Toronto avant-rock trio WHIMM’s debut album ‘A Stare Ajar’ is out now. The nine-song collection was released on October 27th via Pleasence Records, and is now available here. You can stream it via Soundcloud below to take a listen before you grab it.
For the past three years, Toronto’s WHIMM have brought the searing intensity of their live performances to stages across North America, honed through touring and shows with likeminded artists like Ice Age, Merchandise and Frigs. Singer/guitarist Mounir Chami, bassist Andrew Matthews, and drummer Jonathan Pappo create ominous, emotionally charged avant-rock fusing spellbinding melodies with an urgency akin to 1980s anarcho-punk.
To capture this feverish sound on their debut LP, WHIMM tapped producer Dean Tzenos from abrasive industrial punks Odonis Odonis. The album’s nine songs were obsessively refined over several months both onstage and in their garage rehearsal space, yet the band purposefully limited recording sessions to two rapid-fire days with engineer Ian Gomes at Toronto’s Union Sound (Fucked Up, METZ, Greys).
While bottling the band’s frantic energy, these recordings also add new dimensions to WHIMM’s musical landscape, expanding their instrumental palette with violin, piano, and cello from members of Toronto groups HSY, Scott Hardware, and visual artist Olenka Syzmonski. The album draws on influences ranging from Southern Gothic country, as heard on cinematic opener “Ember in the Wheat”, to the uncompromising experimentation of late period Scott Walker.
Lyrically, the record is refracted through multiple fields of vision, gazing at a splintered world through the eyes of the displaced. Perspectives range from an immigrant office worker forced to assimilate to their environment (“Ushers”) to an H.P. Lovecraft-ian haunted soul struck and captured by horrific apparitions (“A Stare Ajar”). Chami penned these character studies while pulling from the stories of his family and his own experiences as a Palestinian living in Canada, wrestling with internal conflicts while feeling trapped between worlds.
“I think about being part of a diaspora constantly,” says Chami. “Between the home where I’ve been raised and what that demands, and what society and my friendships demand, where do I fit in? How do I stop feeling strange in these environments? I exist in both of them but I don’t really understand how.”
‘A Stare Ajar’ tracklist
1) Ember In The Wheat
2) A Stare Ajar
3) Town Hall
4) Undermine
5) Second Sound
6) Field of Vision
7) Fifth Column
8) Crescent
9) Ushers
WHIMM’s ‘A Stare Ajar’ was released by Pleasence Records on October 27th.The album is now available here.
WHIMM are hitting the road in November for shows with artists such as Pop. 1280, Ice Cream, and their Pleasence Records labelmates Blonde Elvis. See the full tour info below.
WHIMM tour dates
Nov. 9 – Guelph – Dstrct
Nov. 11 – Hamilton – HAVN * >
Nov. 17 – Toronto – The Baby G (LP Release) +
Nov. 24 – Ottawa – Pressed >
Nov 25 – Kingston – Venue TBA >
Nov. 26 – Montreal – PN >
Nov. 30 – New York – Silent Barn ^ >
Nov. 31 – New York – Venue TBA >
^ With Pop. 1280
* With Blonde Elvis
+ With Ice Cream, Que Lastima, Invisible Out
> With Deliluh
