Stylus Magazine -- Feb/Mar

Feb/Mar 2012

Published by the University of Winnipeg Students' Association

Volume23 Issue1

S

Stylus

Feb/Mar Volume23 Issue1

On the Cover JENNY HENKELMAN is a freelance writer, blogger, and artist who compiled and designed Fundrive’s CKUW Colouring Book, this year’s limited edition Fundrive incentive. When she isn’t hosting her radio show The Book of Right On (or crocheting incentives for Fundrive), hosting her podcast Fatties on Ice or writing articles for Canadian or international magazines, she blogs at PaperAndGlue.net.

O ya, and she’s a former Stylus editor.

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

TableofContents

Cover Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jenny Henkelman Printed by Copy Plus Inc. . . . . . 204-232-3558

Contributors Kristal Jax Adrienne Yeung Nick Van Doeselaar Victoria King Holden Bunko Kent Davies Kevin Mozdzen Jordan Janisse Kent Davies Jesse Blackman Kevin Strang Scott Wolfe Devin King Nigel Sutcliffe Janet Adamana Colton Balske Cole Snyder Kabir Kaler Colburne Poapst Ryan Simmons Bevin Boyko 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:

Features Grimes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 .RU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 John K. Samson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 The Hidden Words . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Stylus Magazine

Memoryhouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

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

Curtis Nowosad . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Jóhann Jóhannsson . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 RatTail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

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.

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Blah, Blah, Blah Events around town . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 CKUWho Work It Out Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 CKUW Program Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Local Spotlight T. Fuller // Crabskull . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Root Cellar Shelley O’Brien // Joe Henry // Steve Dawson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Ulteriors Dixie’s Death Pool // The Cat’s Orchestra // Zs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 Iconoclast Boston Strangler // Serenghetto // Kittie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 Mental Notes Saul Williams // The Weeknd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Jukebot Nans & Nat // Delhi 2 Dublin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 Under the Needle Paley & Francis // John Cale // Tom Waits . . . . . . . . . . 30 Live Bait Tim Hecker // Big Fun Festival Secret Show . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Kontroller Deus Ex: Human Revolution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Fear of Music The Insiders: Affinity Groups and Why Hating Nickelback is Acceptable . 35 Weird Shit with Kent Davies Vote Weird! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Royal Canoe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Pip Skid . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

CKUW Fundrive 2012 1 Feb10-17th

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THIS HISSES KICKING OFF DAY 1 OF BIG FUN FESTIVAL AT ACE ART ON THURS. JAN. 26

Blah, Blah, Blah We’re rocking balls deep into winter here friends, and the weird and wooly are coming out of the woodwork. Big time. Pull on your long-johns, layer up and hit the dang streets. There be shit going down! *** Check out Andrew Neville and the Poor Choices every goddamn Wednesday at the Standard Tavern. Buck up and get wild. *** Every Sunday, something strange from Bad Country or something awesome from Scott Nolan will go down at the Standard, or head to the Times Change(d) for Big Dave McLean’s weekly blues jam. *** February 10th is the beginning of CKUW Fundrive! We’ve got all the deets you could possibly need to make the most of this annual fundraising-orama! Tons of great bands! One great cause! Make sure to pledge some cashola so that our favourite community and campus radio station can keep rocking! We may be in tightening our belts across this great nation, friends, but I’m sure we can all dig deep on this one. If the gall-dang Gov’t isn’t go to support the Arts (and they won’t), we’ve got to do it ourselves! *** Feb 11 - Lo Pub – Manitoba Rocks Funspiel kicks off at the Lo Pub, while Feb 12 the who’s who of Manitoba Music will be getting their rocks off down at the Granite Curling Club for the annual Manitoba Rocks Funspiel in support of the Unison Benevolent Fund. *** Feb 16 you got the Perpetrators & Bottle Rocket @ the Times. *** Feb 17 – Still Lights CD release at Park Theatre // Royal Canoe CD release at WECC // Dixie lovin’ F-Holes are @ the Times *** Let the Mary Ellen

PHOTO BY ANDREW MAZURAK

Carter Rise Again! Feb 18 –Nathan Rogers sings songs of Stan Rogers at the WECC. // Subcity Dwellers play the Pyramid that night, too, while Potatoes & Washboard Hank get into it down at the Times Change(d). *** Feb 23 Get rowdy with The Fight at Lo Pub *** Feb 24 Ahoy! FM Sea release their EP at the Lo. // Make sure to hide the razor blades from little Lucy! Every Time I Die are getting emo at the WECC, while Carly Dow, Ben Wytinck, and the Reverend Rambler serenade the boozers at the Standard. // Manitoba Metal Fest at Zoo kicks off on Feb 24, too, featuring Into Eternity, Seventh Sin, Legion of Liquor, ENDAST, and Annex Theory. If you feel like getting really fucking weird and reaching for the sky, Fancy Pants do Ween at the Times. *** Feb 25 – More Manitoba Metal Fest, bangers! Suffocation, Untimely Demise, Hoarfrost and Alphakill, while Winnipeg’s favourite nautical enthusiasts Boats dock at the Lo for a night in port. Lock up the children! Romi Mayes & Jason Nowicki are rocking the Park Theatre, while Bombay Bicycle Club, The Darcys & Lucy Rose hit the WECC. Magic Slim & the Teardrops are doing something strange at Pyramid.

