Carmen Braden is a versatile, genre-jumping musician from the Canadian sub-Arctic, with Voice in the Dark being our very first taste of her music! It’s certainly a unique sounding tune, yet it’s also surprisingly catchy, truly making for the best of both worlds! Find out more about Carmen below…

By Jane Howkins

 You recently released a new single titled Voice in the Dark. What can you tell us about the song?

The song originated several years ago. I heard a local friend and a radio host share what it was like to experience a major technical issue and not know if anyone was listening to them talk into the darkness of radio-space. I remember writing the lyrics imagining what that would have been like, especially loving the ideas of our human voices going out into the airwaves with just a hope that someone’s listening. Radio’s a big part of northern life, and I’ve grown up being a total radio junkie.

I remember making the first demo of the song back then, late at night at home in the deep of a Yellowknife winter night. And because my baby was sleeping in the next room, I sang it super soft and gentle, but attempted to create a big, warm, driving drum+synth+bass+texture outer-space vibe for the song to live in .

Moving ahead to when my producer Mark Adam and I were tracking songs and ideas for the album, we wanted to keep the frame of the song the same, and amplify the original spacious and delightful energy as we created the final version.

Producer Mark Adam and I have worked closely together on all my albums, on everything from chamber classical music to catchy folk songs to gentle improvisations. For this latest single (and my whole upcoming album A Hard Light) I trusted Mark to take the core of the song, and create space + sound around it that. It was great to have ideas of the song evolve in terms of subtle shifts in harmonies, tempos, even melodic moments as we worked on it.

We fully embraced satisfaction and play of the studio, using synthesisers, upbeat drum grooves, percussion instruments like marimba, layered vocals, and post-production fun… Mark arranged and performed most of the instruments on the tune in his Wolfville studio, with Nova Scotia guitarist Richard White tracking big beautiful electric guitar washes. Some of the original sounds from my 2018 demo even made it into this final track!

With Mark living in Nova Scotia, and myself living in Northern Canada (the Northwest Territories), most of this work was all done over internet connections for the recording and mixing, with a trip to Nova Scotia for final vocal tracking. Kind of bringing the idea to life of our voices moving through huge spaces to connect to each other!

How has the reception to Voice in the Dark been so far, and where can it be purchased?

I’ve been loving the responses to this first single! Folks are hearing some of the things that are my own favourites about it – some of the musical shifts that are a bit unexpected, but also how it’s got such a great groove and beat to it.

It’s available on all the major streaming platforms! Merch for the album will be available mid-fall on my website.

Do you have any more singles planned for release soon?

Yes! A second single was released in early September (this one gets a little gritty+dark, coming from a place of memory+choice+body), and a third will come out in November (this one will be gentle + beautiful + shining, but with a little heartbreak in it).

You have a new album called The Hard Light due out in December. What can you tell us about the record?

This is an album where each song has its own sound. When I’ve been writing and working with producer Mark Adam over the years, we’ve embraced the approach that each moment deserves it’s own attention. So sound-crafting each song is both wonderfully freeing and demanding at the same time. It’s the same balance of struggle-joy that happens in the classical composing world.

But the whole album is rooted in the songwriter world, and there’s a heavy lean into synthesiser/arpeggiator/groove worlds. Mark is an incredible drummer and you’ll hear his production work that gives the album some real shine, and also some moments of darkness.

The overall themes of the album touch on that, actually: Moments of darkness. Not so much dark=negative, but memories of moments that happened in the dark. And in these songs we wanted to shine a light (sometimes it feels raw or vulnerable, or spotlit) on these moments to show the realness of them. Sometimes it’s a beautiful reality, sometimes it’s a tough one.

You won the Western Canadian Music Award for Classical Composer of the Year in both 2020 and 2019, which is very impressive! How did that feel? Do you have any current nominations?

Thank you! It feels great to have a growing presence in the Canadian composition world, which has been one of my major focuses. I’ve been honoured to have my compositions played by incredible soloists, choirs, chamber groups and even a couple orchestras across the whole country. Since I live in a more remote + northern part of the country, having this kind of community and connection makes me feel grounded here but also like I’m stretching out long arms to colleagues and friends and other ears in other places.

And I gotta say that the recognition by the WCMA’s was a feeling that cemented my believe that people don’t have to live in any of the major Canadian cities like Calgary or Vancouver or Toronto to make make music, but more importantly to make a life as a musician. My home in Yellowknife NWT has been a massive part of making me who I am as an artist. And I love that my work helps make people look at the other music being made in part of the world more, cuz there’s amazing talent up here!

