February 19th, 2010
From the synthetic moons of Aaron Levin:
Bernardino continues to peel wigs and sublimate minds with his vicarious cosmic voyage through swaths of electroacoustic winds and perilous Ace Tone waters. This time we are lead by a transplanted Odysseus, bravely steering Bernardino’s vast synthesizer vessel through mysterious wires and serene circuitry. La Montaña del Capricornio is a continuation from Las Enamoradas‘ granular synthesia, diving deep into the dilemmic waves of warm ambience and dark druid-age. Hobo Cult cleverly realized Bernardino’s brilliance as a double-sided cassette, focusing your energies on the immaculate details emanating through tape hiss and Dolby warmth, adding comfort to the brooding sounds beneath its alluring orphic cover. A++++++.
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Bernardino Femminielli – La Montaña del Capricornio – Side A
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Bernardino Femminielli – La Montaña del Capricornio – Side B
File under: ambient // electronic // experimental // hobo cult // new age // synth
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: quebec | 1 Comment »
January 20th, 2010
From the Kimono-draped androgyny of Aaron Levin:
Geidi Primes is a landmark album of modern Canadian fringe, an assemblage of space-station pop memorabilia teleported from a time-static nether-zone beyond the scope of our earthly understanding. I’ve been waiting months for this, posting anxious pleas to Grimes after hearing the sinuous, harrowing bass-line on Rosa. With the curiously packaged cassette in my fiending grip, the orbiting swaths of synthetic warmth and echoing drum-machines have caused exciting astral projections outside my usual mental musicalia. Geidi Primes takes off from Rosa’s minimal bass-lines and launches straight into a strange hybrid of Björk, The Cure, Micachu, and other avant seamstresses, leaving a footprint in every decade and thankfully landing in ours. Chord progressions and samples are pulled from any source imaginable and the aggregation results in a Kate Bushian trail of decadence. It seems pointless and restrictive attempting to describe its brilliance, so I’ll stop with this: Geidi Primes is a flagship of hyperbolic dimensions. Get on board.
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Grimes – Rosa
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Grimes – Venus In Fleurs
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Grimes – Zoal, Face Dancer
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Grimes – Sardaukar Levenbrech
File under: arbutus // electronic // kate bush // pop // space // strange // the future // weird
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: quebec | 7 Comments »
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 12th, 2010
From the Teddy Riley jacketed body of Aaron Levin:
Chris d’Eon returns with a new moniker and a time-lapsed sound no less forward looking than his last. Veering away from the cosmic meanderings of wa al-’asr (by the time) and plunging wrap-first into New Jack Swingery, D’EON delivers like no other methamphetamine-infused Much Music dance party. The whole trip is soaked in d’Eon’s psychedelic twilight, making it the ideal late-night, post-apocalyptic high-on-life-but-I’m-still-down-on-everything soundtrack to your small-town fashion-school graduation party. Your not-really-friends are passing rails in a bathroom while you’re saluting a full-moon on the apex of an abandoned farm-house; Sony Walkman™ giving portable life to d’Eon’s mellow tech flowing through your veins. Meanwhile, Teddy Riley is sitting in his blackstreet-funded mansion with a giant grin and the speach bubble reads: “it’s about time, whoa jam.”
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D’EON – the girl from köln is gone
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D’EON – artificial law
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D’EON – haridwar
File under: ambient // electronic // new jack swing // numbers station // teddy riley
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: quebec | No Comments »
December 15th, 2009
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Bernardino Femminielli
Las Enamoradas
(Self Released)
Montreal, QC
::web/sounds::
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From the floating naked body of Aaron Levin:
Real mysteries, when they happen, are as surprising as a naked woman bathed in foreign moonlight, floating atop the red desert. Which is why I welcomed Las Enamoradas, Bernardino Femminielli’s debut, with open and inquisitive arms. Let his mysterious sound waves, polluted with synthetic granularity and ambient tones, wash your uncertainties away until you find yourself floating atop your own desert, naked and confused. Which is precisely when you’ll realize the deep, meditative state Bernardino has put you in; a true mage of the mind, able to manipulate your consciousness from great distances without the expense of mana. It’s a marvelous document of the experimental scene, totally unafraid to pass through the stargate, embrace all influences and step into the void of unchartered creativity. The result? An electronic voyage across psychedelic landscapes lacking any pretense or temporal vignettes. Keep an eye out for Bernardino’s 7″ on Fixture Records coming soon!