Top the night off with the Johnny Cash Birthday Bash @ Times. *** Had enough of the sea, landlubbers? Tough titty! Feb 28 Hey Ocean are at the Park tonight. *** March 2 Federal Lights with Enjoy Your Pumas at the Lo Pub. *** Enough with the sea theme already! Islands play the WECC March 3. Get our your leather jackets and walkers,

ye olden punks! Hugh Cornwell (The Stranglers) and Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols) are at the Pyramid that same night, while the Perpetrators are back at the Times. *** March 9 Subcity Dwellers take on the WECC *** March 10 Crooked Brothers and Quincy get up in the Times Change(d) *** March 12 Deicide gets greasy at the Zoo.*** Dust off your shit kickers and get ready to cry some tears in your beers! New Country Rehab are taking the Park Theatre by storm March 15. *** March 17 is St. Patrick’s Day! Get sloppy drunk, piss your pants and vomit green! Don’t forget your duct tape and green corduroys for the Red Moon Road CD release @ WECC. *** March 22 the F-Holes & Crooked Brothers are serenading the ladies at the Park Theatre, while world-class weirdo Damo Suzuki (Can) blows minds at the WECC *** March 23 the long awaited Red River Rampage goes down at the Winnipeg Convention Centre featuring the almighty PROPAGANDHI!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! *** March 24 Yukon Blonde & Library Voice get warm and cuddly at the WECC *** March 27 local poet and erstwhile archivist John K Samson gets Provincial with Shotgun Jimmie up in the WECC. *** March 30 local metal maniacs Mortalis release their debut disc @ Park Theatre, Plants & Animals and Little Scream are at the WECC, and Cheering for the Bad Guy get sexy at the Standard. *** Plenty to see and do friends. Take back those empties and roll another number for the road. If I pass you in an alley, I’ll pay no mind.

THE I’M TRYING RECORDS SHOWCASE SHOWDOWN w/ The Hoots, Little House and Lyzie Burt Feb 10 @ Lo Pub

FUNDRIVE

2012 PRESENTS:

JOE NICE W/ THEO TZU & TURTILIAN AND CODA & PUCONA Feb 11 @ the Rudolf Rocker SEXUAL DU VOYAGEUR W/ DJ CO-OP, ROB VILAR AND SUPERFANTASTIQUE Feb 14 @ Lo Pub THE TRANSISTOR 66 FOLK-ROCK-SHOW-CASE-SHOW DOWN W/ MAGNIFICENT 7S AND THE CROOKED BROTHERS Feb 15 @ Lo Pub THE CKUW SOULCASE SHOWDOWN! W/ THE NOBLE THIEFS, GUERRILLAS OF SOUL AND THE SHALLOW END Feb 16 @ Lo Pub THE DISINTEGRATION SHOWCASE SHOWDOWN W/ SLOW DANCERS, CANNON BROS, HAUNTER AND NOVA Feb 17 @ Lo Pub

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SUBCITY Saturday, Feb 18 at the Pyramid Cabaret

PRESENTS:

BOATS 3RD ALBUM FUNDRAISER Saturday, February 25th @ Lo Pub

DAMO SUZUKI March 22nd @ WECC

WEST CENTRAL WOMEN’S RESOURCE CENTRE DANCE PARTY FUNDRAISER March 3rd @ LoPub

YUKON BLONDE/LIBRARY VOICES March 24th @ WECC

FREEZE FRAME: MEDIA ARTS CENTRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE March 5th-11th 2012

THE JEZABELS April 23rd @ WECC

TRIBUTE PARTY TO ANDY WARHOL Friday Mar. 9th @ Pop Soda’s

BY ADRIENNE YEUNG Electropop pixie Grimes (a.k.a. Claire Boucher)’s angelic voice has captivated millions of pairs of ears in the past two years with her dark and sugary witch house beats. Less than a year after her latest release, the split LP Darkbloom (with d’Eon), the Montreal songstress is back with her most complex and lush sounding album yet, Visions. Stylus got in touch with her via email, and this is what she had to say.

Stylus: What’s an obvious difference that people hear when Halfaxa stops playing and Visions comes on?

Grimes: I think the production quality is pretty obvious straight up – but Visions is a lot “happier” in theory, even though thematically and lyrically it is significantly more depressing.

Stylus: If you could create the ultimate listening space for Visions, what would it be?

Grimes: Headphones at night in the dark – that’s my favourite way to listen to music in general, so that’s how I would want people to listen to my album. :) www.stylusmagazine.ca

ILLUSTRATION BY KEVIN MOZDZEN

Stylus: You’ve made four albums within the past two years. Has each record been a continuation of the same story, or do you feel that they each stand for something different?

