Montreal-based artist Quinton Barnes has shared his bold, experimental and unpredictable new single ‘Sober for the Weekend‘, the second release from his upcoming album BLACK NOISE, out June 6th via Watch That Ends The Night.
Both ‘Movement 7‘ and ‘Sober for the Weekend’ draw from the same source – a classical suite by pianist Edward Enman – but they couldn’t be more different in tone. Where ‘Movement 7” used Enman’s piano untouched beneath Barnes’ stirring vocals, evoking vulnerability and emotional weight, ‘Sober for the Weekend’ pulls apart that foundation into something cheekier, and far more volatile. The piano is dissected, repurposed, and surrounded by spiralling avant-garde jazz, woodwind noise, and minimalist orchestral textures.
While “Sober for the Weekend” builds on the vocal flow of earlier work like “Fuck Alive” from Barnes 2022 album For the Love of Drugs its production takes a new turn – raw, spacious, and tactile, filled with erratic jazz-style bursts and sudden silences. Working closely with drummer Lucas Huang, Barnes constructs a quickfire breakbeat-driven structure, counterbalancing tight, restrained verses with chaotic, escalating choruses. Producer Michael Cloud Duguay conducted the ensemble live in the studio, lending the track an urgent, improvised energy.
From its hook – “bitch I’m sober for the weekend, got drunk and I’m going off the deep end” – the lyrics dive into themes of addiction, poverty, sex work, and self-destruction, all filtered through Barnes’ knowing delivery. The first two-thirds of the song exude a kind of swaggering confidence, before unravelling into something darker and more self-aware: “But somehow, I don’t think I’ll make it this time / I’m running out of options…” It’s thrilling.
Speaking on the track, Banes said: “One of my favourite songs on the record. It’s got that breakbeat, jam band style I love, with a little twist of absurdity. I love this song because it holds so many things in it: vulnerability, defiance, transgression, insecurity – but my absolute favourite part is that every time I play it for someone, they go ‘ooooh this is fun!’”
Recorded at Montreal’s legendary Hotel2Tango studios, BLACK NOISE marks a striking departure from Barnes’ earlier solo production style. Built from Enman’s Eurocentric piano compositions and shaped through ensemble improvisation and noise, the album features contributions from members of Egyptian Cotton Arkestra, Matt LeGroulx, Naomi McCarroll-Butler, and Ky Brooks. The result is an expansive sonic tapestry fusing noise, hip-hop, jazz, drone, footwork, and classical fragmentation.
Slated for release on Barnes’ 28th birthday, BLACK NOISE is the third instalment in a trilogy of albums following CODE NOIR (January 2025) and HAVE MERCY ON ME (August 2024). Where those albums mined identity and confession, BLACK NOISE interrogates the conditions of Black sonic expression in an anti-Black world, steeped in Afro-pessimism, grief, resistance, and radical reinvention.
Pre-order BLACK NOISE HERE
With BLACK NOISE, Quinton Barnes continues to stretch the boundaries of experimental hip-hop, using sound as a weapon, a refuge, and a force of resistance.
