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Spreepark with Forest City Lovers & DJs Peter Rabbit & Electro-Lite
Marquee Room
Thursday, July 3 - Thursday, July 3

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Marquee Room

The story goes that Spreepark’s muse, Annalea Sordi, was raised by Japanese Elm trees at the foot of Mount St. Helens, yet somehow managed to obtain extensive classical training in piano and singing. Or at least that’s what the band’s website would have us believe. The site is more vague about the origins of the band, but Sordi offers a grounded version of events.

According to Sordi, the band formed when she and Mark Hamilton, both of whom are in Calgary’s Woodpigeon, met up with Edmonton’s Marshall Watson. The three had been intending to collaborate for some time, and once Watson introduced the others to Edmonton studio wizard Eric Chang, the line-up was complete. Armed only with their creativity and instant chemistry, the foursome decided to record a spontaneous album over the course of one weekend.

The result of the newly formed group’s intensive 48-hour brainstorming session was immortalized on plastic as the first Spreepark release, We're Reinventing Music, an infectiously simple and effective pop-dance-experimental detour that spans eight energetic and uninhibited tracks. Having experienced the undeniable joy of an environment unfettered by the practical concerns that often intrude upon the creative process, Sordi and the rest of the Spreepark gang came to cherish that studio session.

“We all play numerous instruments and sing,” says Sordi of her Spreepark comrades. “It’s amazing to work with such a diverse and versatile group of musicians. Our approach is pure fun — we go into the studio with no preconceptions and just see what kind of catchy tunes we come up with.

“The idea behind the first Spreepark album was to make things up on the fly and see what happens,” she continues. “Mark already had some concepts for songs in mind; he’s so prolific, so we just picked his brain. It was amazing — he’d be writing lyrics for a song in one corner while the others worked out their instrumental parts. It all happened simultaneously. Woodpigeon has such a meticulous esthetic. This, on the other hand, is our silly dance project. It reminds us to not take things so seriously and let our guards down once in awhile.”

Two long years have passed since that weekend of sonic debauchery, and its echoes have rung in the ears of the four who experienced it ever since. Their nostalgia about the experiment inevitably led them to do it again. So, Sordi and Hamilton hit the road, following the path of their initial pilgrimage, to revisit Chang’s studio and throw open the gates of the Spreepark once again.

“The appeal of Spreepark is that there’s no pressure. We’re a band who rarely appears live and just gets together once a year to record an album,” Sordi says with a laugh. “The second album is even more upbeat than the first. We’ve had time to formulate our sound, and the result is a much more together-sounding album. It seems a lot more mature, if you could say that. It’s a really special and liberating thing to just hang out with other musicians with no strings attached. I think that Spreepark’s spontaneous approach definitely has merit; it can be applied to any recording or song-writing process. The key is learning to trust your own musicality and listen to your instincts.”