Stylus Magazine -- Dec/Jan

Published by the University of Winnipeg Students' Association

S

Stylus

Dec/Jan

Volume22 Issue6

On the Cover SILAS CHIPELSKI is a jack of all trades, a man about town, a sizzling lightning bolt under the disco ball. His nefarious skills include fancy footwork, smooth talkin’, and sharp shootin’ (with a camera, that is).

Snap! Flash! It’s Silas! Watch for him and his trusty sidekick, Fred Astaire, in hallowed halls and dusty gutters.

Book all these aforementioned skills at silas.chipelski@hotmail.com

Production Team Editor . . . . . . . . . . . Taylor Benjamin Burgess Assistant Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . Sheldon Birnie Art Director . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew Mazurak Distributor . . . . . . . . . . . Patrick Michalishyn Advertising Manager . . . . . . . . . . Ted Turner

204-786-9779, outreach@theuwsa.ca Cover Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Silas Chipelski Printed by Copy Plus Inc. . . . . . 204-232-3558

Contributors Victoria King Adrienne Yeung Scott Wolfe Devin King Dallas Kitchen Kent Davies Mike Chiasson Jordan Janisse Kevin Mozdzen Natalie Baird Kent Davies DJ Stone Jesse Blackman Janet Adamana Ryan Simmons Devin King Nicholas Van Doeselaar Elizabeth Whitbread Richard Altman Sheldon Hoffman Michael Elves Stefan Braun Doreen Girard Stylus is published bi-monthly by the University of Winnipeg Students’ Association, with a circulation of 2,500. Stylus serves as the program guide to 95.9FM CKUW and will reflect the many musical communities it supports within Winnipeg and beyond. Stylus strives to provide coverage of music that is not normally written about in the mainstream media. Stylus acts as a vehicle for the work of new writers, photographers and artists, including members of the University of Winnipeg, of CKUW and of the Winnipeg community at large. Stylus reserves the right to refuse to print material, specifically, that of a racist, homophobic or sexist nature.

All submissions may be edited and become the property of Stylus.

All opinions expressed in Stylus are those of the contributors and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors. Contributions in the form of articles, reviews, letters, photos and graphics are welcome and should be sent with contact information to:

Stylus Magazine Bulman Student Centre, University of Winnipeg 515 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, MB, R3B 2E9 Phone: 204-786-9785, Fax: 204-783-7080 editor@stylusmagazine.ca www.stylusmagazine.ca

TableofContents Blah, Blah, Blah Events around town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 CKUWho Dub City Steppers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 CKUW Program Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Local Spotlight The Crooked Brothers // The Magnificent 7s . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Root Cellar Blitzen Traper // Wilco // Elliott BROOD . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Ulteriors Jóhann Jóhannson // Raleigh Moncrief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Under the Needle Dum Dum Girls // William Shatner // Tinariwen . . . . . 26 Live Bait Frank Turner // The Once // Zombie Walk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Fear of Music The Narrative of Popular Music in the Decade of the MP3Blog . . . 31 Weird Shit with Kent Davies The Weird Queen of L.A.’s Rock Scene . . . . 32

Features Oh My Darling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 The Secondhandpants . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Shooting Guns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Breath Grenades . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 The Magnificent 7s . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Chad VanGaalen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 BIG FUN Festival . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Rainbow Trout Fishing & Music Derby . . 17

Disintegration Records . . . . . . . . . . 20

Contributions will be accepted in the body of an email. No attachments please. All submissions may be edited and become the property of Stylus. Unauthorized reproduction of any portion of Stylus is strongly discouraged without the express written consent of the editors.

www.stylusmagazine.ca

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Dec 2011/Jan 2012 Stylus Magazine

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tUnE-yArDs made the unbelievers believe at the West End Cultural Centre on Monday, November 14th

Blah, Blah, Blah What’s up, honey-baby? Looking for some fun tonight? Aren’t we all. Buckle up tight and throw your panties out the door, there’s some hot shit going down and I’m about to take you there. *** You like getting drunk on Wednesdays? You make Poor life Choices? I can see we have a lot in common, sugar. Let’s hit up the Standard Wednesday nights for Andrew Neville. *** December 2nd, the ANAF Club 60 on River hosts Mayor Matt Allen & the Little Buddies. Cheap beer, hot cougars, no hats, swearing or cover charge! *** December 3rd the babes in the Bushtits are at the Folk Exchange. *** Dec. 4th Ghost Face mothafucking Killah is up in Peggritty at the Republic fucking Nightclub!

Shiiiiiiiit!!! *** Mid-Way State play our mid-way province, stopping at the Lo Pub December 7th.

Sexy country crooner Paul Brandt hits the MTS Centre the same night, but shit, who has time or cash for Paul Brandt when PRINCE plays the MTS on the 8th! Nine months from this night, Winnipeg’ll be popping out bastards left and right! *** Starting on the 8th, everybody’s favourite blues rocking party animals the Perpetrators are busting shit up at the Times Change(d) every Thursday in December. *** Winnipeg weirdo JP Hoe hosts his annual Hoe Hoe Holiday Show at the Park Theatre over December 9th and 10th. Can’t beat two nights of solid Hoe action (not legally, anyhow!). *** Sub City will be packing the Times to the tits on December 10th. Let’s get there early, baby, and we can make out in the back! Noble Thiefs will be stealing hearts just a block away at the Pyramid Cabaret that night as well, while over at the Lo Pub, Heartbeat City are making panty soup with Lemuria, Fists In and Dangercat. *** Unkempt rockers Sheepdogs and Monster Truck get hot and heavy at the Garrick December 11th, or else get jazzed up at Pop Soda’s with Joe Cote and Eric Sawatzsky. *** December 12th, Park Theatre hosts the travelin’ Prairie Roots Revue, featuring Northcote, Zachary Lucky, Carly Malcher and ever dreamy Ryan

Jan 18 – 21 @ WFG Cinematheque Upside Down: The Creation Records Story is the only fully authorized documentary about the English fuzzpop record label, home to a number of canonized bands such as Jesus and the Mary Chain, MBV, Ride, Slowdive, eventual arena rockers Oasis, and housepop pioneers Primal Scream. The label, now defunct, has quite the tale of bankruptcy and drugs, a.k.a. stereotypical rock ’n’ roll.

And on Friday, Jan 20, Winnipeg’s own Haunter will be playing a short set of songs from the label.

Taylor Burgess (Editor) www.stylusmagazine.ca

Photo by Jordan Janisse

Boldt (Deep Dark Woods). *** December 14th the Pyramid Cabaret gets hard as fucking nails with Chimera and Unearth. *** December 15 – Transistor 66 presents the Magnificent 7s All Kinds of Mean CD release show at the West End Cultural Centre. This show is going to blow your fucking minds… Rootsy rockers the Empty Standards are hosting a competing CD release at the Park Theatre. If rocking roots aint yr thang, but hippitty hoppetty party beats are, then hit up the Greenroom for Rebel Yell. *** Need a cheap love-slave…. err, date?

Rainbow Trout Festival & Fishing Derby is hosting a fundraising party at the Lo Pub for its 2012 incarnation on December 16. DJ Beauchamp’ll be spinning, Smoky Tiger rocking hard with a bachelor & bachellorette auction to follow… Prefer face smashing metal and stale beer breath? Hit up the Zoo for Seventh Sin, Alphakill and Mortalis. *** Fred Penner plays a double header at the West End Cultural Centre Dec. 16 and 17, with an adult themed gig Friday night, followed by a Saturday afternoon matinee for the kiddies. *** Dec. 17 marks the return of Teemu Selanne to Winnipeg, as Jets host the Anaheim Ducks. To celebrate this historic event, the Times Change(d) and the sexy bitches in Cheering for the Bad Guy are throwing a party! Show up in a Selanne jersey to get in cheap and be entered to win a slough-foot of prizes.

Cypress River’s own Ben Wytinck is playing, too. If you’d rather hear some sweet soulful tunes instead of watching millionaires pass the puck around, local heart-throb J.D. Edwards and his hot band release their new disc at the West End CC earlier that evening. Don’t dig either? Lo Pub’s got the rocking Ripperz, with a Waste Odyssey and the Mystics to knock your socks off. *** The Details and electro rockers Goldenboy are at the Park December 22nd if you want to get your indie-butt-shaking-off on. *** December 29th, after a nice little break to celebrate our good buddy J.C.’s birthday in style, and drink away the debilitating hangover that comes

Dec 17 @ Times Change(d)

with partying with the Lord, the Consumer Goods are throwing a CD release at the Lo Pub. That’s pretty fucking sweet, eh? *** New Year’s Eve, New Year’s Eve… What the fuck to do on New Year’s Eve, eh? If you’re too chicken shit to face the cold, the Jets take on the Leafs on the teevee. If you’ve got the guts to head out, well, that’s another story. The Times’ a Tom Petty tribute night with the Empty Standards. The Park Theatre is also hosting a party with Oh My Darling. Hit any venue in town up if you feel like spending lots of cash and potentially standing in a cold line up to do so. Why don’t we just grab a six from the Zoo and head back to my place, baby? It’s cold out there! *** At this point in the game, everybody is clearly hung over as all hell from the holidays and broker than a pack of jokers.

The listings in our great city are drying up like a 90 year old’s sex drive.... But that’s not to say 90 year olds can’t get wet and wild once in a while! *** January 12 through 14, the Times Change(d) is celebrating it’s 11th anniversary, with red hot performances

by JD Edwards Band, the Crooked Brothers, the Perpetrators and more! *** Sitdowntracy will make you stand up and dance at Pop Soda’s January 13. *** Had enough dancing, honey? Too bad!

January 14th, Pop Soda’s and Queer View host one sexy ass dance party with Dance Unicorn Dance and a sexy night with sexy crooners Ridley Bent & Nathan goes down on... err, at the West End *** January 20th, the F-Holes tear the Times a new one. *** Cheering for the Bad Guy return to the Times Change(d) on January 21st to get weird as fuck, and the Afterlife, Les Sexy, and The Fantastic get all up in Pop Soda’s. *** January 27th, Electric Soul will shock your loins to life at Pop’s, and on the 28th the Bottle Cap Blues Band gets into it at the Times. *** That’s all I know, sweet thang, and all ye need to know. Jump on in my Parisienne, sugar-tits, let’s get wild! ***

Stylus Picks Yr Noise

Dec. 17 marks the return of Teemu Selanne to Winnipeg, as the Jets host the Anaheim Ducks. To celebrate this historic event, the Times Change(d) and the sexy bitches in Cheering for the Bad Guy are throwing a party! Show up in a Selanne jersey to get in cheap and be entered to win a slough-foot of prizes.

Dec 4 @ Marquee Lounge She fell and then lightly touched his jaw.. kissed him // Rubbed his hair, turned around the ambulance was there // Plus the blue coats, Officer Lough, took it as a joke // Weeks ago he strip-searched the God and gave him back his coke //

Sheldon Birnie (Assistant Editor)

Ghostface Killah is Impossible to miss on Dec. 4th Andrew Mazurak (Art Director) Dec 2011/Jan 2012 Stylus Magazine

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DOWNTOWN UNDERGROUND Dec. 1st + 2nd @ Absurd Machine Studios

PRESENTS:

HOLIDAZE CRAFT SHOW Saturday Dec. 3rd @ the Exchange Community Church SPY VS. SPY Friday Dec. 9th @ The Pyramid THE 10TH ANNUAL JUNTO LIBRARY DINNER & SPELLING BEE Sunday Dec. 11th, 5pm @ Mondragon UPSIDE DOWN: THE CREATION RECORDS STORY Wed. Jan. 18th - Sat. Jan. 21st, 9pm @ Cinematheque

ILLUSTRATION BY KEVIN MOZDZEN

BIG FUN FESTIVAL Thurs. Jan. 26th - Sun. Jan. 29th @ Various Venues

BY MICHAEL ELVES

OH MY DARLING

They may have entitled their album Sweet Nostalgia, but Winnipeg’s Oh My Darling wasn’t looking back longingly when they went into the studio to record it. Instead, the roots quartet (consisting of Rosalynn Dennett on fiddle, Allison de Groot on clawhammer banjo, Marie-Josée Dandeneau on upright and electric bass, and Vanessa Kuzina on vocals, guitar and mandolin) was clearly focused on the present and the future with their sophomore full-length.

“We knew we wanted to have a different sound for this record – not necessarily something that was surpassing the other record, but just something very different,” notes Dennett, explaining that “we definitely wanted to incorporate more of our live sound in it so our whole method for recording this album was very, very different from the way we did our first one. We mostly did it live off the floor, all in the same room, playing together, focusing on the acoustic sound and capturing the energy of our live performances.”

Aiding them in their attempt to capture that energy was Juno-award-winning producer Steve Dawwww.stylusmagazine.ca

son, an accomplished musician in his own right.

“We were a huge admirer of Steve Dawson for both his producing and his musicianship. We met him at the Western Canadian Music Awards when we were nominated a couple of years ago and kindof followed him around a little bit star struck,” Dennett relates of how they made their connection with Dawson. “He’s definitely been a huge inspiration for us so when we got him into the studio and started working with him he had a lot to say in terms of the overall sound. He really embraced the idea of doing it live – he was a big push for that whole thing. We had a lot of the stuff pretty arranged but there were some songs we essentially wrote in the studio, that we hadn’t played live before and so he really helped shape that – and he plays some really rippin’ solos on it too,” she notes excitedly.

Bandmate Kuzina chimes in with credit to a second figure: “We recorded the album over seven days in a straw bale house and studio with Don Benedictson in beautiful Roseisle, Manitoba.”

As important as the recording process was for Oh My Darling, Sweet Nostalgia’s strength lies in its material and for that the band found a balance between the old and the new in crafting a collection that Dennett calls “more representative of how we sound live.”

“The collection of songs on Sweet Nostalgia is a mix of some of the songs we’ve been doing since the very beginning. Like ‘Roustabout’ is the first song we ever all learned and performed together and so that one always felt really good to us,” notes Kuzina.

