Left Field Messiah sees Steve Bays (Hot Hot Heat), Jeremy Ruzumna (Fitz & The Tantrums), and Erik Janson (formerly Wildling) coming together to create energizing, genre-crushing music.
“Young Libertine” came from a guitar line Erik (Janson) was noodling that Jeremy flipped as he started playing along on the mellotron, adding some crazy chords as he always does. It’s one of the songs on In Praise of Bombast that still evokes such a strong sense of place and time for us. We were taking daily trips to a coffee shop next to an incredible antique store. The owner is a poet (Craig Wilson Ruttle) and wrote a book that inspired the name of our record. We picked up all types of treasures there from old magazines, to a book of nursery rhyme 45 records and this strange thing called a light box, that Steve put multi-coloured lights inside that we had on while recording. It lent this magical sense of nostalgia to the sessions. ” – Left Field Messiah
“Young Libertine” was an important moment for us because we landed on a new shade of LFM blue, combining early 90s hip hop tones and soul dance melodies splashed with some nice 80s pop moments. This is a song of firsts – rhyming libertine with figurine and x-ray machine with screen – and while our productions have been referred to as “maximalist,” this is one of our more restrained moments.” – Left Field Messiah
Left Field Messiah bio:
“If you listen for it, a voice reverberates, pleading for spontaneity, more chaos, less thought. For Steve Bays (of Hot Hot Heat), Jeremy Ruzumna (of Fitz & The Tantrums) and Erik Janson (formerly of Wildling), Left Field Messiah is their embrace of their internal calling: a rallying cry to document their impulsive, weird, eclectic and even ugly ideas.Their music teeters between soul and dark funk in one moment, and quickly disintegrates into howling rock on the next. Their song “Fuzz Machine,” is perhaps the best example of LFM’s ethos, with lines like “everyday I’m awreck, cuz rock is dead” swimming between blown out 80s synth stabs, a brittle nylon guitar sample, and harmonica. In this age of endless distraction, we need to embrace our moments of internal rebellion and find a lane to express it. For Bays, Ruzumna and Janson, Left Field Messiah is that — their search for a way out.”
