Snowblink’s Inner Classic is everything you’d expect from an album inspired by a ten day silent meditation retreat.
Daniela Gesundheit’s careful, yet effortlessly sweet and powerful voice spills over the entire record. With guitarist Dan Goldman’s production, Snowblink hypnotizes listeners into a content, therapeutic state like waves lapping up on shore. And the therapy doesn’t end there.
The band is now encouraging their fans to book a complimentary singing ‘treatment’ from them by filling out a contact form on their website. Yes, for free, Gesundheit wants to call you or someone you care about and share a one-on-one live performance through the telephone.
It’s not like they have nothing better to do with their time. In 2012 alone, Snowblink toured with Cold Specks, Feist, and is now hitting the road with Great Lake Swimmers. Feist even chose Snowblink to perform as her backing band at this year’s Polaris Prize Gala. How did a force so peaceful as Snowblink crawl it’s way into the Canadian mainstream?
Though Snowblink began as a solo project for Gesundheit, Goldman has been involved from the start. The pair met in Montreal in 2005; Gesundheit had moved north after graduating from Wesleyan University and ended up giving Goldman voice lessons in exchange for guitar lessons.
“We did a little bit of recording that fall, followed by a two month tour…it evolved naturally,” explained Gesundheit. “We communicate really well, it was all so easy and our musical connection is still really strong.”
Despite developing this bond, Gesundheit moved back to California, her home state, and set up shop in San Francisco, where she temporarily employed MGMT’s Benjamin Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden as her back up vocalists. It wasn’t until 2008 that Gesundheit and Goldman returned to the roots of their relationship, officially calling Snowblink a party of two.
“We have a really nice, symbiotic way of working together. I write the songs alone, then Dan edits them and does a lot of work on the production end of the recording process,” said Gesundheit. “He is really involved and responsible for as much of the sound on the record.”
These days, Snowblink calls Toronto its headquarters. Gesundheit credits the city’s music community for giving her the inspiration to have real traction with her music.
“There are so many extraordinary musicians here, and it’s such a close, relatively small community, which I love…It sparks a lot of action in terms of creating, arranging and performing music,” revealed Gesundheit. “We’ve gotten a lot out of it.”
Since 2009, when she moved to Toronto, Gesundheit found herself working alongside Timber Timbre’s Taylor Kirk, Austra’s Katie Stelmanis and Ohbijou’s Casey Mecija as one of the many vocalists in the indie-rock supergroup, Bruce Peninsula.
“[Bruce Peninsula] is a powerhouse of these amazing musicians altogether,” said Gesundheit. “I just walked into some of the most exciting parts of the music scene.”
With Inner Classic and Toronto’s tight-knit music community as their muse, Snowblink has becomes one of Canada’s most surprising bands to watch out for.
Book a ‘Treatment’ from Snowblink at snowblinksays.com/now/book-a-treatment/
Trial track: “Black & White Mountains”
