Victoria and Vancouver Island have a ton of musical talent, and Victoria Excitement would like to highlight some of the very best and brightest community artists and bands.
Every Monday, there will be a clean ‘New Audio Monday’ short article to assistance people today come across and help area artists and bands that are up-and-coming, properly proven or concealed gems!
For this endeavour, Victoria Excitement has partnered with our very good pals at CFUV 101.9 FM, UVic’s campus radio station, to obtain and select the musicians and bands for this typical column.
This week, Slugger is the New Songs Monday highlight!
Slugger is a three-piece, slacker-rock band from Victoria which is comprised of Matt Watton, Matt Engelsman and Gunnar Byres, who have been actively playing together considering the fact that July 2023.
Watton suggests that he was actively playing bass in yet another Victoria band named Divisonaries when he made the decision he wished to variety a new challenge in which he could flex his guitar muscle tissue and sing some songs he had been sitting on.
He then recruited Byres who also plays in the nicely-recognized band ex-cowboy and Engelsman who had been playing in quite a few community bands since relocating to Victoria.
“I found out [Engelsman] was a substantial Ween enthusiast and I’m also a big Ween enthusiast so we had been like, we absolutely have to hook up and play,” Watton advised Victoria Excitement.
“It variety of just took off from there.”
On March 3rd, Slugger launched their new EP, Chumps & Suckers which options a few music Watton experienced penned prior to forming the band that he desired to discover together with his new bandmates.
When describing what slacker-rock meant and the seem they have been establishing collectively, Watton explained they wished to sound large, but melodic and substitute however nonetheless equipped to jam and improvise on tunes.
“When sending this out to reviewers, I termed it ‘hard doing the job slacker-rock,’” he spelled out.
“Slacker-rock to me is like 90s substitute things but considerably less well-liked than Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins.”
Slugger wished to emphasize the third track on Chumps & Suckers, “Duped.”
“There’s three music and they are in essence in buy from worst to greatest,” Watton laughed.
He extra they are proud of all three tracks but on “Duped,” the track genuinely developed into a little something extra than they could have imagined.
“It was originally a quite ‘chordy’ song but turned into something genuinely jammy,” mentioned Watton. “It was a single that actually evolved in the course of procedures.”
The jammy bit produced the song a crowd favorite when actively playing are living exhibits, as it seriously makes it possible for all three associates to take a look at the tune.
“It has a whole part in which we form of improvise on reside,” explained Byres.
Watton suggests that the lyrics for that music arrived from an thought he had to suit as quite a few synonyms for chumps.
“The first line is ‘how many chumps make a sucker,’ and I believe in my notes app I just had a checklist of like, chumps, rubes, suckers, fools,” he laughed.
He included that it is amazingly amusing and cathartic to yell “you’ve been duped” on phase at a present.
Pay attention to a preview of Chumps & Suckers by Slugger below:
To listen to Chumps & Suckers in its entirety, verify it out on Bandcamp or Spotify.
Slugger needs to take most of the summer to create some new tunes and function on their set so they can occur back whole-swing in the early slide, but they will be participating in a few shows all-around Greater Victoria in that time as very well.
“We are honoured to be enjoying Sick Working day Festival on Pender Island from July 12th to 13th,” claimed Watton.
“It’s going to be authentic entertaining, actively playing with all the awesome, enjoyable, community [Victoria] bands that I really like.”
In addition to Slugger actively playing at Unwell Working day, ex-cowboy, Queens Park, Trophy Dad, Conjure Hand, Poppa Don Gernie, HopeCity Waters, Sofia Miller, Silvertone and more will be performing.
“Shoutout to Silvertone,” Watton stated. “They’re going to be the following interesting Vic band, mark my text.”
Associated:
CFUV is a non-earnings campus and neighborhood radio station that performs a ton of nearby tunes of all sorts throughout Vancouver Island. If you like to help regional new music they are an remarkable resource with a plethora of new community tunes in their arsenal.
“As a person who’s comparatively new to Victoria, the audio scene has been my way of connecting to persons and the town and I assume CFUV is tremendous, super integral to that,” explained Watton.
“They validate and assist the scene.”
Tune into CFUV 101.9 FM on air or on the internet!
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