Grimes: I mean, they’ve all got an essence that is continuous, cuz they were made by the same person and I think most people have inherent qualities that will translate into the art they make, regardless of switching up styles, etc. But they are all from different eras of my life, and definitely each one represents something different. My influences change drastically. I go through “phases” quite a bit, haha.

Stylus: You’ve stated before that Grimes is an audio-visual project. How did you incorporate the visual aspect into this album? And what were your visual inspirations?

Grimes: The inspirations for the visual aspects of Visions (which is mostly paintings I’ve done and videos) was a lot of science fiction and cyberpunk stuff – The Fifth Element, Blade Runner, Neon Genesis Evangelion. As far as technique with the painting I was very inspired by Hieronymus Bosch and

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Charles Burns.

Stylus: Can you describe a typical day in the midst of the most passionate stages of creating Visions ?

Grimes: Wake up at 3 p.m., do a bunch of speed, start working, chug water, pee a bunch, listen to Burial for ten minutes, do more drugs, work some more, do jumping jacks, talk to my room mate, smoke a cigarette, listen to “Fingerbib,” pace, eat some peanut butter, dance to the song I’m working on, cry for a while, re-do the drums, feel good, go to bed at 3 p.m. the following day or something.

[The editors of Stylus do not endorse the use of drugs by publishing this interview.]

Visions will be released on February 21 on Arbutus Records. If you haven’t listened to her previous albums, there’s no better time than now – Geidi Primes and Halfaxa were just re-released on CD format January 31st.

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.ru PHOTO BY VICTOR TUGIH

UNdergRound twEENoisE masteRs iN thE post-USSR

By KrIsTEL JAX

In mid 2010, I started billing myself as a DJ who played Solntsetsvety. Solntsetsvety – or Солнцецветы, a Russian word that translates to Sun Flowers (abbreviated СЦ in Cyrillic) – is an artist network which has been spawning lo-fi tracks and albums ranging from harsh noise and pure experimental to transcendental kraut jams and lo-fi reggaes since the late ’90s. Solntsetsvety is based – sort of – in cities Minsk, Belarus and Moscow, Russia, and sort of on their website, lesom.ru. The groups belonging to Solntsetsvety were hard to penetrate, even armed with digital translation and English articles on David MacFadyen’s Far From Moscow blog. Solntsetsvety was magic – and a mystery too intense to shrug off.

The groups belonging to Solntsetsvety are almost impossible to list. One is called Solntsetsvety.

Then there are folky Magnit of Solntsetsvety, pop leaning Mokh, catchy Batmen of Grande Ukraine, noise-infused Simptom Pogremushki, pop concrète Sybarites, and, amid many more, the ever-shimmering, heavily manifesto’d Magical Unicellular Music (Volshebnaya Odnokletochnaya Muzyka, abbreviated as VOM). Perhaps the most famed СЦ projects, VOM are divided into countless factions in multiple countries (each labeled with a number:

VOM1, VOM4, VOM5, etc), many of which have toured and recorded with Damo Suzuki.

Early on I tracked down a guy in Moscow, Аnton Krivulya, who seemed deeply involved with at least one Solntsetsvety project, Mokh or Moss. I sent him some DJ mixes, but he firmly denied any understanding of the English language. I accepted temporary defeat.

Fast forward to fall 2011: I’m at a Kram Ran show in Toronto with an original СЦ member, Aleksei Malakhov, who’s recently moved to Canada from Belarus. He’s trying to teach me how to pronounce Solntsetsvety; I’m making an ass of myself.

This has been arranged by another СЦ-er, Belorussian Roman Bernstein (who has taken part in Solntsetsvety, Mokh, Sybarites, VOM and Simptom Pogremushki, among others), whom I met by chance while scouring the Internet attempting to replace some albums I lost in a hard-drive crash, and to whom I am completely in debt for organizing these interviews – which are at heart attempt to explain what Solntsetsvety is: an important apparition in the bleak, heroin-scarred post-Soviet world.

Below are select answers I received from Roman, Roman’s young brother Tim Bernstein (Mokh, VOM, Simptom Pogremushki), old-school СЦ-er Aleksei Malakhov (now a Torontonian, past member of Solntsetsvety and VOM), and the Solntsetsvety Select Solntsetsvety albums: mastermind: recent Moscow imMagnit of Solntsetsvety – For the Sake of Absolute Surety migrant Anton Krivulya, member Magical Unicellular Music – Kampuchea My Kampuchea [2007] or contributor to just about every Magical Unicellular Music – Inconceivable [2009] Solntsetsvety project, described by Batmen of Grande Ukraine – Vacation at their Own Expense [2007] some members as a magical genius.

