Well, this maybe made me cry because nothing has really seemed more significant recently: One of the greatest OUT Canadian bands of all time playing at the sexiest intersection in the country. Nobody showed up, except for the LEGEND Mark Maclean (1) and Brian Seeger (2) (documentarian). Whomever curated this stage was a GENIUS. Get Disguises to rip a set that sounds like someone shovelling glass trilliums overtop a TG rehearsal… at high-fucking-noon, at the epicentre of EVERYTHING. Before urban renewal, Yonge and Dundas was the only intersection in Canada that really felt like SOMEWHERE! That was before Lastman and his minions at city hall razed the pawnshops and porn-shops, the record stores and headshops, the dank jewellery markets, the diner joints and a whole slew of gorgeous heritage commercial architecture. I’m over it now and back to thinking it’s the coolest intersection in Canada. And if you are old enough to remember Yonge and Dundas before the Great Flattening than you are old enough to remember Disguises with Kevin Hainey (3) in the line-up on woowoowoowoooozy bass. Sometimes he would just stare at the bass and use his will to pitch its eternal wooing. Jon Shapiro (4) shreds bass here but he’s best remembered kneeling on a table playing mixer feedback, tapes and a giant horn. Randy Gagne, who looks like a cross between Prince and the Coffee Time at the corner of Dundas and Pape, better known to YOU as Man Made Hill, is the shuffle in Disguises, the motion flow. And what of the roguish mug up front in the sick cyan plaid? That’s Kevin Crumpp who runs Wintage Tapes and Records (5), crooning his little heart out, beating a rap, homeowner. The Disguises lp on Wintage (now OOP) is a chef d’oeuvre, recorded by Dale Morningstar at the legendary Gas Station Studio on Toronto Island (6) (which is historically significant (7)). People are so busy inquiring about the status of AIDS Wolf they forget to inquire about the status of Disguises, a more pressing question. And next year: Gastric Female Reflex featuring William Davidson at the Harborfront Center.

Addendum: If you’re not jamming WITH the King, then you’re jamming FOR the King, so might as well get with his majesty’s Lute-through-too-much-Line-6-style and call it a deep, mind-melded, madrigal, there Troubadour!

(1) (Mark Maclean) Of the Sick Lipstick, Black Cat 13, Thrashed Genes and Induced Labour, but who recently chose Life and gave up on the permanent death-fetish that is rock n roll, ostie.

(2) (Brian Seeger) Of the Planet Smashers, Pon D’Replay, Wasted Nymph

(3) (Kevin Hainey) Who runs Inyrdisk, the label that released the killer Clinton Machine Lp and tons of Toronto Underground Sound Force related cds, former Exclaim contributor, author.

(4) (John Shapiro) Of Induced Labour, Conspiracy of Familiar Objects, 13 Moons, Almost Blue Sunshine, producer of the John Milner 7” on Pleasance… also runs LsdOTB records, one of the few labels to actually release an Afternoon Penis joint, remembers record shopping on Yonge St. in those Palaeolithic times, secret side doors to the Lion at College and Adelaide, long nights at the Bagel and the first great gig of 2005 as if it had been fried and served just now, Chuck Schuldiner briefly joined Slaughter for a few months and was seen straggling around York Mills for some reason, how the Jerks and Suicide played the Horseshoe, Major Street days, long-night living room gig scenes and onwards.

(5) Wintage, the non-internet-presence label, has released countless amazing underground titles. Recent zones have included releases by Thurston Moore, field recordings of a Japanese couple fucking, Knurl, Nihilist Spasm Band and Six Heads, the former three on wax! The former three are all stone-cold Canadian classics.

(6) (Gas Station Studio on Toronto Island) Of Diner is Ruined, possibly even the Rheostatics. Recorded plenty of records in his day, including sides by Gord Downie, Julie Doiron, the Woodchoppers Union and the second GYBE! record ect ect. The Diner is Ruined blew my adolescent mind bee tee double you, when they opened for Helium and Sonic Youth at the Warehouse circa 1995.

(7) Reminds me of my submitted piece on Black Sabbath’s “Never Say Die” for Weird Canada’s Departures Revisited, the draft of which came back to me defaced, in Levin’s hand, by a giant MAPL system logo with only the “P” blackened.

Somewhere between a Canadiana Jandek, or a tone-deaf Neil Young, prairie-born Dave Smith drops a few of his strongest Going Down the Road-styled slices. Smith’s jams are often nothing more than tape buzz and harmonica-folk devolving into windy noise but with enough personality to shame Shotgun Jimmie into submission. Man of the land.

