is the New Music Monday highlight!\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nTrevor Lang has been a mainstay of the Victoria music scene since he was young, going from playing in Cartoon Lizard to releasing experimental pop music as a solo artist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHe recently released a project he had been working on for years, a cosmic country-inspired album called <\/span>Way Out Yonder.\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\nThough he moved to Germany just over a year ago, this record was recorded in Victoria at Risque Disque Studios and was largely inspired by experiences Lang had while living in BC.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI guess I was just looking for a change of scenery, it\u2019s as simple as that,\u201d Lang told Victoria Buzz.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI lived in Victoria basically my whole life, besides a very short stint spent living in Vancouver.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nLang continued that he had travelled out to Berlin to visit a friend shortly after a breakup, and fell in love with the city and the European lifestyle.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI was really taken with the lifestyle here, and having made [friends] here, I thought this could be a good jumping off point to explore the rest of Europe and got myself a one-year visa,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t expect to be here for over a year, I didn\u2019t know what I was going to do, so I said \u2018I\u2019ll just get a visa, a year will fly by and I\u2019ll have a better idea if I want to stay or not.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nAfter making the move overseas, Lang found a new community, immersed himself in the local music scene and has now been in Berlin for over a year and a half.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cNow this is my life,\u201d he noted. \u201cIf I were to go back home it would basically be the same experience, obviously more familiar, but I would be losing a lot of the things that I have here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nOn his new record, <\/span>Way Out Yonder, <\/span><\/i>Lang says the idea for this recording project began with a themed party he had been asked to play music at.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe whole thing started when a friend of mine, Louis Belcourt, asked me to play a show on Cortes Island that was a space rodeo,\u201d Lang explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cYou go dressed in like, western wear and there\u2019s sci-fi vibes and stuff like that, but I was under the impression everyone was going to be playing space country sets\u2014nobody did this, I was the only one who made a space country set.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nBut this was just the catalyst Lang needed, as he says he had always had the idea to do a recording project inspired by old B-movies and country music.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThe two have always felt connected somehow.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nSo he began pulling from old notes in his phone and writing country songs about loss and grief, all of which followed the narrative of a sad, pathetic cowboy character which Lang imagined as the album\u2019s protagonist.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHe then took these songs to Risque Disque and recorded them very simply\u00a0 live off the floor, and then began layering samples of old songs and sci-fi sound effects overtop.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nThe result was <\/span>Way Out Yonder, <\/span><\/i>an album meant to be listened to as a whole to glean the journey of this sad cowboy Lang imagined.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFor this week\u2019s New Music Monday, Lang chose to highlight the album\u2019s second track, \u201cReno Casino.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nHighlight track<\/b><\/h3>\n
\u201cI feel like the crowning jewel of this record is \u2018Reno Casino,\u2019\u201d said Lang. \u201cIt\u2019s also maybe, sonically, my favourite recording I\u2019ve ever made.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nHe says this song came from an experience he had in 2015 while touring with a Vancouver-based band through the United States, and walking around the streets of Reno, Nevada.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI don\u2019t remember much from it, but I remember a few visceral sense memories,\u201d he explained.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nLang said it was extremely cold when he was there, walking the streets of Reno, and the air had a fog to it at night.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAlso, I kept seeing these people that seemed really kind of sad,\u201d he continued.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nHe says he also kept encountering people who seemed sad and downtrodden, and began to imagine a narrative for them.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019d see this guy, sitting in a bar by himself, huddling over his drink,\u201d said Lang.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cThere\u2019s something about Reno and the fact that it always lives in the shadow of Vegas, like, it\u2019s the second best for this kind of thing and I love their motto: \u2018The Biggest Little City in the World,\u2019 which is kind of pathetic but also awesome.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nWhile walking about with the band, a member suggested going to a \u201cReno casino\u201d and that stuck with Lang. He wrote the words down in his phone and came back to them when thinking about the <\/span>Way Out Yonder<\/span><\/i> project.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nListen to \u201cReno Casino\u201d by Trevor Lang below:<\/span><\/p>\n