Beach Season forecast: plenty of “booty wave”

By Liv Ingram, October 9 2014 —

Local electronic musician Beach Season, aka Sam Avant, has made music since he was forced into piano lessons by his mom as a kid.

Now grown up and finding influence in everything from chillwave to hip hop, the 20-year-old musician crafts a mellow brand of electronic R&B, or “booty wave” as he calls it, which has garnered attention in the Calgary music scene.

His debut EP, Internet Evening, released in January, was praised by music critics at Noisey, Freq, Beatroute, Fast Forward and CJSW.

Although Beach Season is technically Avant’s solo project, and all music released under the name is his creation, he says long-time friend and collaborator Simon Blizter plays an instrumental role in the project.

“We started doing this whole electronic thing together way back,” Avant says. “He’s helped out with everything that I’ve been making recently. So technically it’s not a solo project [since] it’s always been the two of us.”

During live shows Blitzer plays many of the instruments using an Ableton midi controller while Avant handles the vocals with his smooth falsetto.

Together the two are gearing up to launch Beach Season’s first Eastern Canada tour with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal.

Although Internet Evening was released earlier this year, Avant says singles from the album rarely show up in their live sets anymore as Beach Season’s sound has evolved from the “really cooled out, really ambient vibe” to a more upbeat, dance style “with more bangers.”

Avant credits the evolution to the pair’s dedication to creating music every day.

“We get up, go to work, do that and then as soon as we’re done that we’ll hop right into the basement and just start creating,” Avant says. “That’s pretty much all it’s been for the last couple of months. Job work, then music work, sleep, repeat.”

Fans can see Beach Season’s new direction on their upcoming album, which Avant says will be a concept piece meant to be listened to as a complete work rather than just a collection of tracks.

“The songs we have so far for it, they’re all very progressive. You’ll never hear the same part twice,” Avant says.

The project marks a new sound for Beach Season and officially marks the end of Avant and Blitzer’s previous hip hop project, Obey The Crooks.

Although the genre of the music they create has changed, their desire to push the bounds of creativity reinforces the collaborative nature of their musical relationship.

“We’ll always be making music together. I just can’t see us doing solo shows,” Avant says. “We’ll never be completely separated, but [Obey The Crooks] was a very hip hop influenced, very elementary project in our youth. Now that I feel like we’ve refined ourselves a lot more, it’s just time to evolve and go into this next chapter of creativity.”

Beach Season kicks off their tour at Dickens Pub on Friday, Oct. 10 at 7:00 p.m. with Napoleon Skywalker and guests.