There is an unfinished video for the opening track of Sargeant X Comrade’s new album, Power Vol. 1. Read More
There is an unfinished video for the opening track of Sargeant X Comrade’s new album, Power Vol. 1. For now, both the video and an over-arching funk-meet-kung-fu theme have been put on the back burner as the Calgary duo readies for the June 6 release of its fourth record. But snippets of the video could
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There is an unfinished video for the opening track of Sargeant X Comrade’s new album, Power Vol. 1.
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For now, both the video and an over-arching funk-meet-kung-fu theme have been put on the back burner as the Calgary duo readies for the June 6 release of its fourth record. But snippets of the video could be seen as part of a trailer made to promote Sargeant X Comrade’s recent Western Canadian tour.
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It was initially going to be a video to accompany Power, the commanding opening track of the album. It was an elaborate affair filled with extras, stunts and kung-fu moves.
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“We had all these kung-fu schools involved,” says DJ-producer Evgeniy (Jay) Bykovets, the Comrade to vocalist Yolanda Sargeant’s Sargeant. “Me and Yolanda did all this kung-fu training for the video. It was a big production. But that one is still in the works.”
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For those interested in seeing a completed Sargeant X Comrade video, one was recently released for Escape the Matrix Pt. 1 and offers more evidence of the duo’s ambitious vision. The song was one of the many haunting standout tracks from the act’s 2023 concept album, Lo Fi Future. It was directed by Bykovets, albeit under his auteur guise, Gino Bikovesso (also known as True Geneus), and is an intricately storyboarded and cinematic venture full of tracking and drone shots, beautiful cinematography and elaborate costumes.
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It is another reminder that Sargeant X Comrade don’t do anything in half-measures, something those who have followed the duo for any amount of time already know.
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As the title suggests, the new record will be the first of two that will deal with various notions of power. Not unlike Sargeant X Comrade’s music – an exhilarating blast of mashed-up genres, chameleonic vocals, spoken-word performance and studio wizardry – the concepts and ideas seem to come to the act with tremendous speed and abundance. Sargeant and Bykovets shifted gears so quickly that even the album’s promotional material lags, referring to a kung-fu theme that is now barely present.
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“We switched it last minute, and I think the press release has not caught up to the switch up,” Bykovets says.
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“Basically, the concept is power,” Sargeant says. “Power of self, self-love, all these different concepts of power.”
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As with past albums, Power benefits from an eclectic crew of collaborators and backup from first-rate musicians who provide an electric charge to the duo’s clever use of samples and allusions and trademark ability to slip seamlessly into different genres. Helped out by Western Canadian artists such as Prevail, Moka Only, DJ WeezL and Winnipeg art-rap collective Super Duty Tough Work, Distant Lands is a silky and hypnotic hip-hop number. River, featuring spoken-word artist and former Calgary Poet Laureate Wakefield Brewster, boasts some old-school gospel backup vocals that recall the Fairfield Four. That song, in particular, has a sentiment that fits nicely into the theme of empowerment, says Sargeant.
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“That song started as a prayer,” Sargeant says. “You are kind of just waiting for things to change. You want to be better, but sometimes you can’t be better, and you realize that the only way … is by letting go of all the things that are holding you back: … your own stuff, your own things that you won’t deal with. You realize at the end of the song about the mountain: You’re just supposed to climb it, you’re not supposed to carry it. Everyone carries a weight with them based on everything that has happened before and what they anticipate will happen. You just gotta be free and let it go.”
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Defining the duo’s music has never been an easy task. Most acts like to think they are too original to be pigeonholed into a genre, but in the case of Sargeant X Comrade, it’s true. In the past, the act defined itself as pioneers of “Lo Fi Soul,” a label they created because existing genre descriptions seemed severely wanting in summing up their sound.
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“I’m a DJ, so I love all different genres, so it’s hard to stick to one,” Bykovets says. “I’m sure the same could be said for Yolanda, she is into all sorts of music and multi-talented with soul and hip-hop.”
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“If you’re sticking to one genre, are you really able to express yourself in the words and the songs the way you want to, or are you just stuck in a box?” Sargeant adds.
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While the album may be full of positive vibes, some of it was also informed by grief. Marvin (The Fly) Kee, a longtime collaborator with Sargeant X Comrade and a staple of their live act, died in March 2023. A number of the tracks on Power, Vol. 1 still feature his bass and guitar playing.
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“After Marvin passed away, it was a really sad and depressing time,” Sargeant says. “It was a very painful time. After he passed, we would play shows and the music didn’t feel the same at all. We went back to the drawing board and figured out what songs we needed to get done just to have that new energy with Marvin included in it. It wasn’t like we were mourning our friend who was gone, and we had done all this stuff with him. It was more like we were creating something new, with his memory in mind and his talents and his dreams still intertwined within ours.”
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The album is dedicated to Kee, who was such a pivotal member of Calgary’s music scene that he is central to a mural in Inglewood along Calgary’s Music Mile that was unveiled last year.
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The unveiling and the multi-act Flyfest 2024 festival held in his honour were partially organized by Sargeant X Comrade’s Mo Gravy Records. The duo launched the label that put out their music and that of other artists. In August, they will release an album of Kee’s final work under the name Flytrap.
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Community-building has always been a part of the duo’s mandate. They began recording back in 2014 after meeting at a party. Sargeant, whose musical background includes listening to her father’s gospel, Soca and Calypso records, was born and raised in Calgary and sang in the Mount Royal Children’s Choir before discovering punk, neo-soul and hip-hop. Bykovets spent his early childhood in Russia and Ukraine before arriving in Calgary at age 10 and eventually discovering underground hip-hop and DJing. The band’s 2020 release, Magic Radio, the act’s first full-length release, was longlisted for the Polaris Prize. In 2023, Sargeant X Comrade oversaw the Incubator at Arts Commons, which enlisted 22 local artists to participate in a mentorship, networking and performance program that ended with a series of cabaret performances under their leadership.
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On June 12, Sargeant X Comrade will hold a record launch at Sweet Loretta with Ginger Beef and Ninja Star, an event being described as a celebration of Calgary’s burgeoning music scene. Power, Vol. 1 is also a celebration, albeit one that also recognizes that community is often in flux.
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“I think a bunch of the songs were born out of the fact that everything is always changing,” Sargeant says. “Nothing is for certain. You have friends, and they come, they go. Some people die. You have to figure out what you want to do, and you want to be regardless of the adversity that comes. That’s why we chose power. Once you empower yourself, you can empower the people around you, and everyone becomes more powerful. That’s the sentiment behind a lot of things we are talking about in this project.”
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Sargeant X Comrade will perform on June 12 at the Sweet Loretta. The show starts at 8 p.m. Power, Vol. 1 will be available June 6.
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