World News Keeps Organic Music Alive With Their Latest Album, 'On Steroids'

Toronto hardware duo World News (Bill Cutbill and Qu Mi) spent nearly a decade

building their own sonic ecosystem, building experience, and honing their skills on

synths, drum machines, modular racks, samplers, and more.

Their debut album, 'On Steroids,' released via Safe Sounds, feels like the moment that ecosystem finally spills over into the rest of our world. It’s a record that spans themes of organic creation; of the magic that can happen when musicians are locked into improvisational symbiosis, shaping machines until they seem to breathe.

Recorded largely during extended sessions in a rural Muskoka hideaway, distils three

years of exploration into eight tracks that map the coordinates of the band’s expanding

musical journey. The opener “Hype” feels like a warm trippy daydream, evoking

discman-era sunlit nostalgia. “Last Chance,” one of their earliest creations, feels

fantastical, tactile, and eerily peaceful. “Move on Me” taps into trip-hop minimalism and

emotional entropy, while “Ejection” mutates from brooding ambient tension into a techno

eruption.

Focusing on the opening salvo, “Hype” is simply an amazing gateway to the rest of the

album. Accompanied by a beautiful music video that follows a woman skating the

Rideau Canal as the sun sets in -30 degree weather, “Hype” manages to incorporate a

distinct feeling of nostalgia along with the normally competing forces of whimsy and

purpose. Sonically, the synth work does really capture World News’s organic approach

to music, mirroring the feeling of a breath taken, held, then released, as synths

repeatedly build up in intensity before easing away like the fading sunlight.

New World’s new album 'On Steroids' demanded our attention, and we think it’ll

demand yours as well. For listeners drawn to the experimental, the emotional, and the

genre-agnostic, World News offers you a nice opportunity to whet your appetite.

Whenever you’re ready, tap in and check out New World’s album 'On Steroids,' and

especially “Hype,” you won’t regret it.

Welcome to BUZZMUSIC, World News! You mentioned your music is built almost entirely through improvisation with hardware. How do you navigate the balance between losing yourselves in the moment and shaping those sessions into cohesive, emotionally resonant songs?

Qu: Hi Buzz, thanks for having us!

Bill: That’s a good question, but the short answer is, it just sort of takes care of itself, thanks largely to our process! The first and most important thing is to always press record! But after that, getting a good balance is just about improvising together enough, because it takes a while to get a natural rhythm going and to become somewhat telepathic as we create. 

We improvise while recording 16 channels of hardware. This process takes away the pressure of something needing to be something – that classic thing where a musician can play a part perfectly until it comes to pressing record, when they constantly flub or start to overthink it – that doesn’t happen so much with us.

Inevitably, there are a bunch of our jams that lack cohesion or fail to get off the ground, but then other jams just fall into place, and so we prioritise those ones, and they become the music.

When improvising vocals, which is probably the most difficult bit, you can sometimes get everything all at once – the words, the phrasing, even the actual recordings that make it onto the final tracks, which is the case for MOVE ON ME. Other times, you get a few words or phrases, so then when we come to revisit the recordings, we can finish them up in the studio and fill in any gaps we feel are missing to make sure they resonate.

Qu: Yeah, it's also worth pointing out that although we do write all our songs through a method of improvisation, it doesn't mean we don't prepare. Bill makes field recordings in his travels, so those get edited and prepped in advance. And we’re always playing with our synthesizers and workstations to prepare sounds and beats on our own, in part because that helps us to get to know each piece of gear better. We do sometimes shape all this stuff completely on the fly as well, but it depends.

Bill: And yeah, to answer the question as to how we make them emotionally resonant, that’s just about turning up and being present when making the music. It’s normally pretty easy to feel when something rings true when you listen back. The general rule is, if it makes us feel something, then it’s good!

Much of “On Steroids” explores the tension between electronic and organic matter. Can you talk about how recording in rural Muskoka influenced your creative process and the emotional palette of the album?

