Ash Koley is, at its core, an insular musical duo. Formed in Winnipeg by eponymous singer-songwriter Ashley Michelle Koley and multi-instrumentalist Phil Deschambault, the collaborators got their start by writing buoyant, eclectic pop songs for an audience of each other. Since then, the project has expanded significantly in scope, and the pair’s vibrant new sound will soon be unveiled with the sophomore album Elements, releasing June 10, 2016 via Nettwerk.
The new record is a bold leap forward from the 2010 debut Inventions, which came out on Nettwerk Records/Sony Music and won over audiences with its bouncy bubbly cabaret pop. The album’s single “Don’t Let Your Feet Touch Ground” hit the Canadian Hot 100, was featured in various film and TV placements, and was even included in the broadcast of Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics.
In the years since then, Koley and Deschambault have thrown themselves into an intensive writing process in which they entirely overhauled their approach. Koley moved to Los Angeles, and the pair frequently met up for intensive sessions with a cast of co-writers. Although the duo continued to handle nearly all of the production themselves, their new collaborators helped them to expand their palette to incorporate synth-pop, hip-hop and and soul.
“Elements means a few different things,” Koley says of the new album title. “We introduced a few different elements for this record, meaning collaborators and places and experiences and sounds. And we’ve also been placed out of our element, which is normally just the two of us in a Winnipeg studio. Now it’s travelling to L.A., working with other people and going to different sessions every day.”
One of these sessions resulted in “Criminal,” which was co-written in a whirlwind meet-up with Justin Gray (Mariah Carey, Amy Winehouse). The song has already charted on the Canadian Hot 100 and landed on the HOT AC & AC Top 20 radio charts, and its lovestruck lyrics, towering pop hooks and cinematic hip-hop beat act as a pulse-racing introduction to Ash Koley’s new style.
Elsewhere on the album, “Irresistible” is a sweeping, reverent ballad that highlights the poignant dynamics of Koley’s voice, while “Dangerous Words” is a beat-driven anthem about a fear of commitment and the life-changing weight of the words “I love you.” Another standout is “Every Time I Think of You,” a synth-spiked dance banger that was written in a lightening-fast burst of creativity in Deschambault’s Winnipeg basement. Deschambault remembers, “That was one where we got together and it wrote itself. I remember writing that in four or five hours.”
This writing process shows that, while Elements features new sounds and new collaborators, the band’s success still lies in the alchemical musical relationship between its principal members. Deschambault reveals, “My favourite phrase that Ash said to me is, ‘Can you hear what I just thought?’”
At this, Koley laughs and chimes in, “Yeah, and he can!”
