Sarah Neufeld is a violinist and composer based in Montréal, Canada. Best known as a member of Arcade Fire, she is also a founding member of the acclaimed contemporary instrumental ensemble Bell Orchestre, and most recently as half of an exciting new duo with renowned saxophonist Colin Stetson.
 
Neufeld began developing pieces for solo violin in a formal sense in 2011, though she has made improvisation and solo composition part of her process and practice since first picking up the instrument at a young age. Neufeld counts Bela Bartok, Steve Reich, Iva Bittova and Arthur Russell among the formative influences for her solo work, in tandem with an ear for the textures and sensibilities of contemporary electro-acoustic, avant-folk and indie rock music.
 
Neufeld’s debut solo album Hero Brother, released August 20/2013 on Constellation Records, indeed channels all of the above, flowing through shifting atmospheres and oscillating between restrained, stately ambience, emotive études, and raw kinetic energy. Small touches of wordless vocalisation, harmonium and piano supplant the violin in a few places. The album was recorded in Berlin by pianist and producer Nils Frahm, with Neufeld’s performances captured in a number of locations with site-specific acoustics, including an abandoned geodesic dome.
 
Neufeld is currently preparing for the release of her second full length album, The Ridge, out February 26th, 2016. This new body of work sees Neufeld moving away from Hero Brother‘s classical minimalism and sepulchral ambience, and into the world of rhythmic pop minimalism. The Ridge employs more emphasis on vocalizations than Neufeld’s previous works; the interplay between Neufeld’s voice and violin has become strongly integrated and narrative. The album also features Arcade Fire’s Jeremy Gara on drums, adding greater layers to the compositions, creating an intense, dynamic atmosphere, and a captivating listen from start to finish.
 
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Please note: Colin Stetson will be sitting in during Sarah Neufeld’s set

Eartheater is Alexandra Drewchin, a New York based musician and artist who seeks on a daily basis to upgrade her mental software. Also known for her  incendiary performances fronting Guardian Alien, Eartheater is Drewchin’s unshackled solo vessel, a deliberate distillation of voice, synths, guitar, and electronic production techniques into short-form compositions teeming with crystalline details.
  
October 2015 saw the release of her second album in the same year on Hausu Mountain, RIP Chrysalis. Following perfectly from her debut Metalepsis, RIP Chrysalis is a stunning up step. At any given mement, an Eartheater composition reads somewhere between a folk song, a musique concrete collage, and a filmic suite fit to soundtrack a cosmic montage that only she can imagine in full detail. Her intricate ballad arrangements rise from standing pools of hi-fidelity synthesis, while her dynamic vocal performances span an untold number of tactics and tonalities. Drewchin builds layered electronic productions possessed of enough detail to constitute stand-alone worlds, each weighted thick with text and texture.
 
Possessed of a free-associative structure spiked with experimentations with the drone, ambiernt, and noise traditions, Metaleosis unfolds as a singular curatorial effort with Drewchin’s voice and guitar as it’s gleaming focal points. Eartheater is Drewchin’s personal evolution: as a musical process at once tethered to advancing technologies and to the flashed of humanity that escape between the circuits.
 
 
“A digitized take on psych-folk, casting spells in javascript and lacing them together with silken guitar work.” –Pitchfork
  
“It’s one of the best pieces of psychedelic music we’ve encountered this year, but even that genre tag feels limiting to Eartheater’s transcendent mysticism.” –FACT
  
“…bizarre assemblages of electric guitar and synthesizer samples that bleed and swirl into one another with the boundless energy of psychedelia, at once feeling like ancient rite and unabated innovation,” –SPIN
  
“The first two Eartheater albums released this year have turned out to be grand rejections of absolutism. Metamorphosis is always possible… Abandoning any effort to enclose her too vast imagination, as Eartheater has built herself a world with no edges.” –The Wire 

 
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