Lethbridge, Alberta’s Midnight Channel aren’t just playing jazz – they’re reimagining it, tearing it apart, and letting the pieces orbit through time, memory, and love. Their new album, Alien Love Songs, is a sprawling, groove-heavy collision of blistering horn lines, meditative melodies, and the emotional messiness of being human.

Featuring the monstrous, mystifying focus track “Shelly,” the record explores romantic, platonic, spiritual, and self-love as well as the aching absence of it. It’s as inspired by anime and inside jokes as it is by Don Cherry, Makaya McCraven, or Miles Davis’s electric era. The result? A chaotic, transcendent, deeply personal take on the jazz album.

Alien Love Songs was recorded live-off-the-floor in an empty church and later refined at Studio One at the University of Lethbridge. The result is a sonically raw but emotionally rich document of the band’s collective evolution.

“We’re lucky to have a community of talented friends and producers who helped us bring this to life,” says drummer Drake McCheyne. “The whole thing felt collaborative, grounded, and real.”

As the album explores themes of longing, grief, joy, and disconnection, it never loses its sense of mischief or play. “When we first started playing original music, we’d joke before going on: ‘Ready to scare them?,’” says tenor saxophonist Stuart Dalby. “That attitude actually helped us stay true to what we want from songwriting and performing. It reminds us to focus on what we love, not what other people might think.”