Today Antoine Corriveau announces the upcoming release of his fifth LP entitled “Oiseau de Nuit,” which will be available everywhere April 25th via Secret City Records. Coproduced by Antoine and Stéphane Bergeron (Karkwa), “Oiseau de Nuit” is an exceptional sonic journey that will surprise listeners. Improvisation, narration, shattered musical conventions — the bird rises into the night and topples all pre-established notions about his creator. Melodies that flirt with R&B rub shoulders with epic lyrics delivered breathlessly, as “Oiseau de Nuit” confirms a liberating, unprecedented artistic freedom. The album artwork is a photograph by the artist José Enrique Montes Hernandez. The record will be available in digital, CD, and vinyl format.The lead single “Suzo” embodies this musical summary. Antoine shares what inspired it with us: “The first lines of
the song came to me while I was walking on St-Denis Street, between De Castelneau and Villeray. I imagined meeting a lawyer, Master Vittorio Suzo, someone high up, and telling him my life story, thinking he could help me repair the harm I’d done and put me out of danger. This set the stage for a revelation that would guide the whole album — a false identity.” The music video, premiered on Indiemusic was directed by Samuel Terry-Pitre & Jérémy Gagnon.
How do you write about what’s growing deep inside you, which you chose not to express until now? It’s there, in the middle of the knot, that several invisible forms of violence stick out, burrowed into the flesh, which can lead to a need for dissociation, a powerful desire to become another, a double, a new being, to get past the imprint of the dark. Traps and distractions abound; affectless sexuality, camouflage, compensation, journeys into the void, multiple small deaths, escape throughout time and space, resurrection. During the creative process, recollection mingles with projection, and the lines between parallel lives and memories blur. Diving to the core of childhood and adolescence before spectacularly ascending back to unveil the many facets that make him who he is, the award-winning singer-songwriter takes us on an unforgettable journey. By questioning his identity — the public one, the private one, and the one that strictly belongs to him — Antoine Corriveau reveals what he has never said before on any record on this new album.
The primary desire behind the creation of Oiseau de Nuit was to borrow from the codes of hip-hop production, without falling into the trap of a stylistic exercise. Interested in further exploring the sound collage technique he toyed with on his previous album, PISSENLIT, Corriveau acquired a vast vinyl record collection, with the aim of making a sampling album. Alas, he quickly felt cramped in this format and decided to create custom samples, by inviting many musicians to jam in his studio: Stéphane Bergeron (drums and co-production), Marc-André Landry (bass), Simon Angell (guitar, saxophone), Sheenah Ko, François Lafontaine (synths), Cherry Lena, VioleTT Pi, Rose Perron (vocals), Taurey Butler (piano), Éveline Grégoire-Rousseau (harp), Pietro Amato (French horn), Émilie Fortin (trumpet), Kalun Leung (trombone), Laurie Torres (piano), Mat Vezio (drums), and Ariel Comtois (saxophone).
These free-flowing exploratory sessions led to the production of nearly half the album. For the rest, Antoine Corriveau returned to his first love, alone at the piano or with his guitar, writing a series of songs that were arranged in great part thanks to the taped jams. The records that influenced him while creating his own music included those by the Beastie Boys, Kendrick Lamar, Makaya McCraven, Armand Hammer, Alice Coltrane, Cymande, Yusef Lateef, Lolita Cuevas, Georgia Ann Muldrow, and Brahja.
Tracklist
1. Suzo
2. Un Jardin
3. Imprudences
4. Moscow Mule
5. Pastorale
6. En plein coeur de la nuit
7. Ambulance
8. Argentine
9. Interruption
10. Pur Sentiment
11. Parc Avenue
12. Balcon
More About Antoine Corriveau
Antoine Corriveau is a Montreal singer-songwriter. In the musical landscape since 2011, he broke through in 2014 with the critically acclaimed Les ombres longues. That album features the song “Le nouveau vocabulaire,” which won the Prix de la chanson SOCAN (by popular vote). Cette chose qui cognait au creux de sa poitrine sans vouloir s’arrêterwas released in October 2016, earning 4 nominations at the Gala de L’ADISQ, making it onto the Polaris Music Prize2017 Long List, being included among the ten finalists for the Prix Félix Leclerc – and winning the Prix André “Dédé” Fortin, as well as the Indie Rock Album of the Year award at the 2017 GAMIQ. By then the vast Francophone market is already closely monitoring Corriveau’s career, and he is picked as one of the five new voices to watch out for by Le Point (France): “He is often compared to Bashung. It is true that their voices, their writing and their looks are not all that different.” The Feu de forêt EP was released on the Secret City Records label in November 2018, thrilling critics, in addition to winning the Folk EP of the Year award at the 2019 GAMIQ. It also received a four-star review in La Presse, and it was lauded in France and the United States. “More than ever, he remains a genuine treasure. We are blessed to live in the same era as him […]” (Tsugi); “exhilarating, cinematic rock” (Brooklyn Vegan). His 2020 album PISSENLITfurther established the melodic and lyrical skills of the artist and won over critics. Three keys from Télérama, ★★★★1⁄2 from Journal de Montréal, 8,5/10 from Le Canal Auditif, ★★★★ from La Presse, in addition to threenominations at the 2021 Gala de l’ADISQ, including Critics’ Choice and Singer-Songwriter of the Year. Antoine Corriveau toured across Québec and opened for Klô Pelgag at the Maroquinerie in Paris and in Belgium to promote the album.