Bishop Morocco

In the Fall of 2008, two old friends from Toronto, Canada met in the greyness and never-ending drizzle of Groningen, a town in the northern Netherlands. Jake Fairley (aka Fairmont) had spent the past 6 years based in Berlin, riding a wave of European techno hits released on labels such as Border Community and Kompakt. Jim Sayce had been in Toronto, pursuing graduate studies while playing in such bands as Tangiers (French Kiss) and earlier, the Deadly Snakes (In The Red).
Their long-standing friendship had not manifested itself into a musical project since their early teens, and they decided to re-ignite a creative conversation that had been put on hold over ten years earlier. Though their musical paths had taken divergent, almost opposing courses, they used the geographical disconnection from everyone they knew to focus on creating a new kind of pop music.
Their sound references Americana as much as Brit-pop. Their influences range from Roy Orbison and Angelo Badalamenti to the Smiths and New Order. The result is somewhere between the soundtrack to Twin Peaks and the Madchester sound. Dark but full of hope, Bishop Morocco's music is a reflection of their shared youth within the west-central neighborhoods of Toronto, juxtaposed against the history and cultural wasteland of small-town Europe. The product of their time in the Netherlands is their self-titled debut album to be released June 1st 2010 by Hand Drawn Dracula.