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Chad VanGaalen

Since debuting in the front half of the 2000s, the multi-dimensional world of Canadian singer, songwriter, and visual artist Chad VanGaalen has developed as a panoply of experimental D.I.Y. indie rock, ethereal folk, and outright psychedelia all wrapped together into a distinctive audio/visual aesthetic. A multi-instrumentalist and self-contained creativity machine, the Calgary native has been a staple of the Sub Pop label since 2004, with three of his albums having been nominated for Canada's prestigious Polaris Prize. VanGaalen has also recorded electronic music under the name Black Mold, produced a pair of albums for fellow Calgarians Women, and animated his own science fiction film. His output remained varied and prolific throughout the 2010s with albums like Shrink Dust (2014) and Light Information (2017). He kicked off the next decade with his typically eclectic seventh album, 2021's World's Most Stressed Out Gardener. VanGaalen started his career in the early 2000s, recording a series of small D.I.Y. releases, often on CD-R and featuring his own packaging and illustrations. He made his official debut with 2004's Infiniheart, which served as the inaugural release for Calgary-based indie Flemish Eye Records. A wild mix of clamorous lo-fi indie rock and surprisingly nimble folk sung in VanGaalen's peculiar high tenor voice, he played all of the instruments and designed the artwork. His exposure grew significantly when Sub Pop re-released Infiniheart a year later. His follow-up, Skelliconnection, appeared in 2006 and was shortlisted for the Polaris Prize, expanding his reach even further in Canada. The bulk of these two albums consisted of a massive backlog of home recordings VanGaalen had made prior to joining the label, but he soon offered up his first set of newly recorded material in 2008's Soft Airplane. A critical and commercial success, not only did it earn another Polaris nod, but was nominated for a Juno Award as well. Branching out into production, VanGaalen produced the first two albums by fellow Calgary band and Flemish Eye labelmates Women, then took a detour into experimental electronic music with 2009's Snow Blindness Is Crystal Antz, which he released under the name Black Mold. By 2010, he had assembled a proper studio which he christened Yoko Eno. 2011's adventurous Diaper Island was his first album to be recorded there. The Green Corridor #2, a collaborative album with Xiu Xiu for the Altin Village & Mine label, arrived while VanGaalen simultaneously recorded his next solo effort and labored away at his first animated film, a science fiction feature called Translated Log of Inhabitants. Released in 2014, Shrink Dust acted as a partial soundtrack to the film which finally saw release three years later. VanGaalen's animations also bore fruit in the form of a video he made for Timbe Timbre's 2014 track, "Beat the Drum Slowly." 2017's Light Information explored themes of anxiety and alienation while his wily seventh album, 2021's World's Most Stressed Out Gardener, seemed concerned with spontaneity.
© Timothy Monger /TiVo
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Discography

14 album(s) • Sorted by Bestseller

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