Lovers Audio Mix: Sparkling Water

Toronto-based artist Adam Waito has dedicated his life to the arts. Over the past two decades, he has moved fluidly between music, illustration, animation, and film. He fronted the Montreal indie pop group Adam and the Amethysts, played in bands like Telefauna, Miracle Fortress, and Nancy Pants, and contributed to numerous other projects as both a performer and collaborator. His original scores have appeared in films such as Voice Over and To the Beat of Beverly School, and his music featured in the Oscar-winning short Curfew.

Sparkling Water is his current solo project, focused on ambient textures and emotional clarity. Following the 2024 EP Expansive Definition, he is set to release a new album, Routine Gives Me the Space to Dream, on May 27 through Dream Chimney. In our recent interview, Adam shares how parenthood, anxiety, and a need for emotional grounding have shaped his creative direction. Rather than offering an escape, the music serves as a tool for presence and calm. It's a soundtrack for moving through life with more balance and care.

For his Lovers Audio mix, he presents a deeply personal collection of Canadian ambient, synth, and New Age music from before the year 2000. Featuring both cult favorites and lesser-known names—Danna and Clement, Beverly Glenn Copeland, Stephen Bacchus, Mort Garson, and more—the mix flows like a dream archive, glowing with analog warmth and quiet wonder. It's a beautiful reflection of the Sparkling Water ethos: nostalgic, grounding, and full of heart.

Lovers Audio: Tell us about Expansive Definition! How did this album come to be? What influenced it? What's it about? What was the recording process like?

Sparkling Water: The tracks on Expansive Definition were recorded mainly throughout 2024. Since becoming a parent in 2016, and especially since the start of the pandemic, the music I've been listening to has skewed towards stuff that makes me feel calm and grounded. I've gotten a lot of comfort from Japanese environmental music as well as North American New Age music from the 80s and 90s, which has a very optimistic, sometimes naive vibe that I love. I’ve also drawn influence from mid 90s Larry Heard albums, like Sceneries Not Songs Vol 2 and Alien, CD ROM splash screen music, early electronic music, movie and TV soundtracks, etc. etc. I have the unfortunate combination of being quite anxious and empathetic while also being obsessed with keeping up with current events, so music making and listening is an important grounding exercise for me. Some of that anxiety and feeling of helplessness also motivated me to release this EP as a fundraiser for eSIMS for Gaza.

My tracks usually start as melodic sketches and sequences programmed on the Elektron Digitone which I then migrate to Ableton to flesh out and expand upon. Sometimes I start composing directly in Ableton. For sound generation I have a collection of synths, mostly vintage but some modern as well. I'm particularly fond of synth modules from the late 80s and early 90s that combine PCM samples with digital synth oscillators, which generate the types of airy, icey, and sometimes gritty and aliasing sounds I'm drawn to, while also often being available for pretty cheap. Most of the ones I own (like the Yamaha SY22, Roland D-110, Korg M3r, Kawai K1r, etc.) are the more budget versions of the more expensive classics that big studios had (M1 or D50 for example), which I feel make them even funner and more unique sounding.

I also more sparingly use software synthesizers like Dexed (a DX7 emulation) and Nils' K1v, which is a software recreation of a synth I actually own, but which is clumsy to program and I don't have all the expansion cards for. As far as I'm concerned the VSTi version sounds just as good. But for now I try to primarily use hardware synths because I find the associated challenges and limitations to be more inspiring and the sounds more idiosyncratic in general than what software achieves.

Lovers Audio: Y're about to release a new album called Routine Gives Me the Space to Dream. What does this release mean to you?

Sparkling Water: Life can be heavy, and this album is intended to be pretty light. The title references realizations I've made in my own mental health journey. When I was younger I used to go on lots of tours in bands and work lots of different gigs in between, and generally I thought that I thrived in a pretty chaotic lifestyle because I'm an artist or whatever. And while I still love travel and playing shows, I've learned that a base level of stability and predictability is actually really crucial for my particular brain and emotional wellbeing.

Finding feelings of peace and security is particularly important but difficult in the context of all the fucked up shit that's happening around us at this moment in history. Hopefully some of that healing, lightening energy comes through to the listener. Not as an escape, but as a tool for grounding oneself to be more equipped to handle the world and show up for our communities.

Lovers Audio: What's next on your agenda?

Sparkling Water: I'm very excited to be releasing Routine Gives Me the Space to Dream on the San Francisco-based label Dream Chimney this May 27. It's going to be available on a limited edition cassette that I'll be launching at a few parties with some really really great artists. The two I have booked so far are June 1 in Montreal at Casa Del Popolo (with Laurie Torres and NPNP), and June 5 in Toronto at the Tranzac (with Hidden Attachment and Andy Male). And I'm looking forward to lugging my impractical synth rig to even more live shows this spring and summer. I’m also looking forward to some exciting upcoming collaborations.