As to the new material, she concludes: “Our writing was really starting to form in a way where we were finding just the right balance between our inspiration and our love of old-time and traditional music but marrying that with some new sounds in our original material. It definitely speaks a bit to the past and hints at some of our older work too, but is moving forward in a way that way more cohesive – we’re finding a way to balance all of our different inspirations and passions.”

Dec 2011/Jan 2012 Stylus Magazine

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the

SECONDHANDPANTS

PHOTO BY RYAN SIMMONS

SUSPENDERING DISBELIEF ACROSS THE GALAXY

BY RYAN SIMMONS

S

econdhandpants, Winnipeg’s finest Science-Folktion duo has become somewhat of a local institution.

Many will know them from the Winnipeg Fringe and Folk Festivals, where they regularly appear as the featured act in a gigantic jukebox, often stealing attention from the main stages they appear next to.

The duo is comprised of brothers Curtis Wiebe (a.k.a.

Francis Leonard, who was raised in the wild by Saskatchewan prairie goats) and Marlon Wiebe (a.k.a.

Will Maynard who was adopted by aliens and has returned home). They have surrounded their catchy, whimsical tunes with an ever-expanding mythos bolstered by the short films they create and a Fringe play last year, which feature an array of spin-off characters portrayed by friends and impressively constructed puppets (do a quick youtube search for “Rocket John” for an example).

The duo has an uncanny knack for finding an incredibly appealing middle ground between DIY charm and perfectionist craftsmanship that needs to be experienced to be truly appreciated. And, as a fan myself, I have yet to see a single person walk away from one of their many appearances without a certain feeling of glee. The pair are hoping to see their new album Suspender Your Disbelief released shortly before Christmas this year.

06 Stylus Magazine Dec 2011/Jan 2012

Stylus: So, you two are brothers, how long have you been making music together?

Marlon Wiebe: Well, I guess it’s been six years now?

Curtis Wiebe: Yeah, as the Secondhandpants.

MW: We didn’t really do anything before that though. Wait, how did that start? I remember walking on Mostyn, by the curling rink, and you were like: “I have this great idea! This thing called Secondhandpants, and we’ll have a song called ‘The Secondhandpants Dance.”

CW: Yeah, that was the idea. The concept was we were going to write and record an entire album in one day. But, then, of course that got stretched out to a whole weekend. And that’s our first album, Featuring Space Robot.

MW: And that was recorded on my old computer with just a $10 mic hanging from the ceiling.

CW: Yeah, very outsider. And we thought that would be it, but then we were asked to do a show.

MW: Mennofolk.

CW: And that’s when we came up with the personas. So, since our genre is Science-Folktion it made sense that one of us should be spacey and the other should be folkey.

Stylus: So, you kind of just winged the first album and then you were forced to kind of justify

it?

MW: Yeah, that’s kind of how it happened! And the mythos slowly built from there.

CW: Yeah, there’s a whole back-story. It’s very involved.

Stylus: So, is your new album a concept album?

MW: Well by default, I guess it is, yeah!

CW: They’re all… I never really thought of it that way. Our whole lives are concept albums.

Stylus: You guys do a lot of construction on props and sets and use a lot of performance in your shows. How did that start?

CW: Well, it all goes back to the first show, we had this thing called the Communicatron, which is a souped up rotary phone we used to call Space Robot during the show to sing with us from deep space. Then we came up with the jukebox thing as a subversive way to play music at the Folk Festival, I was a sculpture student at U of M at the time and made the Jukebox as a project. I would never have been able to make it otherwise, without the studio space. As far as performance, and us there was probably always an element of that. It just goes back to us playing around.

MW: I think that’s just inherent, remember back when we emceed that wedding and we were playing as ourselves, before Secondhandpants, and someone

came up to us and said “You guys are like Bob and Doug McKenzie.”

Stylus: So where do your songs usually start?

MW: Usually Curt.

CW: It usually starts with the ukulele and I come up with a concept and Marlon comes in and adds the bass line and harmony once in a while.

Stylus: Okay, some people might peg you guys as children’s performers.

MW & CW: Ohhhh...

MW: I find it unfortunate when people are like, “You guys are great kids music!” And it’s like, “You guys enjoyed it, right there!”

CW: My point of reference is always the Muppets. Because, people assume it was for kids, but at the time it was never meant to be a kids show.

It was an all ages show and kids liked the puppets, but at the same time they had Peter Sellers on for adults. I think of ourselves as an all ages group. Also, we regularly host Puppet Slam shows, which is meant as an adult event. But we do some stuff just for kids too!

Stylus: So, tell us about your new album.

MW: Yes, it’s called Suspender your Disbelief. It’s our first professionally recorded album.

CW: We have an engineer. We wanted an album we felt good about asking people money for, all of our other albums are recorded very cheaply on our own. People always want to pay us for our music, and handing them a CD labeled with a sharpie…

MW: Well, we’re probably selling ourselves short a bit, but I still feel too bad asking too much!

Mennonite humility, I guess.

www.stylusmagazine.ca

Stylus: Are you trying anything new on the album?

CW: Yeah, a string quartet.

MW: And we have a choir on one. Kids yelling, we got kids at Art City to yell stuff. They were pretty excited about it too.

SUDDENLY, THE INTERVIEW IS INTERRUPTED BY THE COSMIC ARRIVAL OF FRANCIS LEONARD AND WILL MAYNARD! Francis Leonard: Our mission is to spread the gospel of Science-Folktion music around the world, but we haven’t gotten past Winnipeg yet.

Mainly, that has to do with financial concerns, but we’re hoping one of these days that an anonymous millionaire will show up to back us. Perhaps, Will, you have a rich space uncle?

Will Maynard: Yeah, I’ve got a couple. But they’re mostly homebodies, lots of tentacles. And the monetary conversion rates for space-bucks is very poor.

Stylus: So how much do you think ScienceFolktion has caught on?

FL: Oh, I really think it is!

WM: There are at least four or five people.

FL: At least four or five people! We have some likes on the Facebook. And on my Twitter feed I get at least one fan every four or five months.

At least twenty-five total, at least! I’m considering hiring some bodyguards, because you have to stay safe when you’re popular.

Stylus: Are there any protest songs on this

album? It is folk music, right?

FL: Well yes, you’re right. We sing about important Science-Folktion topics like…

WM: Invisible people.

FL: It has various songs about mythical beasts, a crypto-zoological element. We have a song about the Manipogo, which is the Manitoba equivalent of the Ogopogo. We have a song called “We are The Sasquatch” which is sort of a protest song, like, “People on the fringes unite!”

Stylus: So do you consider yourselves fringe artists?

FL: Well, you know since we’ve gotten so many friends on Facebook we may be coming out of the fringes, but I will always consider myself a fringe person. I grew up raised by wild Saskatchewan wild prairie goats, and nobody’s heard of them. I accept that I came from the fringe. And, we often play at the Fringe Festival.

Stylus: What do you want people to get out of this album?

WM: That Science-Folktion is a viable, formidable genre.

FL: A few more friends on Facebook would be nice. But I just want people to have an enjoyable experience, maybe challenging, because there are those songs about living on the fringe. ScienceFolktion covers a wide range of the human experience, maybe alien too. Will would know about that.

For more intergalactic tomfoolery, check out secondhandpants.com

Dec 2011/Jan 2012 Stylus Magazine

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PHOTO BY TRAVIS COLE

SHOOTING GUNS N

ovember 11th, Shooting Guns returned to Winnipeg near the close of an action-packed year for the band. Guitarist Chris Laramee and synth jockey Steven Reed talk about the near future and the distant past, mojo oracles and the voltaic path to a behemoth riff.

Stylus: How did Shooting Guns come together?

Chris Laramee: We’ve all known each other for at least a decade now. When Keith moved back from Vancouver, he and Jay moved in to a place together that had a sweet garage to jam in, so Friday night burnout sessions began. That was about two and a half years ago, and here we are.

Steve Reed: Jim and I have known each other since the early nineties in Dalmeny, SK, and have been shirking adulthood together ever since.

Stylus: Steve, you and Jim (Ginther) co-founded Teargas Recording Tree artist collective, which has been in existence since 2002. How did the collective begin, and how has the focus changed since then?

SR: Back then we were frustrated by the fact that a lot of great local bands were breaking up without ever recording themselves; the good news was that recording equipment was suddenly no longer priced out of range for amateurs. We bought cheap Behringer junk, dented mics, and taught ourselves a bunch of terrible recording habits. Our albums and a lot of friends’ albums were published with the Teargas imprint, but we’ve never had a budget to function as a proper label, so we’ve shied away from presenting ourselves as such. We also admired the collaborative spirit of independent shows that were happening at La Salsa and (the old) Bassment, and wanted to work with whomever was also interested in reciprocal effort. This was all before MySpace and Facebook and Bandcamp, so now it sounds pretty ridiculous to say, but we were hoping to serve as a hub to connect artists who were into collaborative scene-building. Now anyone with a molecule of ambition and a computer can and should network for themselves. The website is a shamefully neglected archive now, but we still publish under that sigil. We also still occasionally receive hilarious pitches from bands that have done zero research, looking to “get signed,” in which case we try our best to encourage them to start conspiring and volunteering with local www.stylusmagazine.ca

promoters and bands they respect.

Stylus: You just released a video for “Public Taser.” How was that experience?

CL: To be truthful, we didn’t release it. A buddy of ours, Tyler Baptist, wrangled the whole crew together, shot it in a couple of days and edited it in about the same time. He was the mover/shaker and deserves all the credit. We just showed up and drank beer.

SR: Tyler (BadMonsterFilms) is amazing. I can’t believe how fast he put it all together. Couldn’t have been simpler from our end of things. Show up.

Drink, smoke, lay down.

Stylus: Density and texture of sound are salient characteristics in Shooting Guns live show.

What are some of the favoured pieces of gear in use right now?

CL: Mine would be my girlfriend Shelby’s Gibson SG. Sounds amazing. High end to counter Keith’s earth-fuzz.

SR: Speaking for myself, I’m really loving what the cheap $60 Korg Monotron can do in terms of demonic howls and bowel-shattering low end through a Holy Grail reverb pedal. If cheap pocket-sized analog synths are the future, sign me the fuck up.

Also, I enjoy Keith’s new Orange cab, and I hope my MX 55p wedge can endure my abuse. In terms of software, my pal Brennan (a.k.a. Knar) just released his first VST plugin “Knardist01.” It makes some pretty amazing squeals when automated over a percussive arpeggio.

Stylus: Are you working out new material right now? Any near future plans for recording?

CL: Hitting the studio a week after the Winnipeg show. We always record at Steve’s while we jam, just in case we hit gold.

SR: We’ve also got hundreds of hours of recorded jams to plunder. We’ve just finished “Down and Out in Detroit,” our half of a split 7” with the Cult of Dom Keller (top psych in the UK right now, in my opinion). We’re also going to record at The Avenue on Nov 19th for a split with Edmonton’s brain-melting Krang.

Stylus: How are Shooting Guns being influenced now, as opposed to when you started writing songs together?

CL: I would say about the same method of writing; me or Keith will bring in the main riff, we’ll quickly

BY DOREEN GIRARD

discuss some arrangement and have at it. When the smoke clears, we’ll usually be deafened and falling down laughing and we’ll have something we can use.

Or we’ll just be falling down laughing.

SR: I’ve always loved psych – thank the gods for Rick White – but I didn’t have much of a taste for metal before joining this band; now I’m glad to say that Electric Wizard, Lavagoat, and Red Fang are lighting up my soul thanks to these guys. They’ve all got sagely amounts of lore to share about amazing music, most of it ranging quite FAR from metal, actually. They could DJ the rest of my life. I think as our proficiencies develop we’ll be more likely to wander away from the comfy hexatonic gloom of drop-D; who knows, maybe we’ll even start to use rests. In any case, I think we’re all convinced there’s a motherload yet to be mined if we keep following this Hawkwind-Sabbath vein.

Stylus: You’ve been doing this for a while, with a bunch of different bands. Do you remember the first gig you ever played?

CL: Actually, no.

SR: My first gig in a proper venue was at Amigos with Shakey Wilson’s original Co-ops lineup. I remember I couldn’t stay because I was underage, but that suited me fine because I thought I had a shot at getting laid at a party that night. I was quite wrong, of course.

Stylus: Best stoner epiphanies?

CL: Being on mushrooms in Bellvue, SK and watching two elderly couples playing cards from across the street, while listening to Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew.

SR: Camping with Jim, I (thought I) woke up to the hum of a million bloodsucking insects in a tent on an island near the ruin of a trapper’s cabin. But no insects were inside the tent, and none were out in the forest either. The ground was heaving up and cracking open to show the green glow of something under the moss. A hulking cave bear skeleton rose out of the ground with a ribcage full of skulls. In utter silence, I was swallowed up into the ribcage and the beast plunged back into the damp earth. Season after season flashed by, leaves followed by snow, followed by melting, and fungal blooms. Decades. It was pure beauty. I was unafraid. Outrunning death is ridiculous. We belong to the earth; it’s not the other way around.

Dec 2011/Jan 2012 Stylus Magazine

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BREATH GRENADES 25 years of Blowing Minds and Bewildering Audiences

By Kent Davies

Iwanna play this song but the radio just won’t play,

We’re going to play it now. Hell… we’re not gonna go away.

- Breath Grenades song “Blasting Pad” from CBC radio’s Brave New Waves in 1996.

No one sounds like the Breath Grenades. No one acts like the Breath Grenades. These legendary space rawkers are so far gone from anything resembling a conventional band that they often defy logic. Beginning with their uniquely destructive bass-snyth sound, they do things their own way. In their decades of playing they have only released one rare album. They don’t play out very often, having a sincere hatred for most venues. Few bands stay together for more than a few years let alone a band that has had a staple members pass away. But despite the hardships this groundbreaking punk act has managed to stay a band for more than 25 years.

Now with the inclusion of drummer/sound/visual arts genius Richard Altman a.k.a. Vinegar Rich, the Grenades: Don Bailey a.k.a. Vom Doom and Al Conroy (Not Half) a.k.a. Vortexo are coming out from the basement to play shows again. On the eve of the first Breath Grenades show of 2011, Vom and Vinegar gave Stylus a history lesson of the Breath Grenades past, present and future.

