Sonically, their music is instrumental post-rock, but to truly understand the passion of its fans, it’s best to see Mute Sounds as a tale of strength and tenacity. In the winter of 2015, Rui Pedro, a Portuguese multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, was building a life in Toronto, Canada when a terrible pain in his throat forced him to seek medical treatment. Doctors soon gave him the bad news: he had throat cancer for the second time - and this time, he would be fighting for his life. Rui was forced to return to his home country to receive treatment, leaving behind his new life and new friends. As his treatments began in the summer of 2016, he was told that if he survived, he would lose his ability to speak. Most people would have been devastated by this news, but for Rui, it was a chance to turn his pain into something beautiful.
Over the three months that he received his chemo- and radiation therapy, he picked up an old guitar he had been given years before and learned how to play. He quickly became a source of inspiration for the doctors and patients in the hospital, as he spun his grief and pain into soulful acoustic movements. As his old voice faded, Rui Pedro trained himself to speak through music - and a new chapter of his life began.
Rui wasted no time after he was cured. He began pursuing music as a fulltime career, joining musicians and bands on any stage he could reach, collaborating with artists and ghost-writing several successful songs in the process. Even with this newfound passion, however, he felt that there was something more waiting for him back across the ocean in his second home of Toronto. He returned to Canada in 2018 and immediately got to work assembling a band. The goal was to bring together a collection of musicians that matched his talent, passion, and desire to succeed, and take his new voice to the next level. Several years of auditions, practices, and live performances coalesced in 2022 into a four-piece project: Ralf Caetano, guitarist extraordinaire with roots in both Portugal and Canada, and talents in many different styles and traditions; Luis Barcenas, a living metronome and rock-solid bassist with strong prog influences; and Ben Cook, a dynamic percussionist who refuses to stick to a genre.
With 3 albums released since 2020, Mute Sounds has been playing shows across the most famous venues in the city of Toronto such as Lee’s Palace, Horseshoe Tavern, Bovine Sex Club and many more. In 2023, the band decided to embark in its first tour to present their third album, Resilience (part I and II) around Ontario; Sudbury, Hamilton, Guelph, Ottawa, London, were some of the city’s part of the “Resilience Ontario Summer Tour”. Throughout its journey, Mute Sounds was featured in some radio and TV shows and also critically-acclaimed by some local media, such as Blast Toronto, “The Unheard Sound” by Radio Regent, “NOS Portugueses” by OMNI Television, an interview at a Toronto’s tv Portuguese station, FPTV and also “CMCTV Talent”, a talent showcase co-produced by CityTV and CMCTV. The fourth album is what’s next for the band; Northern Lights will set to be released in the fall of 2024 with the first single, “Finding North”, to be released in October 25th .