Simptom Pogremushki – Omega Load [2010] Many thanks to Roman for his help Sergei Pukst, Anton Krivulya – Black Stork [2010] with translations* and organization, Sybarites – Dlinniy Put’ [2010] and to Anton, Tim, Aleksei, and past Moss (Mokh) – One Billion Yellow Birds [2010] Mokh member Mitya Matievich Solntsetsvety – Instructions for Embroidery [2010] (who helped out but did not answer these questions) for their assistance.

Select Solntsetsvety bands in their Cyrillic incarnations: Solntsetsvety sound is bound by Solntsetsvety (Sun Flowers): Солнцецветы something unexplainable – it’s free, Mokh (Moss): Мох DIY, and allows itself to blur the line Magical Unicellular Music (abbr. VOM): Волшебная between real and fiction, and the peoОдноклеточная Музыка (BOM is usually abbreviated VOM for ple who make it seem to know that the sake of English speakers, as V = Volshebnaya) the gross output of the collective is Sybarites: Сибариты greater than themselves. In speaking Simptom Pogremushki (Rattle Symptom): Симптом Погремушки with five of its countless members, Batmen of Grande Ukraine: Бэтманы Большой Украины (BatI found a brilliant combination of many Bol’shoi Ukrainy) humour and frustration: anger at the Sergei Pukst, Anton Krivulya: Сергей Пукст, Антон Кривуля

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dysfunction of post-Soviet life wrapped up in jovial, loose, sovereign spirits. *Just prior to my second round of questions during this interview, Anton conceded that he does know English quite well, and would be communicating with me in English for all further investigations. Roman translated between us prior to that, and also assisted with other necessary translations.

Stylus: What / who is Solntsetsvety (СЦ) and how did it begin?

Anton Krivulya: In Minsk, as everywhere else in the Soviet Union after its collapse in 1991, deranged teens appeared in large numbers, not on friendly terms with reality. They rejected the society and the state in all their manifestations; it was a revolutionary generation, for it was not possible for an intelligent young man to live in the late Soviet Union without feeling intolerable disgust. We were doomed to marginal existence and chose refuge in art – established a land of our own and named it Solntsetsvety. It’s not right to say somebody is a “member”– it’s more like mist that you can enter or leave. We call Solntsetsvety an artistic group just to set forth at least some kind of coordinates. [We] accept everybody in the world into Solntsetsvety in absentia: membership became irrelevant.

Aleksei Malakhov: The band started as acoustic punk-rock duo – I remember their first gig on a degraded truck in the ruins of suburban Minsk. They soon went electric with a full line-up.

Tim Bernstein: Solntsetsvety are everyone. Sun Flowers – it’s some kind of a plant, I guess.

Stylus: How is Solntsetsvety pronounced?

TB: [‘sɔntsɛtsv(j)ɛ’tɨ] AM: / s-o-n-ts-Ə-ts-v-e-t-i/ Stylus: What are all the projects of Solntsetsvety? Who is in each / where is each located?

TB: All is changing constantly, and new projects arise from time to time. As for the persons behind the names, they could be counted. Don’t waste this paper with the names, though.

AK: Solntsetsvety came about as a survival method.

The projects of Solntsetsvety emerged as such, each for its own moment. What made it possible for us to survive in the ’00s was our set of projects. The group was already nonexistent as a collective, but it did exist as an alliance of people with similar interests; each member could introduce creative projects

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[and] strengthen the common concept.

AM: To name “all” would be pretty ambitious.

Stylus: What binds these projects together and makes them Solntsetsvety?

TB: This is a unique feeling. It’s like a wave of an ocean that will ruin the world to the initial stage; to its basic state.

AM: It’s hard to tell what the kinship is based on – it’s inner feeling rather than musical style or lineup. For example, [my band] Green Brain Arts Band, Inc. had three Solntsetsvety members, but it had nothing to do with Solntsetsvety.

Stylus: Why is everything on lesom.ru free to download?

AK: It is impossible for a musician or an artist to make a living with their art in our country. Ones who cherish such illusions put in jeopardy their own lives and the lives of their family members.

There are more effective ways to earn money.

TB: I guess it began with “Who will ever be interested in what we do?” Wanna listen – download, visit live shows or, come on, do something better.

Stylus: What labels have released Solntsetsvety albums?

AK: We don’t exist for them at all, I think. For the local ones we’re not profitable, and for the foreign incomprehensible. Only one album – The Stone (Камень) was released with VOM4’s own money and administrative support from Moscow label Otdelenie Vyhod (Отделение Выход).

TB: Clinical Archives net-label welcomes our music. Haze net-label released some.

Stylus: Can you describe what makes Simptom Pogremushki different from other Solntsetsvety outfits?

TB: SP-ki is a one-man project, with help from friends if they want to collaborate. It’s not bound to ideas or manifestos; it’s more personal and intimate. The word “pogremushka” is compared with a “rattle” (a childhood game; to conjure), “noise,” “thunder,” or a “pogrom” massacre.

Stylus: I’d like to hear more about the Sybarites project.

Roman Bernstein: That was a funny story.

