Un dance party angoissant, mais un party quand même : la voix d’un la Fred Schneider fantomatique mène des guitares spastiques, des volutes synth-chédéliques et un tapochage de Neandertal à travers une dense ambiance de sélection naturelle. Des tounes qui crient vers les cavernes, préhistoriques et brutales, rendues intrigantes par des mélodies vivides et tordues qui rampent vers toi comme des peurs que tu t’inventes : je veux dire, tu vas pas avoir peur d’un CD, t’es plus fort que ça, mais ces gars-là PORTENT DES MASQUES.

Encased in a squeeze box of screen printed palms, Ocular Gymnastics’ debut transmission is as lavishly packaged as it is blissful. Pedal-jammed Casio meditations cast ripples across the mind-pond while the mountain of found-sound percussion clanks and rattles down the cortex. Only Moduli TV could provide suitable visual accompaniment for these C.H.U.D. ravers in a tropical time-warp à la Bamboo For Two.

We are excited to announce the second annual Wyrd Montreal festival occurring Thursday, June 14 2012! Once again, we have teamed with beloved experimental music festival Suono Per Il Popolo to offer a multi-stage showcase of boundary pushing artists from the northernly fringes. Alongside the returning Mega Merch Bazaar (featuring a selection of Canada’s best record labels) Weird Canada will be taking over both La Sala Rossa and Casa del Popolo simultaneously for a one-night-only cornucopia of sinusoidal delight. This will allow fans the chance to bounce back and forth between the two bars conveniently located across the street from one another. Should fans find themselves needing a respite between wondrous electronics and/or bludgeoning chaos, experimental DJs Aaron Levin and Hobo Cubes will take residency in Casa del Popolo delivering a strange brew of new age, electronic, and avant psychedelics.

Date: Thursday June 14, 2012
Venue #1: La Sala Rossa (4848 Boulevard Saint-Laurent, Montreal)
Venue #2: Casa del Popolo (4873 Boulevard Saint-Laurent, Montreal)
Cost: $10 (adv.) / $12 (door)
Doors: 8pm

Lineup

La Sala Rossa
Brave Radar
Dog Day
Actual Water
Coca Cola (U.S. Girls + Slim Twig)

Casa del Popolo
Drainolith
Energetic Action
Tenderness
Bobo Boutin

Artist Bios

Coca Cola (U.S. Girls + Slim Twig) (Toronto)

Continuing Wyrd’s philosophy of unique collaborations, we’re proud to include a rare performance by this duo known as Coca Cola. Combining the rhythmic polyphonies of Toronto’s Slim Twig with the miasmic chaos of U.S. Girls, Coca Cola conjure an arpeggiated ethos of Cluster-inspired jammery. Expect a fantastic array of electronic drone and perturbed psychedelics.

Actual Water (Toronto)

Born in the depths of Ben Cook’s (Fucked Up, Young Guv, Bitters) epic space in East Toronto, Actual Water’s jangled power-pop transforms their 12-string anthems and insatiable marimba-laced punk into vocal bonanzas and summery attitudes. Every song is laced with their flowering ’60s slacker vibes and live the whole calamity is wrapped by frontman Tony’s enigmatic ‘tude. Stoked!

Drainolith (Montreal)

Drainolith is the multi-throned oscillating 8-bit transmigration of Montreal native Alex Moskos (ex-guitarist for the now defunct AIDS Wolf). Diving deep into polyrhythmic hood jams and clamouring solos of synthetic marvel, Drainolith hams heavy, agnostic experimentalism into a creative vehicle the world may or may not be ready to digest.

Energetic Action (Edmonton)

Edmonton, Alberta is home to many improbable entities, and Energetic Action’s revisionist goth-punk paradigm is no exception. Straddling the unknown line between The Pop Group and This Heat, their impossible rhythms and extravagant performances wrap an undisturbed nascency into music hardened by generations of nuclear waste. A certified western anomaly.

Brave Radar (Montreal)

Local Montreal darlings Brave Radar have kept quiet a long time. So long, in fact, that we reluctantly started to believe their demise. We can barely conceive they’ll be back on stage with brand new oblique pop sweetness.

Bobo Boutin (Montreal)

Ex-Les Georges Leningrad drummer Bobo Boutin inhabits a delirious world of warped electronics. One man, yet an overwhelming performance slowly mounting into a frenzy of nightmarish proportions.

Dog Day (Halifax)

Dog Day’s bent alt-rock resonates with grand designs. Seth and Nancy are husband and wife, a charming duo who constantly keep slinging sharp and heavy anti-heroic hooks at every corner.

Tenderness (Toronto)

With bizarre loop sampling wizardry, cracked electronics and sexy sax swoons, Chrissy Reichert redefines any conceivable notions of contemporary R & B. Tenderness is not to be missed, because true originality comes in small doses.

