Chromewaves
"Magnificent... their widescreen cinematic sound was just stunning. A welcome punctuation of orchestrated calm and beauty in a sea of guitar rock."
About.com
"The sound of the vibes, billowing and folding inside the high-roofed gallery, was astounding on its own -- and backed by the soft beats of the drums, the low rumble of bass, and the veritable orchestra of other instruments -- it really (to put it crudely) blew us away. I know nothing about these guys except that the stolen snippet of unplanned music they gave us was some of the freshest, most delightful and more enjoyable at the SXSW festival."
Stereogum
"Superb."
Songs: Illinois
"Like if Stereolab played Bacharach."
Basic Sounds
"AMAZING! Talented tight musicians that deliver orchestral compositions with indie post-rock melodies."
Sunglasses In Unforgiven
"After spending many months with this album, I can safely say it is one of my favorites of the year, and perhaps king of the (surprisingly crowded!) vibraphone-sounding-post-rock crowd, a genre (of sorts) that I typically roll my eyes at."
Popsheep
"Vibraphones and glockenspeils, buzzing swirling around a simple melody which manages to change over the course of the song almost without the listener noticing, capturing the chaos of lying on your back in your back yard, the sun beating down on your face while you drift in and out of sleep."
The Rawking Refuses to Stop
"Hylozoists don't score films, but they should. Their debut, La Fin Du Monde, is a fluttering jumble of Jon Brion I Heart Huckabees flourishes and rhythmic Morricone-isms, horn squelches and woozy vibraphones."
Treble Zine
"The gossamer of La Fin Du Monde is an enigmatic fusion of classical composition and contemporary pop mentality. A new experience on every listen."
Tiny Mix Tapes
"Each track is a veritable post-rock orchestra of Canadian indie who's whos, always heavily featuring one or more vibraphones, glockenspiel, and some form of string.. It's as if Tortoise remembered how to jam. La Fin Du Monde is as smooth as a baby's ass from start to finish."
I Guess I'm Floating
If you were impressed by Sufjan as a composer, or even Win Butler, you'll be right at home in the company of Hylozoists
I Heart Music
"On a superficial level, it's easy to compare The Hylozoists to Bell Orchestre. Both bands share members with other, much more well-known bands, and both bands specialize in quasi-classical instrumental pop that doesn't rely on distortion ... unlike Bell Orchestre, whose debut created post-rock soundscapes that conjured up vivid visions of Montreal without using any words, The Hylozoists create music that's not quite of this world. They make dreamy, ethereal pop that just happens to (usually) not have any vocals; in this respect, their music is much closer to acts like Air or, to a lesser extent, Stereolab."
You Ain't No Picasso
"Add Hylozoists along to the list of bands that I was afraid I'd hate because the word "instrumental" got tossed around. Much like the Octopus Project, I wound up enjoying their music, and my perspective on instrumentals has changed for the better. Unlike The Octopus Project, they won my affection through soft waves, rather than thunderous crashes."
Ottawa Citizen
"A huge clan of Canadian artists playing a wide array of instruments to produce dramatic songs that jump from cabaret sultry to romping circus tracks to noodly funk-out to dreamscape lullaby soother."
Chromewaves
"Double-digit-member Toronto-based musical collective/supergroups are old hat, but double-digit-member Toronto-based musical collective/supergroups fronted by vibraphonists? Hold the phone! ... pretty, joyous, sweeping and rolicking and completely un-indie rock. It sounds like the orchestral score to a circus movie, laden with strings, horns, keys and yes - vibraphones."
The Whig Standard
"The Hylozoists are coming to blow your mind ... anything but your average rock band ... The Hylozists create gleeful, instrumental chamber pop; spacey indie-rock movie music; and wacky, psychedelic jazz, drawing on influences as varied as contemporary post-rockers Tortoise and Stereolab, to orchestral film scorers Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herman ... Where other arty instrumental bands often fall prey to self-indulgent noodling, or pretentious, shoegazer atmospherics, The Hylozoists stand out with their extroverted perforances and catchy melodies."
Take Your Medicine
"Orchestral opium for the masses."
Take Your Medicine
"It's a high school music class who keep practising all through school, kept the spirit alive and kept creating over the top tracks encompassing everyones idea in orchestral opium for the masses."