Summer 2006, Mono and Anton [are] running around, telling me they invented a totally new way to record things – THE ULTIMATE ETHNOFUFLO recording method: everything unplugged. Bass guitar in a plastic bucket, the resonating sound picked up with a mic. Bass drum made by thumping an umbrella upon a cardboard box; distorted guitar solos sung by voice; lots of flutes and all kinds of percussion.

They invited me to join and we recorded an EP in one day.

TB: Sybarites: “Those who appreciate the finer things.” It’s connected with everyday life, all things / sounds crazy.

Stylus: What is Magical Unicellular Music/ VOM’s manifesto?

AK: VOM is a musical form without musical text. Formally it’s discreteness of the constant.

Units of discreteness are not equal between each other, because of the fluidity of consciousness into which they are immersed: each listener has his/her own subjective composition. Such is the principle, but the problem is that not all listeners perceive music purely, without allusions or matrices. Many attempt to listen to VOM as Krautrock or minimalism.

TB: It was a great idea to create a form of music which could be felt by everyone. Extremely primitive and soulful… popular among the trance scene. www.stylusmagazine.ca

AM: The concept is even the most primitive form can make great music. Different incarnations have different lineups and sound, but what unites them is musical minimalism. Live in Detroit is based on one chord in different positions.

It sounds like Bo Diddley was released from a mental institution; like Kraftwerk decided to outsmart Can in being monotonous.

RB: The best definition: “The people in the audience stare at the guys on stage playing instruments, but nothing seems to ever change. Then it clicks: the music starts playing inside the heads of the listeners, while on stage there seems to continue to be nothing happening.” For me, when that click happens – I enjoy that like few other things. My silly dream is to play with VOM5 on the main military parade in Belarus where they showcase their tanks and rockets, on one of those giant wheeled platforms that they use for transporting nukes. VOM is very emotional music for me.

Stylus: How many factions of VOM exist?

Who / where are they?

AM: Oh no, never counted them.

Stylus: What is a Solntsetsvety live show like?

TB: You never know what will happen next. You get this feeling even if VOM is playing.

AM: Depends on project, lineup, and Anton’s mood. In the beginning, СЦ was a typical punk outfit – shaven heads, dirty jeans, cheap guitars, lots of raw energy. Anton was often drunk. Then the image started to evolve. I remember one show in Bobruisk that had lots of death and black metal bands in it (I don’t know why this is so popular in Belarus – we always made fun of them). There are those drunken headbangers, leather jackets, inverted crosses and all that jazz, and sober Anton comes out in a white shirt, with a scroll of poetry in his hand and says “Hi, goblins.” They in turn yell “crippled faggot” (Anton held a cane due to injury). Then the band goes into high-tempo hardcore punk, and those guys can’t help but start dancing to it. Between songs, mutual insults resume. Great!

As time passed, СЦ floated into psychedelic… performance elements started dominating.

RB: It depends. A good VOM concert is like therapy (or surgery). Other projects work other ways.

AK: A classic performance of Solntsetsvety is when on stage come out many (many!) people well prepared for the gig, with neat haircuts, in nice suits, with sparkling new instruments as if for the last time. And then something happens that nobody has foreseen, but it’s exactly what everybody came to the gig for.

Stylus: Where is the center or Solntsetsvety?

(Minsk? Moscow? Online?)

AK: The last ten years the website has been the center of our activities. I strive for tangibility, and I wish and hope to see Solntsetsvety function trans-spatially.

TB: There can be no center for everyone :) Stylus: Why has Solntsetsvety existed these past two decades? What are its musical, environmental, political, financial and spiritual influences?

AM: In 1991 we were a bunch of guys living in a decaying Soviet Union, no money, no future, political rat race around. We wanted to have fun and did it in a way we could afford. We listened to garage, psychedelic and [punk]. We wanted to play our music, because everywhere in Belarus

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it was either pop or metal; very few local bands to listen to. One thing different from the West, there was no punk vs. hippie thing: both were ostracized and hated equally by cops, civilians, and working-class youth. There was no dichotomy: while СЦ music was punk, the lyrics were Syd Barrett-style. It really hit the spot. This facilitated a smooth transition to a more psychedelic sound (unlike in NYC where I heard snide remarks about how Bad Brains “lost their edge”). But… drugs, career changes and creative blocks took their toll. One contributor to line-up changes has been immigration; it’s natural to find ways of not being so dependent on lineup… incorporating electronic elements, or having a network of musicians. Since СЦ never had a musical dogma, (nobody says, “Play exactly like our previous guitarist/drummer,”) everyone’s free to bring their thing to the music, thus keeping it from fossilization.

AK: The main influence was undoubtedly the time we grew up in, the collapse of the empire, breakdown of the social order. Our generation is separated from society, it hates the state, and at some point the state gave a valid reason to be hated – Belarus became a dictatorship. But we always tried to live like some other world was real and what we did happened in some other coordinate system. The Beatles also meant a great deal to us; their music was true revelation in the Soviet Union. I’m influenced by Paul Valery, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, poets Aleksandr Vvedensky and Olga Sedakova, symphonies, post-punk culture…

TB: As for me, I like to forget how to do something: forget known patterns and find something interesting in a newly discovered form.

