Canadian band, Left Field Messiah is made up of Steve Bays, Jeremy Ruzumna, and Erik Janson. Left Field Messiah is their embrace of their internal calling: a rallying cry to document their impulsive, weird, eclectic, and even ugly ideas. Their music teeters between soul and dark funk in one moment and quickly disintegrates into howling rock on the next.
Their new single, “Feels Like Summer” is an atmospheric, hypnotic track with futuristic flourishes over a dreamy groove. The video, by Steve Bays is psychedelic and fits the track perfectly.
Check it out below, and find out more about Left Field Messiah via our Five Questions With segment.
Care to introduce yourself to our readers?
We’re Left Field Messiah: Steve Bays (Hot Hot Heat), Jeremy Ruzumna (Fitz and the Tantrums, LFM), and Erik Janson (Wildling).
We met randomly through our music publishers, but after writing less than one song with these dudes, I had already decided we were going to be a band. That day we made it official when we started our epic LFM text thread that still lives on today.
Tell us a bit about your music and writing style.
Basically, our mission is to write music that we would want to listen to ourselves if we were hanging at a dope party and someone said “hey, someone please put on some music.” If LFM came on, we’d be down. (Also there would be sick catering.)
We just get together, usually for a limited, pre-set number of days (usually 5), and go ape shit in one of our studios (Steve is up there over in Canada, and Erik and I each have our spots in LA). We try out an insane amount of ideas that we get from playing on all our random synthesizers, drum machines, tape decks, effects pedals, etc., whilst sampling fine Mezcal.
How have you been keeping creative during the Pandemic?
The pandemic got a lot of people thinking about what’s really important in life, and what you can jettison and never miss.
We spent a good part of the pandemic working on videos for the band, recording more music, and generally scheming on how to take over a world that no longer existed, forcing us to re-analyze the already complex and often treacherous landscape that once was the music business.
If you were asked to suggest only one of your songs for someone to hear, which would it be?
That’s, like, Sophie’s Choice. That’s hard to answer.
I’m in love with all the songs, but “Are You Ready” comes to mind because it’s the first song we ever wrote together, and one of my favorite things I’ve ever been involved in making. We worked it and re-worked it until it was exactly the vision we had originally had for the song in the first place. It was a ton of work and I love it.
Canadian Beats is all about Canadian music, so who are your current favourite Canadian bands/ artists?
There’s actually this dude coming up over there that I think people need to keep an eye out for, ’cause he’s super talented. His name is Drake, and remember this conversation, ’cause he’s gonna be really successful.