Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
“the third album by indie-pop maestro Mathew Adam Hart is so stunning that it makes the Postal Service look like half-hearted dilettantes” - July ’05 “Bands To Watch”
“Hart's third LP, Our Thickness, is an exuberantly echoing starburst of lo-fi twee-pop gone grand, an opulent boudoir popera for the Taj Mahal. A crashfest of cheapo synths, poppity drums, and spun-sugar vocals, almost clownishly oversized…It's an IMAX epic shot on Super8 and projected onto a bed sheet, a sumptuous coronation parade in a snowglobe, a theme park made of Tinker Toys… postage-stamp epics, majestic in miniature. Get the picture?” - Our Thickness CD Review
"Our Thickness never outstays it’s welcome – it’s a succinct psych-pop manifesto that clocks in at under 40 minutes but never skimps on melodies and hooks" - Our Thickness CD Review
"This is Hart and The Futurists' third album, and it's frankly masterful. From beginning to end, there's nothing out of place, no sound that isn't perfectly aligned, and no song that's less than carefully executed. I'd go through pointing out highlights, but pretty much the entire album is a highlight. If you're a pop fan; if you're into the whole one-man-band thing; if you just want to hear a significant talent at the top of his game, you owe it to your music collection to pick up a copy of Our Thickness." - Our Thickness CD Review
“Have you heard The Russian Futurists?…It’s like tinker-toy Depeche Mode…it’s really poppy and catchy!” - REM
Discography
Ecole de neige (EP) - 1999
The Method Of Modern Love - 2001
Lets Get Ready To Crumble - 2003
Our Thickness - 2005
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
When The Russian Futurists' internationally acclaimed debut, The Method of Modern Love, was released in 2001, bold, unashamed confessions of romance and vulnerability were rare commodities in pop -- whether above or underground.
Suddenly, as if from nowhere -- but, in fact, from the remote wilds of Eastern Ontario -- arrived a talent that was simultaneously modest but mighty, plain-spoken but rigorously intelligent. Critics and audiences, from London to Tokyo to Toronto, declared Futurists founder and creative linchpin Matthew Adam Hart a songwriter of rare compositional and lyrical brilliance. "[The Method of Modern Love] is one of the most melodically seductive and exhilarating records of recent times," wrote Uncut magazine; R.E.M's Peter Buck, former Blur guitarist Graham Coxon, and skater/actor/filmmaker Jason Lee all recommended the album. Hart had recorded it in his childhood bedroom for less than $100, using "very limiting and awful equipment."
Its follow-up, 2003's Let's Get Ready to Crumble, consolidated Hart's reputation as a writer who, seemingly without effort, subverted the conventions of the love song, creating miniature electronic epics that cost a shoestring but sounded as if they were spun from gold. Comparisons to The Flaming Lips, The Magnetic Fields and fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen were welcome and astute, but Hart had fashioned an enchanting aesthetic universe to which nothing else could fully compare.
And so where has Hart been these past two-plus years? Some of that protracted elapse was spent ushering The Russian Futurists from the solitude of the bedroom and into the glare of the outside world: having assembled a band, Hart hit the road on wayward mini-tours, known to have driven straight south one day for a show in Kentucky another time straight from Toronto to Tallahasse...The Russian Futurists hit Chicago, New York, Miami, London, toured Italy, Spain three times (the latter jaunt included a stop at the prestigious Primavera Sound Festival, alongside Pixies, Wilco, Franz Ferdinand and others), played the 2004 editions of the CMJ and Pop Montreal festivals, recorded sessions for CBC Radio, and just finished a 2 month North American Tour supporting Caribou (Ex-Manitoba) and The Junior Boys.
But the third, most eagerly anticipated Russian Futurists album, Our Thickness, best explains its creator's prolonged absence: Hart has been making his best album to date. Comfortingly familiar and yet a quantum leap beyond its predecessors, it bears all the hallmarks of Russian Futurists recordings -- insinuating melodies, ingeniously grand low-budget arrangements, insightful words about loves lost and found -- but is fuller, wiser, sadder and giddier than before. A video is currently in the works by critically acclaimed director Matt Eastman (Five Alive Commercials) for the colossal album opener "Paul Simon" (#2 college radio, #1 debut CMJ, CBC 3, feature play Indie Hour Edge 102). Stay tuned for more details on the Canadian and European tour.
The Russian Futurists have returned.
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Upper Class Recordings is finalizing an extensive and imaginative world-wide mission for The Russian Futurists, The Cansecos, Cadence Weapon and Food For Animals. It is Upper Class Recordings plan and our purpose to ensure that every experience will be a unique moment of delirious sounds and dazzling sights.
www.upperclass.to
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