RB: Solntsetsvety is a way to clear your vision and get closer to reality, [and for me to] play music I want to hear but can’t – nobody else would make it. Environmentally and politically, financially and spiritually [life] feels like armageddon to me… maybe Solntsetsvety is a way to deal with that.

Stylus: What is the future of Solntsetsvety?

AK: Something should be changed, no doubt.

[We have] no rational design.

Stylus: Do you have hopes for how Solntsetsvety will be seen historically in Russia / Belarus and beyond?

AK: The most important thing СЦ proposed is an idea for survival of the creative process and collective, expressed in our structure and technologies. Maybe our tree-like structure, like Bergson’s L’Évolution Créatrice, can be a useful model for [others].

Stylus: Anton, how do you feel about other members of Solntsetsvety naming you ring leader, and a genius?

AK: I don’t know what the word “genius” means at all.

Stylus: Do you strive to make your music an incomprehensible mystery to foreigners, or is that just a result of your process?

AK: It’s not only incomprehensible for foreigners but for Russian journalists, listeners and sometimes for me. We’re based on illogical parallel expansion, and sometimes we’re even changing our past.

Go to imtrying.net/sun_flowers for downloads we’re 99 per cent sure will sync up with your Western music player, plus interview extras (fake Peel Sessions? Damo Suzuki?) and semi-coherent artist lists, or visit lesom.ru for adventure.

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CITING SOURCES

John K. Samson releases debut solo album Provincial

By Victoria King

After a disturbingly friendly-weathered day, John K. Samson welcomes the subzero chill that we Winnipeggers are so familiar with. “I’m kind of relieved it’s getting a little colder. It was freaking me out yesterday. It was kind of unsettling... We need the real winter,” he explains over the phone.

His debut solo album Provincial, came out January 24 on Epitaph. Despite releasing several solo EPs in the past, Provincial is decidedly bigger, with focused Manitoba devotions, and also different than his regular Weakerthans appearance. “It was really a research-based record, and my idea was to research four different stretches of road in Manitoba and write three different songs about each of them and use techniques and research as well as exploring the places themselves and just try to use different strategies to try and get a sense of each of these places.”

“Doing something on my own was frightening,” Samson continues. “Not having the fellowship and camaraderie of the Weakerthans was hard for me because those guys are like family and we’ve been making music for 15 years and I love making music with them, but I just felt like this one had to be done in a different way.”

Topics flowed pretty naturally for the album.“My mother grew up near Ninette, Manitoba, and some of my father’s family came from Riverton, so those two spots had some built in residence for me. And Winnipeg of course is my main theme in my writing anyways. Highway 1 is the other route, which I’ve spent a lot of time on over the years as a touring musician, so that’s just something that I thought would be a through line for the record.”

The lament of a driver stuck on the roadside of Highway 1, “Highway 1 West” was one of the first songs written for the new album. Samson laughs when asked if the song was the result of a specific incident, saying, “No, but I have been stuck on the highway for sure. And I’ve been stuck on Highway 1, but I guess I was kind thinking probably, of the couple times I’ve broken down on Highway 1... yeah, definitely, actually I have done that. But the city of Winnipeg is always sort of there in the distance, in my mind at least. If you stick to the road you’ll get to Winnipeg eventually. All routes lead there.”

One thing to note about the album is that two of Samson’s most recent EPs, 2009’s City Route 85 and 2010’s Provincial Road 222, have been included.

“Petition” from PR 222 is now “www.ipetitions. competitionrivertonrifle” on Provincial – an actual web address for an online petition to induct Reggie Leach into the NHL Hall of Fame.

“It’s from the point of view of fictional townspeople of Riverton, Manitoba. It is kind of inter-

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esting to write about a person who actually exists, it’s kind of scary.

I’ve done it a few times before. Reggie Leach is such an important figure, it’s almost like he became a fictional figure to the town of Riverton. When you go there there’s a big mural with his face on it, and there’s a street named after him and an arena named after him, so he’s become this larger than life figure and I was trying to write about that.”

Another song set in Riverton (as well as being partly inspired by “The Simpsons”) is “The Last And.” “I was writing about the e l e m e nt a r y school in Riverton for some reason and I was kind of idly trying to write about someone from a small town, teaching in an elementary school and having an affair with their principal. It’s the kind of story about the dynamic of a small town and how closed it can be, and how ‘desperate’ it could be, to be someone like that. And about halfway through that I thought, ‘Oh wait, this is sort of reminding me of something’ and I thought about Principal Skinner and Edna Krabappel. And that’s always kind of struck me as a sad storyline and an interesting one on the Simpsons. It was just kind of something that wandered into my brain as I was writing.”

