When: 7.30pm on Friday 16 September 2011
Where: Kraak, off Stevenson Square, Manchester M1 1DB

We’re excited to bring a band who produced one of our favourite albums of last year back to Manchester.

Mt. Chimaera, the debut album of Vancouver band Brasstronaut, can be envisioned as the mythological beast of its title. This record skillfully unifies genres as various as pop, electronica, klezmer and jazz, just as the chimaera is composed of parts from a lion, goat and serpent. And they both breathe fire.

Recorded at The Banff Centre in the Rocky Mountains and mixed/produced in home studios in Vancouver, Oberlin, Ohio and New York, Mt. Chimaera is the first full-length release by Brasstronaut’s definitive six-piece line-up. Fronted by vocalist and keyboardist Edo Van Breemen, this roster is fluent in trumpet, lap steel, flugelhorn and the seldom-heard EWI (a breath-controlled synthesiser). But don’t be mistaken, this is a pop album, just one brewed with the most astonishing ingredients. This delicate balance is attained with the kind of grace that make Grizzly Bear and Radiohead at once avant garde and universal.

‘Part luscious synth-rock, part sweet, brass-bolted acoustica, part Eastern circus waltz, and underpinned bythe improv ethos of free jazz, it progresses according to its own eerie rhythms. This weirdly lovely record is as strange as it is satisfying’ – Metro, 4*

‘The debut album from this six-piece from Vancouver is complex, Arcade Fire-style baroque pop‘ – Q, 4*

‘A fluid, genre-ignoring, breath of fresh alt.pop air. It’s sweetly melodic yet constantly shuffling between territories, from ambient to electronica to blue-eyed soul‘ – Uncut

Support comes from one of our favourite Manchester bands: Stranger Son of WB. In 2011 they will release their second full-length album on Manchester’s Whiteboxrecordings, showcasing a move toward a wider landscape through orchestration and Glass/Reich polyrhythms.

Kraak is a performance and exhibition space in the Northern Quarter. It’s down a cobbled street, just behind Fit To Dance off Stevenson Square.

Tickets are available from Common (no booking fee), Piccadilly Records, Vinyl Exchange, Seetickets.com, WeGotTickets.com, Ticketline.co.uk, Ticketweb.co.uk and on 0871 220 0260.

Attend on: Facebook | Last.fm