“New Country Rehab, Great Lake Swimmers, & Ophelia Syndrome

As many of you know, we are fundraising for our new album and tour on Sellaband.com. We have set little targets along the way, and as part of our 1500 EUR challenge, we promised to release a song from our upcoming album when we reached our goal. And so without further adieu, here is a rough demo of “Magnets”. To learn more about our fundraising, please visit: www.opheliasyndrome.com/funding

Thank-you all for your support!

xoxo

Ophelia Syndrome: “The Fuel That Keeps This Band Going”
I really have to make my amends for not featuring Ophelia Syndrome earlier. They’ve completed their first funding on Sellaband back in November 2010. Now the band is running their third project on the platform. I talked to Deanna Wells about it and why they feel at home on Sellaband …

50K MUSIC: You’ve started your current Sellaband project in November last year. Are you happy with how it goes so far?
Deanna: Yes, we really are very happy! It is such a wonderful thing to know that we have people who are willing to pre-order our new album before it is even recorded. We have been so overwhelmed by the support that we have thus far, and we thank every single believer that we have for supporting us.

50K MUSIC: It’s your third crowdfunding project on Sellaband. It seems like you feel at home there. Is there something special that made you come back again?
Deanna: For us the appeal of Sellaband has always been the on-line community of believers and artists. If it not for Sellaband, we would not be where we are today, and that is a fact. Every single contact we have made through Sellaband has been invaluable to us in so many ways. And so, us coming back is our way to honour this community that we are so grateful for. I mean, let’s be honest, there has been some upheaval with Sellaband in the last couple of years, so we are not saying it’s perfect. But nothing in life is, and we just feel really lucky to get to make music for people, and the supportive community of believers and artists who are on Sellaband has given us that chance.

50K MUSIC: You’re raising funds for your upcoming album. Please tell us something about it.
Deanna: Sure. This new album is a collection of 10 songs that I started writing once we got back from tour last summer. I was so inspired by the trip that I immediately found myself sitting at the piano and singing and writing these new songs. I brought them to the band, and that was it. They really wanted to start working on them as a group. We are so excited about these new songs. I think this is the best work we have done up until this point. The songs are lyrically the most honest for me as well, which can be very difficult as well. Also, keeping with the experimental nature of this group, Josh, our bass player recently purchased a Moog little phatty which is making an appearance on many of the tracks, and Andrew our former guitarist is now our drummer after Adrian left for personal reasons. So in a way, this is a new direction for the band, but an exciting one. We are teaming up again with Michael Chambers of Catherine North to engineer and also produce the album. We are really looking forward to getting started on it.

To read the rest of the article, please click here.

If the answer is nothing, then why don’t you spend the night with us! That sounds dirty… and I like it!

12 January 2013. Hamilton, Ontario. Artword Artbar. 15 Colbourne St. All ages. 8 pm. $10. With Kori Pop. Facebook event.

We have posted our version of “Driving Home For Christmas” to our 500 EUR prize winners Frederik and Gerda!!
We wish all of our believers a Merry Christmas!! Thank-you for your support, we hope that you enjoy this!
Stay tuned for our next challenge…

AND:

Each and every believer can get a chane to win a prize pack, just enter here:

https://www.sellaband.com/en/pages/christmas_2012

Ophelia Syndrome

Another repeat offender! Ophelia Syndrome is back on SellaBand to record, produce and promote their new full length album in one mega-funding! They are dying to get back in the studio and their fans are excited to hear the new material! Their piano driven pop rock is popular hear on SellaBand so make sure to check them out!
Ophelia Syndrome’s single “Long Wait” is available for download, also check out the Ophelia Syndrome Prize Pack below!

Posted on December 04, 2012 09

Thank-you so much to everyone who voted for us!!

The results are here.

We won the Sellaband Featured Artist of the week.

You have been asking, and now we can show you a little preview of our ‘Live at Catherine North” concert.

