“Fluid and at times utterly beautiful few will grow tired of these songs living in their headphones” BBC Music “A record that uses its shadowy atmospheres as an escape rout even when it sounds stripped bare. It’s post modern pop for a generation growing more obsessed with dance music.” Resident Advisor “Humid, sun kissed heart-on-its-cut-off-sleeve electro pop” Pitchfork Blue Hawaii, Arbutus Records and many of their Montreal counter-parts all began with the same breath in early 2010. They released their first EP ,vBlooming Summer which was recorded following the pair’s travels in Central America. It frames a time of warmth and novelty, featuring dense female harmonies, tape saturated synths, guitars and drum machines. Eventually Ra– returned to her role in BRAIDS, touring constantly, while Ag–moved to Europe, treading deeper into dance music, electronics, and production. The two decided to make Untogether in 2012. It again captured a time and place, but instead of a dense saturation of love and excitement, this record reflects the vast world of self-awareness and delicacy. It takes for its subject the question of belonging, despite overwhelming space. It demonstrates successful creative process in a pair who composed apart, and in doing so it is a meditation on communication: how technology and art influence modern human relationships. It contains the vast space of two years passing, including watching their Montreal scene change as some launched into international success and others turned deeper inwards. Here, the album finds the conflict of separation/belonging to one’s self and community. The duo notice that throughout the changing social and personal landscape which is one’s twenties, these divided notions and people somehow stay together. Even the name Blue Hawaii suggests a kind of melancholic, jaded paradise, but a paradise afterall. It is because – or perhaps in spite of – these disjointed intersections that the record is called Untogether .