Screen Door

Adapted from José Teodoro’s theatrical text, the debut LP from Applied Silence—available digitally and on limited edition double vinyl from Offseason Records—is a tonally dynamic merging of atmospheric post-rock and intimate first-person narrative. Shifting between dreamy wonderment, bracing dissonance, and twilit suspense, Screen Door features musical contributions from Stephen Lyons, Shanto Acharia (Limbs of the Stars), and Paul Rigby (Neko Case), alongside vocals from veteran theatre artists Tasha Faye Evans, Marina Moreira, and Steven Hill (founder of Vancouver avant-performance titans Leaky Heaven).

Screen Door chronicles two idiosyncratic ghost stories. In one, a woman receives a postcard originally delivered to her now-deceased father thirty-six years ago. In the other, a man falls asleep at the movies and wakes to discover he’s been transformed in some manner beyond his reckoning. Fusing the uncanny and the ordinary, these stories converse with eerie melodies, primal percussion, ominous electronics, and flights of blissful reverie (listen for Rigby’s euphoric pedal steel on “The world from positive to negative”), conjuring the feeling of being haunted by some unresolved past, of eternal return, of time folding in on itself. Structured as variations on three motifs—each of which possesses its own distinct approach to storytelling, melody, and mood— Screen Door is an immersive tandem narrative in which memory, ardour, myth, family, magic and loss coalesce.

Screen Door was produced by Lyons and Teodoro. The music was recorded by Jesse Gander at Rain City Recorders, Vancouver. The vocals were recorded by A-Dub at Crew Studios, North Vancouver, and John Critchley at Green Door Studios, Toronto. Editing by Stephen Lyons. Mixed by Jesse Gander. Mastered by Jamie Sitar. Photography by Laura Barrón.

Screen Door had its live debut on December 3, 2021, at the St. James, Vancouver, Canada, as part of Pi Theatre’s Provocateurs series. Its cast was the same as the record’s, except Jessie Liang replaced Marina Moreira.

The recording of Screen Door was made possible by the generous support of The Canada Council for the Arts’ Digital Now program.