August 24th, 2010
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Mark Alexander McIntyre
Situs Inversus Totalis
(Seductive Sounds)
Ottawa, ON
::web/sounds::
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From the seductive text of Joni Sadler:
After playing in numerous Ottawa bands over the past decade, Mark Alexander McIntyre has finally gone and released a solo record. As it turns out, Situs Inversus Totalis was worth the wait: McIntyre’s slow-burn acid folk possesses a unique and eerie sense of timelessness that is rare in so much of the music being produced today. Waves of queasy feedback stand in nice contrast to simple acoustic guitar and sparse vocals, and the whole record – right down to its plain cardboard sleeve and Xeroxed liner notes – remains nicely minimal in style. Ultimately, McIntyre channels the influences of sonic bros like Greg Ashley and Sir Richard Bishop through a haze of druggy sadness so damn well that all we’re left wondering is why it took him so bloody long to make a solo album in the first place.
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Mark Alexander McIntyre – My April
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Mark Alexander McIntyre – Reflections
File under: acid folk // folk // joni sadler // minimal // psych folk // seductive sounds
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: ontario | 3 Comments »
August 22nd, 2010
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The Brazda Brothers
The Brazda Brothers
(Dominion)
??, ON
Originally Released: 1973
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From the Russian imports of Aaron Levin:
These two Russian hippie-bros emigrate to Ontario and release an album celebrating the pastoral scenery of their new home. With thick, stilted Ruskie accents and strange instruments (Cordovox?) they weaved twelve streams of folk-rock textures in dedication to our unique landscape. Their foreign perspective is the album’s greatest strength; take their journey and visualize the vast industrial heartland through outside, lysergic eyes. The resulting innocence, both serene and moving, place the Brazda Brothers alongside other nationalized fringe-folk canon whose trails into uncharted territory shaped our anomalous soundscape (Riverson, Ptarmigan, PCC, etc). The band claims that 5,000 copies were pressed but the number of known copies states otherwise. Released on a budget label concerned mostly with fiddle and children LPs. I flipped my lid when I found a sealed copy of this!
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The Brazda Brothers – Gemini
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The Brazda Brothers – 20th Century
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The Brazda Brothers – Blooming Flowers
File under: aaron levin // acid // folk // folk-rock // private // psych
Categoria!! 12" :: Departures Revisited :: ontario | 6 Comments »
August 16th, 2010
From the dead love of Jesse Locke:
Chiming and charming six-string jangle-pop moves from this aptly named quartet currently on tour across Canada. Following up the Cold Crystal Shield cassingle with a full-length eponymous effort, the band from three cities can now boast six record labels to its name (including Germany’s Coraille) and a pristine mastering job from none other than Chicago indie-rock vet Bob Weston. Male/female falsetto/hushed harmonies offset an onslaught of hooks and tricky licks, resulting in an ace set of tunes with endless replay value. RIYL: Let’s Active, Keep It Like A Secret and “I Am The Cancer.” Go see them at a bar, hot dog shop or house show near you!
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Play Guitar – Sleep
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Play Guitar – Dead Love
File under: Coraille // halifax // indie // jesse locke // noyes // pop // youth club records
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: nova scotia :: quebec :: yukon | No Comments »
August 3rd, 2010
From the televised meanderings of Aaron Levin:
Bursting through the basement murk of their last string of releases, Vancouver’s blistering two-piece have finally captured their bludgeoning low-end jabs with brilliant fidelity. Let the blaring rapid-snap ferocity course through your body as Andrea’s shrieks peel wigs and burn minds; it’s ritual time in the realm of dualic fringe and we’re all invited to the party. Check your mind at the door, lay your ears at their alter and praise the new queen of shred.
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Nü Sensae – Night Talker
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Nü Sensae – Skull Mecca
File under: 90s // aaron levin // nominal records // punk
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: british columbia | 2 Comments »
June 22nd, 2010
From the there-is-no-describing-this-confusion of Paul Lawton & Aaron Levin:
Long overdue debut LP from Toronto-based sexual hyperbole that collects material recorded between 1983 and 2009. Tonetta’s recipe for success consists of wasted erotic lo-fi dripping in wet bass, fruity drum loops, and occasional 80′s guitar sleaze; backdrops for his variety show of graphic sexual acts, perverts, prostitutes, drug use, hedonism and occasional political rhetoric. Once a song is recorded, Tonetta dons a costume (g-string, Kabuki mask, demon makeup, etc), takes off most of his clothes, and dances. After the initial sexual overload, a gripping desire to break through the facade takes over. The songs are compelling enough to dive right in and the LP, removed from the visceral overload, allows a new entry-point into Tonetta’s garish existence. As a compilation of material spanning 25 years, the album is one highlight after another, from the soaring 80’s cheese of “Drugs Drugs Drugs” and “I Want to Marry a Prostitute” (which could be a viagrafied Jimmy Buffett song), to the Bowie-esque album standout “I’m Still a Slave.” In the tradition of musical oddities like Jandek, J.T. IV, or more recently Blank Dogs, Tonetta is a mystery best left unsolved. Weird Canada grants this our highest recommendation.
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Tonetta – Still A Slave
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Tonetta – Drugs Drugs Drugs
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Tonetta – John And Yoko
File under: 80s // aaron levin // black tent press // costumes // lo-fi // paul lawton // sex // sleaze // vintage // wasted // weird // wtf // youtube
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: ontario | 10 Comments »
June 16th, 2010
From the shark-dog feathers of James Goddard:
Kingdom Shore eviscerates with tense, calculated string slashes. Ultra-violent. Tightly wound. Subtly disorienting. …and all the dogs to shark is a visceral listening experience; unrelenting sharp edges, protruding corners and just enough quiet. There is undoubtedly a sophisticated theoretical framework to analyze here, but that isn’t the point, this album hits you on altogether different level. This is violent music. This is the soundtrack to Saw 18. This is the soundtrack for your next UFC viewing party.
