Given the right stimulus, the mind can enter a trance. Sometimes it happens innocently: maybe you’re sick with food poisoning and the malaise conjures up otherworldly images from behind the retina. Other times it’s drugs, dance, music, or a combination of all three. Whatever the case: to be in a trance is to lull the mind into a false sense of security, to be transported into a kind of other consciousness. Sometimes it’s magic. Or maybe you’re just high. Or on your deathbed.
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Montreal based band The Beat Escape ostensibly make dream-pop, but it’s the kind that acts as a springboard into a trance-like experience. Today we’re premiering their latest single and video “The Moon In Aquarius” (watch below) which, to be honest, has me feeling like I’ve been relocated from my body and am crawling around on the office ceiling.The track is taken from the group’s immersive and lightly psychedelic debut album Life Is Short, The Answer Is Long – released through Bella Union later this month (April 27). Ahead of its release, I called up The Beat Escape’s Addy Weitzman and Patrick A Boivin, who said that their sound isn’t forged so much from dream-pop but a love of electronic music, which makes a lot of sense considering its transcendental qualities. They explain that they’re super into industrial music, early techno, electro, exotica, and that throughout the years they’ve been going to loads of raves.And so “The Moon In Aquarius” sounds like the moment the rave has ended, but the motion in your body and the atmosphere in the air is telling you to carry on. It is, ultimately, electronic songwriting with bold purpose. Though this is their debut album, the confidence exuded by The Beat Escape perhaps comes from the fact Weitzman and Boivin have known each other for ten years now and have already played in several bands together – many of which have involved a Juno 106 synthesiser.The band, however, came about after the pair moved into a shared apartment in Montreal a few years ago. During this time they also DJ'd together in a local bar, and when time came to record an album, they set-up shop in a studio located upstairs. Some of the record was completed here, as well as in the Laurentians – a plethora of gentle rolling mountains in southern Quebec – which is also where the video for “The Moon In Aquarius” was filmed.Shot in collaboration with photographer and filmmaker Christopher Honeywell, the music video cooly compliments the meditative nature of the track. Yes, it’s slow – a good thing. Yes, it features a moon – also great, especially considering the name of the song. And on that point, the last final point, where did that title come from? Are they into astrology? They say they’re not deep into it, but they do have a fascination with the cosmos. As for their star signs? Patrick is a Pisces; Addy is a Libra. Water and air. Intuition and intellect. As far as the stars tell it, that’s a match made with a strong sense of escapism.You can find Ryan on Twitter.