The song is written in the first person, and as Samson reasons, “I think that the first person is the most direct, and accessible for me as a writer but these are fictions for the most part, they’re characters that I invent. So it’s first person fiction I suppose I’d call it. I find those to be the most immediate and the most dynamic kind of narratives to come up with. I guess that’s my neutral gear, it is I what I lean towards is to find the voice of someone to explain something or to describe a place.”

New to Samson’s repertoire is the song, “Letter in Icelandic from the Ninette San,” which was researched at the Manitoba Provincial Archives.

“I put on the little white gloves and I did some research into the Ninette Sanatorium and some

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ILL US TR AT ION

BY NI CK VA ND OE SE LA AR

stuff a ro u n d Riverton.

I was trying to find this film of the Ninette Sanatorium that I knew had been made, and it said that they had it in the archives. But the movie has been pulled from the archives so I didn’t get to see it. I actually had this long talk with the archivist there about my project and he was kind of interested in it, so we got to talking about places that if I wanted to do more sites would interest me. He had this list of fascinating stories of Manitoba that he started to unspool on me, and I thought ‘oh, this is going to turn into a four record thing.’ So I had to kind of draw back from that,” he jokes.

“I don’t have much of a analytical or a prosewriterly brain. I have trouble writing anything longer than a pop song,” John humbly admits. Yet Provincial begs to differ. As “When I Write My Master’s Thesis” would suggest, the album really is a thesis of sorts: Sunday cruise nights, the Army Surplus on Portage Ave, and various small town dramas are just several of the components that seem to make up a Manitoba existence.

“I think of Winnipeg as a small town in a city disguise. I wanted the record to be like a map. If someone came to me and said, ‘I have 2 days of time’ I could take them to the site of every song, like there’s an actual place for each song. In my head I had each song mapped out, I just had to write the songs about these places.”

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PAINTING BY KAMAL-OL-MOLK MANIPULATED BY ANDREW MAZURAK

THE HIDDEN WORDS

Alden Penner and friends explore the Baha’i faith in Song

BY SHELDON BIRNIE

The Hidden Words is a Montréal-based acoustic folk-pop project celebrating the scriptural tradition of the Bahá’í faith. Initiated by Alden Penner (exUnicorns, Clues), the project has grown to include Penner’s old friend and collaborator Jamie Thompson (ex-Unicorns, ex-Islands), as well as MarieClaire Saindon, Neah Bahji Kelly, James Farr, and Ben Howden.

The music is different than Penner’s previous projects, but not necessarily a departure.

“I suppose there’s not an overarching difference in the songs, in that these are songs that I’ve structured myself, so I guess there’s a signature to that,” Penner said over the phone from Montréal. “But at the heart of the project, we’ve sort of decided to have it as a point of focus the writings of the Bahá’í faith; the spiritual nature and the mystical quality of the relationship between man and God.” “In so doing,” he continues, “the project is intended to communicate something of the spirit of those writings in a beautiful way through music. And hopefully do justice to the work by having them translate into actions, whether that’s doing kind of things that bands don’t normally do, like playing in homes, or elevating people’s souls through music, or, indirectly by inspiring other people into doing other benevolent acts or good deeds.”

Penner says the Hidden Words “emerged out of a long winter and spring thaw following a period of inactivity with Clues where I kind of decided that I wanted to be more involved in a local community and make music that was more reflective of where my mind and body are at the moment.”

“With the previous project Clues, it was more of

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a repository of older songs; songs that dated back to high school or songs I was playing with other bands, so it felt a little anachronistic. This project emerged in the spring of 2010 as a repository of more current songs that I was writing, and just trying to memorize some of those passages from the writing [of the Bahá’í faith]. It kind of went more hand in hand with what I was actually doing in the present, and was more reflective, or of an intended more harmonious reflection of my life.”

Many of those songs have now found their way onto the first Hidden Words album, Free Thyself From the Fetters of This World, which was recorded in the summer of 2010 and released in December 2011. According to the band’s website, mixing of a second album is underway. On Free Thyself, Penner plays the bulk of instruments himself, from acoustic, electric and bass guitar to vibraphone and piano.

“I’ve been playing music since I was pretty young. I think the first instrument I started playing was either the recorder or the violin,” Penner explains. “Then it’s been a succession of learning different instruments, taking private piano lessons for a long time, up until joining school band and learning how to play the trumpet. Then moving through the percussion section and the bass guitar.” [Disclosure: I played clarinet in elementary school band with Alden in Dawson Creek, BC. We all wore dorky red cardigans with a bulldog on the breast to recitals.]

Lyrically, the Hidden Words draw their content directly from the spiritual scriptures of the Bahá’í faith (quite literally, “the Hidden Words”). Free Thyself features vocals, by Penner, in English, French, and Spanish.

