CREDIT: PROVIDED BY LOST ARTS
Fanshawe Music Industry Arts (MIA) alumni band, Lost Arts, is riding a high wave with the recent release of their debut EP, Let Me Go.

Band members from local London group, Lost Arts were excited to announce the release of their debut EP Let Me Go last month.

This alternative rock group, which draws similarities to bands such as Queens of The Stone Age, Alice In Chains and Stone Temple Pilots is made up entirely of recent Fanshawe graduates.

Front man Caleb Thompson, lead guitarist Nick DeSalvia, bassist Hayden Vandenbosch and drummer Drake Campbell all met in a performance class during their first year in the Music Industry Arts (MIA) program.

Although they've only been together a short time, Lost Arts is already making some tremendous strides in the indie music scene.

Interrobang met with Thompson, who told some stories behind the process of Let Me Go along with updates on what the band has been up to since graduating from Fanshawe this past April.

Thompson said that during MIA, the band was one of so many groups in their year that it became difficult to gain recognition.

“It felt like we slipped under the radar a little bit in MIA,” Thompson said, “It bummed me out at the time, but now, obviously I would rather it be this way than the other way around. It made me fight a lot more...and want to just prove ourselves.”

This led the band to take on a major amount of initiatives during the college faculty strike in their second year. Although classes were not being run, the program's recording studio facilities were still open and the band took full advantage of this opportunity, recording most of the EP at this time.

“The majority of it was done in the first week of the strike and then vocals were done kind of whenever we had time, when we were done with the main stuff,” Thompson said, telling how once classes started back up, it was a little more difficult to find the time to finish the overdubs.

The group was not alone however, as throughout the whole process from writing to release they had the help of the EP's producer and MIA graduate, Karl von Estorff.

“Karl was a huge, huge part of the project. At the time when we were writing the stuff he lived with us,” Thompson said, recalling that this living situation allowed von Estorff play a key role in the creative and technical aspects of the album.

Thompson explained that the songs on the album came to fruition in number of ways. Some, such as their debut single “Explain Me Away”, were written by Thompson before the group was formed, while others were a much more collaborative process.

Once all the tracking was complete, the band considered getting a student to mix it and the group decided that a project this ambitious needed a professional touch.

So, they enlisted the help of MIA program co-ordinator and JUNO winning engineer Dan Brodbeck.

“Dan worked his magic on it. So, I was really thankful for that, he helped us out a lot on that and it's wicked to say that he mixed our first EP,” Thompson said.

Although they released the first track off of this EP in December of 2017 and received the final mixes and masters of the entire EP in May, the group held off on the official EP release date in order to build suspense and improve their music's reach.

“Life calms down a little bit more for our current demographic in September... I just think releasing it in July and doing a release show just wouldn't have been as successful as doing it when [they did],” Thompson said.

The music has been gaining a fair amount of attraction already and Thompson said that the band couldn't be happier with the response.

“The receptions for the first week has been pretty cool. So it feels good,” Thompson said. “I was very nervous to put it out...But right now we seem to be riding kind of a cool wave.”

The EP Let Me Go can be found now on all major streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music. With plans for an upcoming release tour soon, fans can stay in the loop on future dates and other news on Facebook at Facebook.com/LostArtsBand or on Instagram @IcantFindMyArts.