Harmonizing with our overall energy that has manifested over the course of 2020 is Heavy Clouds, the debut EP by Ava Strange. With darkness and doom and five blues-heavy tracks, the EP goes for a big mood that’s best experienced through total immersion
Ava Strange is the current musical project of Avery Theriault (Internal Night), who has spent his isolation working on the EP and recording it all in his home studio.
“I recorded the entire EP during the spring lockdown using my home studio,” says Theriault. “I had a lot of input from friends on the mixing, and I think it has lead to the project taking quite an interesting form. The mixing is highly creative, and I spent a ton of my time in isolation on it. I play every instrument on it, and the main thing I did not do is the mastering, which was done by Franc Lopes at Ocean Floor Recording in Halifax.
“. . . [The tracks] have to do with learning to see some of life’s mundane details from a different perspective and are generally about looking a little deeper into things that are so familiar to us that we don’t really consider them anymore.”
Heavy Cloud carries a bluesy tone throughout with side trips into droning doom and psychedelic grooves as well as slight folk-rock undertones. With a sound akin to that of Uncle Acid, Ava Strange’s classic doom and psychedelic rock influences shine through.
The release’s first single, “Want to Hear,” starts the album off with a sound that is strongly reminiscent of Black Sabbath, setting the stage for the rest of the album. Theriault also cites Captain Beefheart and David Bowie, among others, as influences for the five tracks, and we hear a nod to Led Zeppelin near the end of “Dancing” in the form of a quick and improvised “Dazed and Confused” riff.
“The EP itself is based around some old songs I reworked and added the rest of the instruments around. ”
Though it is currently his only other project aside from Internal Night, Theriault says he had initiated his Ava Strange endeavour with the intention of his music being divided into multiple projects. After deciding the tracks were sounding like they belonged together, he decided to amalgamate the projects into one and now has a backlog of music to prepare for a future release.
In Heavy Cloud, Ava Strange serves up an off-the-cuff, jamming quality and a gritty production quality that lends itself well to this music style.