Absent Sounds Archive

Today on Absent Sounds we're talking to Salami Rose Joe Louis — the project of Lindsay Olsen — at Sled Island, playing through her 2025 record, Lorings. If you know her earlier work, Lorings might catch you off guard compared to her previous albums built on elaborate concepts and world-building, Lorings strips it all back into something closer, quieter, journal-like between the middle of a couple of years through a hard stretch, and back again. We talk through the little moments of creative chaos, collaboration and instinct that craft Lorings into the beautiful world that it is. Listen live on Met Radio (Toronto) and CJAM 99.1 FM (Windsor/Detroit)

We caught up with SamWoy — the project of Juno-winning musician and producer Sam Woywitka (Half Moon Run, Patrick Watson, Teke Teke, Luca Fogale) — at Sled Island in Calgary, where he was in town for two sets — one at Dandy Brewing, one at midnight at the Legion — off the back of his sophomore album, Even Sad Boys Like To Have Fun. SamWoy is an enigma, that became more layered with each minute spent unravveling. We talked about chaos as a way of life, the strange grief of looking at your past self, a debt collector rap battle, and what it means to actually believe in the thing you've given your life to.

In today's episode of Absent Sounds, we sit down with jc, the brain behind the beast that is friends&, to talk through folx. It's the 2026 record from the Toronto collective sprawling 112-tracks, and eight years in the making. We get into the terminally-online roots of the project, the genre term "laptop twee," what it means to let a track live it's full absurdity, the file-management discipline it takes to survive a record with this many discarded versions a cappella and all.

Greg Mendez's Beauty Land circles back to the same place again and again: forgiveness, offered and asked for, like a practice. This week on Absent Sounds, we sat down with Greg on the grass outside of the Sound Garage to talk about being a friend, the strange comfort of graveyards and hospitals, the difference between loving someone and loving them selfishly, and what tricks are still left to pull before the candle goes out.

It has been a long time coming for Hikes to release new music. In every way, Winnower finds them stripped down to the truest version of themselves — built around the folk practice of separating grain from chaff. It's a record that lives in a meditative space where questions of belonging, of place, and of vulnerability slowly come into focus. This week, Nay and Chris of Hikes walk us through Winnower track by track, and talk about how their time away transformed not just their sound, but the way they hold the work altogether. 

One of our favourite albums of 2026 was released only 16 days into the year. 6 months in and we're still just as captivated by it as the day we first listened. That album was Shaking Hand by Shaking hand and this week we're joined by the band as we talk through the record track by track. A shaking hands doesn't mean losing control and the Manchester-based band proves it on the debut album that drift in and out of time, fall apart, and come back together, all while sounding completely sure of themselves.The band is George Hunter on vocals and guitar, Freddie Hunter on drums, and Ellis Hodgkiss on bass.

This week, we have finally reached the end! The final Treefort episode aired with bands: Bonnie Trash (Emmalia + Sarafina) and Heaven for Real (Mark Grundy + J. Scott Grundy). Despite sitting on different sonic registers, both find themselves reckoning with what music holds — between trust, grief, fatherhood, and making art in between. Bonnie Trash's record Mourning You felt like the answer to what you make for someone who cannot "hear" it, while Heaven for Real ask why you make anything at all. Both arrive, by different routes, at the same quiet answer. This episode uniquely features twins and helps us observe another key model for trust. Find full transcripts, videos, and all the previous episodes, here :]

Back in March we asked 10 artists at Treefort Music Fest 2026 some version of the same question: what question their music was trying to answer right now. This is the 3rd of four episodes. Three artists, without knowing the others had done the same thing, were circling this one: What does it cost to let yourself be seen? What gets made in the space between hiding and arriving, and while even when you want to go inward, just like you’re still sitting listening to this on the other end, there is still something or someone, waiting to receive you. Today’s episode is featuring Emily Yacina, Fanclubwallet (Hannah Judge) and Kishi Bashi.

Taupe is a shimmering four-piece from Montreal whose debut record New Window arrived this spring. We caught up with Andrew Miller, Heather Ogilvie, Jess Barry, and Evan Magoni before their show at the Cameron House, during one of the first warm Toronto afternoons to talk about the multitude of pieces tucked into this record. It feels like a free association conversation of thought, from Cosmic Crisp apples, the authorship of "Truly Authentic," to life being restructured into a song- and most importantly of all, where on earth Pasta No 1 and 2 are. If you're a longtime friend of Absent Sounds, this is a really cool episode not only because of the music, but because its actually our third time talking to Evan and Andrew for the show. Whew! New Window is out now. Listen wherever you get your music.