June 4th, 2010
From the infinite hypnotism of Aaron Levin:
Existing within the submerged foliage of a hyper dimensional psychedelic jungle, Hypnotic Infinitum captures the untamed reverberations emanating from the core of unknowable places. At their centre there exists a triforce; a triumvareate of underwater libraries, astral exotica, and the granular brilliance of experimentation, from which Hobo Cubes emerge as a new wave of brilliant fringe mascinations. Yet another side project of the highly imaginative Francesco de Gallo (with some help from Bernardino Femminielli). The album is packaged beautifully by the die-cut masters from Patente. Amazing.
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Hobo Cubes – Onde Astrali (w/ Bernardino Femminielli)
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Hobo Cubes – AXXA
File under: aaron levin // exotica // experimental // jungle // noise // patente // psych // synth
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: quebec | 1 Comment »
April 19th, 2010
From the chromatic waves of Aaron Levin:
Peril loiters around their underground vision, embracing our maligned audience with unprecedented density. Step sequencers set the pace, with a brooding, low-end urgency driving COSMETICS’ minimal masquerade. Soft Skin pulses like a beacon within some distorted gothic crepuscule; leather, skin, and twilight transmute into anthems of superficial warrants and synthetic indulgence while traces of italo disco and minimal synth dance beneath Aja’s reverberated whispers. Possibly the sexiest underground synth record I’ve heard.
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COSMETICS – Soft Skin
File under: aaron levin // captured tracks // dance // italo disco // minimal synth // synth
Categoria!! 7" :: New Canadiana :: british columbia | 1 Comment »
March 9th, 2010
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EMILY
Neat and Tidy in Your Mind
(Mo=Da=Mu)
Vancouver, BC
Originally Released: 1985
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From the generally untidy mind of Aaron Levin:
Destructive guitar congruance. Menacing synthetic tones. Echo-to-infinity vox processing. Extirpated TASCAM wreckage. Neat and Tidy in My Mind is the most relentless barrage of left-field maximal synth North American has ever seen. It’s the second cassette by solo, multi-format Vancouver artist Emily Faryna, whose visionary digital mythics have been obscured by Canada’s under-documented vintage cassette scene. Her conical prose hovers darkly over Neat and Tidy‘s minor-key delirium, brewing the magnetic urgency coursing through its self-producing ether; a last, desperate attempt to convince the world that the mind’s ailments exist on the outside. It’s a gateway drug into the underbelly of a hyper intimate experimental underground torn from the pages of Neuromancer and, to me, the flagship vehicle for the vanguard of fringe-Canada. Words left to describe Neat and Tidy in Your Mind: ambitious, singular, forward-thinking, powerful, intense, and prodigious. There is a reissue in the works.
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EMILY – Who Cares
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EMILY – Compromise
File under: 1985 // aaron levin // ambient // experimental // maximal synth // minimal synth // mo=da=mu // noise // psych // punk // synth
Categoria!! Departures Revisited :: british columbia :: cassette | 4 Comments »
February 24th, 2010
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Mode Moderne
Ghosts Emerging
(Lust Neuvo Records)
Vancouver, BC
::web/sounds::
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From the ghostly bedding of Aaron Levin:
Vancouver’s synthetic underground is bubbling for the second time since the 80s when labels and artists were populating basements, clubs, cassette racks, and ideas with bleak drum machines and coarse synthesizers. COSMETICS, magneticring, N.213, Twin Crystals, MYTHS, Von Bingen, Haunted Beard, [insert band I'm forgetting] and now the industrial gothic Mode Moderne project Vancouver as a city on the brink of a synth-adjective explosion. Ghosts Emerging live centre-stage in the unassuming minimal-synth-pop arena with secret conviction and harmonic prowess, drifting listeners on their currents of nostalgic woe. Vocalist Phillip Intile’s non-chalant industrial modulations makes the whole trip strangely manipulative as you wake up mid-album unaware of your new musical surroundings: pulsing drum machines, swathy synthesizers, ethereal guitar leads, and blankets of ambient-satin. Let’s welcome the new age.
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Mode Moderne – Les Neuf Soeurs
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Mode Moderne – Radio Heartbeat
File under: aaron levin // lust neuvo records // minimal synth // pop // synth
Categoria!! 12" :: New Canadiana :: british columbia | 2 Comments »
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 | 2 Comments »
February 17th, 2010
From the perilous necklace of Aaron Levin:
I want to live Precious Necklace. I want tight sweaters. VIP access to the clurb. Double martinis. False love. Teen soundtracks blasting. I want the whole world in a song and I want to dance; pulsing drum machines, echoey vocals and exaggerated pop-harmonies. Let the music take you back in time. Nintendo, cocaine, plastic people, and radio hits. Sex in bathrooms and parental neglect. Stereotypes. We’ve lost our youth. We can take it back. The Silly Kissers, in a futuristic act of heroism, are our only hope. Their fourth and most realized effort to-date showcases their perfected 80s-pop ventriloquism. Precious Necklace is a re-imagining that only nostalgia can deliver; glossing over the weaknesses of an era we will never truly understand and manipulating the pearls of its bounty to deliver every genre’s saving grace: synthetic pop perfection. Precious Necklace, released as a limited-edition 10″ on Montreal’s Arbutus Records, is a 10/10 major-scale heart-melt. The world has never needed so much. They will deliver. GRIP. IT. NOW.
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Silly Kissers – You Could Even Like Me
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Silly Kissers – Treat Me Like You Do
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Silly Kissers – Precious Necklace
File under: 80s // arbutus records // pop // synth
Categoria!! 10" :: New Canadiana :: quebec | 3 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 »
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 »
August 8th, 2009
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Silly Kissers
Halloween Summer
(Self Released)
Montreal, QC
::web/sounds::
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The first time I got close to another women (during our junior-high dance) I went for a butt-grab. I was twelve. She told me she had to go to the bathroom and never returned. The confusion hanging in the air post-grab-pre-rejection would have been the perfect foreground for the Silly Kissers’ new adventure into vintage summer-of-’84 teenage angst. Six months after they dropped Love Tsunami, their take on the more danceable side of ’84, the Silly Kissers return with a thoughtful, less sugary, and more interesting segue into the unchartered waters of extreme-catchiness and mid-80s radio-faire. They depart from the Human League standard and set-course towards a more emotional and distorted take on ’80s-balladry. The rapid key-scales and spoken-word segways are still there, so you know it’s the same band of creative sailors on a quest for some higher understanding of pop. The new album is a grower and it’s blowing up my spot right now. I love it.
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Silly Kissers- Easy Fantasy
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Silly Kissers – Thinking Of You
File under: pop // synth
Categoria!! New Canadiana :: compact disc :: quebec | No Comments »
July 31st, 2009
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::
File under: cosmic // italo // minimal // minimal synth // synth
Categoria!! thisweekin**space | No Comments »
