Ten minute tea with Afternoon Tea. Spend ten minutes with Afternoon Tea. In the time it takes to boil one kettle, and let one cup of tea steep, we will have your daily art + music fix covered. Take your afternoon break with our Afternoon Tea curators. Need an extra lump of sugar? One more sip? If you have five minutes more (or ten), we have one more hit.
Today’s tea + soundtrack + visuals curated by 8know8.
Toronto-based instrumental electronic artist 8know8 is proud to announce the self-release of her fourth studio album, She. A deeply personal and sonically immersive record, She continues Polly-Jean Vernon‘s journey of self-discovery, expressed through intricate layers of synth and live percussion.
8know8 recorded She using her signature approach: layering live drums and synthesizers in real-time, preserving the raw energy of a live performance. “No quantizing, no electronic drum pads, no punch-ins. I want it to feel and be real,” she explains. “Mistakes happen, and you can hear some on every one of my records – but they sound real, in a world that is increasingly sterile and uniform.”
The album’s focus track, “Make It Work,” embodies the intensity, frustration, and eventual triumph of the creative process, delivering a hypnotic blend of electronic and acoustic elements. “I was playing around with a synthesized music box sound and fell in love with the interplay of syncopated waves and hi-hats,” says Vernon. “This song started from that groove and evolved into something that truly represents my experience: life is tough, but you have to make it work.”
Driven by an unrelenting rhythm and shimmering melodic textures, “Make It Work” stands as a testament to Vernon‘s ability to merge human emotion with electronic soundscapes. The track, born out of artistic frustration and perseverance, took on an unexpected life of its own when a technical glitch caused an outro melody to continuously reset itself – a flaw that ultimately became a defining feature of the song.
“Sometimes the best parts of life are substantially flawed,” Vernon reflects. “And you just have to make it work.”
Stream + share She feat. “Make It Work” now:
From the soaring highs to the shadowy depths, She paints a sonic portrait of resilience, transition, and self-acceptance. “This album is about confidently showing up for myself and not hiding anymore,” says Vernon. “It’s about existence as resistance, about love winning over hate, about embracing complexity while still moving forward.”
Ilhan Mamaroglu, Freddie Hubbard Quintet:
“Sing a Song of Songmy” (1971)
Hubbard
This album re-appeared in my life a couple of weeks ago, when I pulled it from
the shelf where it had been misfiled among a bunch of hiphop records. In a way
it’s a strange album for me to choose for this purpose, because I listen to very
little “jazz”. I’m usually after something with earth shattering bass and electronic
instruments or amplification. So it would make a lot more sense for me to build a
tea experience around a direct influence of the 8know8 project, like Aphex Twin
or Trans Am. But much as I tried I couldn’t make anything stick, a nagging and
persistent feeling kept bringing me back to this extraordinarily compelling
experimental record made in New York City in 1970. Freddie Hubbard and his
quintet join Turkish composer Ilhan Mamaroglu and poet Fazil Husnu Daglarca to
create a striking commentary on the human experience during the horrors of the
Vietnam-American war.
The record is “a fantasy for electromagnetic tape” using a wide variety of
electroacoustic elements including organic and synthesized tones. It’s all
amazing but I am particularly entranced by the rich tones of Hubbard’s horn.
The visual companion is printed on the album cover: Pablo Picasso’s “Massacre
In Korea” (1951). The interior of the gatefold album is a collage of photographs,
newspaper clippings, handwritten notes, and part of the handwritten score.
For this tea session we will hear “The Crowd”, the third track on side A of the
record. Tonal idiophones mix with experimental electronic sounds, human voices,
and strings plucked and bowed. When Hubbard’s warm horn finally joins the
cacaphony of voices, any sense of meter is lost, or is it? The performance walks
a line between chaos and order, and uses both the synthesized and organic parts
of the music to work together to say something more than either could separately.
This album is a feast for all of the senses, and food for the heart. So much pain
and hope all tied together with passion and presence. Still horrifically timely.
“Massacre In Korea” by Pablo Picasso
Tea: “Lemon Ginger Rooibos” by Genuine Tea Co.
Tea + Me 