A person’s teen years are so important in defining who a person is, and who they’re about to become. Fortunately, Canadian alt-rock artist F. Scott has a sonic snapshot of that time in the form of his single “Lakes” which he wrote while attending an outdoors camp on John Island at the pivotal age of 17.
“Lakes” is sweeping, orchestral, head-bopping, and gorgeously, discordantly chaotic in the way being a teen is, or should be. “When I wrote this song I was greatly inspired by the beautiful landscapes of northern Ontario that surrounded me, and the friends from all over Ontario that I made there,” F. Scott divulges. “The cover art showcases a picture of my friend, standing on Front Beach on John Island.”
The song is the third single off of Scotty Season, an album of 10 songs released in five parts over three months. All the songs were written in different locales in Ontario over the course of eight years of F. Scott, a.k.a Gabriel Burke’s life. “’Lakes’ was one of the hardest songs on this record to make,” he says. “With almost 150 tracks, it uses a variety of string samples, synths, and takes.”
The tentpole song of Scotty Season, “Lakes” was recorded in part by violinist Shawn Fisher in British Columbia during the pandemic, when F. Scott suddenly had a lot of time on his hands to go through old demos and recordings.
“The project started as a sort of renovation of these old songs,” he says, “updating and rewriting lyrics, splicing new musical sections in, and reproducing them with more modern influences, introducing pop and hip-hop elements, in a way that these songs were never originally intended to sound like. It felt like I was bastardizing my own previous work, which was incredibly exciting.”
F. Scott is Gabriel Burke, a Guelph-based artist blending folk, indie, and hip-hop influences to paint a picture of house parties, the rugged outdoors, awkward experiences, and friends. F. Scott started as a side project while Burke was studying at the University of Guelph. Having returned from a summer of tree planting in Northern Ontario, he wanted to create music that reflected the social atmosphere of that experience. Out of this came an EP in 2018 titled Normal Behaviour, made in multiple makeshift studios in Guelph, Toronto, and Creemore. From sketchy mic set-ups and closet studios, to samples of friends at parties, almost everything was completely DIY.
