After a long but gentle gestation, shadow—a five-piece band led by Bethany Fulde—is ready to release the fruits of its two-year labour: A double EP, one titled the dark and the other, fittingly, the dawn.
“In the end, some of it was recorded between three studios,” says Fulde, laughing. The album travelled with Charles Austin’s Echo Chamber Audio from its last location on Almon Street to Kyle Varley’s Frameworks Productions in Dartmouth and back to Austin’s new home on Spring Garden Road for finishing touches, finally mixed and mastered by Graeme Campbell.
Not unlike the classic Halifax music origin story, Fulde found her backing musicians (and collaborators) in adjacent bands. One of them, then an acquaintance, came across a video Fulde had posted of one of her songs online, and stopped her in a bar. “I saw that video,” Fulde says Casey Jones told her, ‘I didn’t even know you did that! Do you need a bass player?’”
Three years later, that same song, “Broken Record,” has found a home on the shadow double album. The music itself has two states of mind—it broods and jingles, hence the division.
“The darker-sounding theme songs [landed on the dark] and the major chord theme songs on the dawn,” says Fulde, explaining that each half reflects a kind of chapter in her life. She’d write the songs, send them to her bandmates, and they’d all get together, each player adding their own salt or spice via drum or horn to Fulde’s soup.
The collaboration can be described in a word, she says: “natural.” The album release is a milestone after a long investment. “Some of these songs we’ve been playing together for two, three years,” says Fulde. “It’s come full circle.”
