The song conveys the profound emotions of loss, hopelessness, and personal surrender in the context of self-abandonment. It’s an inner scream designed to reach others when we feel invisible to a world that never stops spinning for anyone’s pain to be seen, to be shared. It’s the resilience of being, of believing in another morning shine. It’s the reminiscence of traditional Japanese songs of longing, “哀傷歌 (aishōka)”, defined by mourning, contemplation, and faith in better tomorrows. 

Foreseen as a story within a story, Kimiyo bloomed into a multi-layered entity, the album is inspired by the testimonies of the people Foster met in Japan back in 2010. Kimiyo’s main narrative focuses on the journey of a young person who wrote to Foster years after their encounter to share pieces of her journey about how she found a new sense of self after thinking of taking her life upon becoming unwillingly pregnant, but unable to fathom the idea of ending her life or her pregnancy, she became hateful towards the burgeoning existence slowly taking over her body, but found a fulfilling form of hope for her present and future self emerging from feeling the baby starting to move inside of her body.

She then envisioned a life of her own, a purpose she had never imagined being able to find anywhere – especially not within herself – but lost the child following a miscarriage, leaving her empty again, but somehow transformed. She had learned that happiness is a measure of the heart and soul, accepting that purpose is something that grows from within, but, as Foster exposed it, while the tree might too often hide the beautiful density of a forest, there are lights that are simply way too bright to be hidden.

Alex Henry Foster's new project Voyage à la Mer is an artistic multidisciplinary endeavor based on the asymmetry of human emotions. While the project refers to the title of a self-searching poetry and meditative notebook he started writing during a trip to Japan back in 2010, it also symbolizes the fundamental connection that individuals and communities nurture with water, the beginning of time, ritualistic pilgrimages, redemptive processions, purification, the incarnation related to the flow of life, birth and death, the passage to afterlife, transition, and rebirth.

Foster underwent a life-altering cardiac surgery. He spent months recovering, unable to talk, and unsure he would have the ability to sing in the future. Foster writes: “I was in no other position than to either feel sorry for myself or have a prolonged look with myself to figure out who I was beyond the distressing sensation of losing my identity. The introspective clarity brought me right back to Japan, in what had been for me a transformative experience almost 15 years ago, highlighted by the long-forgotten fragments of film, photographs, and people's testimonies I had the privilege of witnessing.” Slowly starting to regain energy, Foster contacted his friend and longtime creative accomplice Ben Lemelin to assist him in writing and creating. With Foster still regaining his voice, the duo invited fellow artist Momoka to be the voice of the first incarnation of the project, titled Kimiyo.

Alex Henry Foster has crafted four different creative entities; the albums Kimiyo and A Measure of Space and Sounds, the film Voyage à la Mer, and the in-public conversations & live musical improvisation affair Of Flashes and Other Currents, all due to be released over the span of 2024.

Nocturnal Candescence

All Of Our Past Future Lives

"A Silent Stream" is a contemplative journey within ourselves, designed for us to discover the purpose of days passing by, beyond the illusion of control over "time" and the meanings we’d like to believe in. 

Foster says about the upcoming LP: “I have always been looking for a pretext or an excuse to work with Momoka. She’s got a very unique spirit, and she’s a very inspiring and insightful person.We have a common view about life in general and spirituality in particular, but most of all, she is a fantastic artist for whom I have the utmost admiration. When it became obvious to me that I would be in no way capable of singing or speaking on the songs we had sketched, Momoka was in my opinion the only person able to transcend the project’s spirit. The poetry of Voyage à la Mer was to be the core holding the whole project together, but I wanted Momoka to make her own interpretation of the lyrical undercurrent and to express herself in her native tongue, so she wouldn’t have to be my voice or try to emulate what my words might convey. We set the canvas, laid down the color palettes, but it was for her to express herself and be the painting.” 

