Album Announcement – Axis Decade – ‘Half Full of Empty’

Axis Decade is a band, it’s a brand, it’s utopian collectivism, it’s rugged individualism, it’s multiple genetic aberrations,it’s advanced hearing loss, it’s New Wave, it’s old wounds, it’s a benediction, it’s a sunk cost fallacy, it’s too much, it’s barely anything at all, it’s 1967, it’s 1980, it’s 1992, it’s a broken shoelace when you’re running late.

Callen Diederichs has prowled the fringes of the Saskatoon music scene for over 30 years, in bands such as The Ecchoing Green, The Oatmeal Savages, Ophelia’s Swim, 2 Headed Kafka, and Lorca. A western Canadian & Northern European tour playing guitar with Saskatoon/Montreal psych-folk phenomenon Dumb Angel led to teaming up with bassist Devin McAdam and drummer Tyler Smeding to record his debut album (onto tape, in typically quixotic fashion) under the nom de plume of Axis Decade.

Drawing on ‘60s psychedelia, ‘70s pre- and post- punk, ‘80s new wave, and ‘90s shoegaze but ending up stranded somewhere else, Half Full of Empty is a song cycle at once elusive and excessive, intimate and expansive. Traditional pop songcraft gets hijacked by self-indulgent improvisation as personal and global

Armageddons come to term.

With Chad Mason (Shooting Guns, Moths & Locusts) at Sinewave Studios running the decks, bed tracks were recorded on a sweltering day in July of 2020 & overdubs tracked between pandemic lockdowns in April of 2021. Matt Stinn (Friends of Foes, The Northwest Kid, Saul Chabot) at Rainy Day Recording Co. mixed & mastered in the fall of 2021.

Streaming Links!

Check it out on Bandcamp

Follow Axis Decade on Instagram

Tags: axis decade, local music, saskatoon music, shoegaze, yxe music

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