ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT - Darling The Dawn

Two acclaimed and fiercely seasoned iconoclasts of Montréal independent music join forces: ALL HANDS_MAKE LIKE is the newly minted orchestral-punk electro-shoegaze power duo of Ariel Engle (La Force, Broken Social Scene) & Efrim Manuel Menuck (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion).

"Darling The Dawn" is their radiant debut long-player: singing & modular synthing in glorious blown-out tangles & tendrils of melody & drone, with contributions from Jessica Moss on violins & Liam O’Neill (Suuns) on drums, mixed by Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes).

From Ariel Engle

Efrim had an idea already for what he wanted to make when we started working together. We first talked about it at a Jennifer Castle concert at Ursa in Montréal—an apt show to have planted the germ for this project, given Jennifer’s otherworldly folk songs.

This music is inspired by ancestor music, some shared, some not. A loose idea expressed in longform narratives over thick synthetic beds. Sea shanties for seas we’ve never sailed but are familiar to us.  

Some of these songs were written through file sharing while both in the city in adjacent neighbourhoods. Efrim sent music, with lyrics or not, and I mostly kept the first thought I had, like a cold read. I wanted the melodies to be immediate to me and to surprise me. This is not a laboured vocal process, it’s about being a weather vane, guided by preconscious impulses. 

“We live on a fucking planet and baby that’s the sun” is a lyric that's been floating around in my head for a couple decades. I lived in an apartment once with floor-to-ceiling sliding doors by my bed. One morning I woke at dawn, sat up like a bolt, and heard myself say those words. I could see the halo of orange pink light cut into the last of the night. The lyric is about the uncanniness of living on a sphere. The smallness of us in contrast to the size and motion of planets and the comfort of the eternal return of dawn and sun after the night.

Ariel Engle is a Canadian singer, musician and composer who records and performs under the name La Force. She is also a member of Broken Social Scene and of Patrick Watson’s band.

Engle first became noted as a guest vocalist on Montag's 2005 album Alone, Not Alone. She has subsequently appeared as a guest or backing vocalist on recordings by Melissa Auf der Maur, Sam Shalabi, Plants and Animals, Stars, Big Red Machine, Patrick Watson, Broken Social Scene, Safia Nolin, Morrissey, Adam Cohen and Martha Wainwright, to name just a few. Engle has performed live with Feist, Big Red Machine, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, Sam Shalabi’s Land of Kush Orchestra, Safia Nolin, Jerusalem In My Heart, and The Besnard Lakes, among others.

Engle co-founded AroarA in 2010 with Andrew Whiteman of Broken Social Scene and Apostle of Hustle. The band's 2013 EP In the Pines, based on the poetry of Alice Notley, was longlisted for the 2014 Polaris Music Prize. She became a full-time member of Broken Social Scene, with 2017’s Hug of Thunder marking her first recorded appearance, and has toured extensively in the group since, also contributing as a songwriter to the latest EP Let's Try The After released in 2019.

Engle has sung and performed in Patrick Watson’s band on and off since 2013, joining as a full-time member in 2021 and co-writing “Height of the Feeling” on Watson’s 2022 album Better In The Shade. She began the songwriting collaboration ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT with Efrim Manuel Menuck of Godpseed You! Black Emperor and Thee Silver Mt. Zion in 2020; the duo released a cassette EP in 2021, with a debut full-length forthcoming on Constellation in Spring 2023.

In 2016, Engle launched her solo project La Force. Her self-titled debut album was released in 2018 by Arts & Crafts and longlisted for the 2019 Polaris Music Prize. Her second album, entitled XO SKELETON, will be released by Secret City in Fall 2023.

From Efrim Manuel Menuck

we’ve known each other since 1997.

we met here in montreal, at the northeast edge of the tiny mountain.

started playing music together during the first lockdowns of 2021, with no idea but filling empty space.

like tossing seeds into an alley, hoping the blooms would rise and exhale and endure.

recorded a self-titled cassette and played a show outside.  made small and immediate plans.

recorded a long-playing record and raised families.  continue to make small and immediate plans.ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT= the work that gets done, the work that all of us do, trying to build a home beneath endless deluge.

the sound we make is maybe secondary to the labor involved in making that sound.

next record might be disco, or could just be a long yell in aisle 3 of some terrible grocery store.

this long-playing record:

it started with the idea of making a long thing about “THE DAWN”.

the different weights of its radiance,

the pink light that twines into white light and turns purple

the noise of it, and the way it kisses our dumb faces when we rise and leave the night behind.and then the songs turned into another thing on their own accord=the heaviness of that light when you haven’t slept,

the weight of your legs when you’ve been walking all night trying to find home.

these times are in-between times. the old things are sinking with their hands around our throat.

there is a dawn coming, and a terrible reckoning too. there’ll be even more beauty there, during the unravelling, and then even more after the dark times are through.

hold on 

and hang onto what you love. 

the dawn comes for us all. 

+ born on stolen land,

+ high school dropout.

+ no job 1987-1993

+ furniture mover 1993-1998

+ started the godspeed you! black emperor band in 1994

+ started thee silver mt. zion band in 1999

+ played guitar in vic chesnutt's band 2007-2009

+ solo records between 2009 and now

+ oscillators and griping in the "sing sinck sing" band 2018 to present

+ oscillators and yelling in the ALL HANDS_MAKE LIGHT band 2021 to present

+ tired father / poor sleeper

+ and i've been on the road since 1997