There will be more following shortly…

Thank-you to Citizen A for doing such an incredible job!

xoxo

Thank-you so much to our Sellaband believers, and also those who purchased their pre-order: Stefan Steiner, Harro, Kevin, Skons, Angie, David Baker, Holeanta, Didl, MjcV, JMG, Ajay, Wolfman, hauhaien, Snarf, Mumsey, tesadelou, Fabian, Frederik & Gerda, Cyrille, Mind4Hire, Laura, George, Martin Nicholas, Sommersby, Ben, Johan, Onno, Nette000, Musicfan, Ramona, MDWH, MR-10, CiGband, Maarten, Ed, Willeke, Breno, Judith, J/f, Christer, Kori, and Hyperboy (who invested in us first!!). Your support means so much to us!! Eeee!! This is so exciting!!

For more please visit: www.opheliasyndrome.com/funding

New Album on it’s way! And we have started fundraising:
https://www.sellaband.com/opheliasyndrome

To read more about it, and to find out how you can contribute and pre-order the new album please click here: http://opheliasyndrome.com/funding/

Thank-you so much for reading xoxo

Thank-you so much to everyone who honestly voted for us everyday! Your e-mails, texts, and phonecalls supporting us means so much Especially thank-you to Meg for being so kind and supportive. We were really happy just to have been a part of a number of seriously talented musicians (including my BF Kori Pop). ♥ Thank-you for taking us into the top 10!

http://www.cbc.ca/bandwidth/2012/11/03/expand-your-bandwidth—-the-top-10-revealed/

Talentcast – Song of the Week

The winner of the first voting on TalentCast radio programme is Ophelia Syndrome from Canada with their song “How To Say Goodbye”.

Ophelia Syndrome was formed in the winter of 2002, when singer and pianist Deanna Wells and cellist Trina Nadeau met during their studies at Mohawk College. In 2007 Adrian McFarlane and Josh Kohler joined the band, completing the sound with drums, bass and backing vocals.

In 2009, the band independently released their debut EP “Shades of Grey”. The release was followed by a tour all over Canada, apart from the band’s regular shows n Hamilton, Oakville and Toronto. They also appeared at The Cambridge Arts Festival, and as a headliner at The Art of Sound Festival in 2010.

Encouraged by the success of their debut, Ophelia Syndrome signed up on SellaBand to seek funding for their first full album. In November 2010, they finished raising 11 900 € and a year later released “All Things Forgotten”. The album was recorded and co-produced by Michael Chambers at Catherine North.

Fundraising on SellaBand brought Ophelia Syndrome new fans all over the world, and the band started thinking of a European tour. After raising some funds on SellaBand again, the band got on the plane to Amsterdam. Together with the Dutch band Carved In Gold, they played seven shows in the Netherlands, where they met many of their SellaBand believers and made new fans. They also did one show in Germany.

With two successful funding projects behind them: an album and a tour on which they got to connect with their believers, Ophelia Syndrome is one of the bands who best took advantage of the opportunities offered by SellaBand.

“Hamilton’s Ophelia Syndrome aren’t the biggest name in the city’s booming “art is the new steel” movement, but they definitely deserve more recognition than they’ve been getting to this point. The newest release – April’s All Things Forgotten – is an interesting collection of folk-pop, rock, and jazz-inspired tracks that gains momentum with the listener as it progresses. This record really is something where you’re in for it all if you’re in for any.”

To read the rest of the review, please click here.

Friday, July 6: 7:00 PM – This week, I On Music stops by a groovy loft in Downtown Kitchener for Ophelia Syndrome’s CD release party.

Michael recently did a great interview for 100 Mile Microphone!

Here is a excerpt from Michael on working with us:

“By contrast, Ophelia Syndrome came in, and they had done a phenomenal job with their demos, just using a little handheld recorder like yours. (ed. note: it’s a Zoom H4n–super cool!) They record all their rehearsals, pick them apart. It was amazing. I had worked with them on their first EP in 2008 and they hadn’t done that homework. So back then, although every part sounded cool on its own, they hadn’t thought about the big picture.