Alex Henry Foster's new project Voyage à la Mer is an artistic multidisciplinary endeavor based on the asymmetry of human emotions. While the project refers to the title of a self-searching poetry and meditative notebook he started writing during a trip to Japan back in 2010, it also symbolizes the fundamental connection that individuals and communities nurture with water, the beginning of time, ritualistic pilgrimages, redemptive processions, purification, the incarnation related to the flow of life, birth and death, the passage to afterlife, transition, and rebirth. The 2010 trip to Japan forms the basis of the project, in particular a conversation with the parents of a young Japanese fan who, prior to taking his own life, had been corresponding with Foster via letters the two sent back and forth. As time passed, Foster underwent a life-altering cardiac surgery. He spent months recovering, unable to talk, and unsure he would have the ability to sing in the future. Foster writes: “I was in no other position than to either feel sorry for myself or have a prolonged look with myself to figure out who I was beyond the distressing sensation of losing my identity. The introspective clarity brought me right back to Japan, in what had been for me a transformative experience almost 15 years ago, highlighted by the long-forgotten fragments of film, photographs, and people's testimonies I had the privilege of witnessing.” Slowly starting to regain energy, Foster contacted his friend and longtime creative accomplice Ben Lemelin to assist him in writing and creating. With Foster still regaining his voice, the duo invited fellow artist Momoka to be the voice of the first incarnation of the project, titled Kimiyo.

Alex Henry Foster has crafted four different creative entities; the albums Kimiyo and A Measure of Space and Sounds, the film Voyage à la Mer, and the in-public conversations & live musical improvisation affair Of Flashes and Other Currents, all due to be released over the span of 2024.

A Silent Stream

"'Alchemical Connection' is the contemplative portrait of a blooming dawn I had the mesmerizing privilege of witnessing in the dead cold of winter, through the Virginian mountain horizon where I live," Alex Henry Foster says. "I was fascinated by the slow awakening of colors growing into one another, evolving into a stream, and redefining impermanent beauties. It reminded me of the bright shining lights dancing over the ocean of crystal pieces covering the awakening morning in the middle of the desert, where silence murmurs about inner peace and where wind carries the nature of what it feels like to be truly alive. This song evokes those profound sensations."

Foster mentioned that, “It felt like the representation of an organic movement that could ultimately break us free from the echo chamber we might have been trapped in and therefore end the emotional twirl and affective cycle of redundancy that too often comes with our emptiness and desperation...”

Following Kimiyo, what would eventually become the second chapter of Voyage à la Mer, A Measure of Shape and Sounds, is an intimate journey of its own, representing a profound personal breathe-in made of several layers of guitar loops, reverberations, resonances, and oscillations juxtaposed together to create a sonic multi-directional contemplative maelstrom. Purposely recorded live to capture as direct a flow as possible, the songs embodied at that exact moment carried their human disposition not only to abandon oneself to the motion but to become one with it. Foster mentioned: “It felt like the representation of an organic movement that could ultimately break us free from the echo chamber we might have been trapped in and therefore end the emotional twirl and affective cycle of redundancy that too often comes with our emptiness and desperation.”

He adds: “Even though I had the conviction that we had guided Kimiyo as far as we had to without spoiling its natural beam of light by suddenly adding the shadows of our ambitions to it all, Ben and I felt there was more to explore, as so many additional fragments of musical landscapes instinctively surfaced while we kept dwelling on the vivid sensations we were both still being impacted with at that precise instant.”

Instrumental by choice and minimalist by design, it was capital for Foster that A Measure of Shape and Sounds stood as its own living organism, not as a faire-valoir or add-on to the growing entity that Voyage à la Mer was becoming. If Momoka incarnated Kimiyo’s voice, Foster was adamant about the fact that “no introspection is really yours until you voice it yourself.” In that sense, the album would provide an ongoing soundtrack to that internal self-searching reflection inviting us to lift ourselves forward, to tame the other bonding voices to which we usually surrender our longing desires for freedom.

This is what Foster encountered throughout the process: “If those pieces of new music were already leading the way, I knew there was more to experience. To discover what it might be, I would have to entirely let go of all the looming concerns I was starting to ponder regarding the circumstantial parameters associated with what was starting to look much more like an extensive endeavor than I was able to circumvent at that moment. Since genuineness and coherence are always the ultimate sieves through which I pass every single one of my projects before releasing them, I had to trust my instinct and discover what had begun to blossom deep down underneath my limitative worries, remembering that coherence is about honesty, not about structure. Contrary to so many precedent art forms I worked on, what I saw burgeoning out of our writing sessions didn’t have to be analyzed to determine if they were “it” when they surfaced; they were. You can’t fabricate honesty.”

