Calvin Love
Edmonton native, Calvin Love, is taking listeners along a journey of self-discovery with the recent release of Super Future – his first album under the esteemed indie label, Arts & Crafts, and his second to date. Featuring themes of love, loss, frustration and nostalgia, the album’s title befits its distinctly celestial sound – think dream-like synths and textured melodies underscored by funky bass lines and upbeat drums.
Like 2012’s New Radar, Love wrote and recorded Super Future entirely by himself, only bringing in outside help for mixing. As a self-professed “control freak”, the solitary recording process is something that works well for Love. “I’ve played in bands before and I like collaborating, but I just kind of needed to prove to myself that I could do it all on my own – and it’s nice to be the only one calling the shots.”
I’ve played in bands before and I like collaborating, but I just kind of needed to prove to myself that I could do it all on my own – and it’s nice to be the only one calling the shots.
But despite the similar recording process, Super Future is a markedly more optimistic effort than New Radar – something he partly credits to a change in disposition. “Yeah, I was in a good place. I was feeling really stoked on life at the time. I met a new girl, so that was cool.”
The otherworldliness of Super Future is beautifully captured in the video for “Calls from Jupiter”. It was shot and recorded using only Love’s iPhone while visiting Castillo del Mundo – a Haitian art gallery and UFO museum found in an alien-sighting hotspot of the Dominican Republic. “I thought the UFO vibe and the song worked together,” says Love. “So I just shot it at magic hour, pieced it all together and put it on the Internet.”
If he makes shooting a music video look easy, perhaps it’s because Love has a deep-rooted appreciation for the relationship between film and music. “In everyday situations, I’m always kind of hearing music in my mind – kind of like a soundtrack.” Expressing a desire to someday score music for film, Love says, “I tend to write cinematic kind of movie music, so I think it would come pretty naturally to me – I’d like to try that out.”
Already knee-deep in writing his third record, Love is preparing to break out of his comfort zone. He wants his next release to have more of a live feel – for instance, using drums instead of drum machines. “I’m still going to be the guy who comes up with the songs, the melodies, the riffs, but for this next record I’m definitely way more open to collaborating. I’m hoping to work with a likeminded engineer or producer who can push what I do even further.”
