Feeling Figures - Migration Magic (2023) Hi-Res

For years Feeling Figures have tinkered away at the edge of the Montreal scene, never fitting neatly into the ebb and flow of the city's cultural trends or its more traditionalist camps. A geographer, a music therapist, a writer, and an underground arts biz maverick, the four Figures have long been friends and collaborators in various musical formations and continue to propel multiple projects.

At the core of Feeling Figures is the Zakary Slax and Kay Moon songwriting partnership, which itself stretches back a decade, the pair first crossing paths in a vibrant period of musical upheaval in Sackville, NB - a college town on Canada's East Coast. In the big city, a series of self-releases, shifting monikers, and revolving live lineups eventually coalesced with Thomas Molander & Joe Chamandy as the ultimate rhythmic vehicle and spiritual consorts for Slax & Moon's unconstrained syntheses of multiple eras of indie rock, punk, psychedelia, folk, and outsider pop. Their debut 7" of 2021 was an early entry in Montreal upstart label Celluloid Lunch's catalog.

“Migration Magic” was recorded in a flurry of live noise across two nights in December 2022. The Figs (as they are affectionately known to each other) had already recorded a full album’s worth of material earlier in the year, but as the winter holidays grew near and a brief stint as openers for the nationally celebrated Ancient Shapes concluded, they knew they had something more to capture. Thomas brought his recording gear to the Studio Migration practice space and the quartet threw all their remaining material into the air. Some songs were drawn deep from the back-catalogs of Moon & Slax, others were new compositions, and 2 spontaneous covers were chosen to round out the set. The immediacy of these recordings, with their interplay of sweet melody and raw instrumentation, forged a new destiny for the group, ultimately arriving as the first Feeling Figures LP.