Chad VanGaalen

Many of us are already making arrangements to relocate to Chad VanGaalen’s universe. The world as we know it seems to be disintegrating by the minute, so any hint of a means of escape has serious currency. Over the last ten to fifteen years, CVG has been producing living maps in songs, drawings, modified instruments, animations and performances--shifting forms pointing to another world, infinitely more liveable, maybe hidden just under the surface of our own.

Part of the fun of a new VanGaalen record is watching his effortless melodic sensibilities refracted through an array of stylistic filters — World's Most Stressed Out Gardener gleams with Chad VanGaalen's musical signatures: found sound, reverb, polychromatic folk music that is by turns cartoonish and hyperphysical—like ultra magnified footage of a virus or a leaf. This is a collection of songs that does away with obsessiveness, the anxiety of perfectionism, in favour of freshness and immediacy — capturing the world as it was met while recording alone at home over a period of years.