Artist Spotlight: Resurrection Committee
The band formerly known as Thee Magic Circle are celebrating the release of their debut album
Rachel D’Sa // Arts and Culture Editor
Before the release of their debut album this past February, East Vancouver-based band Thee Magic Circle had to make a major change. Now known as Resurrection Committee, the noise-pop group is celebrating the relese of Join!, a 10-track record they dropped on Bandcamp under the local label Strawberry Coffin Inc.
The psychedelic-rock, noise-pop group is comprised of Andrew Rodrigues (guitar, Vox), Ben Morris (bass), Rainer Johnsen (guitar, Vox), ES (Eric) Peters (guitar, Vox) and Jazz Studies program student, Tyler Murray (drums).
Inspired by bands like Sun King, The Rambling Derelicts and Illacuda, the group formed an oasis of their own, under the name Thee Magic Circle. “We were into cult bands like the Source Family’s Ya Ho Wha 13 and wanted a name that sounded culty,” Rodrigues said about the original band name. After realizing that there were already a few death metal groups with the same name, the band decided to switch to Resurrection Committee ahead of their debut album release.
Together the band crafted their album, Join!. They felt it was right to release as their debut as it serves as a compilation of everything that they’ve written and explored within the group since their start in the Fall of 2015. The bold orange cover art was chosen because they wanted something simple and eye catching, that was also influence by liquid light visuals. While the album has yet to be produced in physical copies, the band presented limited-release posters in their album release shows. These posters included download codes for the album.
Similar to the promotion of the album which was both unique and labour-intensive, the creation of the album presented its own challenges. “We used to get into a lot of fist fights over various topics,” said Johnsen. “Then we found the light of the Leader and no longer have to worry about any of that.” The recording process also led the group through a few obstacles, but ultimately came out the other side with not just a dreamy album, but with new knowledge on the recording process. “We cycled through all these options of how we wanted to record the album, we spent time in studios with a producer and all this expensive gear yet it never clicked,” said Peters. “We finally decided to just do it all ourselves, we put all our money from shows into funding a studio in our basement and taught ourselves how to record,” he said, additionally summarizing the process as repetitious, languished, disturbing and great.
At the moment, Resurrection Committee awaits the arrival of their new EP coming out Apr.13, which will feature two songs, each 10-15 minutes in length. Until then, we’ve got Join! to resurrect our spirits.