Alchemical Connection

About the song:
As much as the nature of “A Measure of Shape and Sounds” has been inspired by a profound introspection about life’s impermanence and the decaying sensations that accompany the defying acceptance of our own existential consciousness, “Sorrowful Bouquet” evokes serenity and peacefulness, the results of losing our illusionary control over the conceptual power of time and over our physical limitations and tangible perspectives, thus offering the possibility to embrace emotional freedom that comes with the emancipative reflection of who we are; a transient fragment of the sound waves we’ve created through the limitations of our own selves.
***
About the video:
Aligned with the aesthetic of the Asian wabi sabi philosophy, the video for the song “Sorrowful Bouquet” was filmed in the Japanese prefecture of Tottori and is the visual metaphor contextualizing such disorienting state of mind, where the endless ocean of undulating and modulating sand symbolizes the volatile incarnation of our intimate — yet global — sense of reality. The water all around acts as a representation of a perpetual passage towards letting go, while the transience of the wind offers the uncanny sublimation that balances our daily sensations, scattering its different components. The sun then comes as a stabilizing marker between evolving spiritual intangibilities and the palpable decline of our personal fatalistic views. It’s a willful acceptance beyond our controlling resistance. 
***
About the album:
Following Kimiyo, what would eventually become the second chapter of Voyage à la Mer, A Measure of Shape and Sounds, is an intimate journey of its own, representing a profound personal breathe-in made of several layers of guitar loops, reverberations, resonances, and oscillations juxtaposed together to create a sonic multi-directional contemplative maelstrom. Purposely recorded live to capture as direct a flow as possible, the songs embodied at that exact moment carried their human disposition not only to abandon oneself to the motion but to become one with it. Foster mentioned: “It felt like the representation of an organic movement that could ultimately break us free from the echo chamber we might have been trapped in and therefore end the emotional twirl and affective cycle of redundancy that too often comes with our emptiness and desperation.”

He adds: “Even though I had the conviction that we had guided Kimiyo as far as we had to without spoiling its natural beam of light by suddenly adding the shadows of our ambitions to it all, Ben and I felt there was more to explore, as so many additional fragments of musical landscapes instinctively surfaced while we kept dwelling on the vivid sensations we were both still being impacted with at that precise instant.”

Instrumental by choice and minimalist by design, it was capital for Foster that A Measure of Shape and Sounds stood as its own living organism, not as a faire-valoir or add-on to the growing entity that Voyage à la Mer was becoming. If Momoka incarnated Kimiyo’s voice, Foster was adamant about the fact that “no introspection is really yours until you voice it yourself.” In that sense, the album would provide an ongoing soundtrack to that internal self-searching reflection inviting us to lift ourselves forward, to tame the other bonding voices to which we usually surrender our longing desires for freedom.

Sorrowful Bouquet

Self-Portrait

About the song:
The song represents a sense of personal weightlessness in regard to our existential impermanence. It’s an empowering acceptance of sorts, a liberating acknowledgment of the highly limited measure of time we’ve been allowed, along with the unpredictability of its essence. It’s about the peaceful yet defiant nature of “being”, a consciousness with which we engage ourselves to design the canvas of an unforeseeable life based on who we are rather than what we want to be perceived as. It’s like being suspended over the endless immensity of an ocean made of our personal entity evolving through the stream of moments, whether defined by emotional stillness or affective uplifts.  

About the video: 
It’s about being in a symbiotic harmony with ourselves and our environment. I found water, since it’s our main physical component, to be the perfect representation of the intangible state of inner peace we all look for at some point in our existence. The notion of letting go reflects a spiritual condition that, once experienced, echoes through the body, mind, circumstances, time and space in a unique emancipative synchronization. We defy our own measure of self-imposed gravity to become an intrinsic part of our ever-elusive “now”.

Cinematic Insight

A Mind’s Tapestry

Mechanical Revision

Thoughtful Descent

The EP A Whispering Moment highlights the freely evolving nature of the song Shadows Of Our Evening Tides from its initial incarnation and its organic bloom up to its different live forms.

