March 10th, 2010
From the Planet D residing citizen named Jesse Locke:
With their second transmission from the heart of the black hole sunrise, Edmonton’s Krang continue their clusterfuck of stoner rock, noise-haze and squiggly electronics. The band’s debut self-released EP was a voyage in its own right, but until now, they’ve never been able to bottle the total gnarlitude of the extended space jams doubling as their live shows. Happily, with the addition of fourth member Dean “The Ram” Watson on guitar, this five-song flummox released via Eamon McGrath’s Cassettes Records has finally captured the experience on CD-R. Faithful followers will recognize the bass line from “Farmer” within seconds, along with Krang’s trademark echoed harmonica. Cold Bebop’s standout banger “Ships” has been re-recorded with the addition of Watson’s desolate licks, and finally “Snakes on the Brain” closes things off with some furious Danzig-on-psychedelic-fungi freak-outs. Best of all, the new and improved line-up can still melt faces live.
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Krang – Farmer
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Krang – Snakes on the Brain
File under: cassette records // eamon mcgrath // experimental // jesse locke // psych
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: alberta :: compact disc | No Comments »
March 4th, 2010
From the Jabroka-filled pockets of Aaron Levin:
Beneath Alienation’s beautifully die-cut packaging (typical Patente faire) lays a harrowing journey into Quebec’s multi-format experimental scene. Alienation is the audible outlet by visual artist Simon Langevin. Simon’s autodidactic approach to the genre’s freedom gives 2010 a welcomed erraticism resulting in a strange mix between multi-format, avant-meanderings and static post-techno beat collages. Add an 11-minute minor-key ethereal floater and you’ve got yourself a veritable trip through Simon’s consciousness; corrugated tunnels lined with deep, dark textures appropriate for any hang-out setting not involving: smiles, fun, or not-goths. Killer psychedelic artwork to boot. +1 Patente.
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Alienation – Track 03
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Alienation – Track 06
File under: aaron levin // drone // experimental // noise // techno
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: quebec | No Comments »
March 3rd, 2010
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Bad Vibrations
Bad Vibrations
(Brotherhood Cassettes)
Halifax, NS
::web/sounds::
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From the not-so-bad vibrations of James Goddard:
Sometimes I imagine a future where everyone has forgotten what a guitar actually sounds like; Children brought up on a steady diet of French pop and Swedish 8-bit. Eventually, current trends like lo-fi would become ailments listed in the DSM VII with prescriptions like: 2 hours of Kumbaya orchestrated by battery-operated MicroKorgs (twice daily, with food). Things would be bad. Luckily former Dog Day drummer KC Spidle has strapped on a six string and stepped to the foreground to ensure such a future will never happen. Bad Vibrations play guitar music. They play the kind of three piece power-pop that begs for adjectives like dark or gloomy; and they play it well. Eschewing any kind of overt studio trickery, the members of Bad Vibrations (KC, Evan and Meg) have put together a crisp sounding record that subtly recalls that classic 90s Halifax sound. Nothing could be further from an all-electro dystopia.
[Levin's Note: James forgot the positive side of an all-electro dystopia: Gino Soccio all day 'ere day.]
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Bad Vibrations – We’re Dead
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Bad Vibrations – Think About Life
File under: dog day // guitar // james goddard // lo-fi // pop // rock
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: nova scotia | 2 Comments »
February 26th, 2010
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Makeout Videotape
Eating Like a Kid
(Self Released)
Vancouver, BC
::web/sounds::
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From the pocketed mesh-back of Aaron Levin:
It’s our future babylon: yuppies and junkies coagulating to celebrate their mutant post-human hedonism. And in some grande irony, the lounge-garage stylings of Makeout Videotape will part every velvet curtain to entertain the new world’s last taste of love; vocalist Mac DeMarco’s million-dollar smile and soaring croons calming their insatiable desires. Eating Like a Kid is a mesmerizing departure from Makeout Videotape’s onslaught of red-line garage-punk; the hooks are intelligently buried while its melodies leave traces and flashbacks to Mac’s ageless smile. If there is love in the future it’s the sudden realization that they are speaking to us and as we turn around from our slot-machines, cocaine, sex, pizza, and peep shows – as we turn from our epicurean lives – we will see Mac smiling and know: death is all right so long as someone is singing. Mac’s golden voice is floating atop rivers of reverberating guitars, sailing Makeout Videotape into this new future America and we’re all on board.
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Makeout Videotape – Gigi Bungsu
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Makeout Videotape – Blondie
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Makeout Videotape – Eating Like a Kid
File under: aaron levin // garage // lounge
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: british columbia :: compact disc | 5 Comments »
February 23rd, 2010
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Colic
Best to Your Family
(Self Released)
Edmonton, AB
::web/sounds::
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From the colic cleanse of Aaron Levin:
Colic resides as my favorite left-field discovery of 2009, splintering my identity with an onslaught of pop-sprinkled atonal adjective-everything. Best to Your Family reads like a distasteful Japanese stereotype: hyperactive occult meanderings, bent reflections from unknown metals, and piercing waves of inter-dimensional origin. Imagine Big Mac handed you his demo tape after a weird inter-terrestrial mind-meld; it’s addicting, unearthly, and completely fringe. Yet, it’s greatest strength is making the whole rite-of-passage engaging by burying the subtle popyness within layers of instrumental shreddery. A certified unique listening experience. Genuinely strange artifacts of this ilk are rare. File-under ??????
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Colic – Keys
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Colic – Cold Time
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Colic – At 30,000 ft.
