London Apartments 'Logistics & Navigation EP' album

The London Apartments began as a bedroom-recording project for then 19-year-old Justin Langlois. It was 2003, and Langlois had just entered his first year at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. A fifteen-minute walk away from main campus there sits a four-story apartment complex in Windsor, and at the top of its shambled brick exterior is a cement plaque that reads “The London Apartments”. In this early 20th-century building, Langlois lived in a small apartment with thin walls, no insulation and cold floors. Against a wall in the room that doubled as a bedroom and living room, there was a desk at which Langlois sat with headphones and recorded the sounds that he wanted to hear. It began as noise manipulation, mostly creating layers with his acoustic guitar and static from the television. To avoid disturbing his neighbours, Langlois began to sing ever so quietly and in between classes, he began to toy with freeware drum machines and random sequencing software, eventually layering it all together.

Borrowing a mini disc player from his roommate, Langlois would listen to the songs on the cold winter walks to his classes and upon returning home would try to learn a little more about why certain sounds happened. Langlois uploaded these experimental tracks to the CBC-run site New Music Canada. That site became an integral part of The London Apartments story.

Sound of Pop Records founder JC Smith was browsing the site and came across the splash page with Langlois as a featured artist. Quickly this find resulted in the first of many trips to Sound of Pop in Toronto for Langlois, where initial conversations of a single-song licensing deal flourished into a recording contract and publishing agreement between The London Apartments and Sound of Pop.

By the winter of 2004, Langlois had begun recording what would become “Romanticism Aside”. Langlois worked to complete “Romanticism Aside” by early spring 2005 to be released on Sound of Pop Records.

Venturing out of Windsor for the first time, The London Apartments, at the time Langlois and guitar/keyboard player Erin Fortier, experimented with new sounds at new venues in new cities. In between recording the songs that would eventually become “Romanticism Aside”, Langlois, with the help of a few friends, booked a cross-Canada tour. On May 3, 2005, Langlois and Fortier set out on the first part of a 3-week East Coast tour. With Fortier leaving TLA for school, Langlois continued on to the 2-week Western-leg of the Canadian tour alone.

On the very last day of May 2005, which found Langlois playing a show in Calgary, “Romanticism Aside” was released on Sound of Pop Records and was distributed throughout Canada on MapleNationWide (now Fontana North).

Langlois returned home from a 22-hour drive straight from Winnipeg into Toronto for TLA’s NXNE debut. A short two weeks later, Langlois and Danielle Sabelli were on a plane with Ghostmilk Studio’s Sean Wainsteim to shoot a video in New York City for “Put a Jacket On”. “Romanticism Aside” slowly climbed the college radio charts in Canada hitting #1 at various stations and #15 for all of Canada in August. As well, Sabelli and Langlois shot and edited a video for “Streetlights Are Soldiers” and the same video-edit audio version of the song was released on Lithuanian netlabel Sutemos.

At the very end of October, MUCH MUSIC premiered “Put a Jacket On” on their long-running indie video show, The Wedge. In mid-December, with plans to seek out licensing opportunities for “Romanticism Aside” outside of Canada, Sound of Pop sent out a single copy of the album to Beggars Banquet in the UK. In early 2006, Sound of Pop and The London Apartments began a dialog with Beggars Banquet regarding a release of an EP. By early May, the papers were signed with Beggars Banquet and a release date was set for August 2006. In the same month, Sound of Pop signed an Administrative agreement with Canadian Independent Publishing powerhouse Ole Publishing, securing “Romanticism Aside” in the agreement for worldwide publishing opportunities.

TLA’s “Logistics & Navigation” EP has been released in September 2006 on Beggars Banquet throughout the world on CD, Vinyl and Digital Download formats and includes the songs, “Streetlights Are Soldiers”, “Circuit”, “Summer Takes All of My Time” and “Stories of Big Cities & Bigger Hearts”.

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London Apartments - Logistics & Navigation EP