The music of Sing Leaf – the project founded by Canadian artist David Como – often unfolds like fortuitous mementos sent by past selves. “I'll usually write little ideas with nothing in particular in mind. And down the line, it'll end up somewhere on a hard drive. Then when I find them maybe a year or two later, and they'll suddenly mean something. So it's almost as if I'm leaving notes for myself.” Having maintained a prolific recording output since the mid-to-late 2000s, Como’s work manifests like reverie-like apparitions of his deepest interests. The brilliant Shu Ra cherry-picked global and local sounds with quizzical melancholy, whereas Not Earth nosedived into the cosmic and otherworldly.
Unlike its predecessors, Sing Leaf’s new album Remote Motel – out late 2023 via Tin Angel Records takes Como to more grounded, earthbound places, capturing a rather drastic turn of events in his personal life. He moved from longtime base of operations Toronto to the sleepy community of Madoc, Ontario, into a 140 year old house. “The town lies at what's called the Canadian Shield, where the bedrock is very close to the surface. So, you know, it's like the innards of the earth poke out from the ground. They blast the solid rock with dynamite to put the roads through. So you're essentially driving through these blown out bits of rock and it's kind of swampy up there. It’s long outstretched nature and with these little pockets of humanity.. ”