Toronto, ON-based artist Aidan Belo, and his project His His combines delicate guitar lines with simple yet thoughtful vocals. Belo created this project as an outlet after relocating to his family’s hobby farm outside of the city, in an attempt to evoke something rural and honest.
Most easily defined by the Portuguese word saudade, a feeling of longing and melancholy, “Matador,” the debut single from His His, captures the mood that Belo felt in the barn where he recorded it one afternoon: feelings of melancholy, relative passivity, and low-spiritedness.
Check out “Matador” below, and find out more about His His via our Five Questions With segment.
Care to introduce yourself to our readers?
Hi! My name is Aidan Belo and I’m an artist from Toronto. As well as writing music, I love to read, cook food, and drink red wine.
Tell us a bit about your music and writing style
For the most part, my music tends to be melancholic, nostalgic, and sad. There’s a Portuguese word “saudade”, that basically means all three of these things. I record my songs in an old empty barn on my parents’ farm with a super basic setup and try to keep everything as simple and honest as I can.
Do you have any upcoming shows? For someone who has yet to see you live, how would you explain your live performance?
I’m planning to host some live stream sets from my living room via Side Door Access in the coming months. In the further future, you can definitely expect some live shows once venues can safely reopen. The live performances will be something that is intimate and hopefully have both an acoustic and electric set.
If you were asked to suggest only one of your songs for someone to hear, which would it be?
My debut-single titled “Matador”. There’s more to be released very soon but this is one that I feel best represents who I am as an artist. Sonically and lyrically it’s something that I had been wanting and meaning to do for a long time, and “Matador” was the first time I had successfully written something like this.
Canadian Beats is all about Canadian music, so who are your current favourite Canadian bands/ artists?
It has to be Loving from Victoria, BC. They released a self-titled EP in 2016 and a full-length last year and I find myself to listening to their music all the time. I’m also a really big fan of Timber Timbre and lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of Helena Deland.