Pigeon Breeders: Springtime as Violence LP

Pigeon Breeders' sixth album, Springtime As Violence, offers a cathartic journey through the interconnected process of creation and destruction, tension and transformation. The album features the band's toolkit of guitars, vocals, electronics, contact mic'd objects, and other instrumentation, to present sonic scenery that will connect to listeners of noise rock, krautrock, ambient, post-rock, and other textural genres, while resisting neat categorization. The prompt 'springtime as violence,' offered by dancer Max Hanic for an earlier collaborative project, was loved by the band for its "juxtaposition of a soft, beautiful word alongside a harsh striking word" and planted the seeds for the album's material. To achieve their vision of turning the concept into a record, the band had to abandon their typical mode of album production, which centers around performing open improvisations and then compiling the most favoured moments. Instead, they accepted a new challenge: to recreate an existing sound palette, growing each piece of the album layer by layer — retaining the spirit of improvisation during the performance while having predetermined constraints. The band also took on the project as a duo, having previously retained a trio configuration since their formation in 2011. After 2016's departure of co-founding member Tyler Harland, the band continued to perform as a three piece by working with collaborators including Scott Smallwood, Smokey, and Ghost Cars. Committing to a duo format for the album allowed them to evolve their approach on their own terms, taking their sensibilities to new heights.