Expandards

Isaac and Mikael met in Ojai, California in 2016 and confessed a shared interest in songs from the Great American Songbook. Their collaboration resulted in a fresh new take on these old songs by way of Isaac’s classic vocal delivery and Mikael’s unorthodox accompaniment using synthesizers.

They performed in Ojai, Santa Barbara and Los Angeles, at nightclubs, comedy shows and private concerts for most of 2018. They recorded their stripped down versions of songs like “Someone To Watch Over Me” and “You Don’t Know What Love Is” on SoundCloud and thought that’s what this project would be.

In the summer of 2018 a colleague of Isaac’s asked them to write a song in the style of “All Of Me” and thus began a songwriting collaboration that has proved to be a potent mix of classic songwriting utilizing improvisation techniques to transcend, albeit by accident, traditional song structures.

“Downloading” is the name of the practice where Jorgensen is at a keyboard, Koren on a mic and they record themselves improvising songs together. Lyrics blur into phonetics and Jorgensen’s chord choices become less and less predictable, but no less interesting and adventurous. Five ideas would be captured, named, uploaded to a private playlist on SoundCloud and then, with any luck, completely forgotten about.

This process is repeated and they soon had over 40 songs and/or song ideas. But they let them marinate and allowed time to work its special magic over the inner critics.

Time passed.

Isaac would listen to these takes while hiking and make notes of particular ideas that struck him and then share these with Jorgensen who was touring quite intensively with Wilco throughout 2019. Little by little the shape of a cohesive body of work began to emerge.

In early 2020, Jorgensen reached out to veteran stage and studio drummer Mario Calire (The Wallflowers, Ozomatli) and had him record some drum takes on one tune and that quickly led to Calire playing on all of the tracks. Calire connected Jorgensen with other local musicians such as Kevin McCormick (electric bass), and Randy Tico (upright bass). Also enlisted on this project is Jeremy Turner on cello and Dave Cipriani on classical Indian slide guitar.

Their first single “Cycling” is more or less an improvisation that has been slightly edited and re-sung. Jeremy Turner provides the wonderful pulsating cellos that accompany Jorgensen’s meticulous production and Calire’s sly rhythms.

“Nature Boy” was recorded back in 2018 and really set a tone for the two musicians who wanted to convey the most emotion possible with the least number of elements. It’s a striking version of a timeless tune.

The cover art is by the Toronto-based designer Jose Garcia at Zoca Studios.