ACTORS

ACTORS formed in Vancouver, British Columbia in 2012 around singer, guitarist, songwriter and producer Jason Corbett. The band was a deliberate reset. Corbett had already spent close to fifteen years in Vancouver groups by then, and each one had carried him a little closer to the music he actually wanted to make.

He began as a guitar player. The first record he bought was Photograph by Def Leppard, and he picked up the guitar at fourteen after being caught miming to it in his bedroom. MTV supplied the rest of the education: Billy Idol, David Bowie, The Police, Prince, Madonna, artists he felt he was discovering on his own. His first turn as a singer came with the Saddlesores, the rockabilly and cowpunk band that made his name around Vancouver in the late 1990s. He had joined as a guitarist and only took the microphone because a bandmate suggested it. From there he moved to Speed to Kill, a harder rock project built on the late 1970s records he loved, Cheap Trick chief among them. The shift was abrupt enough that one member of the old audience is said to have thrown a chair.

TV Heart Attack came next. Corbett fronted the quintet as singer and guitarist and made no secret that the sound was his to determine. "I've spent a lot of time focusing on how I wanted the band to sound," he told the Georgia Straight in March 2007. "It pretty much starts and ends with what my vision is." The self-titled debut was cut in Vancouver with Howard Redekopp, whose credits included 54-40 and The New Pornographers, sharing the production. Six Corbett songs were placed in the CTV series Whistler, and the video for 'Hypnotic Eyes' premiered on MuchMusic's The Wedge in March 2007. By the close of that band Corbett had tired of writing toward radio and of positioning a group inside a crowded pop rock market. ACTORS began when he stopped guessing at what anybody else wanted to hear. He has since described that as the decision the whole catalogue rests on: "I had decided to make music for me first. Ironically it was where I needed to be to connect with an audience."

A trip to Berlin gave the reset its shape. Corbett spent several weeks in the city and visited Hansa Studio, the recording complex bound up with David Bowie's Berlin period. Back in Vancouver he began developing a set of eight songs informed by Bowie and Iggy Pop and increasingly built on synthesizers, programmed rhythms and the darker music that had interested him since he was young. 'Post Traumatic Love', 'Nightlife' and 'Forever' were among the earliest. A 2012 profile filed the new direction under Berlin-era Bowie, though Corbett's intention was already wider than any single reference point. Bauhaus, Depeche Mode and Joy Division were as much a part of the plan.

ACTORS started as a five-piece. Adam Fink, who had played with Corbett in TV Heart Attack, took the drum chair and has held it ever since. Mark Crickmay came in on guitar, bringing time in PRIMARY and TV Heart Attack with him and later fronting Other People. Grant Francis Minor played bass and went on to the punk group Schedule 1. Jake Fox handled keyboards, arriving from Fake Shark and Blank Cinema. The personnel turned over steadily through the band's first several years before the familiar four-piece settled into place.

The first record was the 'Post Traumatic Love' b/w 'Nightlife' 7-inch, issued on Vancouver's Northern Light Records as NL7ACT001. Three hundred copies were pressed and hand numbered, one hundred each on black, opaque pink and clear vinyl. The A-side was written, recorded, produced and mixed by Corbett with additional production from Art Guest; Ben Kaplan recorded the drums on 'Nightlife'. The sessions ran at Mushroom Studios, the Vancouver room that had held Heart, Bachman-Turner Overdrive and a long run of Canadian records before it. Brock McFarlane mastered at CPS Mastering, and Richard Pyra supplied the artwork, beginning a working relationship with the band's visual side that ran on through Northern Light's later ACTORS merchandise. Corbett told BeatRoute at the time that making a record instead of a CD had been a personal ambition for years. ACTORS launched the single at the Cobalt in Vancouver on October 4, 2012.

Discorder, the CiTR magazine, reviewed the 7-inch that November. James Olson heard a new wave five-piece working with "'80s aesthetics coupled with modern sensibilities," a shimmering synth line over a pulsing bass, and a record that "oozes charisma, confidence, and sex appeal." He gave the edge to the B-side for its dynamic range and its lyrics, and noted that Corbett delivered it in a very strong Bowie impression. The band had been in existence for a matter of months.

