ROB ELO
hard.times with Lady Phyl
hard.times with Lady Phyl melds rhythmic jazz with the vibe of R&B and soul music to create a sound that is unique and captivating.
In April 2022, hard.times with Lady Phyl released the FACTOR funded ‘High with Me’; so far, the single has accumulated over 130,000 streams and has been added to over 2500 playlists. hard.times with Lady Phyl is gearing up to release their new single, ‘YRU So Confusing’, in spring 2023.
The collaboration between hard.times’ unique, intricate, textured grooves, and Lady Phyl’s virtuosic vocals and soulful lyrics makes this group a noteworthy upcoming act in the world of nu-jazz/neo-soul/hip-hop.
hard.times
hard.times is Matt Aasen (guitar), Rob Elo (keyboards), Steven Taddei (bass), and Jesse McNeill (Drums); musicians with a serious passion for rhythm, and who all have higher education in music performance. With backgrounds in jazz, pop, ska, soul/RnB, and progressive metal, they seek to meld rhythmic jazz with the vibe of R&B and soul music in the hopes of creating a sound that is unique and appealing..
The group’s sound is almost exclusively based in quintuplet swing: a feel that is most often electronically-generated. While a lot of music in the experimental-jazz-fusion genre can alienate audiences with free-time or atonal harmony, hard.times’ goal is to create music that is pleasing to the ear; improvisational, rhythmically and compositionally complex, and experimental, but presented with familiar chords and a tight groove that the listener can understand and enjoy.
hard.times released its debut EP, Portland, in 2019; a FACTOR-funded live-off-the-floor album in 2020; the single ‘Clean Dancing’ (via Inner Ocean Records) in 2021; and the beat-tape album ‘After A Year’ in 2022.
The Body Politic
The Body Politic combines poly-metric grooves, aggressive screams and soaring vocal melodies to push the boundaries of modern metal music with technically impressive musicianship. Their emotionally charged songs incorporate an element of playfulness that has lead the band to perform opening slots for Tesseract, Protest The Hero and Scale The Summit plus multiple Western Canadian tours with their evolution.
Rob played keys and went on upwards of 10 Western Canadian tours with The Body Politic from 2012 to 2019. Their most recent album, Contr:addiction, was mixed by famed producer and Periphery band member Adam 'Nolly' Getgood.