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 12th, 2010
From the solitary confinement of Aaron Levin:
Digging deep in the recesses of Sydney, Nova Scotia’s musical tar ponds, Mess Folk returns with a trio of serotonin-deprived hymns for the emotionally-challenged. Mess Folk’s HoZac debut will uproot your anchors and rip apart any notion of mental-stability. The aural spectacle sounds like lost recordings of Nirvana live in Hobbiton; a sparsely attended minor-key distortion-fest populated by meth-afflicted hobbits and rejects from Gummo’s casting call. It’s all the more real because of its absurd projection, adding musical meanderings to ideas usually debated by stale academics. It’s uncomfortable, challenging, awful, and speaks to every secret plan you’ve made to escape the reality of being. You will hate it, but best of all: you will hate yourself. A+++.
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Mess Folk – Give Me A Gun
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Mess Folk – If I Don’t Get Out
File under: depressing // grunge // HoZac // lo-fi // punk
Categoria!! 7" :: New Canadiana :: nova scotia | 3 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 »
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 »
December 11th, 2009
From the vaguely fluorescent Aaron Levin:
File-under: cassettes blaring from Master Blaster’s tape-deck while executing a ‘64 impala drive-by. So get your leather chaps, crawl on the hood of your mom’s minivan and run drive. Mess Folk has grown into a fierce teenager fighting against Canada’s industrial wasteland (read: Sydney) and unleashing their terrifying Salmagundi of adjective-garbage in the process. It’s scary, chaotic, brutal, and extremely poppy. Every song an anthem for derelict dogs, chimney sweepers, knitting factory women, P.O.Ws, Trotskyists, and any victim of industrial pillaging. This is Mess Folk is the ugly side of capitalism; the underbelly of mutant-punk; the smegmatic 9mm pocket-protecting vomit gun. It’s nine songs of unfuckwittable pain and anguish; an anthemic veneration for the depressed and lonely; the product of a forgotten city, time, and existence. On the East coast everything is missing. But we have this tape. Twelve songs. Every one of them a winner. I told my friend Jazzowita the other day: “the new Mess Folk cassette is good.” He agreed.
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Mess Folk- You’re Too Pretty (I Wanna Kill You)
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Mess Folk- I Shit Blood
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Mess Folk- Modern Man
File under: amazing // garage // lo-fi // loner // punk // weird punk
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: nova scotia | 3 Comments »
November 19th, 2009
The Old Line is dense; a desolate bus-ride on the midnight express to nowhere, culminating in the heaviest, trance-inducing psychedelic yogi-chant ever documented. Gown, the solo project of Thurston Moore collaborator Andrew McGregor (now residing in Nova Scotia), is not your paltry foray into distorted minimalism. Having cut the fabric of space-time and emerged as its own cosmic entity, Gown self-assimilates the reverberations of our universe and rebroadcasts them as soundtracks to our imagination’s self-deprecated autobiography. All the reverb-soaked, red-line meanderings underneath Andrew’s atonal murmurs resonate with the basement of our psyche. It’s challenging and absolutely impressive how deep The Old Line penetrates. I’ve spent three days with this record and I’m not yet ready for the world.
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Gown – roots
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Gown – here
File under: divorce records // experimental // minimal // noise // post-rock // thurston moore
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: nova scotia | 1 Comment »
October 15th, 2009
Halifax is on an advanced level of pop-wizardry. For a city with less than 400,000 people, they put the rest of North American to shame with the shear volume of crafted sounds. And they all have their own Halifaxian aura to them; seemingly channelled through distinct avenues, returning home from remote adventures with presents of pop’s future. York Redoubt has proven themselves a worthy flag-bearer of Halifax’s bubbling underground. Their first cassette showed a brief glimpse into a future-now, and with their self-titled debut out on Hot Money Records (limited to 100 vinyl copies – screen-printed with personalized photograph (cop that!)), they’ve finally actualized into the math-pop behemoth we’ve been waiting for. Weaving complicated threads of stubborn-catchiness between time-signatures that make so-much-nonsense and vocal harmonies buried within angular distortion, it’s difficult to turn your attention away from the album and it’ll be no-time before you’ve listened to the entire thing six or seven times. It’s ridiculous music to write about because it’s so incredibly layered, complex, and easy. Which is where York Redoubt really shines: they’ve taken all this ridiculous math-pop and made it serene; like just another pop song. Listen and buy the damn record. They. Are. Next.
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York Redoubt – I Said Slightly
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York Redoubt – Stenciled Lines
File under: halifax // math-pop // pop // women
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: nova scotia | 2 Comments »
October 6th, 2009
Divorce Records found an odd paring between Omon Ra and Chris d’Eon. In what will likely become a flag-ship release within Canada’s psychedelic tapestry, we (finally) see the benefits of our quilting of culture. Within both sides of this cassette are woven threads of proven psychedelic fybre: Chris d’Eon channeling streams from the Eastern source and Omon Ra from the western rhythmic pop-lysergia. Chris d’Eon occupies the entirety of Side A with a long, progressive track based around (what I’m assuming is) guitar, tabla, and sitar. It’s a classic trip that reaches quick perfection as it touches on John Fahey, Sandy Bull, and Shawn Philips, amongst other masters of the folk communion. Side B captures Omon Ra conjuring ethereal, western acid with layered vocals, distorted drones, and subdued-pop. It’s catchy, droney, vaguely-emotional, and a certified trip. Omon Ra will become a leading creative mind in Canada and I’m assuming there’s a lot more at the source. Grip it before it’s sold out and let it resonate with the subtleties of your subconscious, causing vibrations within your inner-mind; channel the stars, night, and that weird star-wars looking dude on the cover. Recommended for late-night listening. Alone.
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Omon Ra – It’s So Nice To See You All Again
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Chris d’Eon – Dhikr Remembrance of God (snippet)
File under: folk // middle eastern // psych
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: nova scotia :: quebec | 2 Comments »
September 16th, 2009
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PIG / !Kung San / Scribbler
S/Pl/It
(meager / radiator)
(all over), NS
::web/sounds::
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PIG continues to deliver their strange brew of time-lapse-weird-punk on this interesting document of Nova Scotia’s experimental-everything scene. Splitting the bill with PIG are !Kung San, a somewhere-between pastoral noodling and post-hardcore endeavor from Westville, and Scribbler, Halifax’s gravity-lens for experimental-anything in the Maritimes. Scribbler’s six contributions seem to be cut-ups from an insane live-set full of atonal screaming and guitar shreddery; relentless stuff. And, man, I just can’t get enough of PIG; the three tracks from them were not enough!
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PIG – Fight Boring
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!Kung San – 2:42
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Scribbler – Relish Stove
File under: experimental // noise // punk // weird punk
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: nova scotia | 3 Comments »
September 9th, 2009
The ether was my favorite physics concept growing up as a kid. Yes, I had a favorite physics concept because I was the 12 year-old loser reading math books instead of Archie. The point is: a pervasive nether-fluid permeating the universe in a futile effort to slow down light is the perfect banner for an experimental punk band from Halifax whose low-end-lo-fi recordings have a penchant for turning up your what-the-fuck-juice viscosity, damping the reverberations of your mind, and raising the Hamiltonian of your trash-hollering mechanicals. I’m not kidding around with this physics crap, either; The Ether is on to something and it’s going to be everywhere (pun intended). Listen while you still can. Brought to you by the kind folks from Campaign For Infinity.
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The Ether – Play With Blades
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The Ether – No Shame
File under: experimental // lo-fi // punk // weird punk
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: nova scotia | 2 Comments »
