March 11th, 2010
From the Mithril Shields of Aaron Levin:
Living in Alberta, I associate Calgary with the strange angular pop moves found on Cold Crystal Shield. In fact, I’m starting to believe the Calgary sound is just a weird amalgamation of Montreal’s pop experiments, Halifax’s 90s obsession, and Yukon’s cold isolation. It’s all summarized brilliantly by Play Guitar with their combination of incredibly catchy guitar lines and anthemic vocal harmonies, the whole mess being driven down midnight highways and rural avenues. I say rural because I can definitely hear that 90s Halifax honky-tonk pop-rock and it’s awesome. Keep your cold, crystalized eyes out for the Play Guitar LP, coming soon!
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Play Guitar – Stay and Haunt
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Play Guitar – Different Job
File under: 90s // aaron levin // campaign for infinity // mtl // pop
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: nova scotia :: quebec :: yukon | 1 Comment »
March 9th, 2010
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EMILY
Neat and Tidy in Your Mind
(Mo=Da=Mu)
Vancouver, BC
Originally Released: 1985
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From the generally untidy mind of Aaron Levin:
Destructive guitar congruance. Menacing synthetic tones. Echo-to-infinity vox processing. Extirpated TASCAM wreckage. Neat and Tidy in My Mind is the most relentless barrage of left-field maximal synth North American has ever seen. It’s the second cassette by solo, multi-format Vancouver artist Emily Faryna, whose visionary digital mythics have been obscured by Canada’s under-documented vintage cassette scene. Her conical prose hovers darkly over Neat and Tidy’s minor-key delirium, brewing the magnetic urgency coursing through its self-producing ether; a last, desperate attempt to convince the world that the mind’s ailments exist on the outside. It’s a gateway drug into the underbelly of a hyper intimate experimental underground torn from the pages of Neuromancer and, to me, the flagship vehicle for the vanguard of fringe-Canada. Words left to describe Neat and Tidy in Your Mind: ambitious, singular, forward-thinking, powerful, intense, and prodigious. There is a reissue in the works.
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EMILY – Who Cares
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EMILY – Compromise
File under: 1985 // aaron levin // ambient // experimental // maximal synth // minimal synth // mo=da=mu // noise // psych // punk // synth
Categoria!! Departures Revisited :: british columbia :: cassette | 3 Comments »
February 23rd, 2010
From the post-pubescent sludge of Jesse Locke:
From The Cramps (radical) to Mates of State (barf) to the Plastic Ono Band (radical barfing), musical married couples are nothing new. However, what sets thee Grown-Ups’ Sara and Josiah Hughes apart is that they’re cuter than a pair of bulldogs on snowboards that know how to turn up the rock and turn down the suck. Joined by third member/producer Darrell on “dad guitar” (nice Conchords reference, guys), they’ve now teamed with the almighty Bart for tape release number two. Eight songs of angry punk sludge that sound just as pitted as their debut but now with more Crazy Horse guitar solos (see: opener “Meat”) and Art Brut-esque motivational meta-songs (see: “Start A Band!”). This is the soundtrack for the skateboarding video game you invented in your brain. The musical equivalent of a cherry-coke slurpee with a stolen chocolate bar tucked in the cup. The creepy-lovable cover photo rules too, but I really just wish it was a drawing of Odie crossed with Jughead.
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Grown-Ups – Meat
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Grown-Ups – Start A Band!
File under: bart records // jesse locke // punk // sludge // teen angst
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: alberta :: cassette | No Comments »
February 19th, 2010
From the synthetic moons of Aaron Levin:
Bernardino continues to peel wigs and sublimate minds with his vicarious cosmic voyage through swaths of electroacoustic winds and perilous Ace Tone waters. This time we are lead by a transplanted Odysseus, bravely steering Bernardino’s vast synthesizer vessel through mysterious wires and serene circuitry. La Montaña del Capricornio is a continuation from Las Enamoradas‘ granular synthesia, diving deep into the dilemmic waves of warm ambience and dark druid-age. Hobo Cult cleverly realized Bernardino’s brilliance as a double-sided cassette, focusing your energies on the immaculate details emanating through tape hiss and Dolby warmth, adding comfort to the brooding sounds beneath its alluring orphic cover. A++++++.
