Brasstronaut is a band from Vancouver, Canada. Formed in 2007, their current line-up consists of Bryan Davis on trumpet, Edo Van Breemen on piano and vocals, Sam Davidson on clarinet and EWI, Tariq Hussain on lap steel & electric guitar, Brennan Saul on drums and John Walsh on bass. Their current record Mean Sun was released in 2012 in Canada in May, and Europe in October (Tin Angel Records).
Brasstronaut started out as a duo when Edo and Bryan met at a house party in Vancouver and decided to record their little collection of original songs for what would become the Old World Lies EP. After mentions on Pitchfork and Hypem #1 listings, appearances at festivals such as SXSW and Iceland Airwaves were quick to follow. In 2010, the band released their first full length album Mount Chimaera, which was recorded during their residency at the Banff Centre, a multi-disciplinary facility in the Rocky Mountains. Mount Chimaera gained the band a lot of international acclaim and glowing reviews from notable critics such as Gilles Peterson, from BBC1 and the UK’s Independent newspaper, who called the band’s sound "a new way forward“. Not long after, the band won the 2010 SOCAN Echo Songwriting Prize and was long listed for the Polaris Music Prize.
In between two European tours in 2010/2011, with appearances at festivals such as The Great Escape, Reeperbahn and Waves Vienna, the band started working on new material that would become Mean Sun. The album was recorded by Juno-award winning producer Colin Stewart (Yukon Blonde, Dan Mangan, A.C. Newman) and fans and critics alike praised it for its musical diversity and complexities. Like their previous work, Mean Sun also fuses elements of jazz, rock, pop and electronica but with a more spacious, generous and luminous feel to it.
