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 David Jane.
Toronto singer-songwriter and filmmaker David Jane shares his new EP, Ambleside, an alternative collection born from the disorienting aftermath of a transformative year spent studying film in Vancouver. Rooted in longing, memory, and the strange ways the past continues to exist within the present, the five-track project finds David pairing his raw, acoustic songwriting with producer Sam Arion’s expansive ambient soundscapes to capture the feeling of desperately wanting to return to a time and place that can never truly be recreated.
The seeds of Ambleside were planted during the late stages of COVID, when David, creatively paralyzed after releasing his debut EP, turned back to his first love of film in search of new inspiration. A year at Vancouver Film School quickly became everything he had been craving: an intensely creative community, new friendships, adventure, parties, love, and a sense that everyday life had temporarily suspended itself. Returning home was a shock.
“It felt like all of us were existing in this miracle lapse, as if the rest of the world was on hold,” David recalls. “But, as all things do, our year eventually came to an end, and the sucker punch of returning to reality was a lot to process, which finally led me back to my passion for music.”
The EP’s focus and title track, “Ambleside,” brings that longing back to a specific place: Ambleside Beach in North Vancouver. Away from the spontaneity and bustle David associated with places like Kitsilano and English Bay, Ambleside became a quiet respite as his year in Vancouver approached its end – somewhere the rush of the city seemed to disappear and time itself became strangely elastic.
Stream + share Ambleside in full:
Across Ambleside, David processes that lost chapter from different angles. “Garden Out Back” pleads for the reincarnation of a lost love; “Concussion” romanticizes a fading past as its final moments seem to slip away; “Five and Dime” turns toward film, music, and art as an escape from an unfamiliar reality; and “Story of a Night” considers what happens when the present begins to exist entirely in the shadow of what came before. The title track ultimately brings those ideas together in one emphatic refusal to let the past disappear.
On “Ambleside,” that philosophy becomes both place and feeling. David remembers the beach as somewhere he could sit after a busy day, watch the sun disappear over the water, and briefly feel removed from everything around him. Hours could pass almost unnoticed, followed by a hazy return to the city and an inexplicable desire to go back.
Produced by Sam Arion, the title track places David’s rustic, folk-influenced songwriting inside an ethereal world of dreamlike synths, ambience, and the sound of actual waves. Built around only four persistent chords across its nearly five-minute runtime, the song uses melodic push and pull to create a tranquil, almost meditative headspace while gradually deepening its sense of yearning.
Ambleside is a coming to terms with the end of a presumed “endless night of summer” so, following that, I hope you’re in as autumny a mood as I am, and in that I’ve been in searching for a cool acceptance of change, an understated but comforting sense of quiet, a hand to hold through that crisp and cool breeze.
One piece of music:
I stumbled upon this live, unreleased song about a week ago, at what couldn’t have been a better time – it feels like a perfect summer to autumn transition song, like a cool hug. The lyrics are equally hopeful and devastating, there’s a subtle warmth of someone at the end of the line, someone who cares so much and has tried to stay positive through the worst but has exhausted every option – it’s like a sense of indifferent defeat with a hint of cool acceptance. Lines like “I might love you again if you leave me alone,” “I belong to he who gave me away,” or “the devil will love you to death if you let him,” all come with such a cold but comforting acceptance that somehow creates this beautiful catharsis, it somehow makes you feel less alone.
One visual: The Dominion of Light – René Magritte
I’m including here one my favourite paintings from one of my favourite painters, which also happens to be my laptop background, and that is René Magritte’s Empire of Light. I stumbled upon this painting while reading a book about insomnia, and how it could be read as a visual depiction of how insomnia feels but it could be equally apt for a depressive state as well – to live in the darkness amidst so much surrounding light. To me, at this moment, it too feels like a quiet acceptance of change, as if summer or that perfect paradise you’d dreamed of still exists and the haunting of it surrounds you, but you’ve moved on, whether intentionally or not.
One type of tea: Twinings’ Camomile, Honey, and Vanilla
I just poured myself a cup of camomile, honey, and vanilla tea by twinings – I don’t love a sweet tea, nor do I usually opt for caffeine. I prefer something warm and soothing.