Your music has a really unique sound. What/who are you most influenced by? What have you been listening to recently?

Thank you, that’s so kind!

Hmmm – the first songwriters that got in my ears included folks from my parent’s record collection like Randy Newman, the Beatles, Harry Nilsson, Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon. In my teens I loved the amazing wave of Canadian female singer-songwriters like Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morrisette (Jagged Little Pill was my first CD purchase!), Jan Arden… Then I had a heavy Tom Waits phrase – I really loved his embrace of weird + wonder.

I’ve had a love of jazz for ages – and learning jazz piano in my late teens/20’s has had a massive influence on all of my writing, and playing in a big band in university. The colours in the harmonies, the balance of freedom/structure, the strength and beauty of the songs in the “standards”… Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald… and later hearing Canadian players that I got to meet in real life like Mike Murley, Yoon Sun Choi, Dani Oore… (I just picked up playing trombone in the local Yellowknife group The Ragged Ass Swing Band, and it’s sooo much fun.)

My intro to jazz started at the same time as my intro to composing, and that gate-way-drug composer was Debussy. Compositionally, I’ve always loved the colours, the toying with tonality, and the connections to environment from the Impressionists, also pretty much anything Stravinsky, and weirdly, I also love Renaissance vocal music.

Hmm – a couple of my favourite albums to put on lately include American songwriter/composer Gabriel Kahane – his Ambassador album, and Toronto’s Selina Martin’s Time Spent Swimming record. And because I have two small kids, I listen to a LOT of Moana, Encanto and Frozen, and I love it – it’s such great music!

You’re based in Canada. What is the local music scene like in your part of the world?

This is a great question, and a tough one to tackle since Canada has such a big, diverse geography with people spread out so far!

If I reflect on the country as a whole, I’d say the music scene is really active and people are supportive of each other. It’s pretty easy to feel connected digitally from one side to another, and with. One of my favourite aspects of the Canadian music scene has been it’s embracing and celebrating of music from other cultures – and especially the long-overdue celebrations and interest in Indigenous music-makers in all genres. (Check out PIQSIQ, Digawolf, Leela Gilday, Tanya Tagaq, and Grace Clark as just a few Indigenous, Inuit and Metis musicians from my own home territory!) But there’s also impressions that the country is regionally restrictive. Sometimes that’s just because of the challenge to overcome space+time+money when physically moving around the country!

If I have to look at my own part of the country, in the Northern part of Canada (think the same northness as Alaska, just to the East…), it’s a super fun place to live and work. There’s energy and enthusiasm for new ideas, you get to know the community really fast – and feel like you can make your own space here. People often associate music in Canada with reflecting nature, environment, space, vastness, etc… and a lot of my music – and music of others in the Northwest Territories is influenced by the sub-Arctic or Arctic. BUT I like to gently re-shift that stereotype to see it as music coming from people in relationships with that land and with each other. Ha – I can’t argue with the fact that there IS a ton of geography here and it impacts everyone somehow – from fires and floods to bugs and the aurora borealis.

Do you have anything else exciting coming up over the next few months?

Some new contemporary classical writing projects! I have three great commissions on my plate.

And I’m looking forward to hosting + presenting some visiting musicians in Yellowknife in the winter, and in the Longshadow Music Festival next spring which I’m one of the directors of.

And I’ll be honest that I’m starting to look forward to winter – or at least cooler fall temperatures to move past the forest-fire season this year. It’s on a lot of our minds and I know this is a theme that’ll show up in my new works…

Do you have any tour dates lined up for the UK?

Unfortunately not yet – but I’d love to! I’ve been to the UK (England and Wales) when I was a teenager – my family did a trip on a little narrow canal boat which was awesome… I’d love to bring my music to you in the UK live in the next few years.

I did have my first-ever performance of a composition in the UK last year, with the Canadian women’s choir Elektra, performing two of my compositions in Peterborough, Cambridge and London, as part of their wild project based on The Lost Words book by British author Robert MacFarlane. That felt amazing!

Any last words for the fans?

I was just in the East Coast of Canada, in St. John’s, Newfoundland. And for a few moments, I was as close to the UK as I can get without leaving North America! That felt super cool. So I’m glad my music is heading out even farther and getting into the ears of your community. Thanks for listening over there!!