Scions

Today, the avant-garde, genre-defying, Ontario collective Scions are sharing their latest single, "The Mountain," the second offering from their forthcoming album To Cry Out In The Wilderness out November 8th via Idée Fixe Records.

"The Mountain" is a raw, powerful meditation on nature’s fury, post-apocalyptic survival, and the inevitable reckoning with forces greater than ourselves. With its massive, rumbling soundscapes, the track conjures the image of an ancient, dormant mountain awakening in anger.

“This song imagines an ancient, terrifying guardian rousing in response to the world’s devastation,” says vocalist and co-writer Cormac Culkeen. “We wanted the listener to feel the weight of great stones falling, of nature speaking back.”

While staying true to the group members' expertise across chamber jazz and drone, in "The Mountain" Scions combines their composition with traditions more commonplace in metal music, specifically black metal and grindcore. This juxtaposed with the ensemble’s euphonious performances to create a rich, dense soundscape. The piece was created in collaboration with Lucas Goudie on drums and Cameron Evans on bass guitar bringing their unique talents to the mix, conducted freely by Culkeen to unleash an unrelenting sonic force.

The track captures the ensemble's evolving vision of a post-ecological collapse world—a theme that resonates throughout their upcoming album, where moments of beauty coexist with haunting chaos.

Speaking on "The Mountain" band leader Michael Cloud Duguay said, "Much of this record deals with quiet intensities. With ‘The Mountain’, I wanted to push the limit of those intensities by exploring brutal noise, garnished with the same beauty found elsewhere on the record, to investigate both poles of our composition and performance."

 He continues, "Including ideas from metal traditions, influenced by my love of the work of Bill Laswell and John Zorn, in this project was a priority to me from the moment of concept. I hoped to explore as many sonic and aesthetic iterations of drone expression as I could with this record - from dulcet to harsh - and The Mountain provided a platform for this vision. Fortunately, we have friends and collaborators in our improvisation community who perform in metal traditions, and this idea was easy to realise. I wanted the sound design of ‘The Mountain’ to sound and feel like the earth giving out beneath one’s feet, of mountains crumbling and canyons splitting open."

Scions are a new, innovative, experimental ensemble based between Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Peterborough, Ontario, Canada.

The group features members from the award-winning minimalist chamber-jazz quartet New Hermitage, the Polaris-nominated drone-hymn duo Joyful Joyful, and the acclaimed producer and composer Michael Cloud Duguay. Their collaboration began at the Sappyfest music festival in Sackville, New Brunswick, in August 2022. During this event, New Hermitage and Joyful Joyful connected for the first time and teamed up with Duguay for a spontaneous improvisational performance based on his songwriting. The enthusiastic response, capped by a standing ovation, solidified the ensemble's decision to pursue the project further, with Duguay deftly shifting from front-person to producer and musical director.

After being awarded a Canada Council project grant in early 2023 the group took residence in Hotel Wolfe Island on Wolfe Island. Over a week the seven core members lived and worked together, culling material from sunrise improv sessions and collaboratively shaping it into a unique body of work that would later become To Cry Out In The Wilderness.

In June 2023, the ensemble, now joined by double bassist Gabriella Ciurcovich, recorded their debut album in Halifax’s north end. Led by Duguay’s distinctive approach to site-specific production, the recording took place in the sanctuary of St. George’s Round Church, with engineering by Jake Nicoll, known for his sustainable recording methods using a solar-powered, mobile control room. The resulting album, To Cry Out In The Wilderness, finds the ensemble expertly exploring and powerfully combining their skills in jazz, devotional, classical, drone, folk, ambient, metal, improvisational, minimalist and avant-garde music. 

The project culminated in a week of production, with contributions from numerous artists from Halifax’s creative music community. Scions then presented their work live, performing on the opening night of Halifax’s Everyseeker festival of experimental music, where they shared the spotlight with the renowned Sun Ra Arkestra.

Speaking on the narrative of To Cry Out In The Wilderness vocalist and lyricist Cormac Culkeen said: "When we came together to make this body of work, we started from a narrative seed; a post-apocalyptic humanity relearning and recreating itself, after a total ecological collapse."

Scions will return to St. George’s Round Church in Brunswick where To Cry Out In The Wilderness was recorded on November 20th, to play the album in full to a live audience.

Scions are:
Cormac Culkeen - vocals
Dave Grenon - electronics + sound design
Andrew Mackelvie - saxophones & bass clarinet
Ellen Gibling - harp
India Gailey - cello
Ross Burns - electric guitar
Gabriella Ciurcovich - double bass
Michael Cloud Duguay - keyboards, accordion, guitar