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The Belle Game: From Montreal to Vancouver

The Belle Game returns big time after two-year hiatus.

It has to have been a fairly exhausting past few months for The Belle Game. They reunited after a two-year hiatus since their first EP, Inventing Letters, to record their brand new EP, Sleep To Grow, which was released on October 1, 2011.

Besides the flurry of recording, they managed to expand from a three-piece into a seven-(give or take a few, at times) piece band, play at Vancouver’s 125 celebrations and compete in the famously rigorous Peak Performance Project. I got a chance to chat with the Belle Game's Adam Nanji and Katrina Jones about what they’ve been up to in the past few months.

“The best thing for us was being able to come back to Vancouver and just meet, like, a community of other bands. Katrina and I were living in Montreal when the band split up. It was nice, we came back home in May,” explains Nanji.

Jones adds, “Yeah, like Adam was saying, we were both in Montreal for a while. I didn’t know what to expect from the fans and the talent here, and I think more than anything I’m just really blown away with everyone and really happy that we got to share that.”

The culmination of their homecoming was the rebirth of The Belle Game. Despite having a large and fairly fluid number of band members, they manage to make it work and pulled off such a successful EP that it’s surprising to hear that it wasn’t always smooth sailing.

“Luckily a lot of those growing pains, the recordings of them, have been hidden in our band’s vault. The summer before last, actually, we started to record that EP. It was our first time meeting Rob, and Ian and Katrina had recently just joined the band so it was our first time writing songs together. It took some time to really find out what naturally was The Belle Game’s sound.”

Despite the few difficulties, Nanji is also quick to add, “Personally, I always had a vision of being more than a three-piece. Expanding, for me, was kind of following my vision.”

Following his vision paid off and in October The Belle Game released their latest EP, Sleep To Grow. Sleep To Grow is a five-song EP radiating ambience with all the orchestral features you would expect from such a large band. The highlight of the album can be found in the final song. Wool Pt. II is hauntingly beautiful with evocative vocals and trumpets.

Even with so much going on, The Belle Game shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon. They recently finished a tour with Hey Ocean and are currently back in the studio. If you didn’t manage to catch them with Hey Ocean then you can see them at Sing It Forward, an acoustic benefit concert for St. James Music academy on December 21, 2011.