Qu: The majority of the year, we're working on World News from Toronto, usually in the evenings. We rehearse inside the disused vault of an old bank (AKA “Safe Sounds”, which is also the name of our independent label, on which the album was released). The environment there can feel a little closed off from nature. 

Bill: Recording at the cottage in Muskoka, which is something we’ve done for three summers in a row now, is a great way to breathe some freshness into the music.

Qu: It gives us a way to just separate from the city in general – we make epic meals, go for hikes, canoe, swim, throw some darts – but then in the main room we have all the synths and recording gear set up overlooking the lake. It's a bit different than being encased in a cubed room behind two-foot-thick concrete walls, and the music becomes more expansive as a result.

I find that the time we spend at the lake, removed from the day-to-day scramble of city life, allows us to connect to each other on a deeper level, enriching our friendship and making sure we're on the same supportive wavelength.  

This, along with being in an open room, able to see the sky and the horizon while we play, lends a hand to finding that warm and expansive sound we strive for. Our entire ethos is based on exploration and self-discovery, and being out in the woods, on the lake, under the stars, imbues us with that spirit.

As a follow-up to that, what’s your biggest source of motivation when you make your music, and as an extension of that, what does music mean to you?

Qu: Making music is an outlet for self-expression that helps me connect to the world. I'm always trying to create something totally unique and beautiful... or if not beautiful, at least emotive. I get bored easily, but I lead a very routine lifestyle, so I want to be surprised, challenged, and transported by the music I create.

Being a classically trained musician, the World News approach is, in itself, unique to me and challenges all my preconceived methods and theories of composition. I'm frequently awed by the textures and moods we create and the depth of meaning we can get from just a few words uttered during a conversation with the machines.

Bill: There’s definitely an element of capturing a feeling or moment sonically, using all our gizmos and gadgets, that is the motivation for me. Once something has been created, it can be revisited years later and transport you back to that place. That’s what I like, it’s powerful.

What was your favourite part of the creative process for making “On Steroids”, and what’s your favourite part of the creative process usually?

Qu: The creation moment for a new track (what we refer to as the “inception”) is super exciting.

Will: Haha, totally, it can feel like we just birthed something.

Qu: Yeah, it's difficult to describe how euphoric it can be when suddenly all the elements work together, one or both of us have found an inspired lyric or melod,y maybe, and we're working in tandem to sculpt the whole thing into a crescendo or really tight mood, or are introducing new elements to change the entire vibe on the fly.

That said, I think my favourite part of the creative process overall is actually working on the recordings. When we get to go through them and isolate all of the different parts that we played, we can peel back the layers and edit things down to prioritise the essence of the song and enhance the music. 

This allows us to hone in and clean up the mix, and it also shapes how we approach playing the songs for our live sets as well. I love getting into all the guts of a song and sculpting it into the "perfect” version.

You’ve said that ON STEROIDS is “not an easy listening record,” but a journey for people drawn to the unusual. What do you hope adventurous listeners discover about you and themselves when they experience the album from start to finish?

Bill: I think in ON STEROIDS, we’ve made a record that on a first listen might seem odd to some people, just because it doesn’t really fit in a specific genre. 

Qu: ON STEROIDS encompasses a wide gamut of styles from within our world, and it doesn't really sit still, except for when it does! I guess what I’m saying is it's not just a mindless bopper you put on in the background while you work. And though it does journey between styles and moods, plus it does have "singles" that stand on their own, it feels more like a book than a series of short stories. 

Bill: With it being packed full of emotion, bravado, and texture, I feel the album will have a lot of replay value. There’s so much to absorb, it would be impossible to hear it all in a first listen! It’s a bit of a chameleon in that sense, and I say that as someone who knows it better than anyone… it still surprises me, which I love.

Qu: Conceptually, there's a throughline, and it's up to the listener to find it for themselves. There's a lot of questioning in this album, and not necessarily a lot of answers, but it does make you think.