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 »
December 1st, 2009
From the portal-books of Jesse Locke:
For those keeping track at home, Aidan Baker’s discography is starting to stretch longer than both his beard and onstage guitar jams. On this split LP, the multi-instrumentalist and founding member of “Ambient Doom” duo Nadja is in full-on minimalist mode, filling the entirety of his side with the soft-focus tone workout “Disturbances pt. 1 & 2.” Movement wise, it’s as unhurried as Eno or Stars of the Lid, and equally iridescent. On the flip, Brooklyn’s Sarah Lipstate (a.k.a. Noveller) – a member of Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Army, Glenn Branca’s 100 Guitar Ensemble and formerly Parts and Labor – contributes two shorter songs. In comparison to Baker’s piece, her haunting “White Rabbit” and ornate “Under The Color Cave” sound positively lively. This one could be a desert island pick, if that island happened to be Myst.
[Levin's Note: Having played Myst (blind subway!), Myst II: Riven (hang-man language thingy!), and Myst III: Exile (bee-hive!), I concur with everything Mr. Locke has stated, and more!]
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Aidan Baker – Disturbances [excerpt]
File under: ambient // avant-guitar // divorce records // experimental
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: ontario | 1 Comment »
November 12th, 2009
Slow-forward to the future. Turn left and you’ll never see Han Solo shoot, having been blasted by the 28 shots of Mos Eisleyian whiskey and bravely translucent pressure waves emanating from a new Cantina band: the Holy Cobras. Dead Bodies Float in Space is Hawkwind re-imagined inside an alternate nowhere, far removed form any human consciousness; pulsing, wasted synth coursing through psychedelic veins feeding life into tired, synthetic limbs grabbing every adjective needed to self-identify. It’s a new sound for new believers and I bet their live show is more cathartic than church could ever dream of being. The cassette sounds like shit in way that further mystifies its origins; Canada Post leasing a Millennium Falcon to bring back treasures from the world of Hollywood magic. Press play, close your eyes and witness Stacia, naked, undulating next to dead, floating bodies. Campaign For Infinity is on to something. A++++++++.
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Holy Cobras – Dead Bodies Float in Space
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Holy Cobras – Mama Jihad
File under: campaign for infinity // lo-fi // psych // punk // weird
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: ontario | 7 Comments »
September 30th, 2009
Turn out the lights. Light a candle. Slip into something comfortable. Take it off. Grab a drink and come back to the hot tub. Weird Canada is for sharing and I’d like to introduce someone to you. His name is Thomas. His new album, S E L F H E L P is the post-smooth hyperbole you’ve been waiting for all day. Fetch me a towel. Allow me to wipe the bubbles off my body and talk seriously for a moment. Thank you. Thomas takes off where the late-70s AOR, yacht-rock movement degenerated into slap-bass bull-crappery and his interpretations are bang-on. In the most serious fashion Thomas covers the gambit from Jodeci/Guy-jack-swing, Hall-and-Oats-esque yach-synth, and Sade–is-his-operator smoothness. Thomas has attended the Tim Buckley school of singing, accentuating his verses with grunts and hollers, bringing this pop-explosion into an other-worldly palm-tree paradise. There are elements of every pop cliche executed brilliantly and fashionably. It’s tasteful, sexcellent, and most importantly, strange; dripping with creative genius, every channel of pop has been approached from bizarre, acute angles producing unimaginably beautiful results. It’s the soundtrack to an alternate, psychedelic beach party where every dead celebrity is getting down; martinis in their ageless hands tipping their glasses to the young boy riding on the smooth-rock shoulders of pop giants. Need more? Check out the video to Thomas’ hit Don’t Think, Just Hate.