I believe this very special project not only encapsulates the incredibly personal and intimate emotions that essentially express the brokenness of my heart following my father’s passing and my long belated grieving process, but that also became a singular element for friends and loved ones to find solace in their own losses before providing comfort to many people who would later discover the hopeful nature of a record that might appear or be shallowly interpreted as a sad and weary reflection of love’s impermanence and disarray when its true essence remains finding peace and purpose in our own bleakest times.

And like most unambitious honesty and unselfishly-absorbed creative let go, Windows in the Sky would subsequently offer me the ultimate blessing to redefine my musical journey, and maybe, if not more importantly, to rewire my whole existence entirely.

Therefore, I hope that A Whispering Moment will lead you to discover or rediscover the vibrant sensations of cultivating your life — of being truly alive.

A Whispering Moment (Alternative Version, April 30, 2018)

Shadows Of Our Evening Tides (Extended Version, April 13, 2019)

Part of the project "A Whispering Moment", that highlights the singular evolution of the song “Shadows Of Our Evening Tides”, Alex Henry Foster decided to release a Single Version of the song. 

"Through that re-exploration, we decided to highlight the specific elements that initially moved us while emphasizing the enlightening aspects that now echo through the song so luminously, way beyond ourselves and a multitude of people now, giving life to a version singular enough to ultimately foresee its introduction to radio after years of reluctance to do so. It is a decision that not only honors the significant period of my existence encapsulated by my album “Windows in the Sky”, but that now beautifully overlaps with the new creative whirl I am obsessed with."

Shadows of Our Evening Tides

Shadows Of Our Evening Tides (Radio Edit) [feat. Allen Ginsberg]

Alex Henry Foster & The Long Shadows
Live in Cologne, July 27, 2024

The Son of Hannah (Live in Cologne, July 27, 2024)

I'm Afraid (Live in Cologne, July 27, 2024)

While the band is currently in the studio working on their next album, In the Valley of the Sun offers a sound infused with catharsis, layered with textured guitars, and offers a calmer sonic landscape than what the band usually delivers in concert.

The instrumental track remains faithful to the band’s experimental post-rock style, while hinting that they are working on new material that could be presented during their tour as early as November, in a much more dissonant live setting as Foster mentions:

"It’s been loud, noisy, and truly intentional in my studio recently, which is particularly galvanizing for me since I’m working on a surprising new creative project… Surprising because it wasn’t actually planned at first, and I saw its inspirational essence spark in my heart in such a way that it took precedence over everything I was foreseeing to immerse myself in at that point…"

In The Valley Of The Sun (Writing Session)

“City on Fire is a song that has been vibrating within me for quite some time already. It came and went in my life when I least expected it, but I guess it became much more significant for me as I’ve been horrified by the new measure of atrocities human nature is inflicting on the world. I understood that beyond the fire raging within us and the subsequent cynicism we now have to deal with lies the notion of trying to find some inner peace through it all, to transcend the fear we have to lose ourselves in our own flaming disillusions.

Alex Henry Foster - City On Fire

Crafted in a recluse state of emotional isolation following the passing of his father after a long battle with cancer, Alex explores the nature of faith, grief, sorrow, solitude and hope.

"It's an intimate voice trying to make sense of the echoes of its loss, a mournful heart exuding the last pieces of its disoriented reality by trying to hold on to the distorted views of the shadows of a man it might have to become, away from its personal illusions and the ghosts they are keeping alive." - Alex Henry Foster

Purposely distancing himself from the noisy avant-garde textures of his previous works as the main writer for Juno-nominee post-rock band "Your Favorite Enemies", Alex's “Windows in the Sky” is not only a personal and intimate album; it is a deliberate nuanced creative perspective with a more stripped-down musical approach.

Windows in the Sky

Summertime Departures

The Hunter (By the Seaside Window)

Alex Henry Foster (AHF) is a Canadian musician, singer, author, producer, and composer, best known as the frontman of Juno Awards nominee band Your Favorite Enemies. 

In November 2018, Foster released a first solo album "Windows in the Sky”. This album will be the first project to be released within a new partnership venture established between his label Hopeful Tragedy Records and Sony Music Entertainment / The Orchard.

In April 2021, he released his live album and film “Standing Under Bright Lights”, featuring his first concert at the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal in 2019.

Alex Henry Foster

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