Corbett spent the next several years building ACTORS one recording at a time. 'It Goes Away', 'Jacknife', 'Flesh & Bone', 'Like U Want 2', 'How Deep Is The Hole', 'XYX', 'Forever' and 'Let It Grow' appeared as singles and pairings, most of them through Northern Light Records, which stayed the band's home well past the debut 7-inch. A cover of The Cure's 'One Hundred Years' arrived on May 29, 2014, carrying the line finis vitae sed non amoris and artwork by Richard Pyra. The pace was unusually patient. ACTORS existed for roughly six years before releasing a first full-length studio album, and Corbett has described those years as the time he spent learning exactly how he wanted the records to sound while keeping them independent.

One of those early songs gave the band its infrastructure. Corbett opened his Vancouver recording studio in July 2014 and named it Jacknife Sound after the ACTORS song, rather than the other way around. The studio became inseparable from the band's identity. Corbett develops ACTORS there as songwriter, producer, engineer, mixer and mastering engineer, and he built a production reputation alongside it. Jacknife Sound has since hosted LEATHERS, HUMANS, Louise Burns, SPECTRES and Bootblacks among others, placing ACTORS inside a wider network of Vancouver independent music rather than leaving it an isolated studio project.

The lineup evolved alongside the recordings. Bassist Jahmeel Russell, whose history took in Red Vienna, the Black Halos and KEN mode, joined after Corbett hired him for session work on another record and the two found an immediate rapport. Shannon Hemmett arrived by a more accidental route. A Vancouver graphic designer and photographer already collaborating with Corbett on what became LEATHERS, she was asked to cover keyboards when Jake Fox could not make a show. The chemistry worked, the audience responded, and she stayed. Corbett then cut ACTORS from five musicians to four, leaving Russell, Hemmett, Fink and himself as the lineup that carried the band into its breakthrough.

Hemmett's importance to ACTORS goes well past synthesizers and backing vocals. A professional graphic designer before she was a musician, she took charge of the band's visual language and oversees album artwork, merchandise design and much of the photography for both ACTORS and LEATHERS. She designed the cover of Acts Of Worship. The unusually coherent look surrounding the band is largely the work of one of its own members.

By 2017 there was enough early material for Reanimated, which gathered and remastered songs from the independent period. The band played the Terminus Festival in Calgary that year and returned in 2018. Corbett was surprised to find how substantial an audience ACTORS had already built inside the darkwave and post-punk community. Artoffact Records had expressed interest, and Corbett turned down the first offer. He had spent years controlling his own recordings and was reluctant to hand that over. Jahmeel Russell pushed him to reconsider, further conversation with Artoffact founder Jacek Kozlowski settled it, and ACTORS signed with the Toronto label in late 2017.

The label changed the scale of everything. It Will Come To You, released by Artoffact on March 9, 2018, was the first ACTORS full-length studio album, ten Corbett compositions written, recorded and mixed at Jacknife Sound. It crystallized what the singles had been circling: hard-edged guitars, synthesizers, insistent bass, processed and acoustic percussion, strong melodic hooks and Corbett's controlled baritone. Post-punk supplied the vocabulary and a thoroughly modern production framework supplied the rest. Corbett has called the result post-post-punk, and more recently modern post-punk.

The influences ran wider than the usual Joy Division comparisons allowed. Bowie remained fundamental, with Roxy Music, Gary Numan, Duran Duran, Bauhaus, Siouxsie and the Banshees and Depeche Mode alongside him, and Corbett also drew on electronic dance music and techno production. Rhythm usually came first. "The beat and vibe come first," he has said. "Then I react to that." Guitars and synthesizers were built around programmed or heavily processed beats, Adam Fink's acoustic drums could then be treated electronically, and Hemmett's vocals and synthesizers added another texture to the arrangements. Corbett writes the songs and has been consistent in crediting Fink, Hemmett and the band's bassists for the personality they bring to the finished recordings.