Dose
"It's a bold claim, but the Hylozoists could be the best band in Canada right now."
The New Pollution
"The amount of sound the band produces turns every head that isn't already crowing the stage's edge. It is not only a beautiful, shimmering musical performance, but a great visual one as well"
National Post
"The sound and musty texture of 1970s film scores ... vintage synthesizers and Euro-tribal rhythms ... puffy
studio flutes, twangy country steal ... glittering surfaces abound, as the accumulated colours flood the audible spectrum."
Georgia Straight
"A schizophrenic journey through mariachi-meets-Tortoise-style instrumentals that owe as much to Sergio Leone as they do to Air ... music made to accompany the little pleasures in life, be they headphones or dinner parties, elegant martinis or whiskey on the rocks"
From Blown Speakers
"It's a high school music class who keep practising all through school, kept the spirit alive and kept creating over the top tracks encompassing everyones idea in orchestral opium for the masses"
Chart
"Featuring the extraordinary talents of nine outstanding musicians, the group's eclectic, orchestrated pop is driven by an enchanting mix of vibraphones, organs, bells and violin."
Uncut
"The Hylozoists make harmonically challenging, sustained, trance-like post-rock instrumentals ... an emotionally uplifting harmonic flux that enthralls and delights with its elegance and virtuosity ... an ecstatic blend. (Rating: 4/5 stars)"
Chart
"Beautiful, joyful, utterly unique and uplifting ... The Hylozoists are something of a supergroup. In addition to multitasker Aucoin, they also feature Cuff The Duke's Paul Lowman and Wayne Petti, Nathan Lawr, Jason Tait, and Jason Ball, amongst others. Two vibraphones, bells, two drum kits, a fiddle, organ/keys, bass and guitar all worked together to create songs gentle as lullabies or building up into a psychedelic dreamscape cacophony. Sometimes there would be three people on the vibes at once, sticks flying so fast they became a blur ... Gorgeous stuff."
Now Weekly
"Awesome collisions of Brubeckian jazz, circus clown waltzes, Morricone surf-country and cracked cabaret ... a supergroup deserving of the title"
Rock Paper Pixels
"Their sound is a little bright psychedelic '60s pop, a little Martin Denny, a little Stereolab & and basically a lot great. Such a thing could easily have fallen into cheesey niche/gimic territory, but thankfully there is too much talent there for that. Just awesome."
Exclaim!
"If you find it hard to believe that a vibraphone can rock, you haven't seen Paul Aucoin ... Then again, it's only part of the Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist and producer's arsenal ... whether the situation calls for adding an unorthodox instrument like Theremin, arranging a string part, contributing some engineering skills ... He has done some or all of these for artists like the Sadies, Cuff the Duke, the Heavy Blinkers, and the Deadly Snakes, to the point where he has become arguably the most diverse and enthusiastic multitasker in the Canadian music business. All on top of Aucoin's own band, the Hylozoists, a nine-piece instrumental outfit powered not only by his vibraphone, but two others."
Wavelength
"The Hylozoists take me to magically and mysterious caverns of the mind without excess drug use or good old-fashioned mental craziness. A huge group of talented noisemakers light my ear hairs on fire with their lush, full, pert and upright compositions. The band is thick and dripping with talented musicians and the mood that these folks create could stop any Parkdale 'sketch' in their tracks and put them into a deep trance."
Le Devoir
"Est-ce du country, du rock instrumental, de la pop raffin￩e ou de la musique de film somptueuse ... Imaginez une collaboration entre Stereolab et Tortoise, Mercury Rev et Calexico ... Grace une instrumentation tr￨s surprenante, qui va de la pedal steel, la clarinette, ce groupe trouve le moyen de redonner un peu de lustre au format parfois cul du post-rock. Les melodies se tissent de facon inhabituelle pour ainsi aboutir a une fascinante equation instrumentale. Aventureux sans etre pretentieux, The Hylozoists plane deja tres loin. Ceux qui craquent pour la trame sonore de Virgin Suicides des Francais d'Air seront aux anges. De tr￨s bonnes nouvelles en provenance d'Halifax."
