SPILL VIDEO PREMIERE: BODY SURFER – “PARENTS”

BODY SURFER – “PARENTS”

A SPILL EXCLUSIVE VIDEO PREMIERE

Body Surfer is the songwriting project of Christopher Whitley, a violinist and composer based in Toronto. be the archer, take your aim, out October 23, 2026 on his own imprint Language of Wishing, is the first Body Surfer full-length.

Whitley calls the record “a quiet celebration of a long relationship, a diary, a travelogue of sorts.” He wrote its eight songs over ten years, across four cities and five homes in San Francisco, Austin, suburban Maryland and Toronto. The album charts the love, the little frictions and the quiet victories of a life built between two people. The minimalism of previous Body Surfer recordings is replaced with rich orchestral arrangements, offering vulnerable and sometimes painfully direct text clothed in the lushness of sentiment.

The oldest of the songs, “while you were dreaming,” goes back to 2013 and examines the early days of the relationship that became his marriage. The last, “until that joke gets old,” brings the record into the present with reflections on creativity and new parenthood. In between are songs that trace a move from Texas to the swampy summers of suburban Maryland, poetic reflections on the natural world, and probing examinations of intimacy and emotional missed connections.

The album, written, arranged and produced by Whitley, was recorded in Toronto between February and October 2025. A musical homecoming of sorts, it features collaborators Whitley has known since his teenage years. Leland Whitty of BADBADNOTGOOD mixed the album, contributed additional production and played saxophone and flute on nearly every track. Whitley first worked with Leland and his brother, drummer and percussionist Lowell Whitty, in high school, in a jazz ensemble formed by their music teacher, Doug Friesen, who here plays upright and electric bass and trombone. The string ensemble features Bryan Holt on cello and Laurence Schaufele on viola, fixtures of Toronto classical music. Whitley’s wife, Kumiko Sakamoto, plays violin.

Whitley’s other work is classical. He performs with the Thalea String Quartet and the Canadian Opera Company, and composes and improvises in more experimental settings. He has released a number of albums of experimental electronic music, has commissioned and recorded JUNO-winning music for solo violin, and released his debut album of free improvisation in 2024. His classical background is apparent in the record’s string arrangements and orchestral timbres, but his intention is for Body Surfer to stand apart. The cowboy persona in the visual material is an effort to distinguish his artistic identities. It is also a nod to the record’s country edges, and, as the “parents” video took shape, a character in his own right. “A wandering stranger,” as Whitley describes him, “a disconnected anachronism.”

Both videos were shot in and around Toronto. Luka Kuplowsky directed “old warm scent of gold” over an afternoon at the Royal Botanical Gardens in Hamilton, the same grounds where Angela Lewis shot the album photography. Blake Hannahson directed “parents” over two evenings in Toronto, starting in the green space behind Whitley’s elementary school.

be the archer, take your aim arrives October 23, 2026 on Language of Wishing, on vinyl through Bandcamp and digitally everywhere. A Toronto release show follows in late November, with West Coast dates in spring 2027.

Body Surfer
be the archer, take your aim
(Language of Wishing)
Release Date: October 23, 2026

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