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Thomas – One Day And One Night (Featuring Allie Hughes)
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Thomas – Maypole
File under: AOR // pop // post-smooth
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: ontario | 7 Comments »
September 23rd, 2009
From the musical cabinet of soon-to-be-Dr. Joni Sadler:
It seems fitting to write a review of Nervous System’s latest cassette at an altitude of 36,000 feet. At this moment it is still godawful early and I’m on an airplane high above the prairies. The turbulence is just rough enough to verge on unsettling and I am feeling way burnt out. In a way, ‘Burning White Light’ is the perfect music for this scenario: careening psych freakouts equally capable of leaving you really excited or feeling a tad on edge and queasy. The fact that most of the tracks on the cassette were improvised during the recording sessions is impressive, and there’s a certain recklessness that has (perhaps unsurprisingly) found its way into these songs. Pounding repetitive drums lay down a solid backbone for swaths of wailing fuzz and occasional shouts from singer/guitarist Mat Oxley. It’s all coated with a heavy layer of distortion for good measure. The centerpiece of the album is the nine-minute epic “Freak Construction†– it’s a serious stoner jam fleshed out around a burning guitar lick and given the final touch with some echoey vocal loops. This is serious mind-trip music, best experienced with your head way up in the clouds. [Levin's notes: I am so into this kind of modern-psych that is so strange and poppy at the same time. Bruised Tongue is really killing it these days!]
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Nervous System – Freak Construction
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Nervous System – Burning White Light
File under: psych
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: ontario | No Comments »
September 7th, 2009
From the private mind garden of Jesse Locke:
As far as awesome-sounding made-up genres go, Actual Water’s self-described “nature punk†is right up there with GOBBLE GOBBLE’s “flu popâ€, the Bayonets!!!’ “now wave†and Nü Sensae’s “voodoo punk.†It’s also a bit of a red herring, as you’d be hard pressed to compare the music of this Toronto trio to anything in nature, except perhaps when listening to the bird calls on the 35-minute drone piece “Zodiac Letters†which spans the entirety of Leon’s side B. During a recent visit to Toronto and its coolest record store Rotate This, I was lucky enough to snatch up a copy of this cassette, and it’s now sitting near the top of my favorite finds of 2009. Sounding like a more blown-out Japanther or the Intelligence minus their Suicide fixation, Actual Water slather their hooks with hiss, chiming razor-blade riffs and trashy Trashmen hollers.
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Actual Water – Open Votes
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Actual Water – Pencil Legged
File under: ambient // drone // garage-punk // punk // weird punk
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: ontario | No Comments »
August 11th, 2009
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Fortunately, Everything Dies
Censored
(Self Released)
Windsor, ON
::web/sounds::
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We do this thing in campus/community radio where, as Music Directors, we gather the greatest artists in our respective communities and have them share the cost of mailing their music to other campus/community stations (you can fit four CDs in a standard mailer for the postage of one!) I received one of these packages from CJAM 91.5 (Windsor, Ontario) and the Fortunately, Everything Dies album immediately caught my eye. The press-release deepened the prevailing sense of mystery: the identity of Fortunately, Everything Dies is unknown and the CDs were dropped off in the middle of the night, each one being a hand-crafted modification of a classical album (a possible ode to Newfoundland’s first punk-rock band Da Slyme?) The music wavers between ambient drones and glitchy experimental electronics, most of it being really good. I’m going to guess from the song-titles that the individual(s) behind Fortunatley, Everything Dies are fairly young, which excites me all the more. Hooray for mystery!
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Fortunately, Everything Dies – Girls Heart Noisecore
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Fortunately, Everything Dies – A Proud Client of Prestige Worldwide Since 2008
File under: ambient // da slyme // electronic // experimental // mystery
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: ontario | No Comments »
July 30th, 2009
From the vault of Joni Sadler (Ottawa, ON)
When I first heard about Fucked Corpse, I assumed that they were a grindcore band or something equally violent. What kind of pop group would choose a name like that, right? My initial judgements couldn’t have been much further from the truth: this Ottawa party collective may have grown a bit more aggressive since their early days (fans of sugary lo-fi pop freakouts would do well to check out their “Apple Meat” 7″ from a couple of years back), but those damn catchy hooks of theirs haven’t gone anywhere. Jangly guitar riffs trade off with tambourine smashes and woozy hazes of distortion, but the gang manages to steer mercifully clear of both gratuitious hippie psych meanderings and excessive noise. There are some genuinely catchy jams here, too – “Denim Outta Here” is a straight-up singalong noise pop anthem. These dudes are too busy having a good time to worry about polishing the fuzz from their songs, and you know what? That’s okay. It’s time to join their party.
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Fucked Corpse – Denim Outta Here
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Fucked Corpse – M81 Woodland
File under: crust // freak-out // hippie // lo-fi // noise-pop // psych // zep
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: ontario | 2 Comments »
