Crown Lands launches Ritual I & II (Interview)

CANADIAN PROGRESSIVE ROCK DUO, Crown Lands, launch Ritual II

Canadian progressive rock duo Crown Lands have garnered acclaim in recent years with their self-titled debut album released in 2020, followed by the brilliant 2023 follow-up, Fearless. Now, recently signed to InsideOutMusic, the Juno Award-winning group is poised to take the next step in their journey. While the duo, made up of vocalist and drummer Cody Bowles and multi-instrumentalist

Ritual II came to be a couple of years after Ritual I. This time, they recorded the music themselves with Comeau spearheading the recording.

“We wanted to record this one ourselves as our own decompression from the mechanical precision of the Fearless sessions with David Bottrill. The only constant between the two was the ritual of coming together under a different pretence to the norm—not to fulfil a specific expectation or outer pressure, but rather to create solely with the joy of creation in our hearts. In a special way, this record was truly our own in a way none other had been before,” says Bowles.
Bowles concludes, “It felt liberating to be so free with our creativity, and it was the next logical step for Kev and I, both in musicality and in scope: more textures, more strings, more complexity. We hope you enjoy these two journeys into unknown realms, and uncover the mysteries of the Ritual for yourself.”

The stunning artwork for both Ritual releases was created by Justyna Koziczak.

RITUAL I & II is being re-released with a new ambient approach. What inspired you to reimagine these albums in such a textural, mood-driven way?

Kevin: These records serve as world-building pieces for the larger Fearless chronology.

We came up with a way to present these records as not necessarily our own and it gave us the freedom to write and create from a new perspective, free of commercial considerations.

The music represents the culture of Fearless’ people: the inhabitants of an alien home-world made this music, and we discovered it:

“This relic has been restored from a distant transmission. It is believed to originate from a now-derelict planet. For centuries, these documents have remained lost – until now.”

Cody: Both records serve as a foray into Fearless’ world, Karagon. The first record (Ritual I) takes place over the course of a day, in a Ritual starting at Dawn and ending after Dusk, when The Serpent is summoned from a silver pool.

Ritual II takes place along the variegated vistas and ridges around Karagon, exploring the wider array of biomes and little snapshots into other sonic textures we hadn’t had the opportunity to explore the first time around.

I was largely inspired by the instrumental storytelling of World Music combined with our nerdy adoration for fantasy and sci-fi, amalgamating into the worlds of Ritual I & II.

Cody, your instrument list is incredible—flutes, didgeridoo, Korg Wave Drum, marimba, djunn, ashiko, djembe, log drum, ocean drum, rain stick, tingsha, temple blocks, and more. How did you decide which instruments to layer to create the album’s atmosphere?

Cody: I already had a couple of odd instruments kicking around the studio, like the Korg Wave Drum and the Didgeridoo, but when Graham first came by for the first Ritual I session, he brought with him a plethora of instruments I could have only dreamed of. Graham and his family (Shaw Percussion) specialize in these instruments, and so, I had a really wide selection of killer percussion to choose from. Knowing which ones were right to use for the record came about largely through trial and error.

I have a good base of understanding of how these instruments can interlock by way of my university education in West African drumming, and so, combined with my nerdy obsession with polyrhythms, the rhythms themselves came quite naturally as we were recording. There would be moments where I would create a rhythm on the Log Drum, and I would almost immediately have an idea where the Marimba should land, or where I could fit in an Ashiko rhythm around it. It was quite fun to have the freedom to explore and play like that in a studio setting!

Were there any instruments that surprised you in how well they fit into the ambient reworking?

Cody: For me, it was the Didgeridoo on ‘The Storm’. I wasn’t quite sure how it could fit on the record, but when we experimented with treating it almost like a synth drone, everything clicked. It comes off as fairly aggressive on the record, but we tried to smooth it out with these undulating rhythmic pulses to make it feel like the storm was evolving and moving overhead.

Kevin: Definitely a sound-baffle. We have a number of 2’ x 4’ rock-wool insulated sound baffles in our studio. Cody started hitting one in a cool rhythm to demonstrate a polyrhythm on ‘Respite’. We tracked it and eventually went to replace it with a Djembe, but the Baffle just sounded too cool, so we came up with a different part for the Djembe. Sometimes the studio is the instrument.

Kevin, between guitars, Taurus pedals, Minimoog, Roland JX8P, Kawai K1M, Fender Rhodes, and the Roland Space Echo, there’s a huge palette here. How did you approach building ambient textures with such a diverse range of gear?

Kevin: A lot of my synth collection has been with me for years. I’ve spent a lot of time learning how each instrument fills the sonic space, so I can mix as I track. We wanted to have dense but clear records for the two Rituals, and that starts with designing a good patch, writing a good part, and going from there.

With so many organic and electronic sounds in play, what was your process for blending Cody’s percussion and flutes with Kevin’s synths and guitars?

Kevin: Most of Ritual II came from Cody writing a melody on the flute or me writing a guitar figure. Then we would come up with B and C parts and quickly put a simple structure together. Then the layering began. We tried to build synth patches that would complement the organic instrumentation. We also used a bunch of field recordings of nature sounds to set the mood of each piece.