Midnight Channel Summon Cosmic Catharsis on Jazz Odyssey LP, Alien Love Songs feat. Monster-Sized Highlight “Shelly”
Lethbridge, Alberta’s Midnight Channel aren’t just playing jazz – they’re reimagining it, tearing it apart, and letting the pieces orbit through time, memory, and love. Their new album, Alien Love Songs, is a sprawling, groove-heavy collision of blistering horn lines, meditative melodies, and the emotional messiness of being human.
Featuring the monstrous, mystifying focus track “Shelly,” the record explores romantic, platonic, spiritual, and self-love as well as the aching absence of it. It’s as inspired by anime and inside jokes as it is by Don Cherry, Makaya McCraven, or Miles Davis’s electric era. The result? A chaotic, transcendent, deeply personal take on the jazz album.
“Shelly” itself emerged from a harmonizer-pedal sax jam that evolved into a shapeshifting freak-jazz anthem – anchored by tribal percussion, howling horns, and an unlikely inspiration: a giant crab-like beast from Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings.
“This tune kind of became the soundtrack to the first encounter with the creature where three super-soldier type characters take it on in stunning fashion,” says saxophonist Brandon deGorter. “The shots in the chorus kind of become freeze frames characteristic of comic book panels in my mind.”
Alien Love Songs was recorded live-off-the-floor in an empty church and later refined at Studio One at the University of Lethbridge. The result is a sonically raw but emotionally rich document of the band’s collective evolution.
“We’re lucky to have a community of talented friends and producers who helped us bring this to life,” says drummer Drake McCheyne. “The whole thing felt collaborative, grounded, and real.”