From Kitchener, Ontario comes Vulcan Nightclub, a four-piece band whose love for experimental jamming brought them together just as Covid-19 was beginning to tear apart Ontario’s live music scene. In response to the pandemic-induced deficit in live club music and in-person audience experiences, Vulcan Nightclub opted to “bring the club to your living room,” inviting audiences near and far to tune in during weekly livestream improv jam sessions. The band’s debut release Anthropomorphize is a three-track 30-minute album born of improvisation that is part prog-rock fused with groove music, and part indie jam-band.
Vulcan Nightclub is comprised of four members: Luke Cyrus Hunter (keys), Russell Jennison (bass), Ryan Dugal (drums) and Joel Morelli (guitar). Each member of the band has experience as a recording artist; three quarters of the band are music teachers; and two studied Jazz at Humber College in Toronto. Spontaneity, along with four individual sources of music inspiration, are the driving forces behind Vulcan Nightclub (the name, a nod to Star Trek, comes from the notion that a bright future can be born of times of strife). Anthropomorphize was self recorded, self-mixed and self-mastered, and ultimately released under Groove Step Records, a small independent label that currently represents only Vulcan Nightclub and Luke Cyrus Hunter. After abandoning their original plan to spend 2020 touring and creating music on the fly while performing, the members of Vulcan Nightclub had to switch gears for their music production technique and create their original works for audiences to enjoy from within their homes. As an “improv groove party band,” Vulcan Nightclub is no stranger to creating original material on a weekly basis, that forces the band to exist within the moment as it creates spontaneous and ephemeral compositions. The members of the band approach their sound by collaboratively riffing off a theme, groove or time signature, navigating the creation of each song in real time in front of an audience while performing. As performing this ritual in the same room as its audience ceased to be an option, the band began to stream weekly live jam sessions that used its music to reconnect to its audience. Despite the atmospheric curveball of physical disconnection from its listeners, the band has no shortage of energy, bringing all the adrenaline of a live club performance to its weekly forty-minute livestreams. The resulting product Anthropomorphize is an energy-infused tapestry of instrumental conversation, complete with catchy bass-lines, groovy keys and drums that propel its three tracks forward, into the next sound, and the next. The final track of Anthropomorphize “Lore’s Lament,” remains true to the band’s music-creating approach, as it is a seven-minute first-take live recording that reveals the journey of the band’s organic jam practice. The energy between the individual musicians can be felt even through MP3 format, and as the recording progresses, the band materializes to the listeners, filling the various spaces from which they are tuning in. To virtual audiences it is apparent that these are musicians who enjoy playing together, and clearly have comfortable experience creating with one another. The ethos of Vulcan Nightclub emphasizes communication through music, and the band’s creations seem to reveal a common vernacular spoken amongst its members, and if you happen to be tuning in to a live set, you might just start to learn to understand its language.
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