Players: Selina Martin, Chris Stringer, Doug Friesen, Jesse Baird, Grapes Godly, Julia Hambleton, Brodie West, Peggy Lee,
Joshua Van Tassel, Dave Clark plays a bicycle, and Maya Postepski (Austra) has a cameo on a pre-recorded kick drum loop.

The album was produced by Chris Stringer with Selina Martin, with the exception of When the City Fell (again) and 
Lay Down Your Arms (please) which were produced by Grapes Godly with Selina Martin.

A little about the making of "i've been picking caruso's brain; i think i have the information we need to make a new world"

- development and songwriting happened over three years in Toronto, Montréal, Honey Harbour, Brucefield, Vancouver, and Hawaii.

 

- the impulse to work with Doug Friesen (John K. Sampson, Bidiniband, R. Murray Schafer) and Jesse Baird (Feist,
Steven Page, Guh) came to Selina in a dream.

 

- pre-production began in the fall of 2013 when Selina and Doug drove to Jesse’s farm to explore the new songs and experiment. Long hours every day in an unheated garage followed by not quite enough food and too much drink.

 

- studio recording began at the Lincoln County Social Club in November 2013. Bed tracks, saxophone, vibraphone, organ and some guitars were recorded here.

 

- most of the vocals, as well as cello and clarinet, were recorded at Box Office Poison by Selina Martin, engineered by Michael Phillip Wojewoda.

 

- the electronic versions: When the City Fell (again) and
Lay Down Your Arms (please) were developed over multiple sessions with Grapes Godly in Toronto.

 

- after the basic tracks were recorded, the sonic experimentation and editing that defines the sound of “...caruso’s brain...” began. From very early 2014 until the spring of 2015, Martin repeatedly bicycled up to The Cereal Box for lenghthy sessions with Chris Stringer. The tracks were deconstructed and manipulated so that each sound became elemental. Many tracks were heavily edited and affected, then the songs were reconstructed, illustrating Martin's unrelenting desire to create something new, something original, as her lenghty album title suggests.

 

- the original paintings in the album artwork are by
Douglas Walker, from his collection “Other Worlds”. Douglas paints only in blue.

Raised on a farm in the Ottawa Valley, now based between Toronto and France, extraordinarily acclaimed Canadian songwriter Selina Martin pushes the boundaries of pop, rock, singer/songwriter, punk and experimental music while writing incredibly hooky pop songs.

According to Rokline Magazine, Martin can be “...compared to groundbreaking female songstresses whose art has transcended the usual Rock-Star / Pop-Diva template of popular music, icons such as England’s Kate Bush, Lene Lovitch, and Iceland’s Björk”.

 

On her new album she has morphed into a post-pop pioneer. Filled with raw energy and emotion,
“…caruso’s brain…” strikes a perfect balance between sparseness and fullness, acoustics and electronics, and between control and abandonment.

 

 

ABOUT