Magazine

Dan Bejar’s Destoryer is one of Western Canada’s biggest names in indie rock. Recording music for over twenty five years, Destroyer’s lush instrumentation and whimsical lyricism has seen many different genre shifts over the years, spanning from indie-folk to synth-heavy art pop, as Bejar and band navigate shifting inspirations and moods. 

CJLO has been heading down to the SXSW festival since 2016 with only the pandemic preventing us from going back. In the planning stages before the festival, there was a renewed sense of energy and excitement for us to platform CJLO to a higher stage. The excitement came to a stop when the team learned that this year the festival was being sponsored by the US Army and by Collins Aerospace (a subsidiary of RTX Corporation, previously known as Raytheon). With that knowledge, there was a shift in our hearts and soon everything began to shift around us as well. 

Not much can convince me to go out on a Sunday night, let alone out of my immediate neighbourhood, and above that, after I spent the day moving all my belongings to a new apartment. However, this particular late March Sunday promised a truly jam-packed show of slowcore legends, exhilarating DJs, and up-and-coming rock bands. So, trying to ignore my lumbar pain, I headed out for the night to witness Ciel Noir, a one-day festival produced by Blue Skies Turn Black, featuring five acts you’ll likely never see on the same bill again.

“It's so cruel what your mind can do,” a deep-cut lyric sung by R&B and Soul singer Arlo Parks, has been one of many phrases from the artists’ discography that has vastly resonated with Gen Z’s complex lives. In pure honesty and comfort, Park’s music crafts hardships and catastrophe in a mosaic of connection to one’s body and mind, emphasizing a message of collectivity, originality and self-empowerment.