Here it is: the Patron Saint of weird Canadian records. Alongside Corpusse’s Delusions and Bernard Bonnier’s Casse-Tête, Carlyle Williams’ Gotta Go For It! forms the Holy Trinity of ’80s Montreal private press beauty; each of them summing their parts and transcending with a one-man-one-wholly-formed vision possessed of unbridled id and utter disdain for the prevailing rules and praxis.

Forgotten in the usual fetishizing of the “filles du roi” cypher (1), beyond bloodlines French-royal and First Nation, is that Montreal’s women posses the ultimate sexy quality: good taste. And so it went that Leila Majeri (2) and Marie-Douce St. Jacques (3) played me Gotta Go For It! and on each separate occasion, my mind split open, the air charged, everything changed, and the damn crew hasn’t been the same since.

Released in 1988 and recorded at the Unidisc studios (4) in Montreal’s St. Henri neighbourhood, Gotta Go For It!’s qualities are many: blocky Chung King Studios drum programming, a careening non-chops guitar style that sounds like The Birthday Party minus the fireworks-display fay hairdos, and streams of vocal overdubs that make whomever Tim Buckley thought he was on Starsailor seem like a sane and well adjusted man. Some tracks have a synthetic tropical vibe that predicates the various fi’s (5) of the last half-decade like a boss, raising bloody hell in the listener’s mind, forcing one to reconsider every aesthetic category.

For all its sonic density and deistic power, Carlyle’s message, via truly inspiring vocal work, is positive: obsessive self-awareness and accompanying self-criticism can be reality forming, that the more you look INSIDE the more you will see. That, as he says on “No Reason”, “There is no reason for your next depression. And that’s the truth.” Which as an underlying vibe makes Gotta Go For It! unique amongst the great works of 20th century Canadian art.

Gotta Go For It!’s sleeve states: “The more you look – The more you see”, and like all amazing ass records, the more you listen, the more you hear.

(1) These women, who were poor and undereducated, often orphaned, and in their teens or early twenties, were sent over from France for the men of Canada. The rumour-that-won’t-die is that they were prostitutes.

(2) Screen printer extraordinaire, often using the nick Alphonze Raymond, and also the drummer in the amazing Yomul Yuk.

(3) Editor-in-chief of the awesome aMAZEzine, which lasted a few issues, came with a GYBE! 7” and generally covered a zone, Marie-Douce was also the Farfisa player and vocalist in Pas Chic Chic! I sat down with her to discuss this piece.

(4) Obviously, as the ’80s wore on and disco, particularly the French-Canadian kind, receded in popularity, Unidisc fell on hard times and started renting out their facilities cheap. They were based in the RCA building, who obviously were slowing down themselves.

(5) Lo, no, slow, glow, hi and high fidelities, be it Ariel Pink, Spencer Clark, James Ferraro and the rest, you can hear Carlyle in the faux madness. The incredible Afternoon Penis tape on Heavy Tapes is the most obvious student of Gotta Go For It!, however. Worth looking into for fans of Carlyle.

Undulating acid bass thaws the permafrost of Brusque Twins’ latest EP. The icy hot duo last washed up on these shores with the standout banger of Visage Musique’s Vol. 1 comp, cropping up again here with four new hyperborean ballads. The operatic vocals of Hollie Hensman are the tell-tale heartbeat of this closet goth club, thumping away to the rhythm of the night.

The infinitely astonishing half of the Brothers Tonstartss has unleashed a prophetic tome of popular drone. Andy Boay’s disharmonic orchestra eschews a wondrous pop dialectic; streams of incredible catch coalesce within tempered vibrations and dense bowed riffery while swathes of warm, ecclesiastical timbers mellow with hypnotic ease. Evil Masters brings us mere nanometers towards understanding the creative behemoth that is Andy Boay; yet the face doth melt and the hand grippeth ever more.

Crabe have unleashed a totally blasted and inexplicable artifact from the Montreal underground. Forging undefined links between Archimedean power pop and wasted Ramones covers, their unreadably-titled CDR gives the briefest glimpse into basemental prog conjured by the dialectically adventurous. Quintessentially bizarre. We’re not even sure if this is grippable.

Heady, meditative northern-folk excursions bind Ollie North’s sophomore EP to a deeper, holographic mood. Strange visions extol the steel-picked perturbations as distorted vocals quiver between grooves of acoustic mellow. A strange and welcomed occurrence within the haloed streams of the folk ritual.

Moments pass; Each Other persists. The Nova Scotian wunderkinds have traversed twisted trails to arrive at these amber-encased oscillations, cramming a Rundgren-esque treasure trove of hooks into two new insta-classics. Paradigmatic pop moves that transcend an already-flawless discography.

With insatiable pop addiction, Expwy forge wondrous anomalies between classic riffery and a future primitive brimming with mutant fuzz and choralic melancholy. Bag of Waters enslaves with every sonic ritual, finding wikked balance between jangled nuance and blasted harmonies; without warning, it’ll radiate cultic catchiness to every stalwart remover within the spectral radius of your dual blaster. Its ambitious existence remains a beacon to the brilliant creative energies exploding within our tundradic paradise. Totally and unabashedly awesome.