HISTORY OF THE BREATH GRENADES PART 1: Snoids Stylus: Can you take us back to the beginning of the Breath Grenades? How did the band start?

Vom: The long and short of it was I was in this band called Snoids and we were based in the North End. I had seen these guys play these really garagey-punk songs that were influenced by The Cramps and Misfits and also influenced by the early ’60s like The Who. They were really cre-

12 Stylus Magazine Oct/Nov 2011

ative people and I was in this band called Cog and I wasn’t happy. The Snoids needed a bass player so I quit Cog, joined Snoids. I’d never played bass in my life and a week later I played a show opening for RuggedyAnne.

PART 2: Enter the Captain Vom: Snoids lasted about another year until we got all frustrated and at the same time I started jamming with a friend of mine from high school.

The Captain had a Moog synthesizer and the two of us spent a long time jamming together and making up these crazy… for lack of a better phrase “space-blues” songs. And that’s how the band started. We began in the legendary Captain’s basement in the North End. Then we got kicked out of the basement because we ended up getting confident. We got banished to pink garage and we wrote a song and taped it. We called it “The Legendary Pink Garage Eviction” and we practiced all through the cold weather.

Part 3: The Name Vom: We were trying to figure out a name for the band and while we were jamming in the pink garage you could see our breath because it was so cold. Our guitar picks would break. Someone suggested Band Grenade and I was like nah, check it out and you could see my breath. Breath Grenades! That’s where the name came from.

Part 4: Band Members Vom: We had auditions with guitar players and we never even thought about getting a drummer ever. Initially we had a bongo player who was our first percussionist. A guitarist – that never worked out. It was really funny because the fellow that plays synth right now, his brother tried out on guitar back in ’85. So when Vortexo shows up to play with us he brings the same amp as his brother brought to try out. We’ve been a trio, a quintet, had guests with sax players. That was a weird period in the ’90s. There have been about 50 members of Breath Grenades over the years. I guess I qualify that by if you do a live show, you were in the band.

Part 5: First Gigs Vom: We didn’t play a show until a year and half or something. There used to be a band in Winnipeg called Beach Mutants and they invited us to play a house party. We played with this band called Dr. Seuss, which became Dementia 5 with Andy Morton from the Windups, and Lesbian Bingo with Greg Fenton who recently passed away. I just remember playing with the Captain and our amps being in-sync and people pounding on overhead pipes and stuff. That was a fun show. The one after that we played at the Fort Rouge Leisure Centre. That was our big debut. I was wearing a Misfits t-shirt and people were upset that I was wearing a punk shirt but we sound like this awful horrific, synth-bass combo noise.

Part 6: Tales of the Captain Stylus: Can you talk about the contribution of the Captain?

Vom: The funny thing is when we used to play out everybody would be telling me make sure you turn that guy down man. The sound guy would say it’s just a bunch of noise and I would be, “Yeah, but it’s his noise.” What can I say about the guy? He never had a job, he never worked he just spent his time playing in his basement surrounded by comic books and crazy records. He was pretty interesting to say the least. He was the guy that everyone would beat up on the way home from school. The Captain also represents anything that can be learned on synthesizer. He represents full absolute freedom on a synth. An experimental genius, really. Who knows? Maybe Steve Bates wouldn’t have created send + receive if he hadn’t have been exposed to something like the Captain. Bates put out our first album. He was a big Breath Grenades fan. He loved the Captain’s playing. When we used to play in the late 80s, early 90s and everyone involved with

PHOTO BY RICHARD ALTMAN

Stylus Magazine and CKUW back then used to stand at the front of the stage absolutely bewildered by us. Ears pinned back. You should have seen their faces. The smiles would have ripped their ears off.

They all loved Andy (The Captain). He would make these crazy noises off this old Moog that fell down the stairs of where the Alternative Cabaret used to be. It would have been treated as completely broken by anybody else but the Captain took this cigarette pack and put it in between the last key and the side of the Moog and he would hit it with a stick and that’s how he played it. I didn’t know what to make of it. Nobody did. I was just happy to play with someone who wouldn’t yell at me and tell me what to do like all the other bands I had been in. We never criticized each other. I guess we focused on criticizing our drummers. I guess that’s why we had so many. I miss the captain. He contributed a lot to the philosophy of the band, like low energy input and high-energy gain. It’s just a hobby and there’s no hurry and all this kind of stuff. He did something and whether you love it or hate it, it’s entirely never been done before ever.

Part 7: Vortexo and Rich Stylus: After the Captain passed away did you think the band was over?

Vom: I’ve been blessed with two amazing synth players. What’s the luck of finding two of these guys in the same city? How does that happen in Winnipeg? Where everyone is obsessed with classic rock, folk music, and generic metal. Even if you like that stuff the freedom of the Breath Grenades is a sight to behold. You can thank the Captain for that and you can thank Vortexo for keeping it going. When Vortexo joined the band we bandied about whether he would play the Captain’s Moog, the captain left

his Moog, we still have it. It’s still sitting there all smashed up with the cigarette pack still in there. But he likes to do his own synth stuff. They shared the stage one time at Core Fest in ’97. That was the last time the Captain played with us. That was one of the best gigs. There have been lots of good ones but that one sticks out. I miss those shows, those old Garbage Hill shows were great.

Stylus: How do you like your new line up?

Vom: Our visionary drummer is nuts. The theme is always on. Always on!

Vinegar: Never off. There is no off switch. You can’t get off the ride.

Stylus: Has Richard’s background as an animator and video artist helped the band evolve?

Vinegar: It’s an anti-social networking thing, you want to go out and dance but our show can be for those people who want to go out by themselves and sit down. I’ll pay 10 bucks to go sit down. Don’t give me brain damage by not providing me with something to digest mentally. Like the brain is a small version of the small intestines. They both look the same the digestive tract and the brain. So anyway.

I love doing visuals. Whenever Venetian Snares would do a show, Aaron would give me a call and we’d work on something. Don was certain that the Breath Grenade shows have to have projections. So for sure.

Stylus: How do you like playing in the band?

Vinegar: Don and Al, they’ve been around forever.

Let’s face it. One of the longest running punk outfits in the city. The only one that sounds like… well no one, not one band sounds like Breath Grenades.

The great thing about Al and Don is they don’t care.

They’ve done it all so they can do anything. As long as you can keep up, add something to the song and not be a flake they’ll let you be part of the band. I

Greg MacPherson Disintegration Blues DIS001 Out now

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can go triple speed if I wanted they wouldn’t care so it’s still an evolutionary process. It’s not like old bands playing the familiar same old songs. Everything is melodically ready.

Part 8: The Future Stylus: Future of Breath Grenades?

Vom: There is interest by a US label that wants to do a double LP. I thought maybe we should do three albums. Vinyl’s hot again. It’s ridiculous that we haven’t recorded any vinyl. I hate CDs – that’s the reason we never really released anything other than that one album. We could just wait a little more. Look what the waiting has done. Now that we’ve waited there is this huge archive of recordings.

We’ve got hundreds of songs. I guess we’ve just been negligent to put things out. I’m kind of embarrassed about it. If there is anyone actually out there that likes us, I feel sorry for them because we have the same CD for sale for 20 years. No t-shirts. Kids will come up to me and ask, “Do you at least have stickers?” and I’ll peel off some duct tape and I’ll write Breath Grenades with black marker and give it to them and they’ll take it. People will show up with their homemade Breath Grenade shirts. Good enough. We’re not in this thing for money. We just do it because it’s so boring here at winter. I hope a show will bring us out of the funk and out of the basement. The inertia is starting.

On August 20 The Breath Grenades came out of the basement to play the best show of the year that nobody saw at the Elice Theatre. Make sure you witness the madness next time. Tune in to their Always On antics at breathgrenades.tumblr.com/.

Cannon Bros.

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Stylus Magazine

December/January

Making Friends and Getting Mean across the Continent

ILLUSTRATION BY NATALIE BAIRD

BY SHELDON BIRNIE Winnipeg’s Magnificent 7s are a hard traveling, hard rocking bluegrass band. Preparing to release their sophomore album for local imprint Transistor 66, Matt Magura and Andy Bart recently sat down with Stylus to chat about All Kinds of Mean over a couple pitchers of Two Rivers.

“It was recorded live off the floor, just solid takes on the songs,” explained Bart. “Did those songs a lot of times over until they were right.”

“It was pretty strange being so isolated in the studio and still playing live, altogether,” Magura says of the two weeks spent in Private Ear Recording this past June with Neil Cameron. “It had a very different feel. On our first record we stood up in the [Rudolph] Rocker and we had one mic on everybody’s instrument, one mic on everybody’s vocal. Standing looking at each other the whole time.”

Since the release of Dirty Roads, in 2008, the Mag 7s are down two members.

“Chris [Bodnarchuk] went to the States for a while, and now he’s living in Windsor,” explains Magura. “Ingrid [Gatin] decided to go on her own pretty much after we played our first CD release party, and of course she’s doing well, making lots of music and keeping herself busy. Other than that it was the five of us, the dynamic only changed because now there’s two less people.

“I’d like to think we’ve come a long way since recording that,” Magura continues. “We didn’t even really start touring until after that came out.

We used to play like 50 shows a year in Winnipeg.

Sometimes we’d play like four shows in a weekend, we just played anywhere and everywhere. Since we www.stylusmagazine.ca

put that first album out, we’ve been touring a whole bunch. Last year between April and April we played about 100 shows outside of Winnipeg, and obviously drastically reduced the number of shows we’ve played in Winnipeg.”

Being on the road so long certainly has its drawbacks, but that’s the nature of the beast.

“I think that’s where a lot of the songs came up, was on the road,” Bart admits. “Being on the road, whatever’s happening, the inspiration sort of comes from that… being on the road, homesick, missing dirty old Winnipeg is a lot of the songs, maybe not depressing, but hard sounding. ‘All kinds of mean.’”

“Sometimes band members complain about all the hours in the van,” says Magura. “But myself, I find it totally satisfying staring at the scenery going by, because I’ve never seen it before. Even if you don’t get to stop. It’s kind of neat to see the changing topography. But it is kind of disenchanting when you stop in a city you’ve got half an hour to walk and get a coffee, you go down the street to sound check, you’ve got a few minutes to prepare yourself for the show, you play the show, then you’ve got to find somewhere to sleep. Then you have to wake up and take off.”

“It’s always nice to make a connection,” Bart adds.

“Whether it’s people you’re staying with, or people in the industry, musicians, bar owners, that’s always great. Making friends, right? We’ve done pretty well on making friends across the continent, so far.”

“We were in St. Catherines recently, and we were playing this bar,” says Magura, speaking to the diverse audience the 7s have been cultivating. “There

were like 40 kids, like skiddy looking punk rockers, and everybody had a good time. A week later, we played to like 150 people in this beautiful old church that’s been turned into an arts centre in Petoskey, Michigan, and like, the same thing. People seem to appreciate… sometimes it might just be the rocking energy, sometimes people really like the instrumentation, the musicianship.”

With the release of All Kinds of Mean, the Mag 7s are showing no signs of slowing down their tour schedule. However, the group is looking to focus more on festivals in 2012 than previously.

“It’s all fine to be an entertainer, but we definitely recognize the value of attending these music conferences and stuff like that,” says Magura. “You’re surrounded by your peers, by musicians as opposed to people who, whether or not they give a shit about your music, just want to get drunk and have a good time.”

“We’re not going to forget these places where we’ve played, the people we’ve met,” Bart stresses.

“We’re going to still do tours to keep up those connections and serious friends that we’ve met.”

“We work pretty hard, and sometimes we live pretty skinny,” admits Magura. “But it gives you tools to conquer the impending battle that is life on the road. We look forward to playing some good shows in Winnipeg, too. Can’t wait to fill some seats at the West End.” Get your tickets to the Magnificent 7s release of All Kinds of Mean today. The party goes down Thursday, December 15th at the West End Cultural Centre.

Dec 2011/Jan 2012 Stylus Magazine

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15 MINUTES WITH

BY VICTORIA KING

While Chad VanGaalen may refer to himself as a “joke” of a singer-songwriter, tour relatively little, and gain the reputation of being a “notorious homebody,” he’s still working with one of the biggest and best record labels in the world. After the success of his 2004 release Infiniheart on Flemish Eye Records, Sub Pop jumped on board the crazy psycho-eclectic and talented musical train of VanGaalen and they’ve been going steady ever since.

“It’s funny. Every time I go there I’m like, ‘Really? You guys still wanna keep doing this?’ And they’re like ‘What are you talking about?’” he explains over the phone, on one special Friday afternoon of Now Sounds, the radio show I host on CKUW with Kyra Leib.

“I feel like the entertainment business in general can get pretty creepy pretty quick,” says VanGaalen. “There are a few labels out there that are still running their businesses properly.

And I think Sub Pop is one of those.

They still take me out to dinner every once in a while.”

While his own self-titled discography is stand-alone impressive, his alias projects are equally as enthralling. Black Mold is a CVG alter ego, more electronic and less singer-songwriter.

“The Black Mold record that came out was a pre-ejaculation on my part, and me being really excited to kind of represent myself.” As it turns out, Black Mold isn’t the only thing Chad’s got going on. “Sub Pop and Flemish Eye have agreed to let me have my own sort of cassette label. So this month I’m putting out 13 records of my own stuff. There’s one Black Mold album, but most of it is electronickind-of-synth music. There’s one hip-hop record... There’s gonna be a download code for all the cassettes, and they’re gonna be super cheap. You can go get them off the website and it should be up in the next week. I’m just putting on all the finishing touches on the album art.”

“Invention of Science is a hip-hop group that I’ve been in for a long time, and that’s a ‘best of ’ record of sorts.

It’s funny cuz we’ve never put out a record, but it’s ten years in the making,” VanGaalen explains as Kyra and I try to grapple with the idea of 13

new records. “We’d let each other fall asleep, and then wake each other up.

