the lake vernon drowning
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the lake vernon drowning

Toronto, Ontario, Canada | Established. Jan 01, 2005 | SELF

Toronto, Ontario, Canada | SELF
Established on Jan, 2005
Band Alternative Psychedelic

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This band has not uploaded any videos
This band has not uploaded any videos

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"the Lake Vernon Drowning 2005 selftitled ep"

The Lake Vernon Drowning

My favourite kind of weather is chilly, stark, possibly pissing rain, though fog and /or drizzle will do just as well. It makes me forget how hum-drum and boring pieces of my life sometimes are, and puts me in just the right state of melancholy reminiscence. And so that may explain why The Lake Vernon Drowning (available online at www.cdbaby.com), the concept album by Toronto musician Andrew Barker, resonated so much for me. It's like a long lonely walk on a grey fall day. - Ben Bowen


"lvd at press club"

A survivor of the titular drowning which gave way to his new project, Andrew Barker has since been fitting the pieces of folk, jazz & electronics together::: forming great pop puzzles & causing serious swoons from the ladies in the crowd --mr. Don Juan himself will be performing stripped down & solo this Wednesday at the press club (Dundas and Euclid). - poor pilgrim


"the lake vernon drowning self title EP"

The Lake Vernon Drowning

My favourite kind of weather is chilly, stark, possibly pissing rain, though fog and /or drizzle will do just as well. It makes me forget how hum-drum and boring pieces of my life sometimes are, and puts me in just the right state of melancholy reminiscence. And so that may explain why The Lake Vernon Drowning (available online at www.cdbaby.com), the concept album by Toronto musician Andrew Barker, resonated so much for me. It's like a long lonely walk on a grey fall day.

    Before sitting down to write this, I listened to LVD a handful of times, sometimes hearing hints of Flaming Lips or The Rheostatics, but always amazed by the unmistakeably unique musical voice and the raw vulnerability of the writing. It is otherworldly, like the soundtrack to an indie stop-motion movie by a young Tim Burton or the NFB… real art music, while resisting the avant-garde and remaining absorbing and accessible. Built around a formative event in Barker's youth, the music is a collection of mournful lullabies: cathartic, haunted, and deeply emotional; a surreal dreamscape of retrieved memories.

    Like an aural figure skater, Barker is a master of making the complex sound simple. With an archetypically Canadian singer-songwriter aesthetic, he uses a seamless blend of hi-fi and acoustic sounds to weave textures of sometimes overwhelming beauty. The music is full of space but not quite sparse, Barker's use of unaffected acoustic guitar backed by simple bass lines and drum sequences, with a variety of blips and samples, and at its peak, on "Exile No More," a soulful kickass electric blues guitar solo.

    This is the kind of music that needs to be made, but that normally won't garner nearly enough attention – too counter-cultural and anti-mainstream, thumbing its nose @ the status quo – to make it worth an artist's while. And while the tides have begun to turn in favour of indie artists, in the shadow of the current homogenized mainstream market, The Lake Vernon Drowning is still a brave expedition into possibility, an oeuvre that challenges the limits of music as art.

    ~ Ben Bowen, 02/2006
- Ben Bowen


"The Lake Vernon Drowning Man of Leisure, Man of War"

By Daniel SylvesterTwenty years after post-rock first trickled into indie rock's vernacular, it's become easy to retroactively see how much its style has permeated the sounds of band like Stereolab, Low and Broken Social Scene. Under the name the Lake Vernon Drowning, Andrew Barker (multi-instrumentalist for Toronto, ON indies Bruce Peninsula) creates music that sounds indisputably '90s, if not only for its use of post-rock modes. His debut, Man of Leisure, Man of War, sees anti-anthemic melodies and textural guitar play living in harmony with spiky, terrarium housed instrumentals. Songs like "Sleepwalking Through the American Dream" and "This Spring" unfold infinitely, while "Man of War" and "Before the Horse" work exclusively by their choice of instrumentation, as warm brass and icy idiophones create distinct personalities. Man of Leisure, Man of War finds a musician obsessing over his craft, resulting in a fascinating piece to unite musical and melody purists.
(Pet Mantis) - Exclaim!


"music: Go Live"

exerpt- "Barker touches on a whole spectrum of emotions with the LVD, cloaking his theoretical and mind-wandering lyrics in strange electronic swells and smart folk arrangments. Barker is an accomplished jazz guitar player, graduating with a B.A. from Humber College, in toronto, but it's his ability to play sloppy psych-folk progressions that makes the LVD something worth looking into. - Dose-jan 26, 2006


Discography

Still working on that hot first release.

Photos

Bio

Andrew Barker, known for his work as a multi-instrumentalist and contributing force behind Toronto Folk-Rock outfit Bruce Peninsula, showcases his individual talent with his solo venture, The Lake Vernon Drowning. Barker has spent the last year composing a sprawling allegorical concept album based on a modern-day Dark Age. All of which crept into his imagination one morning almost fully formed and begging for sound.

Musically influenced by a diverse set of artists, Barker displays a world with sound and feeling reaching out in all directions--in one direction, a vibrant mixture of post-rock influences like Gastr del Sol or Tortoise, and in another, the delicate yet boiling cauldrons that are Mount Eerie or Elliott Smith. Throw in a varying array of Jazz influences, i.e: Wayne Shorter and Miles Davis, and pull everything together with influences from the Metal genre such as "Mastodon" or "High on Fire". The result sets the stage for a world set to crumble beneath a beautiful melody.

The LVD is a marriage of beautiful and eerily harmonized lyrics with dynamic instrumental sections. Expect beautiful questions and angry answers with words that gnash their teeth, and sounds that bite.

Band Members