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Graham Van Pelt, aka Miracle Fortress.

Back in 2007, Montreal multi-instrumentalist Graham Van Pelt quietly released a record called Five Roses under the name Miracle Fortress. The album — a sunny synth-pop/shoegaze confection with major Beach Boys vibes — went on to be shortlisted for the 2007 Polaris Music Prize and Van Pelt went on to be heralded as a musical genius.
   
In the years following the release of Five Roses, Miracle Fortress was relatively quiet. Van Pelt kept busy with his other gig, manning guitar and keyboards in Montreal indie rock outfit Think About Life — but he never stopped experimenting with his own music.
   
Good thing, too, because now he’s got a new Miracle Fortress album on his hands. Released earlier this week via Secret City Records, Was I the Wave? sees Van Pelt taking the project in a new direction. While Five Roses was essentially a fuzzy, dreamy pop album, Was I the Wave? is a more angular electronic offering. Still, despite their notable stylistic differences, it’s clear both records are from the same brain.
   
"It was quite a similar process — again, I was working alone in my studio and using a lot of the same techniques, experimenting and exploring with sounds," says Van Pelt, 27, who acted as composer, performer, arranger, producer and engineer for the album, and worked in virtual isolation. "The end result ended up in a different direction, but the process was the same, just sort of letting the experiments happen. There wasn’t a eureka moment, that I must make an electronic record."
   
Indeed, it’s clear from Van Pelt’s writing and recording process that he’s comfortable letting the music lead the way.
   
"If songs work out in a way that interests me, I keep them," he says. "Once I have a few that fit together, I assemble a record out of that. Some of them I slave over every mundane detail for weeks; others will be finished the day they were started.
   
"There were seven versions of (the song) Raw Spectacle," he adds, by way of example. "I added and subtracted elements until I had the right brew." (The labour paid off; the song offers some of the album’s most sublime moments.)
   
His approach to writing is similarly guided by music. "The way I write lyrics is I listen to the music a lot and let it take me into my own head," he says. "The music will trigger some memory or some feeling."
   
The songs that make up Was I the Wave? listen like anthems for brainy introverts, dealing in themes of alienation, social overexposure and anxiety — all set to a soundtrack of shimmering synths and bottom-heavy beats. This is a well-crafted album that obviously benefitted from Van Pelt’s thoughtfulness and willingness to take his time.
   
"I’m not exactly a megastar who needs to release a blockbuster every year," he says. "I can wait until I’m comfortable with something. I still feel green as an artist. I want to build up my arrangement muscles and my songwriting muscles before I feel like I can drop music every year."
 

MIRACLE FORTRESS
May 1, Lo Pub