Sans AIDS is Edmontonian Peter Sagar, playing lo-fi, mellow guitar and drums with an alluring bedroom-recording quality. The project originated last summer when Sagar’s other band, Outdoor Miners, a “noisier” group, was scheduled for a tour.
“Our guitarist had to get surgery and we cancelled the tour. I was bored, so I started this,” he says. Initially a solo project, Sagar now plays as a two-piece with drummer Ily Barne.
The trip out east is to visit his friend Salina Ladah, a NSCAD student who hand-drew all the album artwork for the sold-out Sans AIDS EP Little Brown Girl, each CD boasting a unique cover.
“I made the CD awhile ago, it’s too lo-fi, I’m not really into that as much anymore,” Sagar says.
Currently, he’s working on a seven-inch record, to be released on Edmonton’s Pop Echo Records with a tentative April release date.
“I recorded 11 tracks with my dad—he has a reel-to-reel recorder and a really big living room.”
Sagar lists his inspirations as “pretty much the ’90s…Pavement, Guided By Voices, Eric’s Trip and girls.” The song “My Friends” features smarmy lines like, “My friends don’t return your phone calls” and “My friends all probably snuck in,” but this show is free, so you don’t have to.
He credits any out-of-town attention he’s getting to the Edmonton-based blog Weird Canada, which has been bringing a wide range of underground, noisy, lo-fi and weird music from across the country to light since starting up in the summer (and, might we add, being especially favourable to Haligonian bands).
Edmonton “is pretty friendly, I do OK here,” Sagar says, but he’s excited about the Halifax scene too. “I’ve never been east of Saskatoon,” he says—and who of you can boast that?
This article appears in Mar 4-10, 2010.