It Will Come To You turned ACTORS from a Vancouver project with a growing underground following into an international touring band. They worked extensively through the United States and Europe, appearing at Terminus, Out From The Shadows, Wave-Gotik-Treffen, Infest, A Murder Of Crows and all three 2018 editions of the Cold Waves festival, while also recording sessions for KEXP, JBTV and Part Time Punks. At Wave-Gotik-Treffen Corbett looked out at an audience of roughly a thousand people and realized that many of them already knew the words. The touring cycle established ACTORS well beyond Vancouver and placed the band firmly within the international post-punk and darkwave circuit.

One of those performances produced a record of its own. ACTORS cut four songs live at The Cave Studio in Los Angeles on September 30, 2018, with Josiah Mazzaschi recording and mixing, and Artoffact released the Part Time Punks Session EP on November 16, 2018. The four tracks were 'L'Appel Du Vide', 'Slaves', 'Face Meets Glass' and 'We Don't Have To Dance'. The EP caught the Corbett, Hemmett, Russell and Fink lineup at exactly the point where sustained touring had turned a studio project into a formidable live band.

In 2019 the band pressed Reanimated to vinyl themselves, catalogue JS0001, limited to 500 copies and running eight tracks. Two of them, 'It Goes Away' and 'Mining For Heart', were exclusive to that pressing.

After the touring cycle ACTORS began moving toward a second album. Jahmeel Russell left and Kendall Wooding joined on bass and vocals. Wooding was already connected to the circle through Hemmett's LEATHERS project, where she played guitar and sang. Her arrival established the lineup the band still carries: Jason Corbett, Shannon Hemmett, Kendall Wooding and Adam Fink.

Acts Of Worship followed on Artoffact on October 1, 2021. Made again at Jacknife Sound, it kept the dramatic post-punk foundation and leaned harder into dance rhythms, synthesizers and large melodic hooks. It was the first ACTORS album to feature Wooding. The opening song, 'Love U More', was accompanied by a video directed by Peter Ricq.

On August 19, 2022 Artoffact returned to the formative recordings with an expanded Reanimated, catalogue AOF406, timed to the tenth anniversary of 'Post Traumatic Love'. The fifteen-track edition combined the remastered early material with the 7-inch itself and six remixes of the title track by HUMANS, Mark Hjorthoy, Slow Waves, Woodhead, Felix Bondarev and Sons Of Nuns, assembling most of the band's pre-album history in one release. It is a materially different record from the eight-track 2019 self-released pressing.

ACTORS kept touring internationally and released new material in its own time instead of following Acts Of Worship straight into another album. 'In Real Life', 'Dead Inside' and 'Object Of Desire' appeared through 2024 as work continued at Jacknife Sound. The band's reach widened to Cruel World, Grauzone, Substance and further appearances at Cold Waves and Wave-Gotik-Treffen, and ACTORS recordings found their way into television, including Nancy Drew and Netflix's The Order.

The third album developed under very different circumstances. Our Love Will Live Forever was released by Artoffact on September 4, 2026. Corbett took the title from words on his grandparents' tombstone and began with it as a meditation on memory and enduring love. During the writing and recording he suffered a serious cardiac emergency that stopped the sessions and forced him to consider whether he would finish the record or perform again. "Getting wheeled into an emergency room and spending days in the cardiac care unit put me in a state of deep reflection," he said. "I was given a second chance to cherish every experience." When work resumed, the themes of mortality, memory and immediate experience carried a weight nobody had anticipated when the album was named. "There is no permanence," he told Side-Line. "There is no forever."

The record extends the approach ACTORS had been refining since 2012. Corbett writes and produces at Jacknife Sound, Hemmett supplies synthesizers, vocals and much of the visual direction, taking the album's star motif from engravings on medieval armour, Wooding plays bass and sings, and Fink drums. 'Left On Read' looks at heartbreak conducted through screens; 'CTRL', built as a set opener for the European dates, runs on Depeche Mode and Human League. Corbett has refused to let ACTORS become an exercise in nostalgia. The connection to the first generation of post-punk is deliberate, and so is the contemporary production, the electronic rhythm and the pop construction. The combination has given the band an unusual position, recognizably descended from the darker music of the late 1970s and 1980s while sounding like a group working out of Vancouver in the present.

-Robert Williston

Lineup:

Jason Corbett: vocals
Shannon Hemmett: synth
Kendall Wooding: bass
Adam Fink: drums