File under: adjective-everything // art-punk // experimental // outdoor miners // wyrd
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: alberta :: compact disc | 6 Comments »
February 2nd, 2010
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Adam Mowery
Port City Burning
(Self Released)
Saint John, NB
::web/sounds::
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From the singed mind of James Goddard:
Adam Mowery began the decade singing songs about being a cat and wearing striped socks in a well-loved acoustic indie-pop trio. Here as we enter a new decade he has re-invented himself as a sort of bizarro world Harry Belafonte. His live shows are swoon inducing rock and roll revivalism at its best. On this CD-R he treats us to 13 bad luck pop songs. The old pop-sensibility that used to dominate Port City Allstars records is now tempered by lo-fi experimentalism. His falsetto voice cuts through all the tape hiss and off-beat percussion making you believe that the rain-soaked, wind-ravaged port city of Saint John, New Brunswick really is a tropical paradise. What could be better than that?
[Levin's Note: Saint John is the new Halifax.]
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Adam Mowery – Turn Another Page
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Adam Mowery – The Dragon Boat Festival (Let’s All Go To)
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Adam Mowery – I’m Forever Diggin’ Where the Well Went Dry
File under: indie // lo-fi // pop
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: new brunswick | 5 Comments »
January 29th, 2010
From the celestial kingdom of Zachary Fairbrother:
Broken Deer is the project of musician/artist Lindsay Dobbin, formerly of Halifax, now relocated in the deep, northern frontier of the Yukon. Our Small Going is a collection of beautiful songs mixed with field recordings, soundscapes, and lo-fi blips and bleeps, finding the perfect home on San Francisco’s Gandhara Recordings. Lindsay’s music is embedded with grainy sound pieces and field recordings to create a celebration of nature, ritual, life and decay. The opening track “Coming of Age Funeral” is a beautiful instrumental piece, played on a solo acoustic guitar with tape hiss and buzz, giving the music a warm maternal feeling, while also tragic, as in the passing of an era or the sadness that comes with moving on. Neither ancient nor modern, the music seems to celebrate the difficulties and conveniences of our journey in the age of technology. Her textures are always light, often just using single instruments, allowing her to explore the fabrics of her sounds. Her unique voice shines through, giving a deep sense of ecology to her music.
[Levin's Note: Broken Deer is a testament to the undiscovered treasures existing beneath the dark snow of Canada's north.]
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Broken Deer – It Creeps
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Broken Deer – Face on the Riverside
File under: avant-garde // experimental // folk // gandhara recordings
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: yukon | No Comments »
January 19th, 2010
From every fleeting moment of Aaron Levin:
Montreal has effortlessly cultivated an ensemble of pop creators ready to fill any niche, pocket, or corner. Thus, it comes as no surprised that Devon Welsh was nurtured in the same wasteland of Montreal that produced Sean Nicholas Savage, The Pop Winds, Matt Perri, and other spectacular curators I’m forgetting. Juxtaposing his backdrop of distorted, reverberated murmurings with pop-savvy guitar leads and harmonies, Welsh delivers a surprisingly pastoral post-burn-out too-soon-for-whiskey-but-too-late-for-breakfast introduction to the universe. Too full for the abrasive lo-fi popular amongst Da Youth™ and too earnest for the Steely Dans of the world, Welcome exists in the ether between things; invitations to catchy exploration.
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Devon Welsh – Girlfriend
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Devon Welsh – Fun House Mirror
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Devon Welsh – As Far As I’m Aware
File under: lo-fi // pop
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: quebec | 3 Comments »
January 14th, 2010
From the cave-dwelling hive-mind of Paul Lawton:
This xmas I got a Peace for Bombs CDR and a book outlining the history of Wowbam Records label directly from the source, Jeff King, who writes and releases music under a legion of pseudonyms and (fake) band names (though The Square Waves and Favour have been his most well-known, mainly because he has actually assembled musicians to play those songs in a live setting). The Wowbam discography is remarkable – 31 releases over ten years, ranging from noise, to punkrawk, to straightpop; a catalogue that features some astonishing works such as the Folk 6 collection that spans seven discs and 300 songs (!). With the newest Wowbam release, Peace for Bombs, King plays secret hit-maker working within his limitations, six anthemic songs built around that shitty-drum setting you found on every toy-keyboard in the 80’s and layers of synths and guitars that gives this lost classic feel – one that no one has heard, but everyone has heard-about.
[Levin's Note: "Anthemic" is an understatement.]
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Peace For Bombs – Summerstory
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Peace For Bombs – Want 2 Belong
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Peace For Bombs – Peace For Bombs
File under: anthems // lo-fi // pop // wowbam
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: alberta :: compact disc | No Comments »
December 22nd, 2009
From the sensitive-thug stylings of Jesse Locke:
Before we get into the sweet and unassuming goodness of Cousins’ slacker rock sing-a-longs, let me tell you a little bit about their ride. Rolling in style from their native Nova Scotia, the Haligonians hit the highway this fall in a magic school bus equipped with bunk beds and fueled by vegetable oil. A radical alternative to be sure, but as it turned out their max road speeds were barely enough to bring them up hills, resulting in several late arrivals at out-of-town tour stops. That’s a fitting analogy for the songwriting style of Cousin’s Aaron Mangle as well, tangling up twangy Bill Callahan-inspired rambles with a classic Doug Martsch-style falsetto, while drifting through it all with an unhurried pace. In his review of York Redoubt’s s/t LP, Aaron “canonical” Levin wrote about Halifax’s “advanced level of pop wizardry,” and there’s a similar charm to these 10 tunes.
[Levin's Note: Cousins are definitely a Level ∞ Pop-Wizard.]
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Cousins – Anxious
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Cousins – Write Me A Song
File under: halifax // mellow // pop
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: nova scotia | 3 Comments »
