Our Basement,

The creation of Only One Left (out November 28th) was book-ended by the saddest and happiest events in my life – I started writing the record during the last weeks of my mother’s life, and it was mastered the day before my wedding.

In between those pivotal moments, I travelled for nine months – to Turkey, Greece, Israel, Italy, England, France and the Netherlands – and took my Nord synthesizer that I used to compose most of Only One Left with me. I recorded in a big house in Istanbul, a tiny hotel room in Amsterdam, and an even tinier bathroom in Tel Aviv (to mute the birds in the backyard). Back home in Montreal, I got friends to play on the record – Brad Barr, Joe Grass and Joshua Toal – and my right-hand man, Matthew Lederman, to mix it.

The album’s opening track, “Javelin Fade”, opens with the line “The Sirens are calling…”, referring to the creatures of Greek mythology who lured sailors with their enchanting voices to shipwreck on the rocky coast of their island. The Sirens also evoke the emergency alarms sounding as the narrator floats over the Earth as the sole witness to the aftermath of a nuclear disaster (“Rising in the fallout”).

Only One Left is an album of endings and beginnings, rooted in my native Montreal, but also in the countries where I went wandering – an outsider looking in. The music itself signals a new phase in my work – still committed to the old craft of songwriting, but experimenting with synthesizers and computer to carve out a sound that is my own.
Daniel Isaiah