Matthew Cardinal – May 24th [Music Video]

This would be up KEXP‘s Pacific Notions alley.
Today Matthew Cardinal of nêhiyawak announced his debut solo album called Asterisms which comes out on October 27, 2020 via Arts and Crafts.
The leading single is called May 24th and it is a beautiful and dreamy atmospheric track.

About the album and the track:
The album is a dazzling collection of ambient electronic music that crystallizes moments in the amiskwaciy (Edmonton) based musician’s life.

Cardinal’s first solo full-length is an audio journal that explores “captured moments of experimentation and expression” in eleven entries: “asterisms drawing attention to where I was musically, mentally and emotionally at very brief passages of my life,” says Cardinal.

Illuminated by the first single “May 24th” and its accompanying video by multimedia visual artist SCKUSE (Stephanie Kuse) shared today, Asterisms explores emotional-sonic textures with an often gentle, dreamy tint – the glint of synthesizers dancing around atmospheric melodies and rhythmic accents.
Inspired by Cardinal’s ephemeral night-time flash photography, Kuse set out to create “something soft, hypnotic, and pretty to suit the music that also reflected the dreamy and nostalgic nature of his photos,” she recounts. “I spent a few evenings out collecting footage near the South Saskatchewan River until I stumbled on the right material – wildflowers and grass going in and out of focus as the camera trailed behind. The footage was then processed through an old TV to enhance the vibrancy and to add subtle distortion.”
“‘May 24th’ is the result of experimenting with generative synthesis and syncing external equipment, playing around and having multiple sound sources playing the same melody. I slowed everything down significantly and built on top of that,” reveals Cardinal, a consummate sound-shaper both solo and in his role in the nêhiyawak trio. Coupled with its successor track, “May 25th” – a brief retro-futuristic motif – “May 24th” features alternatingly ascendant and cascading celestial strands, buoyed by dramatic swells of synthesizers that emit a spacious sigh at the song’s gentle end.

May 24th gets:
/10.

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