Someone gets a beat ready and then the person who’s just been woken up has to freestyle about what they were dreaming about. Sometimes it works out really well, and sometimes it’s horrible. It’s a collected work from the past ten years and I’m super excited about it.”

“As we’re speaking I’m finishing up all the track listings for all my delicious new tracks,” VanGaalen informs us, and goes on to list

a few: “‘Jumbo Tanto,’ ‘Rebel’s New Hit,’ and ‘Gargantuan Truffle Digestion’ . . . ‘Creepy Circus’ is probably the best one on there. Or ‘Debbie Lindox Trabs Cam’ is pretty good too.”

Kyra asks, “One thing I’ve always wanted to know from listening to your music concerns ‘JC Head on the Cross.’ At the end of the song, it sounds like there are little kids talking to someone. I was always curious as to what or who that was?”

“That was a snippet of stuff from my uncle,” VanGaalen tells. “My uncle lives out in Victoria and used to work at Vic West Elementary School. He used to have the kids over for a pancake breakfast every Monday. One day I was groggily waking up and made my way down-

stairs. My uncle is like the best uncle in the world by the way, in case you couldn’t tell. He was just entertaining these kids. I had a saxophone there at the time, so we were jamming out on the saxophone and this kid was saying weird stuff about Jesus.”

And when asked about his visuals, Chad admits that art school didn’t do too much for him. “I did go to art school. I went there for printmaking.

My dad was really into watercolors.

He was also into underground comic books, like all the Zap stuff and Freak Brothers... I taught myself by looking at comics. And bugs and stuff. I really liked bug books. I still like bug books.

But yeah, Art College was more like day camp for adults... It was a failure.”

What wasn’t a failure was Chad’s latest tour in Europe, lasting just over two months. “Copenhagen. We had a really awesome show in Copenhagen,” he recalls. “We’d never been there before, and people were singing along. It’s pretty cool to show up to a place you’ve never been to and people were singing your songs. It was weird.

But in a good way. It could have been weird. It was a good weird... London was good. I got to get drunk with some friends, and they took me out for dinner. It was a crazy gourmet dinner, and I just ended up getting French fries. Which I thought would be funny, to make them make me French fries at a crazy gourmet restaurant.”

“That’s so North American of you,” Kyra teases.

“No, I love French fries though.

It was good times for sure. Oh! We played at a hippy fest in a German forest, and there was, like, a body temperature lake, and like, Germans were getting nude, so everyone was like nude and stuff... ” Our 15 minutes with VanGaalen has nearly come to it’s close, as he says modestly, “Like, I don’t sell records. You know? They just have me around... I’ve had a lot of good luck.”

Chad VanGaalen was scheduled to play at the West End Cultural Center on November 18 with No Gold, but cancelled due to wintry road conditions.

Now you’ll be able to see him there on January 13, which is luckily a Friday.

ILLUSTRATION BY NICK VAN DOESELAAR

BY KAELEIGH AYRE Winnipeg music fans will be able to shake, rock and roll off the snow this January with the inaugural Big Fun Music Festival.

What started as conversation over a breakfast at the Nook, a Wolseley area diner, has snowballed into a full-fledged music festival to be held throughout the Exchange District during the longest and coldest days of our Prairie winter.

“We were sitting out on the patio, having breakfast, throwing out ideas, and I said, ‘You realise we could do this,’” Lauren Swan, the festival’s business manager, says over a late lunch at Cousin’s Diner.

The group of five young Winnipeggers behind the effort is comprised mostly of musicians involved in multiple bands around the city, so the idea was not that big of a stretch for them. “Being in a band, putting on shows, you kind of know what to look for, who to talk to,” Stefan Braun says.

Braun, 23, is another member of the elite squad that assembled to make the rock festival happen. Braun says he has been contemplating getting together his friends’ bands for a festival of sorts for some time.

The festival is being held Thursday, January 26 to Sunday, January 29 with different events being held over the four days at different locations in the Exchange. “We’ve got a few little secret tidbits hidden that we’re still working on,” Braun says.

Since Winnipeg is famous for its frigid winter temperatures, location is key for getting around to each venue without succumbing to the elements.

“They’re all in a really tight radius,” Swan, 25, says. “This is what we wanted because there is going to be a festival pass, which will get you access to all of the shows. We wanted to make sure the venues were within walking distance, so that people are actually willing to hop between shows.”

BIGFUNFESTIVAL The locations are also unique to the festival, and in some cases, as rock show venues. “All of the venues are re-purposed warehouses and art galleries and lofts. We really wanted to stay away from the ‘usual’ bar venues for something different,” Swan says.

Social media and “guerrilla-style” advertising are playing a big part in the success of the festival. “People are really excited. There are a lot of people who are really supportive,” Swan says. “There’s a buzz already, and we only just announced it. We’ve got our teaser poster up, and our website, and

our social media component, which all went up on the same day.”

The excitement over a mid-winter ice breaker is not only being felt on the organizer/music lover front. Several local artists and bands that have been confirmed for the line up have expressed great anticipation via email for the January festival.

“As a band we’ve been really excited about the potential of Big Fun to fill this void in the dead of winter, giving everyone who’s into music something to look forward to,” Stefan Kroeker of The Mystics says. “It seems like some-

PHOTO BY SILAS CHIPELSKI thing that could easily grow into an annual event, and we feel privileged to be a part of the first run.” The Mystics are slated to play the Friday evening festival show, according to the Big Fun Twitter feed.

“It’s going to be great to have something rad to go out and do at the end of January,” Tim Hoover, a.k.a.

DJ Co-op, says. “Rather than staying home and being sad and lonely. And cold.” Hoover commends the level of organization behind the festival.

“Cold weather, shmold meather,” Levi Kwade of Narwhal Strike says.

“I think Big Fun is going to be a really positive force in the Winnipeg music scene. There’s really awesome talent here, but sometimes I feel like not enough Winnipeggers are aware of that.”

Kwade’s bandmates agree that our city is always in need of quality events. “Maybe less people will move away now that there’s something to do during the depths of the winter besides sit in your room and cry,” Narwhal Strike guitarist Hudson Fedun jokes.

“I usually spend January studying for exams,” Dom Markiw, drummer for Narwhal Strike, says.

“For me personally I have a lot of new songs that Winnipeg hasn’t heard yet,” Curtis Walker of Blunderspublik says. “This will be a great opportunity to play them out and see what people think.”

Festival pass and ticket prices, as well as the line up and specific times and locations, are yet to be confirmed, so keep an eye on their websites for more information leading up to the festival: bigfunfestival.blogspot.com/ twitter.com/#!/BigFunFestival www.facebook.com/pages/BIGFUN/124386187668616

RAINBOW TROUT

BY STEFAN BRAUN

MUSIC FESTIVAL & FISHING DERBY

Two weeks before the start of Rainbow Trout Music Festival and Fishing Derby, backcountry roads across Manitoba were being shut down due to raging wildfires and tinder dry conditions. A barrier blocked the road approaching Reynolds Ponds, home to Trout for the last two years – threatening serious fines to anyone who trespassed – thus leaving Trout without a location. Not ready to lose hope, Ben Jones and friend Peter Scott took to the open roads around rural Manitoba, passing town after town, talking to locals, looking for secret swimming holes and fishing ponds, hoping to find a spot to host the third and biggest Rainbow Trout ever.

While driving through Teulon, MB, they caught wind of a town called Inwood.

Inwood is a tiny town consisting of a gas station and a restaurant, home to the finest reuben in Manitoba, with a large abandoned quarry on the outskirts. The spot was perfect with a beautiful quarry, diving cliffs and plenty of room for the potential 400 to 500 festivalgoers to set up and enjoy the weekend. The only problem was that the town sat 2 km away down a gravel road.

Unfortunately, time was short and there were no other options.

The organizers decided to go ahead and set up shop. A scout was left behind for the night to survey the action in the area.

With very little traffic and nothing but positive support from the locals, they began the lengthy two day process of setting up the stage, audience shelter, first aid tent and vendor booths. It seemed things were finally looking up for the ill-fated Trout team. The volunteers had arrived, the stage was prepped and the first band was set to play in five hours. Spirits were high until the RCMP showed up.

“We knew exactly what was going to happen as soon as they drove up,” said organizer Ben Jones. Having obtained no permits from the municipality, the weeks of scouring the country side and two days of set-up were halted with a single cease

and desist order. Rainbow Trout was forced to cancel the festival and start looking into the future.

Rainbow Trout Music Festival and Fishing Derby was formed by a group of friends around a campfire in the summer of 2009. It quickly grew from a local fishing hole stocked with trout to become one of Manitoba’s greatest independent music festivals.

“We were never certain where it was going, it was just so much fun,” says Jones. Although not without

its setbacks, such as the untimely run in with the RCMP that brought the festival to a shrieking halt this past year, Trout looks towards its fourth year with optimism and a whole new game plan. Rising from the ashes of the scorched Manitoba prairies, Rainbow Trout is taking steps to full maturity.

With the help of a small business education program, SEED Winnipeg, Trout is well on its way to becoming a functioning non-profit cooperative.

This includes renting or purchasing a piece of land with all the required permits and the possibility of creating a small town partnership, similar to the relationship between the Harvest Moon Society and Clearwater, MB. Although Trout may be emerging from out of the underground and growing in size, the goal is, and always will be, focused on creating a space where bands from all genres, age groups and social scenes can blend together and celebrate the eclectic music this city is capable of.

If you’re looking for some Trout fun in the long wait until next summer take heart, plans have already been made. Seven events are already set to take place over the course of the year. These events include the Rainbow Trout Fundraiser silent bachelor and bachelorette auction taking place Friday, December 16th at the Lo Pub. Other events include the third annual Trout pop caroling taking place throughout Wolseley.

Be sure to get your hands on a Rainbow Trout Best Friends card to get stamped at every event. Five stamps get you a free Trout t-shirt. Even better, a stamped Best Friends card showing attendance at all events, and one Big Fun Festival event, rewards you with free entry into next year’s festival.

Rainbow Trout has grown from a backwoods camping trip into a staple in the Winnipeg music scene. Trout plays host to a weekend extravaganza with all of your present and new best friends. This is a festival steeped in home grown passion, thriving off of the creative spirit in this town that any Winnipeger should be proud of.

Dub City Steppers with Theo Tzu + Guests Tuesdays, 10:00-midnight on CKUW 95.9 FM or streaming online at www.ckuw.ca

Photo by Taylor Burgess When I come in, the booth door is closed, and Theo Tzu pokes his head out, and asks if I can wait until the top of the hour. I look at the clock—it’s 10:15 p.m. on this Tuesday night. He says that he’s DJing until the top of the hour, “selecting tracks” actually. I ask if I can sit in and watch until then. He allows it, talks to his co-host and I unpack my gear.

Already in the booth, sitting down on the radio board is Turtilian, who has a taste for saying the absurd on-air, which I am always a huge fan of. He’s chatting online in a Facebook group, giving shoutouts to all the regular listeners and their listening habits. “Rocking the headboard,” for example.

“King Fisher,” is what I think Theo Tzu says, and spells the label out, real quick. He’s shouting the names out on-air, yes, so Turtilian can type them into CKUW’s logging system, but so the avid listener can type it in too. I quickly learn that Theo Tzu is playing not just a selection of local tracks, but

a whole whack of them. If you’re not familiar with them, the names are nearly meaningless because they’re said so quickly in alternation with the hardpumping and sometime mind-warping music.

“EL RICHEE,” Turtilian says on-air and types in, in all caps. He then says to me, “He something like a 19-, 20-year-old. Just latched onto jungle and he really got to know the whole jungle, world scene.”

He then turns back to Theo and asks what the tune is called, if it was that name that they had talked about earlier.

“Yeah,” says Theo with a grin, “call it that for now,” like El Richie had just emailed some halfdone thing, even though this huge toon was coming through CKUW’s booth speakers and jack hammering all of the air out of the— No, it is pretty much useless for me to try and explain what the music sounded like. Theo told me of not one, but three record stores I had never heard

Comic by Colton Balske // coltonbalske.com

of (Wax Museum, Nyce Records, and Alchemy Records) where he used to buy vinyl. As Turtilian said of Theo Tzu on-air, he’s been a junglist of ten years.

They’ve had this show for more than a year, Theo Tzu switching to this show having come from a pure dubstep show. I ask what they play now and he says it’s “larger,” cups his hands, and I can understand what he means.

The two guys even play their own tracks, and Turtilian starts raving about one track of their instrumentals being used by Pucona, noting that he’s going different places than the usual MC. “SET THE BAR ITAL PUCONA” is what Turtilian has typed in—only they pronounce this MC’s name like “begonia.” So much to learn. So many names.

So many tunes.

[Taylor starts drooling.]

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DISINTEGRATION Building a Formidable Indie Community in Winnipeg

RECORDS GREG MACPHERSON

“There used to be this band in town called Grand Theft Canoe. They put out this record under the name Voit for their last record,” says Macpherson. “The record was really, really good. They printed 1,000 copies and it sold out in like a month or something, and then they just disbanded and no one has heard the music since. We’re thinking of re-releasing that digitally for them. It’s been about 10 years since it came out. It’s such an important and great, classic Winnipeg record that few people have heard.”

SLOW DANCERS PHOTO BY DEREK HOGUE

By Sheldon Birnie Winnipeg-based Disintegration Records officially launched this past September, with the release of Greg Macpherson’s Disintegration Blues. The tightly knit label is also home to local acts Nova, Haunter, Slow Dancers, and Cannon Bros, whose full-length Firecracker/Cloudglow is Disintegration’s second release.

“A lot of the bands on the label share some similarities, so it makes some sense that we’re all together,” explains label co-founder Greg Macpherson.

MacPherson founded the label with sound engineer extraordinaire Cam Loeppky in January 2011.

“We’re a lot stronger if we do that than if we try to approach it by ourselves.”

“We’re trying to build a community, for sure,” explains Macpherson. “There’s a lot of younger artists on the label, and Cam and I are older guys. We’re both in our late thirties. We’ve been doing this a long time and feel we have a lot of experience and capacity to share and help these younger folks not make the same mistakes we did, or be able to learn through us rather than on their own. It’s nice to be able to impart some of those lessons to people who would otherwise have to make those same mistakes, so maybe we can save them the effort.”

