Latest news with #PowerVol.1

Calgary Herald

Power up: Calgary Sargeant X Comrade's fourth album celebrates community, self-love and change

There is an unfinished video for the opening track of Sargeant X Comrade's new album, Power Vol. 1. Article content For now, both the video and an over-arching funk-meet-kung-fu theme have been put on the back burner as the Calgary duo readies for the June 6 release of its fourth record. But snippets of the video could be seen as part of a trailer made to promote Sargeant X Comrade's recent Western Canadian tour. Article content Article content It was initially going to be a video to accompany Power, the commanding opening track of the album. It was an elaborate affair filled with extras, stunts and kung-fu moves. Article content Article content 'We had all these kung-fu schools involved,' says DJ-producer Evgeniy (Jay) Bykovets, the Comrade to vocalist Yolanda Sargeant's Sargeant. 'Me and Yolanda did all this kung-fu training for the video. It was a big production. But that one is still in the works.' Article content For those interested in seeing a completed Sargeant X Comrade video, one was recently released for Escape the Matrix Pt. 1 and offers more evidence of the duo's ambitious vision. The song was one of the many haunting standout tracks from the act's 2023 concept album, Lo Fi Future. It was directed by Bykovets, albeit under his auteur guise, Gino Bikovesso (also known as True Geneus), and is an intricately storyboarded and cinematic venture full of tracking and drone shots, beautiful cinematography and elaborate costumes. Article content Article content It is another reminder that Sargeant X Comrade don't do anything in half-measures, something those who have followed the duo for any amount of time already know. Article content As the title suggests, the new record will be the first of two that will deal with various notions of power. Not unlike Sargeant X Comrade's music – an exhilarating blast of mashed-up genres, chameleonic vocals, spoken-word performance and studio wizardry – the concepts and ideas seem to come to the act with tremendous speed and abundance. Sargeant and Bykovets shifted gears so quickly that even the album's promotional material lags, referring to a kung-fu theme that is now barely present.