The Cansecos
"yacht rocking from toronto harbour"
Location: Toronto
Website: http://www.thecansecos.com/
Bio: The Cansecos put pop songs into space suits and float them away in every direction.
This sonic construction crew consists of Toronto writing/production duo ... (more)
Bill Halliday (Billionaire) and Gareth Jones (Generous G), and rhythm ace
duo Paul “Princely P” Prince (bass) and “Stealy” Dan McCormick (drums). Jones and Halliday go back to high school in Barrie; The Cansecos is
the third incarnation of their musical combinations, but the theme has persisted: They love pop songs and they love engaging productions. But
what sets them apart from many collaborators is that most of history’s arrangements of this sort involve a producer and a writer, and then a
band, yet Halliday and Jones play all roles; that is - both of them play both writer and producer and play most of the instruments on their songs,
making for probably one of the more eclectic songwriting/production duos in pop’s young
history.
Their self-titled debut album (Upper Class Recordings 2003) was created using little more than
some outdated, falling-apart computers and a four-track recorder, but the resulting sound, feel,
image…is something truly original yet enjoyably - not taking itself too seriously. These early
inventive pop productions have been celebrated in music circles, and some commercial success
was had when The Cansecos landed the track “A Common State Of Being” in star-Canadian
director Aubrey Nealon’s debut feature-length film A Simple Curve while Nike was using
Cansecos tracks for their workout mixes, as well as The Cansecos “s/t” ending up with raving
reviews from the likes of Pitchforkmedia.com, Uncut Magazine, and the NY Observer.
After keeping quiet for 3 years while assembling a live band, a new arsenal of instruments and
computers and creating new audio blueprints, Jones and Halliday’s experimentation with cut-
and-paste sampling vs. intriguing pop melodies, live instruments vs. programmed beats, analog
mixed with digital, dark ruminations vs. playful humour has seemingly spiked in the last year.
In July 2007 they announced the coming of their new studio album “Juices!” in November but
immediately released a free downloadable remix album “Juiced!” of the forthcoming studio
album. “Juiced!” is likely the first ‘premix’ on record, it being a remix released before the actual
release, not to mention it being an entire album remixed!
While the studio album “Juices!” took The Cansecos over two years to make, including enlisting
the help of Adam Nunn (Radiohead, Air) to help finish the album at Abbey Road Studios, nobody is quite sure what inspired them to remix the
entire record to rare and popular disco classic cut up instrumentals to make “Juiced!”, and then to release it ahead of the actual album, for free
download, but this is exactly the ingenuity the band is becoming known and celebrated for, and the fact that those antics only make “Juices!”
even better, is a credit indeed. “Juiced!” is still available as a free download at www.thecansecos.com, in addition to a new disco mix they
eleased called “Disco Showers”.
Recently, in addition to heading out on a Canadian tour, hitting NYC, playing showcases at Canadian Music Week and SXSW, The Cansecos have
been producing like wildcats, recently completing remixes for Sally Shapiro “Hold Me So Tight” (for Remix Romance Vol. 1), label-mates The
Russian Futurists “Let’s Get Ready To Crumble” (MySpace Exclusive), and Black Kids “Hurricane Jane” (Almost Gold/Columbia - June 23),
mixing and doing production on the new studio album by The Russian Futurists “The Weight’s On The Wheels” and working on 2 new
records of their own.
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