Focused as it is on local acts, Disintegration hasn’t ruled out releasing acts outside of Manitoba in the future. But for now, Disintegration is moving ahead with a number of hot projects for 2012. Releases for Nova and Haunter are planned for spring, and a Slow Dancers release for summer. Disintegration is also looking into a series of 7” singles, and possibly the re-release of some classic Winnipeg albums.

20 Stylus Magazine Dec 2011/Jan 2012

By Janet Adamana One of the city’s newest amalgamations of local talent is the soft, slightly despondent and immensely poetic rock band, Slow Dancers, fronted by 22-year-old singer/songwriter Jesse Hill. Starting out as a solo project of Hill’s, the newly inaugurated quartet began after a few encouraging ideas from Hill’s childhood friend and current bandmate Cole Woods. Hill was inspired to take his love for songwriting to a greater level, from part-time solo act to serious frontman.

“When Slow Dancers started I wasn’t really in a band that I was very serious about,” says Hill, “but I had all these songs that I had been playing solo.

[Woods] suggested I let him play drums on some songs. It sounded really good with him so it developed from there.”

The official line-up incorporates the musical mastery of Cannon Bros’ and Haunter’s Cole Woods beating the drums, Haunter’s Marie-France Hollier on bass and musical powerhouse Greg Macpherson adding back up vocals and guitar expertise. They played their first gig in February 2011, debuting at Crescent Fort Rouge United Church.

Since their formation, they’ve played other numerous shows throughout the city, making appearances at Mondragon’s A-Zone Fundraiser, The Harvest Moon Society’s InFARMation event as well as gracing the stages at The Gas Station Theatre, The Park Theatre and Lo Pub. Performing has since taken a pause for Slow Dancers as they prepare to work with Disintegration Records co-owner and producing genius, Cam Loeppky (The Weakerthans, The Details), this winter at Prairie Recording Company.

“Right now we’re just practicing a lot in preparation for recording,” says Hill. “I just showed the band a few new songs we’re working on for the week.”

A Slow Dancers tour is on the back of Hill’s mind, but will entirely depend on this upcoming album. “If the recording goes well, then we’ll do a tour in the summer, but it’s very up in the air,” he says. “If we tour I’d imagine it’d just be a couple weeks, just one direction or the other, but I’d really like to tour Europe sometime in the next couple of years.”

“Last August’s Labour” and “Since We Last Talked” are two Slow Dancers demos that have already been released through Bandcamp, and showcased on CBC Radio 3 as well as on 101.5 UMFM. They are currently on the list of a dozen ready to record songs the band will work on in the studio.

NOVA

By Victoria King Since of the recent birth of Disintegration Records, Nova has been one of its signees to the label. Molly McCracken, Nova keyboardist, chatted with Stylus to talk Disintegration and what the band is up to.

Stylus: How did you all decide to start up Nova?

Molly McCracken: We all knew each other, because it’s Winnipeg. Jackie [Hogue] and Greg [MacPherson] were thinking of starting a band and they knew I played piano. It’s nice to have three people, it’s easy to schedule things. We’re all pretty busy. You have to carve out the time for sure.

Stylus: For anyone who doesn’t know your band too well, could you just say a little bit about who’s in the band, what you’re about, what your sound is like?

MM: Hmm, well... It’s three friends who are playing music that’s from the heart, and Greg writes a lot of our songs but not all of them. We all collaborate on the arrangements.

Stylus: How’s it been working with Disintegration?

MM: It’s great. It’s like a family; a collection of people who all just want to make music. I think Cam and Greg’s leadership in starting Disintegration is ideal timing, with there being all these bands around who need to have a label, and just creating some sort of supports for that. It’s very forward thinking. It’s really just fun to be in a world where music is changing all the time, it’s good to have connections with other people.

Stylus: At the moment, are you writing/recording?

MM: We are doing some recording with Cam Loeppky at the end of this month. Some songs we’ve had in the works and some are new, so we’re looking forward to that.

Stylus: Any shows coming up, or dates for a record release?

MM: We don’t have any actual dates right now but we’re planning on a show in the early new year, and we’d like to have our CD release for sure by the summer, if not spring. We just have to finish the recording and then all the other stuff that needs to happen. It’s good that it’s such a fun process with a great group of people, because you do spend a lot of time together.

we went on tour last summer and we had nothing to sell so we were like, ‘Let’s just put all the songs that we recorded onto a CD and sell it,’ so that’s how the EP came about.”

The pair now finds their new record being tagged as the second release from brand-new Winnipeg label Disintegration Records, a move that came about organically as Cole Woods notes. “I play in Greg’s band and so Greg has heard our music, and the person that he’s running the label with, Cam Loeppky, is the person who recorded our album, so it was kind of like a natural thing.”

Both Walker and Woods sing Loeppky’s praises with Woods stressing that “He mostly just acted as the engineer, which is pretty nice. Not a lot of people can do that, just sit back and be, ‘No, it’s your call, it’s your call always.’ He had some suggestions with guitar tones and sounds but he never changed the songs.”

Walker adds, “As far as the process goes it was really simple, relaxed and enjoyable and it didn’t take us very long to record all the songs.”

Notoriously prolific writers, Walker admits that “we have written so many songs and played so many songs together that probably no one will ever hear and we probably don’t even remember.” So when it came time to consciously consider what would go on Firecracker/Cloudglow, the pair “started playing the songs that we liked the most and stopped playing the other ones and I think that’s how the album came together with the twelve songs.” Woods is quick to note that they recorded the guitar and drums live off the floor and overdubbed the vocals and were conscientious about keeping the songs “still pretty simple” so the pair could recreate the album live.

As to the title of the record and what exactly it means, Woods is tight-lipped: “It’s kind of an ambiguous title I guess, I’ll just leave it at that.”

HAUNTER

CANNON BROS.

proached him about helping me work on a recording grant. He said that it was perfect timing, because he and Cam Loeppky were starting a label and they wanted us involved. After a couple long nights of beers at Carlos & Murphy’s, we all decided it was for the best. We’d worked with Cam before on a demo.

It helped that they picked up some of the tab.

Stylus: How is being signed to a label different from being on your own?

MW: Before, when we were releasing our own stuff, we made up a label – it was just a name – to put out our music just for the sake of organization more than anything else. It was really just nothing, more of a common thing that held our releases together.

We had a big dream to actually make it a real label but we also had no money. Now it’s a totally different monster. Greg always says that Disintegration Records isn’t a service for the bands: it’s friends working together to support and build these things that we might not have been capable of by ourselves.

They’re there to help us as much as they can, but they aren’t booking agents or managers. They have their own lives to deal with as well. It’s an idea that we really loved. It’s exciting to be part of something more like a collective than being told what to do and when to do it. It’s a cliché, but Disintegration Records is a family. Some of us have been friends a long time and some have just met, but creatively, there are not many other people I’d want to work with, now or ever.

Stylus: What’s next for Haunter?

MW: Cole Woods (Cannon Bros.) joined the band a while back. It’s impossible to imagine not having him at this point. We had a specific vision for where and how we wanted to record the album that we’ve had ready for a couple years now. The plan is hopefully to record sometime over the next couple months and then put out an album and do a decent tour in the spring or summer. There’s more of a plan in place to record now, but no real details about it yet. We’ve been spending more time writing new songs so we don’t get bored waiting for recording to happen. We all have different things going on and busy lives and all that, but Haunter is really important to us. I can say that therapy for me is three or four hours of music, pizza and beer with the rest of them. We’re all excited to come back heavy. Haunter Forever.

PHOTO BY MARIE-FRANCE HOLLIER

PHOTO BY KRISTIAN JORDAN

By Michael Elves While local duo Cannon Bros. ended up releasing their self-titled debut EP last winter out of necessity, the release of their full-length Firecracker/Cloudglow came about because the pair chanced into an opportunity.

“The EP we just kind of recorded with our friend and we weren’t even really planning on releasing it,” notes Alannah Walker. She explains, “We just recorded songs when we first started playing and then

www.stylusmagazine.ca

By Elizabeth Whitbread A couple years ago, Stylus got the skinny on Haunter – one of Winnipeg’s fiercest indie rock groups – and they’ve since released the 7” Lighthouse/Great Northern and won the praises The Constantines’ Bry Webb. I asked singer/guitarist Matt Williams a few questions via email, namely about calling their new label home.

Stylus: How did Haunter get signed to Disintegration?

Matt Williams: Greg Macpherson moved into our jam space after a new business opened under his, which was down the hall. It was kind of a surprise – one day we walked into the space and he was just putting his stuff in there. A few weeks later I ap-

Dec 2011/Jan 2012 Stylus Magazine

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W I N N I P E G F O L K F E S T I VA L P R E S E N T S

LIVE @ FOLK EXCHANGE

SPRING CONCERT SERIES JAN

26 Local Spotlight

KIPP KOCAY DAN FRECHETTE

FEB

ers have come out with this time infuses soul and story into sound in one of the most non-cliched ways I’ve yet seen. (Transistor 66, www.transistor66.com) Adrienne Yeung

24 MAR

THE CROOKED BROTHERS Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife?

“I’ve got funk, I’ve got country /I’ve got rhythm and booze / I’ve got this crooked little heart / I’ve got this thing for you.” And what’s that? Following 2009’s Deathbed Pillowtalk, Manitoba’s The Crooked Brothers ( Jesse Matas, Darwin Baker and Matt Foster), have brought their signature growling and all aforementioned genres to Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife? along with stories of long winters, epidemics, hope, loneliness, and sorrow. “17 Horses” is one of the strongest tracks on here with its super catchy, up-tempo beat and gruff, indulgent vocals. Feline basslines prowl all over this record but spend a sizable amount of time slinking and stretching around “Kansas” and “Another Sun.” The dobro, mandolin, harmonica, banjo, fiddle, and violin all lend a great bluesy feel to the ten songs.

A favourite is “Good Man,” a calmer piece so warm with harmonicas and swaying guitars that you can practically hear the love the lyrics express: “There ain’t nothing like a good man / To drag you down / I ain’t nothing but a good man / Why do you keep me around?” Another must-listen is “Your Love is a Ghost Town” simply because it perfectly captures the eerie stillness of a dusty ghost town: raspy vocals are set off by an excellently creeping, measured bassline. I cringe at twanging and country music’s notoriously trite verses as much as the next person, but what The Crooked Broth-

10 MAR

THE MAGNIFICENT 7S All Kinds of Mean Bookended by two tight instrumental tracks, the Magnificent 7s’ sophomore release, All Kinds of Mean, is mean indeed. Picking up where 2008’s Dirty Roads left off, All Kinds of Mean sees the five-piece in fine form, if a touch road worn. Featuring 12 tracks, the disc never loses steam, even on the pensive, moody middle-album numbers “The Rapture” and “Travelin’ Song.” Personal highlights for me are the title track, “Needle in the Hay,” and a beautiful cover of Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend.” “The Flame is Gone (Country Bitchin’)” is also a beauty in the vein of old Conway Twitty / Loretta Lynn duets, where gambling and drinking and running around are hashed out in the parking lot of some backwoods honky tonk. My only concern with the disc is that it is over too soon. Let’s hope it doesn’t take so long for the 7s to put out their next disc, because short and mean as it may be, All Kinds of Mean leaves me with a mighty thirst for more. (Transistor 66, transistor66. com) Sheldon Birnie

24 APR

14 MAY

18

DOUG EDMOND FIRE & SMOKE BRENT PARKIN JACOB & LILY

DOORS 7:15PM, SHOW 8PM THE FOLK EXCHANGE – 211 BANNATYNE AVENUE

TICKETS – Available in advance at the

Winnipeg Folk Festival Music Store (211 Bannatyne at Albert), or at the door. supported by CKUW

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Dec 2011/Jan 2012 Stylus Magazine

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Root Cellar

BLITZEN TRAPPER American Goldwing Blitzen Trapper’s latest album – their third for indie-giant Sub Pop – American Golding is an enjoyable affair. With a real West Coast retro vibe throughout, these beardos have certainly created an album full of tunes that wouldn’t sound out of place when thrown into a playlist between CSNY and the Sheepdogs. A couple of the tunes stand-out after repeated listening, like the cautionary booze cruiser “Fletcher” and the cheeky “Love the Way You Walk Away.”

Overall, the album plays well straight through. I cranked’er cruising Highway 1 between Winnipeg and Brandon a couple times and, for the most part, it made for good driving music.

However, the album does lag a bit through the middle, providing either the perfect place to pull over and piss, or hit the skip button on the changer.

Another thing that sticks with me, though, is that the album is almost too conscious of its retro-rockerroots. Many of the tunes, and lyrics, sound as though you’ve already heard them before when you’ve been half-assed listening to the AM dial – which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just not exceptional. Not a bad album to play while cruising by any means, but maybe not a whole lot more. (Sub Pop, www.blitzentrapper.net) Sheldon Birnie RON HAWKINS Straighjacket Love Ron Hawkins is one prolific mofo.

Since 1991, the man has pumped out well over a dozen albums, EPs and singles as a member of seminal Canadian alt-rockers Lowest of the Low, at the helm of his own band the Rusty Nails and as a solo artist. Straightjacket Love is his latest effort, and it follows in the vein of 2009’s 10 Kinds of Lonely.

Fans of Hawkins will find Ron returning to themes of alcoholism, star-crossed love and down-and-out struggle and strife. At best – on cuts like “The Sickness” and “Waitin’ on

24 Stylus Magazine Dec 2011/Jan 2012

Something that’s Already Here” – Hawkins finds new ways to explore these themes with, for the most part, stripped down arrangements and rootsy twang. At worst, a few moments – “Kill the Lights,” to pick on one track – come close to kicking the last out of the same can he’s been kicking at since Shakespeare My Butt…

I’ve been a fan of Hawkins’ writing and music for over a decade now, which is half as long as he’s been releasing the stuff. I absolutely love Lowest of the Low’s first 2 LPs, though I’ve never really warmed up to much of Hawkins work with the Rusty Nails or the latter day Low output. However, I’ve had Straightjacket Love on repeat for weeks now, and while a few tracks on the album are forgettable, the bulk of the disc is solid gold. (Independent, www.ronhawkins.com) Sheldon Birnie JOSHUA HYSLOP Cold Wind I first heard “If I was a Better Man” on CBC Radio 2 a few months ago, and that song is still stuck in my head.