Ophelia Syndrome

They mentioned this in their interview: how much they learned from you guys about creating space in an arrangement.
Yeah, they learned a lot, and you can tell. They said that was why they came back—because they benefited so much from what Dan and I had to say. But they wanted to come in for the full album with all parts figured out. We actually did that album five songs at a time. Ten songs at once? There are just too many details to keep track of. We did all the mixing and mastering after, but the actual tracking was done in two chunks. The nice thing about ProTools is that the mixing is already half-done by the time you get there. If somebody’s recording a vocal, and I put a nice EQ and reverb on it and then we close the session, when I come back two weeks later, the EQ and reverb are still right there. Not like on the old manual boards, where I might have to mark positions of dials with grease pencil and tape.”

To read the rest of the interview, please click here.

Talentcast – Song of the Week

From Lipstik Indie Reviews May 2012 Issue: The Powerhouse women musicans feature

Finally, someone in the Canuck indie scene has forged through the smithy of their souls poppy.  Ophelia’s Syndrome is an infectious combination of Kate Bush with Coldplay and are out of the common bread of the everyday ho-hum scene that we all have to endure to some degree or other. These days the celebration of the mediocre has reached some kind of apotheosis, whether endless revels of TV shows digging out the innards of pawn shop owner travail to Desperate House Wives of Bel Air to light bulbs for midgets.

This has to be the most banal cultural time in the Western Society. We have reached a kind of backwater awards show for the great unwashed, the philistines of the boondocks the bedrock of trash and detritus that should have been buried in some landfill but is instead dredged up and elevated to the light of day and then put a giant spotlight on it just in case you missed the point.

Fortunately we have groups like this Hamilton, Ontario wunderkind’s who, realizing this, explore this affect of Late Civilization, make fun of it and then dispose of it and move on especially in songs like, Passing Time, Heroes and Villains and As Long as There’s a Fight and Don’t Care. There is a kind of Cabaret element embedded in these tracks that adds irony to the lyrical refrains.

The band consists of Adrian McFarlane: drums, percussion Trina Nadeau: cello, percussion Deanna Wells: vocals, piano, B3, Rhodes, Wurlitzer, bells, percussion Josh Kohler: bass, vocals, percussion Andrew Barbisan: guitar, lap steel, vocals, percussion, siren Leon Furs – vocals, percussion, synthesizer, programming Loretta Hale: trumpet — all excellent musicians if somewhat lacking in imagination regarding arrangements but this is a small criticism  for this entertaining group’s  newest CD, released in April of this year. There are eleven tracks of which Passing Time and  Long Wait and How to Say Goodbye are the best pop tunes. Recorded at Catherine North Studios in Hamilton and produced by moon and 6 and Ophelia’s Syndrome. This CD has the listener friendly vibes of a winner for this group. Thumbs up!!

Tracks Passing Time Heroes and Villains Today Fight interlude As Long as There’s a Fight Don’t Care Glue Fire and Sea Long Wait Feet on Ground How to Say Goodbye

We would like Linda Rourke, the host of Hamilton Life, and also the lovely reporter Jackie Vandinther for putting together this wonderful little piece.

To view our Feature on Hamilton Life, please click here.

We appear at 10:26 minutes into the video.

Hamilton Music Notes By Ric Taylor

“…Compelled to get the music out there, Wells and company went to the fans to fund recordings and now find they have to schedule some dates this summer in Europe to accommodate fan demand. Not bad for a band still relatively based in the Greater Hamilton Area.“I cannot express how absolutely wonderful this is,” beams Wells on the bands new international fans. “We owe these people so much. Everything we do now, we do with them in mind. We push ourselves to be the absolute best that we can be for them.“I think anyone who is playing gigs and recording albums has a goal of reaching people who enjoy listening to the music,” adds Wells. “So very basically put, we just want our music to reach ears. Everything that we do has that basic goal in mind. If we put out the best product that we can muster, or play the best show that we can play, it’s all for the people who enjoy listening to us. It’s our thank-you to them for allowing us to do this…”

To read the full article please click here.
  

Hailing from Toronto and the surrounding areas are folk-pop band Ophelia Syndrome who’ve recently released new album ‘All Things Forgotten’. Taken from it is sweet free tune ‘Passing Time’ which combines a delicate, soulful vocal with strings, twinkling keys and understated production. It’s a welcome change from all the hideously overproduced pop that’s clogging up mainstream radio space.

Thank-you so much to Sound of Confusion!!

