We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

DogGone

by Tryal

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
    Purchasable with gift card

      name your price

     

  • let me know if you'd like a personalized video message or song for you or a friend and I will send you one via email or on Instagram. once you purchase this I email you for more information!

    Includes unlimited streaming of DogGone via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $10 CAD or more 

     

1.
Time+X 01:32
2.
The Map 03:01
3.
Cameo 01:57
4.
5.
i em wading 02:16
6.
vari vue 03:25
7.
Saint Joseph 02:43
8.
Take A Hike 04:37

about

Alex says that these songs are “mini-meditations on miscommunication, friendship, and the struggle to connect”, which feels right.

“Time+X” lays this out for us with its spare ode to humankind’s sweet, clumsy rituals of hanging out, reaching out, making time. Alex is of course in his special way a Sondheim interpreter of some note, and that feels significant here somehow. We can see his song’s subjects finding each other in the crowded streets and the guarded parks, making mistakes, holding on to their own, thinking they’re alone, all the while lovingly observed by this amused narrator-of-few-words.

Fact is, this is obviously, undeniably, music made by someone who loves people, which is an artistic point of view often forced (not to say faked), but we sure know the real thing when we see it. And people who love people are very often endowed with a gift for assembling them in fortuitous combinations.

So it is that TRYAL, in addition to being a vessel for Alex’s gifts as a writer and performer, brings us the beauty of Team Cole/Cartwright (easily one of my favourite rhythm sections, not that you asked), Thom Gill, Sean Donald, and Alex’s vocal group Grex, comprised here of Jill Harris, Mara Nesrallah, and Mingjia Chen. (Look, obviously the human voice’s potential for beauty is vast and various and bottomless, but surely we can agree that the way these three sing together on “I Em Wading” is… on some level… how our species was… meant to use our voices, right? Like, the fact that people can sound like this is without doubt the result of some unfathomably huge existential process going very well, right?)

Anyway, true as it ever was, this is, um, Very Good Music. Music that would never in a million years have existed if it hadn’t been made by these specific people. I can’t really think of any more fundamental criteria for what good art is supposed to be.

-Bram Gielen-

credits

released April 9, 2021

Alex Samaras: Vocals/Piano
Josh Cole: Bass/Guitar (2, 4)
Thom Gill: Guitar (2)
Evan Cartwright: Percussion (2)
Sean Donald: Vocals (4)

Grex:
Mingjia Chen: Vocals (5)
Jill Harris: Vocals (5)
Mara Nesrallah Vocals (5)

Produced by Evan Cartwright and Josh Cole
Mixing: Josh Cole
Mixing on track 5: Nathaniel Morgan
Mastering: Sandro Perri
Recorded by Jeremy Darby at Canterbury Studios Toronto, Ontario.

Track 8 "Take A Hike" by Owen Stewart-Robertson

Album Photography by Claire Harvie

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

TRYAL Toronto, Ontario

Charismatic compositions that treat electronic pop sophistication as a springboard for all manner of exploration. Lithe dream-like arrangements give way to peculiar lushness; beats dissolve into weightless melodies.

contact / help

Contact TRYAL

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like DogGone, you may also like: