July 31st, 2009
OK, I apologize for not posting a review yesterday. I was too busy trying to see Lethbridge’s weird-science-punk marvella Endangered Ape, Calgary’s what-is-going-on-in-that-city Hunter Gatherer, and hobo power-popper Nobunny. All of this spread over two venues and many hours. Endangered Ape and Hunter Gatherer will be coming very soon to a Weird Canada nearest you.
In the meantime I’ll posted my latest **Space obsession. Maybe I’ll even start a “This Week in **Space” for those great bands that don’t have releases yet.
COSMETICS (Vancouver, BC)
File Under: Cosmic disco wave.
::web/sounds::
File under: cosmic // italo // minimal // minimal synth // synth
Categoria!! thisweekin**space | No Comments »
July 30th, 2009
From the vault of Joni Sadler (Ottawa, ON)
When I first heard about Fucked Corpse, I assumed that they were a grindcore band or something equally violent. What kind of pop group would choose a name like that, right? My initial judgements couldn’t have been much further from the truth: this Ottawa party collective may have grown a bit more aggressive since their early days (fans of sugary lo-fi pop freakouts would do well to check out their “Apple Meat” 7″ from a couple of years back), but those damn catchy hooks of theirs haven’t gone anywhere. Jangly guitar riffs trade off with tambourine smashes and woozy hazes of distortion, but the gang manages to steer mercifully clear of both gratuitious hippie psych meanderings and excessive noise. There are some genuinely catchy jams here, too – “Denim Outta Here” is a straight-up singalong noise pop anthem. These dudes are too busy having a good time to worry about polishing the fuzz from their songs, and you know what? That’s okay. It’s time to join their party.
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Fucked Corpse – Denim Outta Here
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Fucked Corpse – M81 Woodland
File under: crust // freak-out // hippie // lo-fi // noise-pop // psych // zep
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: ontario | 2 Comments »
July 29th, 2009
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Extra Happy Ghost!!!
How The Beach Boys Sound To Those WIth No Feelings
(Saved By Radio)
Calgary, AB
::web/sounds::
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You take someone and you push them. You push them into the spotlight of mainstream Canadian rock. College rock. That someone plays to thousands of smashed 18 year-olds trying to find themselves in a gravity-well of debauchery; it’s beer gardens and they are the soundtrack to every fratt-kid’s blurred existence. If you keep doing this (keep pushing), eventually your weird bassist is going trap himself in the bedroom and emerge anew with six eerie pop songs crafted by someone sailing towards their creative zenith. Wasted double-tracked solos, distorted Nintendo, chamber-folk, and Sartre are brewed together into a frothy mead worthy of the greatest basement-viking. Kanpai!
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Extra Happy Ghost!!! – Hot Time Sartre In The City
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Extra Happy Ghost!!! – Sympathy For The Moron
File under: beach boys // lo-fi // pop // sartre
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: alberta :: compact disc | 2 Comments »
July 28th, 2009
There are t-shirts. And they are available. E-mail me (aaron [at] cantorrecords [dot] com) for details.
File under: apparel // hidden synthesizer // t-shirts
Categoria!! Promotions | No Comments »
July 28th, 2009
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Forgetful Florence
Forgetful Florence
(Self Released)
Edmonton, AB
::web/sounds::
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Easily over-looked, certainly under-appreciated, Forgetful Florence’s peculiar debut took a month to settle before the songs started swirling in my mind like a pop-folk-panic the summer will never escape from. The vocalist and main woman behind this basically-a-solo-project reminds me of Nico if you removed the atonal pretentiousness and moved the East Village into Edmonton’s southside. The songs hold their own weight, but it’s the strange usage of distorted leads, hand-claps, and other unknown instruments that really takes this album beyond your average basement acoustic-pop endeavor and into the world of uncategorized brilliance that only the underground can offer. Props to Garrett (who now plays bass for The Wicked Awesomes!) for channeling Forgetful Florence’s creative genius in the rightfully-wyrd direction.
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Forgetful Florence – Mindless Gibberish
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Forgetful Florence – Look
File under: folk // nico // pop
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: alberta :: compact disc | No Comments »
July 24th, 2009
Is it OK to call this pop? The sound is not pop. The approach is probably not either. But there are melodies and rhythms and (possibly) vocals hidden within the streams of prepared piano, coloured noise, and delayed guitar. It’s another bend in a flow of records straddling the line between ambient soundscapes and subtle pop; a movement started by Arthur Russell. For a cassette with 18 tracks of experimental excursions, the album provides a more than enjoyable listening experience; you will travel with Headaches through ambient pastures as the roaring hills of processed sound permeate your auricular life-space. And some of it’s catchy! It’s important to note that the j-card states: PS – It’s real.
