Chad VanGaalen - Soft Airplane B-Sides EP

Flemish Eye, one of my favourite labels here in Canada, recently offered up an EP of B-sides from Chad VanGaalen's 2008 release Soft Airplane, an album that I listened to obsessively while biking to school last year. I felt Soft Airplane was a noteworthy release from last year and was one of the most deserving of accolades, but most consistently overlooked. While flying along on my bike, I was continually impressed not only at the variety of sounds showcased on the album, but at how that variety could come together so cohesively as an "album", a singular statement.

The release was a significant advancement for VanGaalen in light of the somewhat scattered nature of his previous releases: 2004's Infiniheart, and 2006's Skelliconnection. The criticism of those two albums often centered on their lack of cohesion, as they were culled from hundreds of songs Chad had written in his basement; people may have found the combination of seemingly disparate elements such as prepared piano alongside folk-ish balladeering in the tracklisting to be off-putting. I didn't really have many complaints. I thought those releases were just a testament to the guy's genius, but I admittedly was excited when the artist employed a bit more self editing for the 2008 release; the tracks on Soft Airplane felt like they were intended to be part of an album (if they were culled from a batch of hundreds, I couldn't really tell). Given that Chad did edit himself for our sake, I think this EP release is intended to showcase the more experimental, impromptu side of his creative process that he perhaps had to restrain for Soft Airplane.