Who's Breathing?, by Ryan Driver

Who's Breathing?

by Ryan Driver

supported by

	/

Streaming + Download

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

Purchasable with gift card

€6 EUR or more
Full Digital Discography

34

releases

Get all 34 Rat-drifting releases available on Bandcamp and save 40%.

Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Cagey Doves, Asterballoo 22, Enamel • for Scott Thomson, solo trombone & Harmon mute, Hen's Teeth, How Things Happen, The Imaginary Brass Band, In The Same Room, Impossible Burger, and 26 more. , and , .

Purchasable with gift card

€126 EUR or more (40% OFF)

1.	Dead End Street 03:32	buy track
2.	Am I Still Too Late? 03:33	buy track
3.	Everything Must Spin 02:50	buy track
4.	Tell Me True 04:47	buy track
5.	Blue Skies Don't Care 04:28	buy track
6.	It's Tulip Season 05:57	buy track
7.	Don't Want To Leave You Without You 04:06	buy track
8.	Whether They Like It Or Not 04:41	buy track
9.	When Now Turns To Never 04:13	buy track
10.	On A Beautiful Night Like Tomorrow 04:09	buy track

about

Did you know that Ryan Driver has a drink named after him? Yeah, it's called Rye and Driver - which is ostensibly a screwdriver with a shot of Canadian rye - and despite the fact that the drink was neither named nor conceived by him, it still speaks volumes of his unique and confounding legacy. Although the thought of this drink that combines vodka and rye is at first a little weird, the result is quite tasteful and it’s apropos that such a drink should be named after such a person. Having known Ryan for a few years now, I just heard of and tried this drink last week for the first time.

If you've had the pleasure of spending time in Mr. Driver's company or attended one of his shows in any one of his many bands - the Silt, the Reveries, Blah Blah 666 and his own Ryan Driver Quartet, to name a few - you will know that what he brings to the table is something implacable, even enigmatic... And although the genre of music performed spans a slew of old-time and contemporary genres and moods - from folk to free jazz, bombast to balladry - Ryan's presence is always assured and deftly considered, never pedestrian.

With his new album Who's Breathing?, Ryan showcases some of his new songs which, not unlike the drink that's named after him, are both eclectic and sweetly intoxicating. The first half is a top-heavy, bleary-eyed amble through the metaphysical country moves made familiar through his work in The Silt. Central to these songs is Ryan's heady, almost surrealist lyrics, which traipse commonplace folk themes on the slant and uneven ground of a funhouse. Here his way with a turn of phrase demonstrates its dexterity amid slinking caterpillar accompaniments (including a rest stop-style pedal steel and even an English horn pilfered from the AM waves).

The second half assumes the mentalist lounge approach, that particular sound not unfamiliar to those who attend the monthly Ryan Driver Quartet appearances at the Tranzac bar in Toronto. Mr. Driver's own brand of smoky, downcast jazz meanders in a slack void between half-speed piano bar exercises and subterranean psychedelia cast in twilight. On piano, Ryan is accompanied primarily by bass, drums, and Martin Arnold's peculiar, intuitive guitar playing. But, as with the first half, it is Ryan's songwriting that takes center stage; teeming with double-meanings and verbal loopholes, excavating the alien and quietly phosphorescent landscape of the soul.

It is with immense love that this cycle of songs is transmitted to you over bleating pastures and through the blear of rain and sleet. An album for almost all occasions and another landmark in Ryan's unchartered career.

- Andrew Zukerman, August 2010

credits

released July 16, 2021

Ryan Driver — voice, nylon-string guitar, piano, synth, flute
Andrew Downing — bass on 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5
Stew Cookes — pedal steel on 1 and 2
Justin Haynes — guitar on 2, 5, 7 and 9; organ on 3 and 4
Jean Martin — drums on 2, 3 and 5
Marco Cera — English horn on 5 and 9
Rob Clutton — bass on 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10
Nick Fraser — drums on 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10
Martin Arnold — electric guitar on 6, 8 and 10

Recorded by Jean Martin and Jeremy Darby in Toronto at Canterbury Studio and The Farm.
September 2009 – April 2010
Produced by Ryan Driver and Jean Martin
Mastered by Harris Newman

Design by Lewis Nicholson, Photography by Ryan Driver (Penguin and Pipe), Meaghan LaCroix (Fly), Vegar Samuelsen (Ryan)

All songs by Ryan Driver © 2009 SOCAN
Ryan Driver gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts

license

about

Rat-drifting Toronto, Ontario

Rat-drifting music searches for specificity, celebrates detail. It experiments with radical particularity and wonders about the possibilities and potentials of those experiments. If the music drifts, it does so in the hopes that the listener drifts with it—her/his imagination experimenting with the possibilities of the music as well, as they find their own route through their own experience. ... more

contact / help

Contact Rat-drifting

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Who's Breathing?, you may also like:

Two Years
by Whitney K

Canadian troubadour Konner Whitney expands his creative horizons with a vulnerable-yet-venomous record blending rock and folk. Bandcamp New & Notable Feb 10, 2021
go to album
In Another Life
by Sandro Perri

featured on Bandcamp Radio Aug 14, 2018
go to album
UR 050: HONEY
by JOSH THORPE

Bedroom pop with gentle electronic accents from Josh Thorpe, who paints sweetly intimate portraits of everyday love. Bandcamp New & Notable May 9, 2023
go to album
UR 048: SANCTUARY
by CRYSTAL SHIPSSS

Dizzying psychedelic songs that feel like they're being played at the bottom of a deep canyon, drenched in reverb & echo. Bandcamp New & Notable Dec 11, 2022
go to album
UR 038: PESTO
by SKLAVO CERVALO

Low-lit bedroom pop from Ontario, where silvery rays of guitar illuminate murmuring vocal melodies. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 4, 2021
go to album
Let's Part in Style
by Michelle Gurevich - EU Store

featured on Bandcamp Radio Jan 21, 2014
go to album
Red Headed Stranger
by Carla Bozulich

Looking back at Carla Bozulich's debut solo album, a complete re-imagining of the Willie Nelson classic that the man himself played on. Bandcamp Album of the Day Jul 8, 2016
go to album