Windows in the Sky Alex Henry Foster

• 1 The Pain That Bonds (The Beginning is the End) 05:00
• 2 Winter is Coming In 07:44
• 3 Shadows of Our Evening Tides 07:42
• 4 The Hunter (By the Seaside Window) 14:36
• 5 Snowflakes in July 07:17
• 6 Summertime Departures 05:23
• 7 Lavender Sky 06:16
• 8 The Love That Moves (The End is Beginning) 07:32
• Total Runtime 01:01:30

Info for Windows in the Sky

“Windows in the Sky” is the first solo album from Alex Henry Foster, lead singer and songwriter for the Juno Awards nominee post-rock band Your Favorite Enemies.

Written between Tangier and Montreal, “Windows in the Sky” has been crafted in a fragile state of emotional isolation following the passing of his father, a devoted believer to whom he was estranged, after a long battle with cancer. Foster explores the nature of faithlessness, sorrows and solitude while trying to find hopeful directions within the disorientation and the confusion brought about by grief.

In the likes of Radiohead, Swans, Mogwai and Nick Cave, AHF’s delicate and stormy musical journey embodies a singular mix of art rock, shoegaze, noise, psych and krautrock, and is defined by a blend of intimate voicing and introspective spoken poetry. It is an 8-track cinematic voyage that incarnates a distorted voice trying to make sense of its fading echoes, exuding the last pieces of its self-preservative make-believes, trying to hold onto the deceptive views of every shadowing ghosts reflections it is fighting to keep alive, in order to suppress the painful image of the person it might have become, freed from the distorted narrative it was bound to in order to avoid suffering any longer.

Foster describes his first solo project as a contemplative and reflective landscape where purposelessness, vulnerability and disarray press for an honest examination of the true character of your personal spirituality, the distress of your life’s failures and the everlasting sense of regret that keeps on blooming as you try to survive the implacable bewilderment of loss and the mourning reality of your own impermanent existence.

“For years, I’ve been looking for deep personal emotions to be channelled within the safe and elusive context of a band’s dynamic, so I wouldn’t have to be exposed through their real colors, wouldn’t have to assume any intimate implication. I simply hid behind the thick curtain of distant screams and uprising noises. It’s only when my father passed and that I slowly started to work on the songs that would ultimately define the spirit of “Windows in the Sky” that I had to admit that unless I would be willing to tear that bleak veil of fears down, I wouldn’t be able to let any of those vivid emotions be, wouldn’t be able to free them from my exultant struggle to stand into the light… and therefore to have my depressive soul emancipated through the honest embracement of those hidden emotions… one glimmer at the time… which is exactly how the album would finally come to life.”

Entirely recorded in early 2018 at the Upper Room Studio – Your Favorite Enemies’ Catholic church turned professional recording studio facility – Foster invited his bandmates to contribute to the final stage of a few songs’ musical arrangements as he concluded the album’s self-production.

Alex Henry Foster

Alex Henry Foster
is a Canadian musician, singer-songwriter, author, producer, and composer, best known as the frontman of Juno Awards nominee Post-Rock / Noise band Your Favorite Enemies (YFE).

Fierce human rights advocate, Foster has been a very active public speaker over the last decade, commenting on racism, the proliferation of street gangs – in the midst of which he spent his teenage years, the resurgence of populism and identity extremism amongst other things, as well as teaming up with Amnesty International for several campaigns. He also established the non-profit group Rock N Rights in 2004, initiating sensibilization awareness towards children soldiers, has created The Hope Project following the Japanese Tsunami of 2011, and most recently took part in the recent pressure on the Canadian authorities regarding Saudi blogger Raif Badawi.

Aside from having been among one of the first waves of writers to embrace the blogging medium back in 2006, Foster has been a recurrent contributor to the Japanese music mag BEEAST since 2015. He also published the book “A Journey Beyond Ourselves” in 2017 and launched the digital lifestyle mag The Eye View in early 2018.

Foster is also known for being a precursor of a new generation of independent artists/entrepreneurs, as he is not only the co-owner of the respected label “Hopeful Tragedy Records” along with his bandmate Jeff Beaulieu, but he is also the co-founder of the Upper Room studio located in a former Catholic church transformed in a multimedia complex and founded the conceptual creative group The Fabrik, from which bloomed several clothing collections as well as a special line of jewelry, Red Crown Crane, in collaboration with YFE’s keyboard player & art designer, Miss Isabel.

On November 9, 2018, Foster released a first solo music project, an intimate poetry essay about finding peace, faith and hope through the context of grief, depression, and distress. This album is the first project to be released within a new partnership venture established between his label Hopeful Tragedy Records and Sony Music Entertainment / The Orchard.

A real baseball fanatic and a counterculture kook, Foster is also the proud daddy of two dogs named Leonard and MacKaye… and likes to simply be called Alex.

This album contains no booklet.