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Kingdom Shore – Stray Bullets Singing “It’s now what you say, but who you give it to”
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KIngdom Shore – Fire knows no one house; fire knows no one woman or man
File under: avant-garde // black bough records // classical // experimental // james goddard // modern classical // modern composer
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: ontario | 2 Comments »
February 24th, 2010
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Mode Moderne
Ghosts Emerging
(Lust Neuvo Records)
Vancouver, BC
::web/sounds::
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From the ghostly bedding of Aaron Levin:
Vancouver’s synthetic underground is bubbling for the second time since the 80s when labels and artists were populating basements, clubs, cassette racks, and ideas with bleak drum machines and coarse synthesizers. COSMETICS, magneticring, N.213, Twin Crystals, MYTHS, Von Bingen, Haunted Beard, [insert band I'm forgetting] and now the industrial gothic Mode Moderne project Vancouver as a city on the brink of a synth-adjective explosion. Ghosts Emerging live centre-stage in the unassuming minimal-synth-pop arena with secret conviction and harmonic prowess, drifting listeners on their currents of nostalgic woe. Vocalist Phillip Intile’s non-chalant industrial modulations makes the whole trip strangely manipulative as you wake up mid-album unaware of your new musical surroundings: pulsing drum machines, swathy synthesizers, ethereal guitar leads, and blankets of ambient-satin. Let’s welcome the new age.
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Mode Moderne – Les Neuf Soeurs
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Mode Moderne – Radio Heartbeat
File under: aaron levin // lust neuvo records // minimal synth // pop // synth
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: british columbia | 2 Comments »
February 9th, 2010
From the burnt locker of Paul Lawton:
At one point in the second half of Exploding in Time, Nic Hughes (Pompoir’s lead singer and leading member of Shearing Pinx) repeats “Do you feel this?” and to this I say: Yes! I am absolutely feeling this. Pompoir’s grunge has been filtered through an accentuated Vancouver-alienation, giving the songs on Exploding Time a feeling unstuck in time and place while still capturing the sounds of this relativistic-event in Vancouver’s scene. In fact, after the first few listens I had pangs of jealousy that I don’t currently live in Vancouver to hear these bands on any given weekend. I’ll go out on a limb and say, of all the records that have come out of the Vancouver scene in the last five years (and lets face it, there have been a fuck-load of records… SHPX alone have over ten thousand releases!) Pompoir’s Exploding Time lands firmly in the “essential” category. Comes in fantastic silkscreened B-Side and album-covers. The vinyl is limited to 300 copies.
[Levin's Note: The photo used in this review is the rare, test-pressing vagina-cover variant (#15/20). The actual album art is quite similar. This record slays.]
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Pompoir – Going Nowhere
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Pompoir – Krush
File under: 90s // grunge // inw // isolated now waves // punk // shearing pinx
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: british columbia | 1 Comment »
February 8th, 2010
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Collapsing Opposites
In Time
(Self Released)
Vancouver, BC
::web/sounds::
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From the bent winds of Paul Lawton:
The latest opus from Collapsing Opposites is a gem of psych-pop (poppy psych?) that sounds alien, but not alienating, quirky, but not annoying, dark but not desperate. Much of my affinity for Collapsing Opposites comes from the band leader Ryan McCormick (formerly of They Shoot Horses, Don’t They), who lends this record his warmth and charisma, and notably his strange vocal styling. Lyrics take the form of stream-of-consciousness monologue/rants that are layered inside of repetitive, swirling backdrops. I could imagine an edition of Acid Archives thirty years from now unearthing this record and freaking out over it as one of the great unheralded private-press oddities of 2010; hopefully the kids get hep to this record before then.
[Levin's Note: This is proudly the first Acid Archives reference on Weird Canada. PS - You can order this lovely LP by visiting Geographing Records!]
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Collapsing Opposites – Diamond Mind
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Collapsing Opposites – No. One
File under: experimental // indie // lo-fi // pop
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: british columbia | 1 Comment »
January 26th, 2010
From the wish-I-had-a-tough-guy-leather-jacket stylings of Aaron Levin:
Monochromatic Youth, the vanguard of Grand Trine’s Bruised Tongue debut, captured their synthetic sans-wave pedigree at the cusp of their existence, posing the question: where now? Defying all expectations, Grand Trine returned with a barrage of brilliant psychedelic biker-punk transplanted from their phantasmagoric Montreal freak-clinic. Some wastoid time-warp seizure has them sounding like Marty McFly opening for the MC5; face-melting genre-collages, bursting celluloid solos, and decimating saxophone freak-outs; all of it wrapped in layers of frayed leather, busted zippers, and skitched sunglasses. Translation: Sunglasses is not for the faint of heart, mind, spirit, or stomach. All orifices will succumb to their unwholesome mutant hard-rock and I suggest you send all litigations directly to Divorce Records c/o Weird Canada legal services (but make sure to grip the 12″ vinyl (limited to 600 copies) as evidence of their crime). Now, if you don’t mind, I have a large mess near my stereo system to attend to.
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Grand Trine – I Am a Magnet
File under: biker punk // divorce records // punk // punk punk // synth punk // weird punk
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: quebec | 1 Comment »
