Today, Montreal’s JUNO Award-nominated collective, Moonshine, release their new album, SMS For Location, Vol. 5, in partnership with FORESEEN Entertainment. Over a year has passed since Moonshine’s celebrated, SMS for Location, Vol.4. A year during which the JUNO-nominated collective has traveled, played sold out tours and festivals in Europe, Africa and Americas, spinned beats, explored, but more importantly connected with like-minded visionaries and artists globally.
This is exactly what shines through on Moonshine’s latest, SMS for Location, Vol. 5, a collection of 15 genre-busting tracks fusing batida, afrobeats, afro house, amapiano, bass-heavy, and pure electronic sounds. From club scenes in Montreal, Lisbon, Paris, Brussels, Los Angeles, to Kinshasa’s undefeated dancefloors, the crew is building bridges, subverting the paradigm through their now legendary parties. On SMS for Location, Vol. 5, Moonshine is activating the past in the present to secure a future for inventive electronic production.
Highlights on the album include Jamila, an afrohouse-infused Arabic love song delivered by the Moroccan-Canadian duo De.Ville – the infectious Vita Nzoto, featuring Kokoko! member Love Lokombe – the amapiano anthems Ofele (Remix), and Obomi Nga (featuring 2022 Polaris Music Prize winner, Pierre Kwenders, Uproot Andy, MC Azas, and MC RedBul) – and Pink, featuring Kris the $pirit. Read more about the album in the track-by-track.
Stay tuned for more Moonshine as the phases wax and wane in the months ahead and learn more about the collective.
SMS For Location, Vol. 5 Tracklisting:
1. Bleu Goma (featuring Bonaventure, Kingdom Gospel Club)
2. Calor (featuring Nayela)
3. DaftBeat (featuring DJ N.K.)
4. Vita Nzoto (featuring Love Lokombe)
5. Jamila (featuring De.Ville)
6. Pink (featuring Kris the $pirit)
7. Fonfon (featuring Sharabia)
8. Ofele (remix) (featuring Pierre Kwenders, Uproot Andy, MC Azas)
9. Obomi Nga (featuring MC Redbul, Mc Azas, Uproot Andy)
10. Nizar’s Wisdom (featuring Nizar Saleh, Félix Noé)
11. Na Cabeça (featuring NegoO, Sharabia)
12. Off-White (featuring Vanyfox)
13. Beris (featuring Vanyfox, Dekkapa)
14. Obia (featuring Èbony)
15. Afrotopia (featuring Vanyfox, Jean Patrice Keka)
About Moonshine
Depending on whom you ask, the esoteric effects of lunar cycles can be wide-ranging: good fortune, human fertility, ocean tides, werewolf prevalence and loss of sanity among them. For the like-minded musicians, DJs, dancers and visual artists who make up the Moonshine collective, the planetary satellite above all inspires their eponymous monthly event, driven by an inclusive ethos and a shared love for experimentations in dance culture.
Since its founding in 2014, Moonshine has carved out an enviable niche in Montréal’s nightlife milieu by celebrating a wide range of fledgling local talents, championing Afro-electronic, bass-heavy sounds, and bringing together communities that wouldn’t necessarily cross paths otherwise. As the name indicates, the lunar-based Moonshine recipe has the collective throw an all-night, sensory-soaked party on the Saturday after every full moon in ever-shifting, unpredictable locations across the city, always strictly disclosed via text messages. With fresh cuts supplied by resident DJs Pierre Kwenders, San Farafina, Vanyfox and AKantu, close friends such as Bambii, Foreigner, and Uproot Andy, visual installations, musicians, and a slew of live musicians and performers that have included Kaytranada, Dâm-Funk, Le1f, Venus X, and Branko, the parties have become a staple of the after-hours scene, in Canada and abroad, with appearances in NYC, LA, Paris, Brussels, Lisboa, Milan, Barcelona, Amsterdam or Santiago to name a few.
“The essence of Moonshine came out of parties we used to throw in our kitchens,” recalls Kwenders. “We felt like we couldn’t go out and find what we had cooked up in that kitchen. It’s one of the reasons we started Moonshine: to share that with more people who felt just like us, and who didn’t have access to such sounds or vibes.”
Still going strong four years on, Moonshine has also begun making use of the aesthetic, network and structure it established with the parties to promote affiliated artists, expanding its vision from ephemeral moonlit soirées to an expanding catalog of genre-busting music, art and apparel.