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Bernardino – El viaje interior
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Bernardino – Las enamoradas dopadas
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Bernardino – Santuario de Las Appariciones
File under: electronic // experimental // synth
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: quebec | 1 Comment »
December 14th, 2009
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Phil Dickau
This City, And You
(Self Released)
Edmonton, AB
::web/sounds::
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From the sub-zero-not-just-plain-zero Aaron Levin:
Never has there been a more appropriate time to dive into Phil Dickau’s ambient journey through the derelict channels of Edmonton, Alberta. Step outside right now and you’ll enter Edmonton’s absurd tundra-vortex; it’s -46°C outside and I’ll cry if I want to. Using a mix of concréte and synthesizer work-outs, This City, And You acts as a euphoric reminder to mellow out; it’s a harsh world out there, and it doesn’t matter how cold it is: Phil Dickau is here, standing on the edge of your mental cliff, with a synthesizer in his hands, telling you Edmonton’s story (this actually happened). This City, And You is a montage of audible simplicity; standing waves of municipal saturation and industrial escapism. Phil shreds and his record is the opposite of shred, which is why it also shreds. Shred mellow on, brother!
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Phil Dickau – A Candle
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Phil Dickau – An Empty House
File under: ambient // electronic // new age
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: alberta :: compact disc | 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 »
November 18th, 2009
From the brotherly womb (?) of Jesse Locke:
Any brother with a brother will tell you that brotherly love is some of the best love there is. Bare chested wrestling in the basement, giving each other noogies, pickin’ on your little sister and pickin’ boogers from your nose are all timeless ways to have fun, but bros Andy and Edwin White have translated their sibling revelry into some of the freshest music coming out of Montreal. Alongside their military grade crew cuts, baggy white t-shirts and Too $hort pants, you can see the love in their eyes when they take the stage in either this guise or as their High Rise tribute band, High Rise II. You can hear it in their music as well, in An When’s mix of trippy vocal loops, daffy raps and lo-fi loner rock, packing in 10 originals with inspired re-imaginings of Spacemen 3’s “Walkin’ With Jesus” and the Bambi soundtrack’s “Little April Showers” (no joke!). I’d be remiss not to mention the sonic similarities Tonstartssbandht share with the Animal Collective – or maybe Panda Bear’s “Bros” is a more fitting reference point – but they’ve carved out their own little cave in the wilderness as well and seem to be cranking out releases at the pace of Guided By Voices in their heyday. Guess the crew cuts run in the family too, ’cause that’s their Dad on the cover. A+++.
[Levin's Note: Weird coincidence? I had this jammy bumping in my car when Jesse e-mailed me with the review. That's because Jesse and I are bros, too.]
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Tonstartssbandht – Black Country
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Tonstartssbandht – Andy Summers
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Tonstartssbandht – Little April Showers
File under: electronic // lo-fi // pop // weird
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: quebec | 7 Comments »
November 4th, 2009
Chris d’eon’s debut cassette is an incredible 60-minute multi-genre psychedelic-meets-minimal-techno Tour de Force that will absolutely astonish, bewilder, and bewitch anyone curious enough to catch its spell. Weaving within currents of basemental panned-vocals, reverberated folk and Chicago-house-meets-Boards-of-Canada minimalia, wa al-’asr threatens all norms in genre synthesis and track sequencing. Chris d’eon has shown an incredible knack for branding every species of sound with his personal phantasms; every wavelength tinged with the unabashedly cosmic dark-age strata. As such, there is a brilliant vision ensconced inside wa al-’asr’s easter-folk and electro meanderings that is unquestionably rebellious; why try to push boundaries when committing every stream of consciousness to tape does the job for you. Let the world figure it out and they’ll fail miserably. Thankfully there are sadists like myself who enjoy trying. Amazing. Brilliant. Wonderful. Buy It Now.
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chris d’eon – wa al-’asr (by the time) :: Side 1
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chris d’eon – wa al-’asr (by the time) :: Side 2
File under: dark age // electro // electronic // folk // new age // psych // techno
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: cassette :: quebec | 5 Comments »
