An experimental musical duo has unveiled its first album in a 4-D sound environment. CHXMERAS launched Terminal City at a listening party at Lobe Studio in Vancouver on May 4.
One member of CHXMERAS, Jarrett Martineau, hosts CBC Radio’s Reclaimed. He was living in Toronto when he began doing the national show, which focuses on contemporary Indigenous music. The other member of CHXMERAS is Vancouver-based producer, composer, and sound designer Paul Finlay.
Terminal City reflects on Finlay’s upbringing in North Yorkshire, England and Martineau’s experiences amid gentrification in urban Canada.
“This record feels haunted. It’s like a lost soundtrack that we uncovered,” CHXMERAS states in a news release. “As we were recording it, we started to hear echoes in the songs…of the landscapes we grew up around, of the personal losses and transformations in our own lives, and of the cities we grew up in and now call home.
“Terminal City gives form to those feelings and experiences,” the duo adds. “It’s like our attempt to capture the echoes of the futures we imagined, but that never arrived.”
This week, CHXMERAS released a video for “W.P.S.”, created by Laine Butler. Alex Penney mixed the song at Monarch Studios, and Greg Mindorff mastered it at Suite Sound Labs. C.von Szombathy/YupZone created the artwork.
Listen to “W.P.S.”
CHXMERAS decentres the self
According to Martineau, the name CHXMERAS “is a riff on the mythological figure comprised of multiple forms and parts, which really reflects our own creative process of pulling in ideas and elements from everywhere”.
“It’s still pronounced the same (‘kih-mair-ahs’) but our iteration X’s out the ‘I’, so to speak,” Martineau tells Pancouver by email. “A bit of a verbal pun and a way to decentre the self in the band name.”
On YouTube, CHXMERAS says that it specializes in “experimental electronics and otherworldly compositions that blend into a mix of soft techno and underlying vibrations”
The “W.P.S.” video followed last month’s release of the duo’s first single, “Memoria”.
Listen to “Memoria”.
Update
After this article was posted, CHXMERAS announced that it will perform at the MUTEK XXV electronic music festival in Montreal. The 25th-anniversary edition runs from August 20 to 25. CHXMERAS will perform a free outdoor show on Esplanade Tranquille.
CHXMERAS is on Bandcamp and Linkt.ree. Learn more about diverse communities from the Toronto Spark website. Follow the Toronto Spark on X @TOSparkOfficial.