Montreal Mirror
"Fans of Stereolab, Tortoise and Air (and Pink Floyd?), pay attention now ... This phenomenal octet has the familiar post-rock elements in place -- Reichian marimba riffage, space banjo and astro-slide, theremin and tiki-bar vibes and all that great stuff. The songs have an amazing way of shambling along in their ornate glory, seemingly on the verge of imminent collapse. Then they go and fall beautifully into place. (Rating: 9/10)"
Toronto Sun
"Imagine Tortoise crossed with whacked out Smile era Brian Wilson, and you've got the general idea. Truly remarkable stuff."
Aural Innovations
"Taking their cue from post rock bands like Tortoise and Stereolab, The Hylozoists go a step further, synthesizing numerous pop influences into a wild and woolly psychedelic morass. Amidst jingling vibraphones, prancing harpsichords, space age sound effects, jubilant strings, and sighing theremins, sunshine pop Pet Sounds melodies collide head on with looping, twanging slide guitars, like Hank Snow stuck with the Beach Boys on a Ferris wheel at a seaside amusement park ... The Hylozoists take you on twists and turns through a vast kaleidoscope of sound ... a complete, instrumental, psychedelic journey through the history of pop music, seen through the compound eyes of extra-dimensional aliens."
Exclaim!
"The Hylozoists emerge with a sumptuous slice of lush, cinematic, post-chamber pop. That this much brilliance can come from one studio has conspiracy theorists buzzing about alien/human gene splicing, musician cloning, secret societies and ties to an ancient sect of pre-Socratic Greek philosophers ... Aucoin is our Maritime answer to contemporaries like Tim Gane (Stereolab), John McEntire (Tortoise) or Sean O'Hagan (Stereolab, the High Llamas)."
Eye Weekly
"Aucoin revels in lush cinematica that falls between '60s icons like Bacharach or Van Dyke Parks, and '90s post-rock exotica by Macha and Emperor Norton artists ... with little interest in pop pastiche, Aucoin's awesome musicianship is free to run wild through jazz excursions with theremins, vintage keyboards, various malleted instruments, as well as orchestrated strings and brass."
"Magnificent... their widescreen cinematic sound was just stunning. A welcome punctuation of orchestrated calm and beauty in a sea of guitar rock."
About.com
"The sound of the vibes, billowing and folding inside the high-roofed gallery, was astounding on its own -- and backed by the soft beats of the drums, the low rumble of bass, and the veritable orchestra of other instruments -- it really (to put it crudely) blew us away. I know nothing about these guys except that the stolen snippet of unplanned music they gave us was some of the freshest, most delightful and more enjoyable at the SXSW festival."
Stereogum
"Superb."
Songs: Illinois
"Like if Stereolab played Bacharach."
Basic Sounds
"AMAZING! Talented tight musicians that deliver orchestral compositions with indie post-rock melodies."
Sunglasses In Unforgiven
"After spending many months with this album, I can safely say it is one of my favorites of the year, and perhaps king of the (surprisingly crowded!) vibraphone-sounding-post-rock crowd, a genre (of sorts) that I typically roll my eyes at."
Popsheep
"Vibraphones and glockenspeils, buzzing swirling around a simple melody which manages to change over the course of the song almost without the listener noticing, capturing the chaos of lying on your back in your back yard, the sun beating down on your face while you drift in and out of sleep."
The Rawking Refuses to Stop
"Hylozoists don't score films, but they should. Their debut, La Fin Du Monde, is a fluttering jumble of Jon Brion I Heart Huckabees flourishes and rhythmic Morricone-isms, horn squelches and woozy vibraphones."
Treble Zine
"The gossamer of La Fin Du Monde is an enigmatic fusion of classical composition and contemporary pop mentality. A new experience on every listen."
Tiny Mix Tapes
"Each track is a veritable post-rock orchestra of Canadian indie who's whos, always heavily featuring one or more vibraphones, glockenspiel, and some form of string.. It's as if Tortoise remembered how to jam. La Fin Du Monde is as smooth as a baby's ass from start to finish."
