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 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 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 | No 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 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 19th, 2010
From the synthetic mellowings of Aaron Levin:
In the not-too-distant future, Joshua Stevenson will be listed in the canon of modern Canadian synthesia. Earlier this year we saw the release of Josh’s debut into meanderonic minimalism via his solo project magneticring. Meanwhile, an ensemble of Vancouver-area heavyweights (including Josh), titling themselves Von Bingen, reared a massive, ugly head in the latter half of the annum with a difficult-to-find LP of perturbed disquality. Channeling the early fuse of Irrlicht-era Klaus Schulze with droning, distorted guitar fanfare amongst cathedrals of unorganic chambers, Von Bingen subjects you to a sexcellent multi-textual unification of analog-electro genius. Pulsing mechanics, forced dualities, and atonal guitar workouts part the static stasis within the dark shadows of your listening cosmos and reveal the inner beat of our earthic tunings. Part psychedelic, part synthetic, part experimental, but as a whole, rewarding on multiple listens; an entity better heard than read. Packaged with a loving, two-colour essay.
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Von Bingen – Eyeglasses of Kentucky
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Von Bingen – Murray 606
File under: ambient // amen absen // electronic // josh stevenson // magneticring // minimal synth // synth
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: british columbia | 11 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 »
December 8th, 2009
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Holzkopf
Sober Materials #1
(Self Released)
Vancouver, BC
::web/sounds::
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From the closeted-bourgeoise life-stylings of Aaron Levin:
I once thought it would be incredibly ingenious to put Holzkopf in a box and carry him around with me. His adorable ponytails popping out of my JanSport backpack as I dithered about my daily duties (pretentious white-man stuff like buying whole-wheat bagels and reading Trotsky). And then, when things go awry in my white-picket-world, out pops Holzkopf with his busted drum machine, hand-manipulated Walkman, karaoke microphone, and array of pedals, ready to pulverize whatever gentrified fear stands before me. But! Now that Holzkopf has compiled his improvised dungeon dancery onto a CDR, I can get down to his body-destroying beats without leaving my suburb. Holzkopf’s sound and performance are unparalleled in North America (please to find me another pedal-mashing drum-machine hooligan), so we at Weird Canada are happy to celebrate any record documenting Holzkopf’s strange travels. Tracks on this disc were compiled from Holzkopf’s European tour and a few vinyl and cdr releases (on the labels: Little Fury Things, Wintage, and Panospria). Let the shredding begin!
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Holzkopf – draw blood
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Holzkopf – pissing next to me and preaching
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Holzkopf – state trooper
File under: dance // electronic // noise
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: british columbia :: compact disc | 4 Comments »
December 8th, 2009
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Ben Jacques
Millennium Dolphin
(Self Released)
Vancouver, BC
::web/sounds::
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From the Sega™ collection of Ecco-fanatic Jesse Locke:
While he might be better known for his eerily childlike acid brain doodle art, Ben Jacques has also been exploring outerspace electronic noise-scapes as of late with his musical projects Alf and the only slightly less brain-scrambling Haunted Beard. Now, he’s given birth to Millennium Dolphin, the first in a four-part series of self-described ‘New Age’ releases under his own moniker. In our e-mail correspondence leading up to this review, Ben explained that, “this is seriously something I do when I’m lying hung over in bed and want to hear something hypnotic and easy.” Hypnotic sure, but this 18-minute instrumental ain’t no elevator music, with its Motorik propulsion, Star Trek synth FX and what sounds like cyborg mosquitos with their circuits overloading from too much candy kid raver blood. It’s Mutek on the Holodeck. It’s the mutated love child of The Field and James Ferarro. It’s yet another offspring of Vancouver’s endlessly fertile weirdo music underground.
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Ben Jacques – Millennium Dolphin (excerpt)
File under: electronic // experimental // mutek
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: british columbia :: compact disc | No Comments »