Cold Wind, the debut EP from British Columbia’s Joshua Hyslop, feels like walking through the park on a fall afternoon, moving forward but taking time to observe the beauty around.

The tracks are a mixture of a promise and apology – I think that’s part of what makes this EP so enduring. The gently plucked chords and at times haunting choruses on “Nowhere Left to go” will not be soon forgotten.

(Nettwerk, joshuahyslop.com) Sheldon Hoffman

CURRENT SWELL Long Time Ago Although they have been regarded as surf rock in the past, Long Time Ago is a wholesome and complete country album. Acoustic guitars, well ridden drums with a nasally voice that complains about staples such as aging, boozing, womanizing, and the weather; all that is really missing is a ballad about a Chevy. This full

flavoured chili of an album features three notable tracks that make up the essential chili feast. The title track is the tomato sauce, seasoned to perfection with an opening aroma to draw in any cowboy home from the range.

The ghostly sounds of “For The Land” make the song almost great enough to over look the ancient ideals about possession of women, but ignoring the lyrics this song surely will become the beef of the chili, delicious if you are prepared to ignore anything wrong with it. Finally, “Brad’s Song” is the garlic toast, completing the meal, yet not over-powering anything; the smooth vocal harmonies and guitar playing provide great contrast with the rest of the meal. Of course, some songs resemble mashed potatoes and corn more than any other side dish, all in all this hearty meal will leave diners full but still begging for an encore.

Long Time Ago is the Victoria band’s fourth full album, and they have a lot to build on such as playing on the same stage as Xavier Rudd and Bedouin Soundclash and several national tours which have built a strong name for themselves. (Warner, currentswell. com) Jesse Blackman

ELLIOTT BROOD Days Into Years “We grew up right here / Door frames marked with ice and years / Our lives in crooked frames / And kitchen table coffee stains,” sings three piece Toronto act Elliott Brood on the opening track “Lindsay” of their new LP Days into Years, easing you into the rural charm that fills the disc. Days Into Years, released in September by Paper Bag Records, is full of toe-tappin’ twang rock with throaty vocals and the occasional banjo or harmonica. At the forefront of my mind while listening to DIY, I imagine burly cowboys with thick facial hair, impenitent cowboy boots and wide brimmed hats.

I’m not going to actually look up their picture, for fear of that my imagination will be dashed by scrawny cityboys in boring collared polos. Regard-

less of their “authentic cowboy” status, the lyrics are convincing enough for me. The final four or so tracks on the album are full of fond nostalgia, starting with the porch-front strummed “West End Sky” and (continuing on the ‘up-in-the-air’ track-title wave) “Northern Air.” The final cut, “Their Will,” is a wave goodbye with saddles blazing as the boys finish the tentrack set with a final kick to the wind.

I would say that you should go check out Elliot Brood on October 29 at the WECC, but by the time this gets printed they’ll be well on the way to their next tour stop. Hopefully you were there. (Paper Bag Records, paperbagrecords.com) Victoria King

WILCO The Whole Love Wilco’s eighth studio album, The Whole Love, is an exciting and enjoyable cruise through familiar territory.

Of the dozen tracks on the album, none veer the Wilco train wildly off the tracks, though there are some interesting and welcome detours along the way.

The opener, “Art of Almost,” gets wild early, though the rest of the disc fails to kick out the jams to such heights again. The arrangements throughout are tight, interesting, and, of course, catchy as can be. With the exception of the leading and closing tracks, each tune is a compact, easily digestible example of Jeff Tweedy’s pop song writing skills. The closing track, “One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley’s Boyfriend),” is a meandering folk jam clocking in at the 12-minute mark that quite beautifully captures the feeling of a Sunday morning in autumn.

If you’re already a Wilco fan, you probably own this album already. If more than one person whose musical taste you trust has told you that you might like Wilco, you’ll probably dig this album. If you’ve already grown tired of Tweedy & Co’s act, well, you won’t be surprised if this album

ADRIAN GLYNN Bruise Bruise sounds rough-hewn, but I don’t mean clumsy in any way. If honesty

had a sound, this would be it. The incredible intimacy Vancouver’s Adrian Glynn has created on his debut album is what gives each track its strength. A 100-year-old balalaika was apparently played, and you can hear it on “Mother Mary,” which evokes images of whirling skirts and dusty boots stomping faster and faster to a glorious end.

Bruise sounds gritty and weary, and you can hear a lot of chords changing, but it works, especially on the beautiful “Blue Belle Lament,” which sounds like a nomad’s lullaby. I’m not going to cite influence I have no idea about, but quite a few of the tracks

Ulteriors

ELEVEN TWENTY-NINE Eleven Twenty-Nine If you have access to a room with a wood floor and a large window that faces the southwest, you need this album. When the sun reflects off the leaves or branches onto the floor or furniture in the afternoon, that’s the prime time to play this album. Now, ideally, you turn this album on, and you leave your place, it’s that kind of vibe. It’s the kind of music you need your place to psychically acclimate to first, then after say, four or five times of playing it for your place, you let some time pass. Four months later, when you’re doing a cleaning of your place, you’ll spot this album, and you turn it on, and just lie down. Try to empathize with the sun on those days when you first played this album for your place. Every song on this album eventually sounds like it’s been refracted through the prism of the Fripp/Eno tune entitled “The Heavenly Music Corporation,” and this is infinitely great. The songs are entitled various things, including, though not

www.stylusmagazine.ca www.stylusmagazine.ca

limited to, “Eyes on a Cabbage Head.”

Two people, Tom Carter and Marc Orleans created the music of which I type, formally defined as Eleven Twenty-Nine. Numerologically, you have your “11” which is “2,” and then you have your “29” which makes “11.”

“2” and “2” of course gives us a grand total of “4,” and like the waltz taking place on streets throughout North America, it’s hard to articulate precisely in this dimension what the “deal” is, with all this quantification, so when you play this for your place, maybe ask your place and if you’re able to do that, then you probably already know. (Northern Spy, northern-spy.com) Richard Altman RALEIGH MONCRIEF Watered Lawn COMIN AT YA, ALL THE WAY FROM SACRAMENTO! ITS RALEIGH MONCRIEF! Who is this, you may ask? He is the gardener who gardens the seeds from artists Zach Hill, Marnie Stern, Ganglians and the Dirty Projectors!

Alongside his successful producing, Raleigh also puts out some of his own magical musical seed.

Raleigh Moncrief ’s music is a love child of James Blake and Sufjan Stevens’ Age of Adz side, and I don’t think you can argue with that. Raleigh has released EPs in the past, but this is his first full length. Watered Lawn, out on Anticon Records, is really bringing his name out there. Alongside his career in music, Moncrief also

have a hymn-like quality. Glynn’s voice shines with or without accompanying instruments. Unfortunately, several awkwardly timed pauses in the a cappella track “The First Time” bring the album off to a weak start. The title track is quiet and gentle, where guitar harmonics are abound. “Seven or Eight Days” is a heartbreaking story about lost love but is super slinky and

struts its stuff to a great drum beat.

“When Everything’s Right With the World” features vaguely cabaret-style piano and blurry vocals. Bruise is a collection of 12 thoughtful songs that can come off as reserved and rustic, but which, once you get in a good listen, has a ton of passion. (Light Organ Records, lightorganrecords.com) Adrienne Yeung ADRIAN GLYNN

PHOTO BY MARK MARYANOVICH

doesn’t grab you by the balls. Personally, I dig the album, but I’m not about to drop 30 bucks on the LP just yet.

But the disc is certainly a creeper, with tunes lingering around in my head days after I’ve politely invited them to leave the party. After a few more spins, I may have to re-evaluate my position and invite The Whole Love in to stay awhile. (dBmp, dbpmrecords.com) Sheldon Birnie

does film work and makes his own crazy psychedelic music videos, creating an entire world for the listener to explore. With songs moving from mellow instrumentals to upbeat electronic drum tracks, sumptuous vocals to classy flamenco guitar riffs all morphing into a sound that is all his own.

Bands these days have a way of sounding alike. I’m not saying Raleigh is one of his own kind, but he certainly has created something unique and magical. Check out tracks “A Day to Die,” “Lament for Morning,” and...

Ach, what the heck – check ’em all out! (Anticon Records, www.anticon. com) Nicholas Van Doeselaar

JÓHANN JÓHANNSON The Miners’ Hymns No matter your preferred style of music, it is impossible to overlook the captivatingly mournful, eerie, and powerful sounds of Jóhann Jóhannson. The Miners’ Hymns is the soundtrack to Bill Morrison’s film about coalminers in Northeast England that premiered at the Tribeca

Film Festival last April. Morrison’s film (alluded by the song titles like “An Injury to One is the Concern of All,” “Industrial and Provident, We Unite to Assist Each Other,” and “The Cause of Labour is the Hope of the World”) focuses mainly on the political fight of unions amongst miners.

Jóhannson, with the conducting of fellow Icelander Gudni Franzson, created this album with a sixteen piece brass ensemble, an organ, and subtle electronic elements that tap into the emotional core of listeners. The songs build intricately in volume and tensions often using subtle silences to contrast elegantly roaring portions.

Listeners receive a place for their minds to freely wander in the dark mystery of sounds, but with rousing horn sections erupting from the haunting hum listeners will frequently be returned to the brink of reality.

Jóhannson, who is renowned for producing extremely powerful electronic music that challenges the idea of what electronic music is, commands the flow of The Miners’ Hymns smoothly from silence to sound allowing this album to excel to greatness amongst his numerous other works. Although modified speech is not used on this album, Jóhannson still produces classical influence sound similar to previous works which most notably include Englabörn, IBM 1401, and Fordlândia, among others. (Fat Cat, fatcat-usa.com) Jesse Blackman

December/January Dec 2011/Jan2009 2012 Stylus StylusMagazine Magazine 027 25

Under The Needle

ADAM AND THE AMETHYSTS Flickering Flashlight I’ve never owned one of those ordinary-looking rocks chopped in half with amethyst crystals bulging out like grape Kool-Aid, but in front of me is the Montreal-based band Adam and the Amethysts’ second album of indie pop, and it’s pretty darn nice. Genrewise, it also fits under the description “psychedelic folk,” but it’s crafted from pretty familiar ingredients. Nothing about this record strikes me as particularly memorable, but that doesn’t mean it’s not enjoyable. Flickering Flashlight is delicate but never weak, and filled with little odds and ends that keep things interesting: here and there are gleeful yells, and the tune to “Auld Lang Syne”; a rhythm reminiscent of music boxes, and strains of violin like sunlit ripples on the lake.

“Gitchee Gumee Yeah Yeah” is an unabashedly fun song. “Get me out of my clothes, and into the cool lake,” croons Adam over a funky bassline and all sorts of dizzying sound effects.

“If it seems like I’m dreaming, don’t wake me,” is another lovely line from the song “Dreaming,” filled with lowkey beachy sounds. The album ends with “Untitled,” a stirring 40 seconds of melancholy cello. This isn’t going to knock you off your feet, but it’ll come up on shuffle while you’re riding your bike on a sunny day, and slowly the world will look and sound warmer, crisper, sweeter. The equivalent of apple crumble for your cochleas? Yeah, bring it on. (Kelp Records, kelprecords.ca) Adrienne Yeung TINARIWEN Tassili This bunch of dudes has a unique take on music that is heavily influenced by the harsh terrain of the Sahara desert in their homeland of Tuareg. Often described as “Desert rock” and “Sahara

26 Stylus Magazine Dec 2011/Jan 2012

blues,” their fifth and latest effort Tassili finds the band branching out more and collaborating with the members of TV on the Radio and Wilco, to name a few. The music is soothing, though the lyrics not in English. But do not fret, the album has all the lyrics translated for you, good listener!

The lyrics almost take a backseat due to the language barrier, but the guitar work is beautiful and the vocal harmonies still keep the listener hooked. “Walla Illa” and “Tamiditin Tan Ufrawan” will have you joining in on the chorus even though you will have no idea what you are saying, unless you got the CD (see above). If you cannot seem to get past the language barrier, “Tenere Taqqim Tossam” has an English segment courtesy of TV on the Radio. The album starts to feel slightly redundant by the time the last couple of songs are reached, but this is a small price to pay for such a stellar A side. (Anti-, anti.com) Scott Wolfe DUM DUM GIRLS Only In Dreams “But in half-dreams that shift and roll / And still remember and forget / My soul this hour has drawn your soul / A little nearer yet.” These words, by

artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rosetti, largely inspires the latest release of the Dum Dum Girls. Only in Dreams is a tidal wave of surf rock with reverb guitars, sultry and smooth vocals with edge, and catchy hooks appearing consecutively on each track. After the success of their first album I Will Be in 2007, Only in Dreams welcomes the girls back. Starting off explosively and continuing through with soft-punk/ surfer-femme pop rock fashion, it’s reminiscent of the Go-Go’s but painted in red and finished off with some fishnets and combat boots. “Bedroom Eyes” is a personal favorite and one that is beachy and fresh. It’s all relative, though, as there’s something to be said about each track. “Just a Creep” shifts gears admirably, while “Coming Down” is packed with pain. The inner jacket/album insert dedicates the disk to the recent passing of lead singer Kirsten Gundred’s (stage name ‘Dee Dee’) mother, “the original Dee Dee.” That being said, hearing “Hold your Hand” is a stirring and beautiful goodbye. Reconnecting in dreams, constant searching of one kind or another and sick hits culminate into one pumped-up album. (Sub Pop, subpop.com) Victoria King

TEN SECOND EPIC Better Off With three independently released albums, Edmonton’s Ten Second Epic is well on their way to building a strong following in North America and around the world. The Three Days Grace style of punk influenced rock is the result of the hard work of the band’s members, who create a solid and unified sound where the vocals and instruments are well balanced.