Toronto’s storied six-string weakling and Winnipeg’s notorious nightmare machinist junk it up on this flesh-crawling collab. The plainspoken title does little to prepare for the onslaught of shreddery lost in the tempest of tape loops and R2-D2 squeals. Bill Orcutt getting down with Bernard Bonnier is a start, but this is more like Mutant Concrète.

Canada’s elder statesmen of ear-tickling anti-traditionalism have been a national treasure for nigh on five decades. Deriving their name and modus operandi from the found object street orchestras of New Orleans, the NSB has been tirelessly jamming (almost) every Monday since the late 1960s on a motley selection of modified noise makers. Nothing Is Forever proves definitely that they’ve dipped into the fountain of youth, as this four-song slab from Wintage finds the band sounding as mirthful as ever. The immortal foghorn of Bill Exley booms down from the pulpit, once again setting the stage for Art Pratten’s free-squealing “Pratt-A-Various” and the Sharrockified moves of guitarist Murray Favro. John Clement slides in on his fretless, three-string bass passed down by the late, great Hugh McIntyre, while John Boyle tosses in a kitchen drawer of percussion and well-timed cymbal splashes. Longtime adoptee Aya Onishi gets her time to shine on the instrumental title track, letting loose with a deluge of extraterrestrial squiggles on oversized kazoo. In the end, Exley sums it all up with a plainspoken credo: “Music is hard work. You must practice day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year.”

The scorched ferocity barely tethers Burnt Monument‘s searing atonal bliss to our malignant reality. Revelling within the distorted chaos of a guitar-driven daily dance, Burro decimate every squalid soundscape in their pursuit of tautolic wretchery. It’s the ultimate display of damaged purity; a cacophony of annihilation; a treatise on the fundamental nature of obliteration. Ultimate Shred™.

If your parent’s parents were terrified by the satanic vibes emanating from backward playing records, they best stay away from Psychedelic Cadaver all together. The hiss sticking to the back of your throat may cause discomfort, but the feedback drowns your ear in micro-waves that erase all memories of silence. It’s music for people who love airports mixed with Chalupa and cigarettes. This album is what’s under your car in the parking garage and leering at you from the window as you baby sit. Cry if you want, but the demons will never rest.

Recorded in Calvin Johnson’s Dub Narcotic Studio in Olympia, WA, Canada’s most progressively potent gang of art-damaged grumps have created what could be their masterwork. After years of touring Rollins style and unleashing countless slabs upon the mound, AIDS Wolf have pared it down to the bare wires pulsing and robbing us of the horizon. Chloe Lum’s vocals are louder than ever, yet processed in robotic jabs to the eardrums, playful, violent, while Alex Moskos floats and meanders through a valley of oozing moans, all on top of the unrelenting smash provided by Yannick Desranleau. Every time they get into the studio they take it out to the left field for another round of “how insane am I/how insane is the world”, barefoot and lost. Finding new meanings inside the sullen husks of human interaction, focused on the future and destroying the past relatives we had known. Repetition. Repeater. Realized. Where do we go from here?

Wist Rec.’s clever Book Report series earns a crackling, bubbling 3” CD soundtrack from prairie elder label chief Gary Mentanko. The stately soundwaves coaxed through the ether of H.P. Lovecraft’s 1927 tome spew forth from the disk tray with m-Log outerspacials, disembodied radio plays and guttural gurgles from the belly of the bog. A cherished grip for literati and object fetishists alike.

Imagine following that silly rabbit down a hole and never finding the bottom. A soundtrack to your descent may sound frightening but in fact, after about two minutes of free falling, a sense of peace licks your brain and you forget what it feels like to keep two feet on the ground. Shaker Hymns whoop and flip chords to penetrate typical guitar riffs for the ultimate in desert spy movie darkness. A voice squelches from behind a dune but the bass ‘n’ drums are your canteen of agua. Lifesavers in a strange place that leave you afraid but intrigued. A plane in the sky writes a message that reads: “keep going”.

Tech Supporters Nicholas and Cheddle channel all thoughts of “kill roommate” into buzz, wind, fire, distortion and incantations. Indigenous Nudes play with heat guns as séance sounds churn from their guts; writhing a full-term demon baby from underwater delivery through the annals of time/space. Cheddle’s glasnost lingers in the box on the floor that reads “fragile” while ichola scoops up broken glass to throw at anyone who gets too close. To listen is to watch a candle burn with the TV on while mother bakes rotted mincemeat pies and calls from a distance that dinner’s ready.