Polyvinyl Record Co.

Commanding influences as varied as gypsy field recordings, Greek rembetika, Russian folksongs, Faces, and Black Sabbath, Toronto's Picastro craft starkly discordant soundscapes where murmured vocals cascade alongside a rich panorama of dissonance and string-laden dynamics.

Picastro formed in 1997 at a time when the Toronto music scene was predominately catering to loud rock bands. Early Picastro sets consisted solely of acoustic guitar and eventually cello. This early arrangement attracted the curious due to the strong dynamics produced from the relatively unusual musical pairing the two instruments.

It was not until 2002 that Picastro released their debut album Red Your Blues on Los Angeles' Pehr. Stateside, the album began amassing an abundance of critical praise and the album repeatedly sold through pressing after pressing before eventually falling out of print because of the cost of the album's unique artwork. England's Monotreme Records picked up the rights to Red Your Blues where the album garnered further critical praise in Europe.

By the time Red Your Blues appeared, the band had evolved considerably, expanding from acoustic guitar and celloMore