There’s only one truly dynamite song from Better Off and it’s “Young Classics,” which combines incredible guitar riffs with a drummer who puts on a clinic in effort and a singer who could easily be singing “Riot.” Aside from the lead track, Better Off has little else exciting to offer listeners. However, DUM DUM GIRLS

PHOTO BY TOM OXLEY

because of the range in speed, sound, and the central theme of relationships, the album as a whole is a complete success. After the 2010 release of Hometown, Ten Second Epic experienced their first, and certainly not last, taste of success and clearly they want more. Hometown earned nominations at the Juno Awards, but fell short of the Arkells for New Group of the Year. That success led to a tour through Europe and Japan, playing on the same stage as Youmeatsix and Kids In Glass Houses. Back on Canadian soil, Ten Second Epic is kicking off the new release with a Canadian tour which stopped in Winnipeg on November 19, at the West End Cultural Center. (Black Box Recordings, tensecondepic.com) Jesse Blackman JOHN MAUS We Must Become Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves Soon we will add Minnesota’s John Maus to this grande and prestigious alumni of musicians that hold PhDs: Dan Snaith (Caribou), Mira Aroyo (Ladytron), Buffy Sainte Marie, Alex Patterson (The Orb), Milo Aukerman (The Descendents), Sterling Morrison (The Velvet Underground), Robert Schneider (The Apples in Stereo), Greg Graffin (Bad Religion),

Brian May (Queen), Kris Kristofferson, Jackie Fox (The Runaways), Dexter Holland (The Offspring), David Macklovitch (Chromeo) and possibly some members of Talulah Gosh.

We Must Become Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves defines Maus’ place among this canonical group. He creates experimental pop music that is framed around clippings of Joy Division and Scott Walker despite no direct influence.. though the John Maus/Walker Brothers connection is odd. There are also similarities to Ariel Pink, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering Maus was Pink’s keyboardist in the Haunted Graffiti before he focused on his solo career and a nearly finished doctorate dissertation. What may come as a surprise, given the albums elaborate title and his prior role as a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Hawaii, is that Maus is known to underemphasize lyrical content. That this criterion academic and vocal mind be self-condensed into focal dance tracks is an interesting aspect to consider (go read/watch any interview with this frantic-minded man). The musical career that Maus has shaped seems like an ongoing work of exploration to evaluate overlooked intricacies (eg. monetary supplements, tonal progression, and language familiarity) used in the creation JOHN MAUS

and reception of conventional pop songs as opposed to the atypical songs he creates. And these melodic experiments seem to be working just fine considering “Head For A Country” and “Believer” could end up on many “Song of the Year” lists. Censors of Ourselves is the most cohesive album Maus has created and, on a lighter note, his live shows look exhaustingly fun and show no lack of artistic passion even though he desperately needs a backing band. (Upset The Rhythm, upsettherhythm.co.uk) Andrew Mazurak pssssssst.. did I mention that he also plays keys for animal collective and panda bear?

Right. Go buy this album now.

D.O.A. Talk-Action = 0 These Canadian punks have been at it for over thirty years, which is impressive in itself, but even more impressive is the fact they have played a single genre, which they helped create, the entire time. D.O.A. may have cycled through band members like a revolving door, but Joey “Shithead” Keithley has always been the band’s foundation. On Talk-Action=0, the formula remains similar to 2008’s stellar Northern Avenger and fans will without a doubt be pleased with this latest offering. The music is catchy and politically charged with a nice little message permeating the whole album, that you can talk all you want but if there is no action to back it up, there will be no results. “Rebel Kind” kicks ass, the Dylan cover “The Times They Are A-Changin’” also kicks ass. Hell, the whole fucking thing kicks ass, man!

Shithead’s vocals are top notch and although outspoken at times (see “That’s Why I am an Atheist”), the fun aspect, as seen in “Captain Kirk, Spock, Scotty and Bones” takes the edge off. They achieve the perfect balance on Talk-Action=0 proving that punk rock is not dead, it’s just a little over 30 years old, it lives in Canada and it is called D.O.A. (Sudden Death Records, suddendeath.com) Scott Wolfe COLIN L. ORCHESTRA Good God / Infinite Ease

www.stylusmagazine.ca www.stylusmagazine.ca

Let’s get this straight. In “Colin L. Orchestra,” Colin is for Colin, L is for Langenus and O, for “Orchestra,” isn’t an affectation – the CD sleeve lists a staggering 33 members wielding (among others) violins, guitars, oboe, dobro, flute, harmonica, organ, and drums. All three come together in a double album release composed of the 10 tracks of Good God and the six on Infinite Ease. If Good God were a party, it would be the kind where, at 3 a.m., you find yourself sitting paralyzed on the couch staring at someone’s jiggling kneecap and wondering why your head hurts so bad. There’s always something going on every second, usually Langenus wailing over wiggling horns over guitars ripping the shit out of the air. It’s simply exhausting! Don’t get me wrong, though, this is not particularly fast or heavy.

There is a lot of decent guitar work and nice head-bobbing country and folk sounds. Infinite Ease is a happygo-lucky blend of sweet guitars which tend to go on sun-filled dilly-dallies.

On “You Need Sleep,” the Orchestra plays for longer than feels natural, leaving the listener to either a) enjoy the sounds of reverberating violins and folksy golden guitars or b) wonder for the next four minutes if the vocals are going to come back, which

they don’t. (Northern Spy, northernspy.com) Adrienne Yeung SAMANTHA SAVAGE SMITH Tough Cookie Samantha Savage Smith chronicles a tale of wrecked love on Tough Cookie, and despite it obviously being the result of a painful and poisonous relationship, I couldn’t be happier to have this album in my collection. Savage Smith came through Winnipeg not so long ago, playing at the Lo Pub with Freedom or Death and Ashley Roch.

More than a pleasant surprise, this album is on my top ten of the year. This is Savage Smith’s debut release off of Arts and Crafts Distribution, and what a debut it is. Savage Smith has a honeyed voice that is strong and bluesy, with intimate lyrics that shift from the lovey-dovey of “The Fight” to pure angst and longing on tracks like “You Always Come to Mind.” “Honestly / Honesty never really meant too much

December/January Dec 2011/Jan 2009 2012 Stylus Magazine

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to me / So I’ll just keep it in a box” is the near screaming confession of “Keep it in a Box,” while “The Fight” is all timely and willing submission. Dealing with themes of adultery, sex, and self-hatred, Smith hits the major chords of any great romance and she hits them hard. I seriously recommend this album for anyone

ILLUSTRATION BY SAILORBELLARIEL

who’s been in or out love. (Western Famine Recordings, arts-crafts.ca) Victoria King WILLIAM SHATNER Seeking Major Tom

Once in a lifetime, the planets align and we are left with a cosmic event that rocks the foundation of what we – the human race call music. The man, the myth, the legend, the captain, the Shat is back.

From 1978 when William Shatner hosted “The Science Fiction Film Awards” the world was then introduced to the Captain’s unique recipe of blending his Shakespearean acting with modern day pop music in his interpretation of Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” Now “Rocket Man” is featured along with other space themed classics on Shatner’s new double album Seeking Major Tom. Beginning with actual NASA sounds before going into a dramatic interpretation of Peter Schilling’s new wave song “Major Tom,” the album is Shatner at warp-speed tearing though classics like David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” and boldly going where no crooner has gone before with a cover of Hawkwind’s “Sliver Machine” with the MC5’s Wayne Kramer on guitar.

There are other guests who join the Shat on a tune or two including Bootsy Collins on a funky “She Blinded Me With Science.” Highlights include the epic version of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Space Truckin’” by Deep Purple where Shatner finds the right mix of rock ’n’ lounge, along with the ballad “Mrs. Major Tom,” a touching tribute for Shatner’s late wife sung by Sheryl Crow. Overall the double album seems a bit daunting and

Demetra

Rococode

Lone Migration Coming in January

Guns, Sex & Glory Coming in Februar y

Rococode = Te g a n & S a r a ’s r h y t h m s e c t i o n + Hannah Georgas’ keyboardist + ex-Said The Whale w w w.headinthesand.ca

28 Stylus Magazine Dec 2011/Jan 2012

overarching. Is there such a thing as too much Shat? I don’t know? Many of the songs seem to get lost between the epic production work, special effect pieces, repeat sound clips of previous songs and cameos that may be too mainstream – I’m talking about you, Brad Paisley. It may be too much to sift though in one sitting, but at the ripe age of 80 Shatner seems to be pulling out all the stops as he journeys toward the great beyond.

Showing no signs of slowing down, he’s currently in the midst of a cross-country tour with a new book and this epic album. (Cleopatra, www.williamshatner. com) Kent Davies

DANIELLE DUVAL Of the Valley Maybe it’s the title, or maybe it’s the controlled push of Danielle Duval’s voice, but every time I listen to Of the Valley,

my first thought is that it would probably fair best as the soundtrack to some ’90s high school drama cult-classic flick.

“Set in the heat of Beverly Hills, a group of friends try to find themselves... yadayadayada.” “Control” would start up as the theatre darkens, and a sequence of preschool morning-routine acts begins. “It’s Obvious” seems so fitting for any ‘busted behind the bleachers’ scene. (Re: “It’s obvious we have a crush / We made a fuss the both of us” and “We stayed up late / Made all the noise the neighbours hate”) “Day Becomes Night,” which opens with a quick sec of lo-fi fuzz and blasts into fast-paced strums, is the angsty prom night conclusion. That isn’t meant as a criticism either – that’s actually what makes this album so likable, and rationalizes the numerous accounts of in-car dance attacks that has occurred since I first listening to this one. Anywayz, by the sounds on Of the Valley, Danielle Duval is the kind of chick you’d want to be friends with. She’s tough, she rocks out (yes, verb) on the guitar, and yet she’s not so x-core that you’re scared she’d beat you up. Of the Valley is enjoyable femme rock; a contemporary twist on the classic stuff of catchy melodies.

A couple of the tracks off this album are extremely infectious, and have definitely been blasted through my stereo more than once. (People Play Records, ofthevalley.com) Victoria King

Arctic Monkeys making stardom look easy at the Burton Cummings on Saturday, October 1st

Live Bait ARCTIC MONKEYS + SMITH WESTERNS @ The Burt Saturday, Oct 1st, 2011

By Andrew Mazurak Let it be known that Stylus was among the (small?) fraction that showed up specifically for Smith Westerns and yet we agreed with the majority that their set was not an overly satisfying part of the evening.

It may have been that the band was on a larger stage than their look/sound/performance could handle.. and this was only the seventh show on a stretch with the Arctic Monkeys.. so there is really no excuse for such a drab Winnipeg showcase. And this is coming from many attendees who fell for their 2009 selftitled debut and this year’s stellar Dye It Blonde.

I get that a visually apathetic psyche amounts to many of these surf/psych-garage/bedroom rock revival acts that wish they weren’t born half a century after the real magic happened, but the Smith Westerns infantile live experience was punching me in the face that night, and judging by their Austin City Limits performance (that sounds many many times better), it is something that this band really needs work on: “they need to get better at performing live. they need to connect with the audience and not look uncomfortable. i like them and i think their music is awesome but they look like douchebags because of their vibe on stage. they didnt even say goodbye when they were done performing”, says the mostliked commenter from some YouTube video.

Arctic Monkeys, on the other hand, are clearly a rock band that has some live experience notched all over their well worn belts. This band is a concert photographer’s dream and they truly gave the crowd a bigger than life vibe as front man Alex Turner, who was rocking a Leonard Cohen tee (swag//respekt), restated why their debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not is still the www.stylusmagazine.ca

PHOTO BY ANDREW MAZURAK

“fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history.”

Crazy I know..

Regardless of the disappointments and surprises, the night was fun as shit mostly due to the Walker being a block from some fun Nuit Blanche events that went on til sunrise.

THE ONCE @ Winnipeg Folk Exchange Wednesday, Nov 16th, 2011

By Jesse Blackman Wednesday night at the Winnipeg Folk Exchange, the renowned folk trio from Newfoundland, The Once, took the stage in the corner of the small brightly coloured room, and went on to perform yet another magical show. This was their fourth such show on their current tour of Pop Up shows, promoting their second album Row Upon Row To The People They Know, in smaller more intimate venues across Western Canada, and it was simply incredible. No other stage could be more suitable for the power and honesty, the poise and wholesomeness produced by The Once.

A near twenty song set with ten songs played without amplification made this unlike any normal concert, but more of a family gathering in the host’s kitchen; Newfie hospitality is unmatched. True to their roots, The Once played several of their own compositions, half a dozen or so traditional songs from the Maritimes and the British Isles like “By The Glow Of The Kerosene Light,” and of course their own priceless covers of Leonard Cohen’s “Coming Back To You” and “Anthem,” Bob Dylan’s “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight”, Queen’s “You’re My Best Friend” (which they originally took on for a wedding), and Al Pittman’s “Cradle Hill” and “Nell’s Song.”

The stories they told about the history of the

songs ranged from the truly heart wrenching tales of Geraldine Hollett’s father’s brushes with death as a fisherman which were retold in “Three Fishers” and “Charlie’s” to Phil Churchill’s playing his first shows in St. John’s pubs and ordering a beer from the beautiful bartender in “A Round Again,” and Andrew Dale’s explanations about the Feast of Cohen which lead to The Once performing two great Cohen songs.

Artistically I have no doubt that The Once could take any song and produce a cover that combines warming ingenuity and strong resemblance to the original; likewise for their own creations. Individually any member could have a strong career as a musician, but together their voices and instrumental abilities create remarkable sounds that are crisp and thoughtfully cultivated to bring audiences to a dead silence practically begging for yet another note to be struck. Beyond the impeccable musical and vocal abilities of the trio they have the stage presence to make any show memorable with casual banter, Andrew’s especially witty remarks, and personal conversations with young audience members. The best moment from this particular evening was when a young man with an infectious laugh was invited to the front of the room so he could have a better seat.

