C-N-U-S is a new project from Cedric Noel and Union Suit.
C-N-U-S is a new project pairing two of Fredericton’s most creative musical minds. The duo came together as a result of last summer’s FUSE Festival, an improvisational branch of the New Brunswick Summer Music Festival. While the NBSMF is mainly a celebration of the classical form, FUSE adds an alternate dynamic to the annual summer festival. This year, the event featured a number of experimental performances including a showcase featuring popular local musicians reimagining classical works. Through this series, C-N-U-S was born.
Cedric Noel (Sentimentals, Redwood Fields) is one of New Brunswick’s most prolific songwriters and composers, constantly releasing new music and exploring new collaborative projects, while maintaining a busy schedule of live performances. Choosing to work without boundaries, Noel’s sense of melody and structure is continuously shifting, changing route and plotting new courses, comfortably guided in each new direction by an honest and heartfelt vocal performance.
“Meaghan [Underhill] from the New Brunswick Summer Music Festival asked me if I wanted to be part of this year’s FUSE,” said Noel. “I thought it would be way over my head so I asked Tate if he wanted to do it with me.
“We essentially constructed three different drone pieces by adapting three different pieces from different composers in the festival.”
Over the past year Tate LeJeune has emerged as one of the most active local music organizers, working tirelessly to carve a place for fringe sounds within the city’s eclectic musical landscape. Through improv-based projects like Union Suit and Mauk Sallid, LeJuene has done a lot to help shape the current era of Fredericton music.
“I had been really interested in the FUSE festival the previous year when it happened,” said LeJeune. “Also, I thought Cedric and I shared a good melodic and atmospheric sensibility. So when this project came up, I was really excited. All the pieces are really loose inspirations. We would just take a five second sample of a piece and work with that instead of the whole thing.”
Next month, C-N-U-S will be releasing a cassette entitled empathy, please (also available digitally on November 3, 2015), highlighting the material they created and performed at this year’s FUSE event. A short tour of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia will follow, with the potential of future dates in early 2016.
“I’m kind of expecting this to be more of a live performance thing,” said LeJeune. “I’m sure we’ll keep on playing live. We’re considering doing some more shows in the Maritimes in February.”
Tour Dates:
4/11 Thunder & Lightning (CNUS Tape Release Show), Sackville, NB w/Union Suit, Våras
5/11 Connexion ARC (CNUS Tape Release Show), Fredericton, NB w/Union Suit, Jane Blanchard, TBA
6/11 Plan B (CNUS Tape Release Show), Halifax, NS w/Union Suit, Vulva Culture, Ocean Charter of Values