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Headaches – Warm Up
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Headaches – Home Is Where … ?
File under: ambient // mellow // piano // soundscape
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: alberta :: cassette | 3 Comments »
July 22nd, 2009
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Caves / Stephen Cooley
Caves / Stephen Cooley
(Jazz Farm?)
Saskatoon, SK
::web/sounds::
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Weightless jet-streams of chords soak every minute of this odd split cassette from Saskatoon that clocks in at an astonishing 90 minutes. Caves projects his shoegazing kite along these contorted winds to produce pop-scapes that stretch our emotional imagination. On the flip, Stephen Cooley scales it back to traditional ambient themes that seem to weave between the reverberated vocal echoes and field recordings. Both Caves and Stephen Cooley are quite active in the Saskatoon scene, playing in a number of weird projects (Lion Stab, The Foggy Motions, A Gentle Forest, etc.) I look forward to more from these SK basement weirdos.
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Caves – No Birds in the Sky
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Stephen Cooley – Maxwell’s Demon
File under: ambient // shoegaze // soundscapes
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: saskatchewan | No Comments »
July 21st, 2009
There is a subtle brilliance to Crazy Ocean’s cassette debut. Firstly, the pop sensibilities are entombed in their unique magi-distortion and spread into a cosmic psychedelic soundscape, buttering your crispy whole-wheat cassette deck. Secondly, the vocal-hollering, blistering bass lines, and general-chaos seem to coalesce into a chromed middle-earth anthem; if middle earth existed in space and was built with lazers. You see? It’s the perfect combination of the digital-future and our psychedelic past. Imagine wizards writing FORTRAN and troglodytes high-fiving Kool Keith while driving space cadillacs and you have their live show. Except that’s obviously a lie. Because they’re human. And brilliant. More! More! More!
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Crazy Ocean – Vampire
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Crazy Ocean – Step As The Breeze
File under: lo-fi // middle earth // psych // space // wizards
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: ontario | No Comments »
July 20th, 2009
It’s precious that a folk record can prove to be most metal recording I’ve heard. My problem with metal is that I went to a Christian Junior-High school and spent a year in the library devouring books on the occult. I want metal to bring me back to the musty ambience of the library I spent so many lunch-breaks. Which means I don’t care how many pentagrams and crude logos you draw on your record; unless you bring the bog-drenched, harrowing mysticism of Wyrd Visions’ stripped guitar, double-tracked Swedish vocals, and breathless, frozen air: you have nothing. So, for all you aspiring metal-heads out there: take your cues from this minimal folk departure that will surely solidify Satan’s reign and bring victory to the Whore of Babylon. It also helps that he does a Burzum cover and has Castlemusic sing with him.
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Wyrd Visions – Ceremony
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Wyrd Vision – Freezing Moon
File under: bog // burzum // folk // metal
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: ontario | No Comments »
July 17th, 2009
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The Wicked Awesomes!
Punk Holograms
(Psychic Handshake)
Edmonton, AB
::web/sounds::
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NBA Jam for the Sega Genesis was the second most punk sports game ever (the Mutant League series taking number uno). If you got three dunks in a row some dude yelled out “HE’S ON FIIIIIRE” and you burst into flames and did quad-flip slam-dunks. Weird dunks. Now imagine that basketball player is on fire, wearing fluorescent Nike’s covered in time-shit and crystal-snot, death sunglasses, an 80GB ipod, hens teeth, and a jersey from Nowheresville, Ghost Beach. Take a ramshackle of insane kids in the remote recesses of Edmonton’s hoodlets and have them dedicate an album to this space-streaming-intelligent basketball player and you might come close to the brilliance of The Wicked Awesomes!’s LP debut Punk Holograms. The album lacks any pretense and obeys no boundaries; from burnt puke-garage to psychedelic mizrahi-surf, the red-lights on your stereo will burst with wrecked synth-lines and skirt-chasing guitar-riffery. It’s a beautiful pawnshop display-case of wastoid-punk. Brilliant. Amazing. Fantastic. Wicked. Awesome. A sure-shot contender for best album of 2009 on any continent.
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The Wicked Awesomes! – Space Streaming Intelligence
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The Wicked Awesomes! – Ghost Beach
File under: puke-garage // punk // synth // weird // weird punk
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: alberta | 9 Comments »
