Champagne Weather is...

Canadian Folk Music Award-winners and JUNO nominees James Hill and Anne Janelle. Both have one foot in folk traditions and the other in improvised music. With a blend of songwriting and sound sculpture, Champagne Weather artfully bridges these worlds with a sound that evokes Philip Glass and Steve Reich even as it harks back to Appalachian fiddle and Maritime folksong.

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In each Champagne Weather composition, two motifs repeat, entwine and slowly change, creating serendipitous harmony that no-one can predict—not even the musicians. Cello, ukulele and violin sparkle like a field of stars, grounded only by the rumble of low-fi synth. It's ever-changing music that neither sleeps nor wakes, floating instead in a dreamy blue twilight of sound.

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The duo's lyrics paint impressions of modern life and the characters who call it home: the widower, the lost child, the busy people. Every song is a diorama, a shoebox-world with

a peep-hole

        just wide enough

                     to fall

                             through.