I Guess I'm Floating
If you were impressed by Sufjan as a composer, or even Win Butler, you'll be right at home in the company of Hylozoists
I Heart Music
"On a superficial level, it's easy to compare The Hylozoists to Bell Orchestre. Both bands share members with other, much more well-known bands, and both bands specialize in quasi-classical instrumental pop that doesn't rely on distortion ... unlike Bell Orchestre, whose debut created post-rock soundscapes that conjured up vivid visions of Montreal without using any words, The Hylozoists create music that's not quite of this world. They make dreamy, ethereal pop that just happens to (usually) not have any vocals; in this respect, their music is much closer to acts like Air or, to a lesser extent, Stereolab."
You Ain't No Picasso
"Add Hylozoists along to the list of bands that I was afraid I'd hate because the word "instrumental" got tossed around. Much like the Octopus Project, I wound up enjoying their music, and my perspective on instrumentals has changed for the better. Unlike The Octopus Project, they won my affection through soft waves, rather than thunderous crashes."
Ottawa Citizen
"A huge clan of Canadian artists playing a wide array of instruments to produce dramatic songs that jump from cabaret sultry to romping circus tracks to noodly funk-out to dreamscape lullaby soother."
Chromewaves
"Double-digit-member Toronto-based musical collective/supergroups are old hat, but double-digit-member Toronto-based musical collective/supergroups fronted by vibraphonists? Hold the phone! ... pretty, joyous, sweeping and rolicking and completely un-indie rock. It sounds like the orchestral score to a circus movie, laden with strings, horns, keys and yes - vibraphones."
The Whig Standard
"The Hylozoists are coming to blow your mind ... anything but your average rock band ... The Hylozists create gleeful, instrumental chamber pop; spacey indie-rock movie music; and wacky, psychedelic jazz, drawing on influences as varied as contemporary post-rockers Tortoise and Stereolab, to orchestral film scorers Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herman ... Where other arty instrumental bands often fall prey to self-indulgent noodling, or pretentious, shoegazer atmospherics, The Hylozoists stand out with their extroverted perforances and catchy melodies."
Take Your Medicine
"Orchestral opium for the masses."
Take Your Medicine
"It's a high school music class who keep practising all through school, kept the spirit alive and kept creating over the top tracks encompassing everyones idea in orchestral opium for the masses."
Dose
"It's a bold claim, but the Hylozoists could be the best band in Canada right now."
The New Pollution
"The amount of sound the band produces turns every head that isn't already crowing the stage's edge. It is not only a beautiful, shimmering musical performance, but a great visual one as well"
National Post
"The sound and musty texture of 1970s film scores ... vintage synthesizers and Euro-tribal rhythms ... puffy
studio flutes, twangy country steal ... glittering surfaces abound, as the accumulated colours flood the audible spectrum."
Georgia Straight
"A schizophrenic journey through mariachi-meets-Tortoise-style instrumentals that owe as much to Sergio Leone as they do to Air ... music made to accompany the little pleasures in life, be they headphones or dinner parties, elegant martinis or whiskey on the rocks"
From Blown Speakers
"It's a high school music class who keep practising all through school, kept the spirit alive and kept creating over the top tracks encompassing everyones idea in orchestral opium for the masses"
Chart
"Featuring the extraordinary talents of nine outstanding musicians, the group's eclectic, orchestrated pop is driven by an enchanting mix of vibraphones, organs, bells and violin."
Uncut
"The Hylozoists make harmonically challenging, sustained, trance-like post-rock instrumentals ... an emotionally uplifting harmonic flux that enthralls and delights with its elegance and virtuosity ... an ecstatic blend. (Rating: 4/5 stars)"
Chart
"Beautiful, joyful, utterly unique and uplifting ... The Hylozoists are something of a supergroup. In addition to multitasker Aucoin, they also feature Cuff The Duke's Paul Lowman and Wayne Petti, Nathan Lawr, Jason Tait, and Jason Ball, amongst others. Two vibraphones, bells, two drum kits, a fiddle, organ/keys, bass and guitar all worked together to create songs gentle as lullabies or building up into a psychedelic dreamscape cacophony. Sometimes there would be three people on the vibes at once, sticks flying so fast they became a blur ... Gorgeous stuff."
