< >Will Belcourt
Singer/Songwriter/Guitar player Will Belcourt unleashed his second full-length album called Obliterate at a concert filmed for television in June 2009 at Edmontons Starlite Room, an upscale venue for live music. The new album is described to be an astonishing departure from his previous recorded Full Moon Blanket, an album originally recorded in 2007 which was remixed and mastered for re-release this year in 2009. The new album "Obliterate" is experimental in nature, and combines hip hop and house beats with songs originally written on guitar in a singer/songwriter format.
Ancestry: Metis
Genre: Pop
Albums
Awards, Nominations & Submissions
| 2012 | Single of the Year | Coast of Gold | Submission |
| 2012 | Aboriginal Songwriter of the Year | Love Shines | Submission |
| 2012 | Best Producer/Engineer | Submission | |
| 2011 | Best Rock CD | Epoch | Nominee |
| 2009 | Best Pop CD | Obliterate | Nominee |
| 2009 | Single of the Year | Faith | Nominee |
| 2009 | Aboriginal Songwriter of the Year | Nominee | |
| 2009 | Best New Artist | Nominee | |
| 2009 | Best Producer/Engineer | Nominee | |
| 2009 | Best Album Cover Design | Obliterate | Nominee |
Biography
Singer/Songwriter/Guitar player Will Belcourt unleashed his second full-length album called Obliterate at a concert filmed for television in June 2009 at Edmontons Starlite Room, an upscale venue for live music. The new album is described to be an astonishing departure from his previous recorded Full Moon Blanket, an album originally recorded in 2007 which was remixed and mastered for re-release this year in 2009. The new album "Obliterate" is experimental in nature, and combines hip hop and house beats with songs originally written on guitar in a singer/songwriter format.
Belcourt, from Marlboro Alberta, a small Cree community close to the Rocky Mountains says the new album at its core is about hope and the lyrics were taken from thoughts and ideas that filled his notepad while touring across North America in 2008. I write songs about real people, real situations, the people I have met, and things I have gone through, the things I have lived and things I have seen says the young songwriter.
He also explains that the album is very much a collaborative effort with Ciprian Enache, a producer from Romania, and is the same producer who co-produced his last album this time around I wanted to take Ciprian's best skills, which is R & B, Hip Hop and electronic music and mesh them with my song writing, my sense of melody and my sense of structure... what you hear on the album is that collaboration. I brought in complete songs and we built beats and infused the songs with contemporary sounds I liked sounds that were new to and this was a very exciting process for me very fresh ideas started to flow as my programmed sense of melody shifted allowing a new sense of sound to take over...and at the same time it was a challenge not to think like a guitar player which is something that I have been doing since I was a kid so in that respect I had to relearn how to think as a musician and create a new musical language for myself to craft and present these new songs and I think we did it...I think we broke some boundaries.
The gift of turning the personal into the universal is becoming a hallmark of Wills work. If I can take a specific moment in my life and write about how that moment makes me feel not about the moment, but the way the moment makes me feel, all of a sudden Im in a territory where a lot of people can understand that. A lot of people understand that feeling; they have other things in their life that make them feel that way. If I write Shine on Me about my personal struggle to understand why we are here and why we exist, thats a very specific moment, but if I write about how that made me feel, then it opens up and it becomes a universal moment.
His career is heading into a larger arena where new and old audiences are now beginning to feel the impact, and appreciate his artistic voice as a contemporary singer-songwriter. His highly evolved song writing touch on subjects of life and death, love and the loss of, it is also about beauty and redemption, and above all, its about hope. His songs showcase a sincerity exposing a full range of emotions with soulful intensity.
He has played music most of his life honing his musicality in bands ranging from hard core metal to solo acoustic gigs. He has had the opportunity to share the stage with many great artists. He has played some big stages in front of thousands, but is not afraid to enter an open microphone jam-night to showcase his abilities alone with just an acoustic guitar, a microphone and his voice. He has played everywhere from a street corner to television and has music that has charted across Canada on Aboriginal and college radios.
Its a world he views with boundless optimism and, despite the occasionally discouraging lyric, Will infuses that same spirit into the new album. Im not a mopey person; I dont get satisfaction in heartache and despair. With the exception of a few things that start dark and stay dark, theres usually a hopefulness at the end of each song, he says. There has to be; its the hopeful part that makes you want to share them with people. Its the hopeful part that says you found some secret in pain and maybe some other people will, too.
William is from Marlboro Alberta, a small Cree community near the Rocky Mountains and has released two EPs and two full-length albums to date and plans to follow up Obliterate, his latest release with a guitar heavy album with funky grooves and catchy hooks.