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Bernardino Femminielli – La Montaña del Capricornio – Side A
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Bernardino Femminielli – La Montaña del Capricornio – Side B
File under: ambient // electronic // experimental // hobo cult // new age // synth
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: quebec | 1 Comment »
February 15th, 2010
From the polyamorous disaster of Michael Deane:
Looking onto the mid-northern thunderous tundra puts me in a perfect place to relate to the Roommates’ “Back to the Sun,” the latest in a flurry of side-projects from Fucked Up guitarist Ben Cook. The breezy, straightforward pop hooks tinged with melancholy and longing speak directly to me. “Back to the Sun” is self-conscious, with sun-yearning lyrics matched by the sweetly sad vocals and tom-heavy thumping we’re used to from Young Governor. The flip of this cassingle is the slightly creepy, slightly goofy anthem that follows two dudes trying to talk their gals into a “Girlfriend Swap”. Infectious hooks and an entertaining story-line make it repeatable power pop magic. “Don’t roll your eyes at me / Let’s do things differently / We’re all just one big family / So let’s give it a try.” I’m not quite convinced by their logic, but you can’t deny these hits.
[Levin's Note: I'm very convinced. Hit me on my beeper.]
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Roommates – Back To The Sun // Girlfriend Swap
File under: ben cooke // pop // power pop // punk // scotch tapes
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: ontario | 2 Comments »
January 27th, 2010
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False Face
No Business / One Man Clapping
(Self Released)
Kingston, ON
::web/sounds::
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From the I-assure-you-this-face-is-real face of Aaron Levin:
Literally out-of-nowhere mind-melding rock genre-fuckery of a very high calibre. False Face’s emergency-room resuscitation is thankfully limited to a two-track c10 so as to avoid the annihilation of your audible calibration. Atonal guitar freak-outs, droning doom breakdowns, and No Ageian walls of popular-noise are served beneath the covers of cafe-fresh vocal hooks and crunchy drums that churn your pop-music vocabulary into a beautiful puree of adjective hyperbole. An (almost) unbelievable mixture of sounds with a foot in every scene, deep-fried to perfection. A huge thanks to Garrett from The Famines for foisting this on me. Who are these dudes?
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False Face – No Business
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False Face – One Man Clapping
File under: indie // no age // noise // pop // punk
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: ontario | 9 Comments »
January 22nd, 2010
From the compiled danglings of Jesse Locke:
The Comp of Hope starts off with a serious wallop: the 1-2-3 whirligig of Vancouver’s Damages, Nova Scotia’s Minivan Halen (snagging the prize for Best New Band Name) and Toronto’s Place Hands, three groups with distinct yet equally imposing approaches to the post- / proto- / avant- / eff-it-let’s-just-get-rowdy hardcore continuum. Bart Records founder Kevin Stebner seems to favour the tuff gnarl stuff, with seven of the comp’s 10 acts setting their phasers to beatdown. From the spazzy attack of Abbotsford’s GSTS! to the rastafried “turbo jamz” of Edmonton’s Slates, Missisauga’s Whiskey Priest and unfuckwithable label faves Gift Eaters closing it off, this cassette could provide the perfect aggro soundtrack for any hesher’s backyard mini-ramp sesh. The softer side of weird Canadiana is also represented with the Strokes-meet-a-blown-out-Casio addictiveness of Swwords (the former project of this very site’s founder), Montreal’s math-pop dangereux duo Special Noise and a live jam from the inimitable dd/mm/yyyy. Another top-notch tape release from Bart, with awesome foldout liner art (front & back) from Calgary’s Heather Kai Smith.
[Levin's Note: This has the most links of any review on Weird Canada. Which means you get to virtually travel across Canada, all thanks to Bart Records. Benjoy!]