Now Weekly
"Awesome collisions of Brubeckian jazz, circus clown waltzes, Morricone surf-country and cracked cabaret ... a supergroup deserving of the title"
Rock Paper Pixels
"Their sound is a little bright psychedelic '60s pop, a little Martin Denny, a little Stereolab & and basically a lot great. Such a thing could easily have fallen into cheesey niche/gimic territory, but thankfully there is too much talent there for that. Just awesome."
Exclaim!
"If you find it hard to believe that a vibraphone can rock, you haven't seen Paul Aucoin ... Then again, it's only part of the Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist and producer's arsenal ... whether the situation calls for adding an unorthodox instrument like Theremin, arranging a string part, contributing some engineering skills ... He has done some or all of these for artists like the Sadies, Cuff the Duke, the Heavy Blinkers, and the Deadly Snakes, to the point where he has become arguably the most diverse and enthusiastic multitasker in the Canadian music business. All on top of Aucoin's own band, the Hylozoists, a nine-piece instrumental outfit powered not only by his vibraphone, but two others."
Wavelength
"The Hylozoists take me to magically and mysterious caverns of the mind without excess drug use or good old-fashioned mental craziness. A huge group of talented noisemakers light my ear hairs on fire with their lush, full, pert and upright compositions. The band is thick and dripping with talented musicians and the mood that these folks create could stop any Parkdale 'sketch' in their tracks and put them into a deep trance."
Le Devoir
"Est-ce du country, du rock instrumental, de la pop raffin￩e ou de la musique de film somptueuse ... Imaginez une collaboration entre Stereolab et Tortoise, Mercury Rev et Calexico ... Grace une instrumentation tr￨s surprenante, qui va de la pedal steel, la clarinette, ce groupe trouve le moyen de redonner un peu de lustre au format parfois cul du post-rock. Les melodies se tissent de facon inhabituelle pour ainsi aboutir a une fascinante equation instrumentale. Aventureux sans etre pretentieux, The Hylozoists plane deja tres loin. Ceux qui craquent pour la trame sonore de Virgin Suicides des Francais d'Air seront aux anges. De tr￨s bonnes nouvelles en provenance d'Halifax."
Montreal Mirror
"Fans of Stereolab, Tortoise and Air (and Pink Floyd?), pay attention now ... This phenomenal octet has the familiar post-rock elements in place -- Reichian marimba riffage, space banjo and astro-slide, theremin and tiki-bar vibes and all that great stuff. The songs have an amazing way of shambling along in their ornate glory, seemingly on the verge of imminent collapse. Then they go and fall beautifully into place. (Rating: 9/10)"
Toronto Sun
"Imagine Tortoise crossed with whacked out Smile era Brian Wilson, and you've got the general idea. Truly remarkable stuff."
Aural Innovations
"Taking their cue from post rock bands like Tortoise and Stereolab, The Hylozoists go a step further, synthesizing numerous pop influences into a wild and woolly psychedelic morass. Amidst jingling vibraphones, prancing harpsichords, space age sound effects, jubilant strings, and sighing theremins, sunshine pop Pet Sounds melodies collide head on with looping, twanging slide guitars, like Hank Snow stuck with the Beach Boys on a Ferris wheel at a seaside amusement park ... The Hylozoists take you on twists and turns through a vast kaleidoscope of sound ... a complete, instrumental, psychedelic journey through the history of pop music, seen through the compound eyes of extra-dimensional aliens."
Exclaim!
"The Hylozoists emerge with a sumptuous slice of lush, cinematic, post-chamber pop. That this much brilliance can come from one studio has conspiracy theorists buzzing about alien/human gene splicing, musician cloning, secret societies and ties to an ancient sect of pre-Socratic Greek philosophers ... Aucoin is our Maritime answer to contemporaries like Tim Gane (Stereolab), John McEntire (Tortoise) or Sean O'Hagan (Stereolab, the High Llamas)."
Eye Weekly
"Aucoin revels in lush cinematica that falls between '60s icons like Bacharach or Van Dyke Parks, and '90s post-rock exotica by Macha and Emperor Norton artists ... with little interest in pop pastiche, Aucoin's awesome musicianship is free to run wild through jazz excursions with theremins, vintage keyboards, various malleted instruments, as well as orchestrated strings and brass."
