The Canadian singer songwriter guides us through his latest album which was, as always, recorded in his home studio.

Mind Hijacker

Emphasis on time, as you get older time travel changes. The outcome of hijacking another organism’s mind and using it as a way to take a vacation and losing your body by accident. This song lived as many different songs, then got smashed into one song. The original skeleton was made on a tape machine with a dying motor. So I had to cut it up beat by beat to get it from sounding like it was drunkenly stumbling down the street, it took me awhile to realize that it was so warped, I thought it was fluctuations in my metabolism at first.

Locked In The Phase

Over exposure, myth and technology combine to form a perfect storm of paranoia and feeling like you are never in the now. Not road testing tech and how quickly it has been adopted, mind still stuck in the past, stuck anywhere but the present. I like that this song is very simple.

Prep Piano And 770

Trying to capture the Valdez ocean bell. Valdez is an island on the west coast of Canada, my uncle and his friends built a cabin there. I go to it with my family every summer. It has an outhouse with a Dutch door built into it so you can look out over the bay whilst letting go.

There is an ocean bell that bobs back and forth in the water that sounds like the pianos repetitive line in the song. You can see it from the outhouse.

Host Body

The feeling of time stretching you out and turning you into a different person, losing sight of your original intentions. Being seduced by tech, being seduced by a comfortable existence, being stretched thin by life.

Mystery Elements

The universe doesn’t give a shit about you. It owes you nothing. My friend Ryan Bourne plays bass on this track. He is a sweetheart of a man who is kind and gentle. Again, just trying to feel connected to the universe. Expecting to be connected. You should feel it, right?

Old Heads

Tech replacing itself, and slowly replacing our bodies and minds without us even noticing. Trans humanism. Nothing really being good or bad. Making decisions and not making decisions. Having that feeling where you have to know idea what the fuck is going on anymore.

Golden Oceans

Feeling stressed and running to nature for some relief, and finding the sweetest relief. Just touching nature, pulling discarded debris from the river outside my house, swimming in the river and cutting your foot open on a broken beer bottle. Aimlessness. Needing to escape, just needing to run.

This track is around 6 years old now, I have always loved it as a pure release. It was recorded in haste which made it sonically stick out, but I feel like this album has enough tracks that are sloppy enough for it to shine the way it should.

Faces Lit:

Tech snowballing, the new elements. The overdose. The hangover.

Pine And Clover

Crumfuss the Makott was a character that I made to go in an extraterrestrial guide book of sorts. I really liked the idea of a shape shifter with amnesia. I kind of turned the character into nature in the song.She builds up your confidence in her but will wipe her ass with you if she wants. Obviously.

You Fool

Promises that you made to yourself. Things you thought you would never become. The laziness cannot be left to grow wild! Insincere sentiment.

Broken Bell

Getting older, seeing the evidence of time and things becoming exponentially more complicated as your mind unravels. My father’s cancer slowly eating him alive. My mother's relationship with religion becoming the impossibility between us.

I like to just sit and draw to clear my mind, it doesn't ask anything of me. It’s just meditative.

Static Shape

Animals and plants can remind me of what is really happening and what is really important about life. My daughters shake me loose, they look at me and expect me to know things. They force me to be honest with myself. My dog shakes me loose, so does my garden. And they make me feel a new type of heartbreak when I'm not.

I need to be better. I need to make room for the truly good ideas that will make for more love in the world. More dance parties, more bees, more veggies, more bikes, more deep breathing.

Light Information is out now via Sub Pop. For more information about Chad Vangaalen, please visit his official website.

Read the 8/10 DiS review of Light Information here, and our in- depth interview with him here.

Photo Credit: Marc Rimmer