Midnight Channel Redefine Jazz on Alien Love Songs

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Lethbridge, Alberta’s Midnight Channel aren’t just playing jazz – they’re reimagining it, tearing it apart, and letting the pieces orbit through time, memory, and love. Their new album, Alien Love Songs, is a sprawling, groove-heavy collision of blistering horn lines, meditative melodies, and the emotional messiness of being human. It’s a record that refuses boundaries, mixing the cerebral with the chaotic, the tender with the otherworldly, and establishing Midnight Channel as one of Canada’s most inventive modern ensembles.

Featuring the monstrous, mystifying focus track “Shelly,” the record explores romantic, platonic, spiritual, and self-love as well as the aching absence of it. It’s inspired by anime and inside jokes as much as it is by Don Cherry, Makaya McCraven, and Miles Davis’s electric era, creating a chaotic, transcendent, deeply personal take on the jazz album. From the first note to the final crescendo, listeners are swept into a world where improvisation is not just a technique but a lens through which emotion, memory, and storytelling converge.

Alien Love Songs was recorded live-off-the-floor in an empty church and later refined at Studio One at the University of Lethbridge. The result is a sonically raw but emotionally rich document of the band’s collective evolution. “We’re lucky to have a community of talented friends and producers who helped us bring this to life,” says drummer Drake McCheyne. “The whole thing felt collaborative, grounded, and real.” That grounding, however, never diminishes the album’s sense of whimsy, absurdity, or unpredictability.

As the album explores longing, grief, joy, and disconnection, it never loses its mischievous spark. “When we first started playing original music, we’d joke before going on: ‘Ready to scare them?,’” says tenor saxophonist Stuart Dalby. “That attitude actually helped us stay true to what we want from songwriting and performing. It reminds us to focus on what we love, not what other people might think.” The humor and daring embedded in Midnight Channel’s ethos give the album an irrepressible vitality even amidst the darker or more contemplative moments.

The centerpiece, “Shelly,” evolved from a harmonizer-pedal sax jam into a shapeshifting freak-jazz anthem anchored by tribal percussion, howling horns, and an unlikely inspiration: a giant crab-like beast from Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings. “This tune kind of became the soundtrack to the first encounter with the creature where three super-soldier type characters take it on in stunning fashion,” says saxophonist Brandon deGorter. “The shots in the chorus kind of become freeze frames characteristic of comic book panels in my mind.”

Drummer Drake McCheyne adds: “This tune kept resurfacing – one of those jams we kept circling back to but couldn’t quite land. Brando and Chris (keys) ended up collaborating on it, and that’s when it finally clicked into place. It feels whole now.” From circular-breathing sax solos to deep synth grit, “Shelly” balances natural and synthetic textures seamlessly. It also features the ngoni, a traditional West African harp, played live and on record by multi-instrumentalist Matt Erdmann. “It just sits so well with the tribal rhythm feel of the tune,” says McCheyne.

Throughout Alien Love Songs, Midnight Channel take left turns, layering dubbed-out noise, samba breakdowns, soft waltzes, percussive surprises, and intricate improvisation. By the time the record closes with “Celebration,” a spiritual anthem fusing chaos with joy, it becomes clear that Midnight Channel is more than a band – it’s a philosophy of sound. Survival through noise. Love through noise. Weirdness as lifeforce.

The album offers a thrilling reminder that jazz need not be constrained by history or expectation. Instead, it can exist as a living, breathing organism, reflecting the full spectrum of human emotion. Alien Love Songs is messy, joyous, difficult, playful, and utterly irresistible – a record that both challenges and rewards, leaving listeners with the unmistakable sense that Midnight Channel is a band operating entirely on their own extraordinary wavelength.