ECMA Awards 2022 in Fredericton

Last month we traveled to Fredericton, NB to attend the East Coast Music Awards. As many of you know, we have a long history of east cost music. Jay grew up in Cape Breton, Lived in Halifax and started his musical career there. His first band was with Juno award winning artist, Rose Cousins. Jay and Rose played together, wrote music together and formed a band with Joyce Saunders and Benn Ross on Drums. Side note, Benn Ross was a drummer for bands like Thrush Hermit (Joel Plasket’s band). He then played with a number of other bands including the Blues Rock band Servo, Caledonia and a many others.

We attended the ECMA’s representing home in Cape Breton. As Kenzie MacNeil said, “The Home of our Hearts, Cape Breton.” Cape Breton will always be home and it was incredible to represent such a proud culture.

Two ECMA Awards for Autopilot

We digress. We were nominated for 3 ECMA’s, Group of the Year, Electronic Album of the Year and Rising Start Award. We had no idea if we would receive any awards, but we wanted to be part of the experience. We played live on ECMA radio and recorded a live performance for Roger’s TV which will air in the Fall of 2022.

So, here is the story. There were two awards shows, the big show the first night and the smaller show the last night. The first night, we were nominated for Group of the Year and did not win, we were up against some incredible acts from the east coast.

The last day of the conference was the day of the final awards show. We had a flight out of Fredericton at 3:30pm. We went to the show, again, not anticipating any awards but had to know for sure. We waited and waited…and waited while other awards were announced. We were getting late and knew we had to rush to get the plane. We said, lets wait for ONE more award. At that point, it was the Rising Start Award and we waited. Guess what, we won!

After our speech, we RUSHED out and hopping a cab to get to the airport, a very very slow cab. We arrived late at the airport. While we were in the car, we got a text saying we won Electronic album of The Year! DAM!

When we got to the airport the lady at the Porter airlines desk was not happy we were late and lectured us on this fact. As Sloan Said, we rolled our eyes.

The Experience was incredible and in the end, we received two awards. Something we’ll never forget.

DROP ME IN - Offical Video by Paragon Cause

We are proud to release the Offical Video for our New Single, Drop Me In by Paragon Cause

Ottawa Indie Spotify Playlist and Follow List

We have been spending some time developing a playlist of Ottawa Artists we like. The purpose is to get a collection of like minded, talented and good bands from Ottawa. The style would be considered a mix of Shoegaze, Dream Pop, Indie Rock, Noise Rock, Trip Hop, Beats and getting into some Hip Hop. We dont want “pop” or anything like that on the list. I am sure a ton of those lists are out there. This is for a feel, a mood. That mood you get when you walk into a bar and a cool, interesting band is playing. no pop.

A ton of people are on the list including many of our favorite ottawa indie bands, Expanda Fuzz, Dant Danners, etc.

Check it out and make sure you follow as many people as you can.

Fans Rock - Send us comments and we'll post the best ones!

We recently got an amazing comment from a fan from Texas. How can we not post this? If you like our music, tell us. You never know, we’ll probably send you a thank you in the mail. This dude is getting a free vinyl album for this gem.

Synths on the New Album – Paragon Cause and the World of Synthesizers

Synthesizers, the mysterious synthesizer. I must admit, in the early days of my music career, synthesizers seemed cheesy and dated. After some time, I started to play around with the stock synth programs in FL Studio and then updated to the Native Instrument plugins. I spent time and started to learn the in’s and out’s of NI Massive. It was at this point, I started to realize that a synth is as cheesy or cool as the song you produce.

But I digress. Since we started this band, we have opened our mind to what can be done with a synthesizer, both analogue and digital. We couldn’t care less about the analogue/digital argument, its stupid. Shut up and make good music, I couldn’t care less if its 1’s and 0’s or transistors and capacitors. Write a good song, ignore the people who say they can tell the difference between the types of sound generators. The song is the hard part.

We decided to record our new album using a combination of digital and analogue synths, some in the box some outside the box. Of course, there is a ton of sexy guitar, bass and whatever else, but ‘electronic’ instruments are also used. We like that old distorted sound, we want weight to the sound and we want emotion. On our first album, we stuck to more classic synth sounds but this new album we recorded with Sune Rose Wagner (of The Raveonettes), we tried to create some new sounds. Sune Rose opened our ears to many of these new sounds and it was incredibly refreshing and exciting.

1) Waldorf Streichfett  - String synth

This is a digital synth that sounds incredible. Some people across the internet described it as ‘dated’ but let me tell you, this thing is not dated. The sounds you can get with this compete with some sounds from our Roland JX-8P, a synth we relied heavily on.

The Waldorf Streichfett can do gorgeous strings to insane gritty hell on earth. Pump it through an old Yamaha SPX90II and you will be in synth heaven. And that is JUST the string side! There is another side to this that can pump out incredible bass and electric piano sounds. If you want a small, portable, easy to use machine, this is it. We figured it out in minutes. It’ll be part of our live show for ages.

We are using the Streichfett live, in stereo now. It is huge sounding. People can get obsessed with digital vs analogue synths, but come on, it sounds amazing. We have a ton of digital plug-in synths that sound amazing, i’m glad someone finally released an easy to use, incredible sounding synth for live and in studio. This is a great synthesiser for kids as well, it is incredibly easy to learn.

2) Roland JX-8P – Classic 80’s Synth

This thing is a beast. Known for being on many classic albums, including The Cure. We love the presents, particularly the  Cello, Fat Fifths and string sounds. They are all incredible. This is a true analogue synth, perhaps one of the lesser known classic Roland Synthesizers, but nevertheless, it booms.

The problem is programming it, its nearly impossible. You can buy a special controller for this, allowing you to adjust the parameters, but they cost more than the synthesizer! A full analogue synth that will explode your speakers if you want. It is, the best sounding synth I’ve used. Its raw, rugged and a beast. Again, we put it through a Warm Audio Tonebeast, crank the gain and bam…you are in another dimension.  This was used on most of the songs on our album, most heavily on a song called “Someone Else.”

3) Korg SV1 – Modern, Powerful and Sexy

A workhorse, sounds great, looks great, works great. Great keys. Just great. But Heavy. It is our main synth and our main midi controller. We use this keypad and then use a Quatro Midi Thu to send to all the other synthesizers. The SV1 is an incredible flexible and easy to use poly synth. It feels like a piano as well.

4) Roland SE-02 A new synth to the mix, small and mighty. This mono analogue synth packs a punch. We used this for some bass.

5) Roland TR-8s – Drum’s
This is our go to for drums, live, in the studio, practice. This thing is incredible and more people need to know about it. Its all digital, but you can add any sample. As a “rock” band, people are often surprised we use a drum machine, but when they see us play live, they get it. Is different, unique. It is an incredibly powerful machine. If you spend time with it, you will be able to do almost anything.

6) Manther by Melekko

Love the Manther, analogue monosynth. Deep bass, cutting leads. pretty hardcore and tough to tame

New Video for Drop Me In

We have a great time recording our new album and out of this process a few fun little tunes were recorded.

One of these, is a song we played live a few tunes and is a fan favorite, Drop Me In.

Drop Me was released on the European Version of our album Escape as well as this new version.

to make things even more fun, we decided to make a video.

Check out the link below!

VIDEO FOR DROP ME IN