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SO LONG by Cascadian New Single

Cascadian

New releases 2021 - 'Instant Gratification', 'Savoury' and 'So Long' in all digital stores.

Ian Van Oosterhout, professionally known as Cascadian is a Canadian singer/songwriter living in Southwestern Ontario.   Grounded in guitar-driven instrumentals, Ian is exploring a whole new experience - the power of voice.   And he's giving free reign to a choir of deep-chested resonant vocals, along with upper register vocals that are hauntingly critical and soulful.  Hypnotic and addictive. 

In his words:  ‘Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up’ – Pablo Picasso. This resonates well with me because I have seen so many people come and go from music and arts. People grow up thinking “I need to get a real job” and “stop wasting my time” and they lose their sense of wonder and creativity. I feel like every person should be a little child-like in this sense in order to escape the mundanity and repetition of everyday life.  The power to create is one of the many great things that make us human and should be embraced by all.   I want my work to evoke feelings, emotions and make people smile or be happy  or even have a good cry.

Ian is adept at alternating rhythms and changing direction with vocals that are focused and powerful.  He recollects childhood:  One of my earliest memories is being at a wedding and falling asleep in front of the giant speakers blasting loud enough to shake the cake. As a kid when I brushed my teeth, I would do it in rhythms and open/close my mouth to change the pitch of the brushing sound.  I remember always tapping rhythms or humming a tune. My parents took notice and put me into piano lessons in elementary school, then I noticed my brother’s guitar around age thirteen.   He wouldn’t let me play it, so I would sneak in his room when he wasn’t around and play it anyway.  One day, I inevitably broke a string and tried to cover it up, but shockingly, my plan of laying a plastic antennae across the fretboard to make it look like it fell and broke the string didn’t work. Confronting me he told me to play him something and show him what I’d been doing. I played the intro to Sweet Child of Mine, and my brother said, “Well… alright, you can play it.” 

Quickly Ian is unleashing his voice with an uninhibited outpouring of theme-driven lyrics that reflect our symbolic pendulums.  He reflects:  :  I got into metal at a very young age (thanks, brothers) and then convinced myself everything else was crap and not worth listening to. It took me until a few years ago to realize there’s an entire world of music out there that I’d just been leaving untapped and unexplored. Now, metal still holds a special place in my heart and I still love heavy music, but I’ve also discovered a powerful love for blues, country, jazz, contemporary, pop, dance, funk… basically, anything that evokes any sort of emotion and/or puts a smile on my face is worth listening to in my books. 

There is an undeniable quest for truth in descent and ascendance, always telling the story with his revolutionary instrumentals and evolving vocals that are like a mythical creature waiting to make history.  Ian says:  :  What is most difficult for me in writing music are lyrics. Articulating how I’m feeling comes out much more naturally in the form of melody, and I usually rewrite a song seven or eight times then end up not using it anyway.  Saying “I’m finished” and moving on is difficult too.  Singing and writing lyrics are new developments compared to my evolving eighteen years of guitar.    

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