From the seductive text of Joni Sadler:
After playing in numerous Ottawa bands over the past decade, Mark Alexander McIntyre has finally gone and released a solo record. As it turns out, Situs Inversus Totalis was worth the wait: McIntyre’s slow-burn acid folk possesses a unique and eerie sense of timelessness that is rare in so much of the music being produced today. Waves of queasy feedback stand in nice contrast to simple acoustic guitar and sparse vocals, and the whole record – right down to its plain cardboard sleeve and Xeroxed liner notes – remains nicely minimal in style. Ultimately, McIntyre channels the influences of sonic bros like Greg Ashley and Sir Richard Bishop through a haze of druggy sadness so damn well that all we’re left wondering is why it took him so bloody long to make a solo album in the first place.
Mark Alexander McIntyre – My April
Mark Alexander McIntyre – Reflections

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.
Gown – roots
Gown – here

OK, I apologize for not posting a review yesterday. I was too busy trying to see Lethbridge’s weird-science-punk marvella Endangered Ape, Calgary’s what-is-going-on-in-that-city Hunter Gatherer, and hobo power-popper Nobunny. All of this spread over two venues and many hours. Endangered Ape and Hunter Gatherer will be coming very soon to a Weird Canada nearest you.

In the meantime I’ll posted my latest **Space obsession. Maybe I’ll even start a “This Week in **Space” for those great bands that don’t have releases yet.

COSMETICS (Vancouver, BC)
File Under: Cosmic disco wave.
::web/sounds::

It takes an incredible amount of patience to make an album like The Blistering Sun, The Pale Moon, Hahahaha. It’s careful and deliberate; calculated without losing any ounce of intimacy; sparse, yet still engaging. Its minimalism is like a barren landscape whose terrain takes great form as you listen closer; diamonds, cacti, and beautiful insects crawling amongst the sandy-chords and phased vocals. There is a great amount of subtly that makes KNOTS so much more than a ‘guy with his guitar making a loner folk album in his basement.’ KNOTS delivers singer songwriter material that helps us forget how cliche the genre has become.
KNOTS – Happiness
KNOTS – Satiated