Snowday

Toronto chillout electronic duo Snowday came upon the inspiration for the project in an unlikely source – a ukulele they picked up in Madrid, Spain while travelling Europe together. Without a studio to record in while on the road, Cam Sloan and Chad Skinner found a new creative spark in going back to basics and jamming with small acoustic instruments they collected throughout their travels. This newfound appreciation for acoustic textures and live playing greatly coloured the material they recorded once they returned home, which ended up becoming Snowday's first songs. Sloan and Skinner have been making music together in various projects since meeting in high school in Ottawa and bonding over a mutual love of underground hip-hop, which led them into sample-based production. Later inspired by the records they were sampling, with a desire to become better performers, they taught themselves to play their own instruments. The duo began recording piano, guitar, drums, and other instruments to generate their own samples, which helped lay the foundation for Snowday's live organic approach to ambient pop. Their debut album As We Travel is chillout music that is as sensual as it is psychedelic. Swirling synths and laid back guitars swim in washes of liquid reverb and sparkling delays, gently propelled by pulsing rhythms. Their closest musical relatives are chilled out electronic artists like Bonobo and Tycho, with occasional nods to ambient pioneer Brian Eno and minimalist icon Steve Reich. The majority of the record is instrumental and meditative, broken up by the ethereal vocals of guests Sammy Jackson on Regeneration and Kaleigh Watts on A Quiet Winter. As a live act, the addition of drummer Tait Rowsell and violinist Jessie Lyon pushes their sound in more assertive and upbeat directions, without sacrificing the subtle atmospherics of the recordings. Snowday on stage is much more a live band than a laptop act, although both Sloan and Skinner can still be found in the DJ booth on occasion as well. 'As We Travel' was released in November 2014, and received critical acclaim from top media outlets including XLR8R, Exclaim, Mxdwn, and premiered exclusively via Hype Machine. Snowday is the music project of producers Cam Sloan and Chad Skinner, with drummer Tait Rowsell and violinist Jessie Lyon.