Brandon Larocque—known in the music world as BrandonSonnet—is a musician born and raised in Inuvik, Inuvialuit Settlement Region, NT, living in Nahanni Butte, NT, whose albums give listeners a taste of his unique storytelling abilities. Larocque finds inspiration and community across the Arctic, describing his artistic community as “anywhere across the North.” [1]
As a child Larocque had a keen interest in music; he didn’t have the means to join a band, but had access to the music room at school, where he remembers fondly messing around on the drums. As he got older, Larocque began looking for ways to fill the cold Inuuvik winters. So he and his roommate bought a piano and Larocque began to jam on the piano as he had done in his schoolboy days. From there Larocque moved to Edmonton to attend Pixel Blue College, an arts and media school where he was a student in their Audio Engineering and Music Production program. This program taught him the skills to make and record his own music, and also introduced him to a variety of people from different countries with their own cultures and musical styles.
During the early days of Larocque’s career it was these peers that inspired him the most. He was able to further his international connections when he got signed to a record label, Tuff House Records. Larocque spent two years working there, both while he was in school and after he had graduated, making music for other artists using the skills he learned at school.. “Coming from a small community in the North and then going to work in a studio full of people from South America, people from Africa, people from West Indies all over the place…It was so diverse,” he says about the experience. Larocque made an effort to absorb as much as he could from the people he was working with and had the opportunity to make all kinds of different music, like working on Reggaeton music with a friend from Nicaragua or blending Spanish and Reggaeton music with another collaborator. “Eventually I got tired of writing all these nice songs and not seeing them,” he says. BrandonSonnet was born in 2018 as a way for Larocque to start making his own music, but the diversity of genres in the albums he went on to produce as Sonnet still shows his time spent absorbing music from other cultures.
Larocque has released three albums as BrandonSonnet, albums which each follow a different genre. His first album, Odyssey (2020), is alternative/electronic, the second, The Look Back Lounge (2022), is lounge music and the third one, The Beringia Theory (2022), is a blend of Inuit and electronic music. One big name Larocque tries to emulate in spirit is David Bowie. “I like how he never made the same album twice,” he explains. Larocque’s third album takes its name from the Beringia Theory, which discusses how Inuit came from Siberia across the land bridge that used to connect Alaska and Siberia. [2] The album serves as a montage, “a fantasy re-telling,” says Larocque. He hopes that through the music style and by “throw[ing] in a little bit of magic and spirituality” it would make the album more personal for Inuit.
Having experienced a lot of isolation growing up in Inuvik, Larocque likes to mirror these experiences of isolation in his music by intentionally making most of his music in minor scales. Minor scales “mirror the darkness and melancholy,” he says.
Larocque has plans for collaborations with some Iqaluit rappers. As a solo artist, he is working on an alternative R&B project as a solo artist and is preparing another album featuring a blend of genres that he hopes will surprise fans, with potential live performances coming in the future.
This Profile was made possible through support from RBC Emerging Artists.