There is one negative thing, however, that I must say about this show and the limitations of The Once in general: they’re only in Winnipeg for two shows— so disappointing!

ZOMBIE WALK @ Pampanga Banquet Hall Friday, Oct 14th, 2011

By DJ Stone Mmmmm brains, brains nom nom nom nom!!

On October 14, thousands of bloody, rotting zombies were seen limping and crawling towards the Pampanga Banquet Hall (old skool rave locaDec 2011/Jan 2012 Stylus Magazine

29

Bone Thugs-N-Harmony bring back 1999 to the Marquee Lounge on October 21st, 2011

Live Bait tion) after the Winnipeg Zombie Walk. There were zombie cheerleaders, business zombies, rabbit zombies, and some lady in a blood soaked wedding dress holding her aborted fetus still attached with the umbilical cord :-/ The location of this nine p.m. ’til six a.m. rave was TBA (oooo, secretive) until tickets went on sale, brought to you buy DV8 Audio Visual Productions and Jsquared Entertainmynt. It was a 16+ event; however, they did have a licensed area upstairs for the rest of us who wanted to get our drink on.

This was a two-room event, with the legend himself Dieselboy, as well as ill.Gates, Johnny Narcotic and a slew of local “zombie” DJs as well. Well, it was what everyone came to see, a lot of loud, heavy, bass-blasting, dubstep with a touch of drum-n-bass.

I was kinda hoping Dieselboy would have played some of his older drum-n-bass stuff, but I guess dubstep is what the kids want to hear these days.

Who knew the dead could dance so well?! It was pretty packed on the dance floor, rotting bodies flailing around, an overall good party. I give it eight out 10 zombies.

FRANK TURNER + THE ANDREW JACKSON JIHAD + INTO IT, OVER IT @ West End Cultural Centre Friday, Oct 21st, 2011

By Sheldon Birnie Once in a while, a rock n roll show is just perfect. It takes you for a ride, lifting you out of the struggles and strife inherent to living as a human being on Earth. It reaffirms your belief in the power of rock, reaffirms why you’ve spent hundreds of thousands of hours listening to records over and over again, shilling out thousands of dollars over the years to buy those records or attend rock shows, buy t-shirts and beer koozies and other useless shit from your favourite bands. Leaves you feeling pumped up and ready to take on the world when the lights lift and

30 Stylus Magazine Dec 2011/Jan 2012

the band goes home. Makes you feel alive.

This gig wasn’t a perfect gig by any means, but it certainly fulfilled many of the criteria listed above. It was the best rock show I’ve seen in well over a year, if not two or three.

Into It. Over It started the night off at 7.30 sharp. About a dozen kids crowded the stage, while the rest of the West End slowly filled up. By the end of the set, the place was nearly full, and the crowd was attentive to a fault. Into It. Over It is essentially one dude named Evan who sang his heart out, and was clearly very enthusiastic and appreciative of the attention the crowd lavished on him. However, I couldn’t get into his Dashboardy tunes, and he lost me completely with the first line of one of his tunes, about twenty minutes into his half hour set.

The line in question: “Flipping through the pages of your diary…”

The Andrew Jackson Jihad took the stage next, a two-piece featuring upright bass and acoustic guitar from Pheonix, AZ. These guys fucking brought it. The Ventura Concert Hall was full for their set, and the AJJ certainly made some serious friends amongst the rabble. Their tunes are very punk rock, played on instruments that drifter-types can easily haul. Lyrically, the tunes revolve around the hopelessness of life and the pain involved in being alive.

“Hope is for presidents, and dreams are for people who are sleeping,” is the line that hammers home the AJJ’s philosophy best to me, given my limited knowledge of their repertory. A rowdy crew at the front sang along to every word, though. My buddy Willy was among them, and he told me later that it had been “the best night” of his life, bar none. I believed him. Close to the end of their set, they busted out a sweet cover of Neil Young’s “Mellow My Mind.” I was sold before they busted that shit out, but damn was that a sweet cover to pull.

Frank Turner was the star of the show, though, and the already packed floor filled up even more as he took the stage with his tight-as-a-nun’s-no-no backing band, the Sleeping Souls. Turner kicked his oft-overly-mellow tunes into high gear, and the set was fucking awesome. Highlights, for me, included

PHOTO BY MIKE CHIASSON

More photos at stylusmagazine.ca rousing versions of “Dan’s Song,” “Glory Hallelujah” and “Long Live the Queen,” as well as a haunting a cappella rendition of 900+ year old English folk tune, “English Curse.”

For an encore, Frank came out and did a slight variation, “with apologies to the author” of one of his favourite Winnipeg tunes, John K. Samson’s “One Great City!” For this version, Turner substituted “Winchester” for “Winnipeg” in the first two passes, and substituted “love” for “hate” to end the tune off, endearing him further to many of the fans who were clearly already committed to his camp.

The finale was a full crowd sing-a-long to his anthem “Photosynthesis.”

While, overall, the set was awesome and reaffirming of all the rock-as-saviour clichés I hold dear to my heart, it was mired, slightly, by the Loogan factor. But drunk yahoos are part and parcel to a rock show. Frankly, I would have been shocked if there hadn’t been a few drunkards to upset an otherwise hitch-less evening. My only real complaint is that he didn’t play “Live Fast Die Old,” or, if he did, I was too high to remember.

One sad sap was moping after the show, after gaining the stage to give his bro-crush Frank a hug and being quickly escorted out of the venue by security, to much shame and derision. He came up to me as I stood, in the Winnipeg rain, waiting for a bus, waiting for a cab. He apologized to me, and asked if I had had a good time.

“Of course,” I told him. I’d had a fucking blast. I was about to go eat food in a warm place.

“Well I’m sorry,” he said, looking like a sorry bag of shit. “I’m sorry if I ruined your night.”

“Fuck that,” I said. “You couldn’t ruin my night.

Don’t worry about it.”

I wasn’t shitting the son of a gun. It had been an awesome night of music, a night where my faith in music as something fucking special was reaffirmed in spades. I’ll be shocked if Frank Turner, or the Andrew Jackson Jihad, will be playing as intimate a venue as the West End next time they roll through town. Mark my words, friends: You won’t want to miss it, if you missed it this time around.

W RE ND A Y OB OT H P

AK UR Z MA

IMAGINARY CITIES VS. LMFAO FOLK FEST VS. MTS CENTRE NDP VS. CONSERVATIVE

F E A R o f M U S I C The Narrative of Popular Music in the Decade of the MP3Blog

By Devin King In this, the 10-year anniversary of the mp3 blog, how can we say the digital landscape has influenced the culture of music? Perhaps the most significant change hasn’t been with the music itself. Underground music has always existed, but now, in the era of the blog, it has a vast swath of public champions. In this sense, the greatest change to come to music was actually the way that music journalism changed.

Great music journalists like Lester Bangs and Ellen Willis cared deeply and thought critically about the music they heard. However, the pace of music was much different in the prime of print music journalism. Genres took longer to gestate and play out, which gave more time to consider the sound itself. Reviews, in early print publications, were deeper reviews about whether or not to listen to/buy an album because the critics themselves were the only ones who had heard the tracks. These days, when an album is released, most readers have already heard that album and are looking for some sort of confirmation.

Music journalism today would be better described as shaping the narrative of music rather than reporting it. MP3 blogs are complicit in shaping the narrative of music history. The very act of posting an update is a way to change the history itself; any update could break a new band. With so many voices competing together, the tone of music discussions often verges away from deep, critical discussion (indeed, there is hardly the time for deep discussion anymore, there’s just too many new bands/sounds) and instead focuses on “firstism” – being the

www.stylusmagazine.ca

first to discover a band or to coin the name of a new sound. For a blogger to ensure that their ideas become part of that narrative, it means that every new band that crosses their path, and every altered sound must be described as the Next Big Thing. The reality is that there is lots of good (not great) music out there, and there always has been, but the difference has been an increase in hyperbole.

Pitchfork, though not a blog as it once was, will always be the lightning rod in conversations on this music, as

their influence is hard to deny. They solidified their reputation in 2003 by creating the “Best New Music” tag, as well as Pitchfork founder Ryan Shreiber breaking Broken Social Scene that year, with Arcade Fire shortly after. The result of this was that Pitchfork created the most reliable brand in music journalism, which gave them almost carte blanche to write the new music history, and ever since, they have been deftly able to keep the stature of their brand in tact. One way they’ve accomplished this is by not

allowing comments on the site, when most websites (even newspapers) allow comments. Those who doubt their ability to shape musical trends need only look to the case of Travis Morrison – a former favourite of the magazine – and his poorly-reviewed album Travistan. The review would effectively end his career, as listeners were ready to accept an interpretation of the music narrative that turned dramatically on an old hero.

Perhaps there is too much music out there, and we simply need someone to filter through that for us. It’s telling that All Music Guide and Pitchfork appeared around the same time.

Both strived to be encyclopaedias of music, but in different ways. AMG would establish itself as genre encyclopaedia, whereas Pitchfork would be an encyclopaedia of taste. And to this day, its influence in taste is still profound. But it isn’t just Pitchfork to blame, as there are thousands of bloggers and journalists who contribute to the race to shape history. There’s been a rise in not just music aggregators, but aggregators for everything as the digital frontier becomes more and more vast. The problem is simply when we openly accept any definitive revelation without our own critical thought.

The conscious writing and rewriting of music history has always been prevalent. Bomp! Magazine was one such culprit, and even Lester Bangs would do this, though his writing was much more a result of his own passions rather than to lay claim to new artists/categorizations. People have always tried to manage history, but the digital landscape has now forced us to focus our thinking more on the management of history – the invention of new genres, the rabid attempt to be the first to break a band – and less on the actual music itself.

Dec 2011/Jan 2012 Stylus Magazine

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Weird Shit KEnt DAviEs with

THE WEIRD QUEEN OF L.A.’s ROCK SCENE

tion uncontainable. She doesn’t know limits or boundaries and she is fabulous 24/7. Like, for real.

Drag queens can eat shit — Karen is way more intense.”

However, Carnage goes on to say that, “As I’ve gotten to know her, I’ve learned that Karen is a really sweet, almost girlishly innocent woman. Hard to believe, I know!” Carnage credits the film’s director Eckse and an all female film-crew which managed to corral and calm Centerfold down in order to make the film work.

The film also has guest appearances from Centerfold’s fans and foes including: Germs’ Don Bowls, as well as members of the Centimeters, Abe Vigoda, Mika Miko and more. Each interview adds to Centerfold’s legend, but it’s Karen herself that expectedly steals the show in the end.

Much like our Winnipeg weirdo VPW folkheroes Johnny Sizzle and Ronnie Pollock, Karen Centerfold is truly a unique cable access weirdo legend worth checking out. Look her show up on the YouTube, view the trailer for the documentary at www.seancarnage.com or read the full interview with Sean Carnage at www.amoeba.com/blog/ tags/karen-centerfold.

Rocker or stalker? Glamazon or hanger-on?

There is no figure more polarizing in the Los Angeles rock scene than Karen Centerfold.

This gender bending, 6’5” pariah of the L.A. underground rock and roll scene is the subject of upcoming documentary titled Centerfold Centerfold which features Centerfold as a singer, an adult model, a political activist, and host of a ridiculously mind-blowing L.A. cable access show: Raw Talent.

In the documentary L.A. bands tell tales of how Centerfold would come to their shows and (without asking) would get on stage to introduce them, always getting their name wrong and then spending most of the show smacking them on the ass and throwing confetti. This puzzling music scene monster has also been known to trash clubs on the sunset strip, stalk rock band frontmen, pressure pretty girls to be in pornos (which did not exist) – all of this culminating in “I Hate Karen Centerfold” online clubs on MySpace and Facebook with huge memberships.

As L.A. underground promoter and producer of the film Sean Carnage explained in a recent interview with Amoeblog, “This has not been an easy project to produce. Karen Centerfold is by defini-

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M. WARD MAN MAN

MUSE MAZZY STAR

M83

MASSIVE ATTACK MOUNT KIMBIE

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MELVINS

EMAIL EDITOR@STYLUSMAGAZINE.CA 32 Stylus Magazine Dec 2011/Jan 2012

RECORDING

LABEL

1 ! This Hisses Surf Noir Transistor 66 2 * The Pack A.D. Unpersons Mint 3 William Shatner Seeking Major Tom Cleopatra 4 Wilco The Whole Love Anti5 ! Rock Lake Rock Lake Eat ‘Em Up 6 ! Trio Bembe Oh My Soul Self-Released 7 * Feist Metals Arts & Crafts 8 ! Oh My Darling Sweet Nostalgia Self-Released 9 ! Greg Macpherson Disintegration Blues Disintegretion 10 ! The Magnificent 7’s All Kinds Of Mean Transistor 66 11 Tom Waits Bad As Me Anti12 Ladytron Gravity The Seducer Nettwerk 13 * The Planet Smashers Descent Into The Valley of The Planet Smashers Stomp 14 ! The Crooked Brothers Lawrence, Where’s Your Knife? Transistor 66 15 ! Big Dave Maclean Outside The Box Floodland 16 * Handsome Furs Sound Kapital Sub Pop 17 ! Bog River Hands In The Ground Self-Released 18 Ballake Sissoko & Vincent Segal Chamber Music No Format!

19 ! Kayla Luky The Time It Takes Self-Released 20 ! Greg Rekus The Dude Abides Self-Released 21 Dum Dum Girls Only In Dreams Sub Pop 22 * Miesha & The Spanks / The Sphinxs S/T Self-Released 23 * Camp Radio Campista Socialista Kelp 24 * Various Artists Everybody Dance Now: Songs From Hamilton Vol. 6 Indie 101/CFMU-FM 25 * Slim Moore & The Mar-Kays Introducing Marlow 26 Wild Flag Wild Flag Merge 27 St Vincent Strange Mercy 4AD 28 Jolie Holland & The Grand Chandeliers Pint Of Blood Anti29 * Ohbijou Metal Meets Last Gang 30 * Austra Feel It Break Paper Bag