hear throughout the track.”
Additionally, they recorded bocce balls hitting together, and used that sound to help give a bit of boost to the snare drum hits through “Cave In.”
Turenne added that he loves that song because he only got one take to do his bass on that song, which he went out to Revelstoke to record, but ended up nailing that take and that is what is on the record.
Check out AHRF’s first single off their upcoming full-length record, “Cave In,” below:
You can also find “Cave In” on AHRF’s Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal pages.
To support the release of their new album, AHRF will be hitting the road for a west coast and an eastern Canadian tour.
The western Canada portion of this tour started in Revelstoke on August 21st and will see them come through Victoria on August 28th at Fort Tectoria.
After Victoria, AHRF will be playing in Nanaimo at The Globe on August 29th and on the day their full album drops, August 30th, AHRF will be playing in Squamish.
St. John says that this will be his last show with the band for some time, until he returns home from France.
During this leg of the tour, St. John and Nervais will be switching off as drummer throughout the show.
From September 2nd, through until September 5th, AHRF will be playing shows in Ontario and Quebec, before driving back across the country to play shows in Calgary, Fernie and Nelson.
To stay up-to-date with all things AHRF, follow them on Instagram.
Related:
- New Music Monday: Small Pleasures embrace vulnerability on ‘Songs For Lovers’
- New Music Monday: Kill Your Darlings release videos of live session at the Rat Shack
- New Music Monday: People w/ Poise combine poetry and music on unique EP
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.
“Regardless of it being CFUV specific, all campus radio has been so important for AHRF in terms of our ability to get ourselves radio play, but also for us to learn about other bands that we end up reaching out to while touring,” said St. John.
“Getting connected with local [community] radios across the provinces has been a really awesome way to meet new bands, meet new people and really just try to get our music out there.”
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or online!
Let us know what you think of AHRF in the comments below!
