Montreal International Jazz Festival presents

RY X

Born into the small community of Woodford Island in Australia (currently home to around 300 people), he was raised on a permaculture farm by his parents. “There wasn’t even a town, really – my school had about 11 kids, and we didn’t have uniforms, or wear shoes,” he recalls. “I grew up like that, really close to the coast, in this simple life, spending a lot of time in nature.” It was RY X’s father, a permaculturist from whom he inherited his love of the ocean, who also gave him his love of music. “There were instruments everywhere around the house. There was no internet… We had vinyl, and tapes. I used to dig through my dad’s vinyl collective and pick stuff based on the cover art.” He received guitar lessons from a tutor when he was nine, which instilled in him a discipline that helped him discover his love of the instrument. Then, after working two jobs through school (at a restaurant and helping to build houses), he set off to Central America, aged 17, exploring Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Panama, and embedding himself in each country’s culture, surfing the waves and writing music. “At the time, I didn’t think about pursuing music as a career,” he admits. “It was just a very pure expression of my being.”

Visiting Los Angeles, RY X found himself in a world that he “didn’t know or understand for quite some time”. He visited back and forth until, aged 21, took the leap and moved out there full-time. Soon after, and with Frank Wiedemann, he released the single “Howling”, a tension-filled track on which he sang, in his opalescent tenor: “Gold I swam into your spell/ On the rite of god we fell/ You were plush and I laid bare/ You had me howling.” Then, in 2013, RY X released his sublime EP, ‘Berlin’, with the title song charting in the top 40 in the UK and covered by a young Sam Smith in the BBC Live Lounge. Newly signed to Infectious Music, he followed with 2016’s Dawn, which introduced exquisitely arranged orchestral elements to his already intricate compositions. This included “Beacon”, a lovelorn sigh of violins and warm guitar notes, and “Shortline”, a deep-running current of shivering percussion, liquid synths, and tumbling piano notes, as mesmerising as waves onto the shore.

Blood Moon is perhaps RY X’s most organic-sounding record to date, one which reflects on intimate relationships and translates them into wider conversations on spirit, the divine feminine, and the exploration of self.

To purchase your tickets, visit: www.evenko.ca