🎧 Approved: cleopatrick

Toronto duo cleopatrick carved out a space as the raw voice of small-town angst, hailing from Cobourg, Ontario, where they honed a sound deeply rooted in a lo-fi DIY ethos.

Since forming in 2015, Luke Gruntz and Ian Fraser have built their reputation on raw, riff-heavy tracks with lyrics that capture the frustrations and humor of growing up in a quiet Canadian town with big ambitions. 

Their latest single, ‘HAMMER’, however, signals a pivot. Working with Brooklyn producer Philip Weinrobe (known for his work with Adrianne Lenker and Tomberlin), cleopatrick veer into a more contemplative space. The track trades some of their early abrasive energy for a sense of spaciousness, with its core riff having an almost bluesy pulse, looping with a hypnotic quality.

Gruntz describes the song as an exploration of surrender. “This song is about getting pummelled by the big guy”, he says. “Like really just completely flattened out. It’s about the act of not only accepting your beat down, but actually welcoming it. Waving to the cosmic hammer as it comes down on the top of your head”. 

“Guiding its aim for the sake of politeness and efficiency, of course”, he goes on. “Facilitating the expeditious destruction of your sovereign impulse, so that the powers above may move forward with whatever the next phase of their very important plan might be with greater speed. It’s not really up to you to understand much more than that – you actually shouldn’t ask those kinds of questions: just take it!”

🎧 Listen to ‘HAMMER’ below