Joseph Shabason

Early life and education Shabason was born in 1981 or 1982 and grew up in Bolton, Ontario. He began playing jazz music at 10 years old. After first learning to play the guitar, he took an interest in the saxophone when he enrolled in a jazz program at Humber College as a child. His father was a jazz pianist.

In 2006, he graduated from University of Toronto in jazz performance.

Work as band member and session musician

DIANA Shabason is one of three members of DIANA, a Toronto synth-pop band.

Its first album, Perpetual Surrender (2013) was longlisted for the Polaris Music Prize. Their second album was Familiar Touch (2016). Shabason remained an active member of Destroyer between 2010 and 2017. In 2025, he made a guest appearance on the band's fourteenth studio album, Dan's Boogie.

The War on Drugs Shabason played an important role in Lost in the Dream (2014) by The War on Drugs. It was inspired by composers such as Jon Hassel and Gigi Masin.

Though Shabason voiced some dissatisfaction with the album, suggesting there was "a lack of vision",

The album was funded from a grant by the Ontario Arts Council. His mother was pleased with the result, calling it a "beautiful album." Music critic Miles Bowe of Pitchfork called it "gorgeous and empathetic ambient music". The record label describes the EP as an "afterword" to Anne. Its song "I Don't Want to Be Your Love"—previously a bonus track for Anne—features vocals by Destroyer's Dan Bejar. The Fellowship "focuses on Shabason's own past, examining his fraught religious upbringing within—and eventual need to walk away from—an insular Islamic community called The Fellowship." Like his previous two albums, it was critically well received. On Metacritic, the album scored 76 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Welcome to Hell Released October 20, 2023 by labels Western Vinyl and Telephone Explosion Records, this concept album re-scores a 1996 skateboard film with the same name distributed by Toy Machine—a modified version of its logo is used for the album's cover art. Shabason received permission from Toy Machine founder Ed Templeton for the project, and Templeton even supplied the cover art. Besides spending summers skateboarding as a kid, he had an interest in skateboard videos at the time he was contemplating a new album. recorded at a remote location in Northern Ontario.

In 2020, he collaborated with Nicholas Krgovich and Chris Harris on the album Philadelphia, which was a longlisted nominee for the 2021 Polaris Music Prize.

In 2021, Shabason, working again with Nicholas Krgovich and Chris Harris, released the instrumental album Florence. Shabason also composed the musical score of the 2021 dark comedy film Stanleyville.

In 2022, Shabason and Andre Ethier released the collaborative album Fresh Pepper. (Some of Ethier's paintings serve as cover art for Shabason's albums.)

In 2024, the second collaborative LP between Shabason and Ben Gunning was released: Ample Habitat. Musician M. Sage had invited Shabason and Nicholas Krgovich to collaborate on an album in a barn in Colorado. One for the Money (2023) (with Thom Gill)

Official soundtracks

Stanleyville Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2022) Gimme Truth (2026)