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Special Noise – Fitness
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Minivan Halen – Epic
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SLATES – blooloend
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swwords – The Hit
File under: bart records // compilation // experimental // hardcore // math-pop // pop // punk // rock
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: alberta :: british columbia :: cassette :: manitoba :: nova scotia :: ontario :: quebec :: saskatchewan | 1 Comment »
January 20th, 2010
From the Kimono-draped androgyny of Aaron Levin:
Geidi Primes is a landmark album of modern Canadian fringe, an assemblage of space-station pop memorabilia teleported from a time-static nether-zone beyond the scope of our earthly understanding. I’ve been waiting months for this, posting anxious pleas to Grimes after hearing the sinuous, harrowing bass-line on Rosa. With the curiously packaged cassette in my fiending grip, the orbiting swaths of synthetic warmth and echoing drum-machines have caused exciting astral projections outside my usual mental musicalia. Geidi Primes takes off from Rosa’s minimal bass-lines and launches straight into a strange hybrid of Björk, The Cure, Micachu, and other avant seamstresses, leaving a footprint in every decade and thankfully landing in ours. Chord progressions and samples are pulled from any source imaginable and the aggregation results in a Kate Bushian trail of decadence. It seems pointless and restrictive attempting to describe its brilliance, so I’ll stop with this: Geidi Primes is a flagship of hyperbolic dimensions. Get on board.
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Grimes – Rosa
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Grimes – Venus In Fleurs
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Grimes – Zoal, Face Dancer
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Grimes – Sardaukar Levenbrech
File under: arbutus // electronic // kate bush // pop // space // strange // the future // weird
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: quebec | 7 Comments »
January 12th, 2010
From the Teddy Riley jacketed body of Aaron Levin:
Chris d’Eon returns with a new moniker and a time-lapsed sound no less forward looking than his last. Veering away from the cosmic meanderings of wa al-’asr (by the time) and plunging wrap-first into New Jack Swingery, D’EON delivers like no other methamphetamine-infused Much Music dance party. The whole trip is soaked in d’Eon’s psychedelic twilight, making it the ideal late-night, post-apocalyptic high-on-life-but-I’m-still-down-on-everything soundtrack to your small-town fashion-school graduation party. Your not-really-friends are passing rails in a bathroom while you’re saluting a full-moon on the apex of an abandoned farm-house; Sony Walkman™ giving portable life to d’Eon’s mellow tech flowing through your veins. Meanwhile, Teddy Riley is sitting in his blackstreet-funded mansion with a giant grin and the speach bubble reads: “it’s about time, whoa jam.”
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D’EON – the girl from köln is gone
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D’EON – artificial law
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D’EON – haridwar
File under: ambient // electronic // new jack swing // numbers station // teddy riley
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: quebec | No Comments »
January 11th, 2010
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Lightdreams
10,000 Dreams
(Self Released)
Victoria, BC
Originally Released: 1983
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From the cassette-gripping hands of Aaron Levin:
There is a universe inside the mind of Victorian Paul Marcano unlike anyone has or could have imagined. After self-releasing Islands in Space (Paul’s 1981 cosmic folk consecration to the colonization of space released under the moniker Lightdreams), Paul seemingly disappeared into the serene pastures of Vancouver Island with only a brief mention of a new cassette available in an issue of CLEM (Canadian List of Electronic Music). Almost mistakenly lumped in with left-field Canadian avant-gardism, 10,001 Dreams takes a leave of absence from the ambient, synthesizer-driven visuals of Islands in Space to craft a wild, lysergic-filled journey into pan-delic psych and guitar workouts, stretching our understanding of pop-psych and bursting our tiny minds with visions of unfound landscapes. It is thee underground psychedelic masterpiece from Canada; released 15 years too late on a format no one cared about and relegated to absolute obscurity shortly thereafter. The cassettes were made-to-order and incredibly rare. Paul remains a visionary of human experience and is dedicated to experimenting with music and virtual reality.
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Lightdreams – Who is the One
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Light Dreams – 10,001 Dreams
File under: 1983 // folk // new age // psych
Categoria!! Departures Revisited :: british columbia :: cassette | 4 Comments »
