Lineup 2017
Rich Aucoin
Halifax, NS
On his most recent album, Ephemeral, indie-rock musician Rich Aucoin takes his past several years of relentless worldwide touring – from a small town in France, a giant festival in Europe, or even a beach party in Madagascar – and distills all of the big ideas philosophy majors like him love to ruminate on into 10 sharp dance-pop songs all pointed toward the same goal: to gather the things that keep us afraid and apart, and use them to pull us together.
Everything Rich does feeds into something else, his whole life an endless connected mass of roots, needing air and water and a light show to really be seen. There are songs that match videos that stop in time for the parachute to unfurl – with so many devoted and curious fans getting under them now that Rich has to custom-order them for size. “He’s already holding stadium-calibre, interactive live spectacles in the confines of clubs,” marvelled CBC Radio 3’s Grant Lawrence in 2012. “Imagine what this Halifax electro-imagineer could do in a hockey arena?”