Thank-you to Tom from 100 Mile Microphone:

“Ophelia Syndrome has a fresh, distinctive sound. I can’t say why, but when I first heard the name, I was expecting prog rock–Dream Theatre or something like that. I wasn’t expecting All Things Forgotten, a gorgeous album of cello- and piano-based alt- folk/rock songs featuring Deanna Wells’ clarion lead vocals, beautiful ensemble harmonies and a healthy and eclectic melting pot of stylistic influences including Brazilian jazz, Gregorian chant, and many more, all sparkling around the edges of the songs like diamonds around a wedding band.“

To read the rest of the interview, please check out: 100 Mile Microphone

Thank-you to everyone who made “Lost and Found” such a great night!

Today I will be on Indi 101 at 3 pm to discuss the CD release Party coming up on April 20th with very specail guest Kori Pop, and then  at 6:00 on CFMU 93.3 Kori Pop will be discussing her incredible new Lullaby album “Songs for Little Bean”, and then I will be on at 6:30 to talk about the new album I can’t wait!!

Thank-you to http://subrockmusic.blogspot.ca/ for making “Shades of Grey” his video pick of the week

Also, our album has been added to Sub-Rock’s Recommended Album’s and EP’s list.

IHeartHamilton: “…an impressive ensemble that blend jazz, folk, and pop/rock, using guitars, piano, cello, lap steel, trumpet, all sorts of percussion, and more. The result is a rich, smooth sound with lovely vocals…”

Schreibstoff.com: “…Sehr schöner verspielter Folk-Pop dieser fünfköpfigen Gruppe aus den Canada…”

Vents Magazine: “…I am completely in love with Deanna Wells’ voice and I love the sound of the band…”

Hanus TV: “…Ophelia Syndrome approached All Things Forgotten as a chance to reinvent their experimental sound to deliver a truly memorable album…”

La Mazmorra: “…All Things Forgotten, un álbum de exquisito buen gusto y con una enorme variedad de sonidos, combinando elementos de rock o pop con otros más cercanos al folk e incluso al jazz…”

Lito Music: (Translated) “‘All Things Forgotten’, an album of exquisite taste and a huge variety of sounds, combining elements rock or pop with others closer to folk and even jazz. If we add a very elaborate instrumentation and rich vocal harmonies details and absolutely delicious, the result can not be better.”

On Earbuddy: First Listen: “ The band just released their new album, All Things Forgotten, that front-woman Deanna describes as vivid memories. Quite frequently I comment on how horrible my memory is, and these songs are little snapshots of moments and thoughts that I might have forgotten otherwise. At some point everything blurs together, you can only hope for some clarity in the chaos.”

Muruch: “… Their mellow, indie sound reminds me a little of ’90s femme-fronted bands like The Cranberries, The Sundays and/or 10,000 Maniacs…” To read the full post, please visit Muruch.

Here on write. click. cook. listen. you will find a delicious recipe for Lentil Burgers, and also a post about our album. Food and OS, yum!

Another nice little post about our album on Best in New Music.

Here’s another very nice write up on Der Impuls.

Exit 61:” We spent years doing two things, sitting in traffic and listening to music. Here’s a list of songs to crank in your car.”. They added 6 8 Song to the list!

Plus a news piece on dans le mur… du son.

Thank-you to everyone who voted for “Today” making it this week’s song of the week on: Talentcast

TalentCast Song Of The Week – Ophelia Syndrome “Today”

Flip to pages 54-55 in: http://ping.fm/AJDks
you can read a lovley article about Trina by Steph Deline!!

A very nice review of our album:

• Tuesday, December 20, 2011: T.O. Snob’s Music

All Things Forgotten is the debut full length album from Hamilton, ON quintet Ophelia Syndrome, a band who take their name from a popular a condition where you fall in love with a mad Danish prince and then drown ‘accidentally’.

The record, fully funded by fans, combines traditional rock and jazz foundations and layers cello, lap steel guitar, keyboards and more over top.  Add in gorgeous vocals and you have a warm sound that is both dynamic and lush. I wish I had heard it a little sooner.  If I had it may very well have squeaked into my Best Canadian Albums of 2011 list.
Thank-you T.O. Snob’s Music