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“I think that’s also reflective of my current and more recent experience. I’ve been living in Québec for an eight-year stretch now. I actually grew up here, and was born in this province and lived here until I was about eight years old,” Penner says. “The French language has been a part of my world in a big way. It’s only been more progressively integrated into my music. With the Spanish, that kind of happened spontaneously one evening. I was handling a document, one of these prayers in Spanish that I was familiar with in English had a kind of musicality to that language that kind of flowed right out.”

The coming year sees the Hidden Words continuing to write and play around Montréal, with the idea of taking their music further a field as the year progresses.

“We are eager to explore new places to play,” Penner admits, “but sometimes there’s just a misunderstanding of what the projects is, based on the excitement of our previous involvement in these other bands, and we end up playing somewhere at two o’clock in the morning, at some bar. That’s fine and everything, but I think the hostility that results through our words in that situation can be sort of overbearing. We want to make sure that we get out there in the right way.”

Check out the Hidden Words’ debut album at http:// thehiddenwords.bandcamp.com, and cross your fingers for a Winnipeg date later this year.

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014 2009

Stylus Magazine

December/January

MEMORYHOUSE the slideshow effect

PHOTOS BY VANESSA HEINS & BEVIN BOYKO MANIPULATED BY TAYLOR BURGESS

by adrienne yeung

Forget the map. A pair of headphones and Memoryhouse’s debut LP, The Slideshow Effect, are all you need to find a little oasis of sepia-toned zen anytime, anyplace. (It also helps if you have the muscle tone to not drop your backpack on a stranger’s foot like I did when I was chilling/dozing to this during my commute.) The duo behind this ambient, invigorating pop consist of Guelph natives Evan Abeele and Denise Nouvion, who took the time to play Q&A with Stylus.

Stylus: So what’s the meaning behind the title The Slideshow Effect?

Evan Abeele: I think our album title reflects on the various ways we tend to create a narrative for our lives; a running story of where you’ve come to be, and how you got there. This concept is reinforced by the songs themselves, which I view as little snapshots of where Denise and I grew up, and what kind of music defined that period.

Stylus: Denise, do you set out to take pictures with the intention of gathering material for a song?

Denise Nouvion: No, I think my photography is more or less just an intuitive reaction to things around me. I like when my photographs are able to convey a story or a history, without being too imposing or upfront. I want there to be a little mystery, something inviting to pull people into the world I’m trying to portray.

Stylus: Can you give a quick description of the images you chose for the album?

EA: The cover image is important, it’s a shot of a girl tenuously holding onto an old tree trunk above this old lake we used to frequent as children. The photo is double-exposed; it’s a visual metaphor for

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how people tend to misremember the past (generally in their favour). Again, it comes back to the idea of self- narrative, and how our past isn’t really all that it seems.

Stylus: Evan, how many instruments do you play, and is there one that you find yourself drawn to the most?

EA: I used to approach playing instruments with a weird mentality; I wanted to play everything! And I did, for a very long time, play everything, but as I matured as a songwriter, I found that playing so many instruments led to a lack of creative focus.

Piano is my strongest instrument, and up until our LP I did most of my writing on piano. However, I’ve since decided to play guitar almost exclusively.

I find it very thrilling, guitar is a little unnatural for me, but I get to be creative with it without having to follow any rules.

Stylus: Your songs have a really soothing, ambient quality to them. But it’s obvious that you’ve spent just as much time on giving the lyrics the same beauty. What takes precedence, the story you’re trying to tell or the atmosphere?

EA: The story is always the focus. I had feared that our use of texture and atmosphere could become a bit overwhelming, so I think we really tried to bring the narrative to the forefront with this album, because we really do like the lyrics we write, so it’s nice when people can identify and connect with them.

Stylus: Is Memoryhouse’s sound today different at all from what you two set out to create two years ago?

EA: Yes, I hope so. Two years ago we really started from scratch, we were very slowly figuring out what our strengths were, and figuring out how to work

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them into the material we were writing. I feel more confident as a writer and performer now, so we’re more able to explore a greater depth and nuance in our songwriting. I think our songs “breathe” a lot better now. Everything feels more open and inviting, and it’s a bit easier to place the phrases we’re playing.

Stylus: When you feel creatively blocked, what are some things you do to get re-inspired?

EA: I try to change things up often. After we recorded our LP I felt that I needed to clean house so I could approach things differently. I started listening to different music, reading different authors... things like that. When art begins to feel like a routine, it is easy to get trapped into certain modes and rhythms, and I think it’d be unfortunate to not want to actively pursue new art forms that you can (hopefully) learn from.

Stylus: What’s a situation in which you’d imagine someone listening to The Slideshow Effect?

EA: I guess the ideal situation would be disconnecting from the thousands of distractions we all endure on a daily basis and just listen to the album in something approaching a “pure state.” It’s always a little frightening when I see people listening to an album live on Twitter, while reviewing it on-the-go.

Great albums take time and investment on the part of the listener, so I’d really like to see that approach taken towards our album. But yes, I’m sure a common situation would be something like listening to the album while reblogging a picture of cats surfing on hot dog bun on Tumblr.

The Slideshow Effect is due for release by Sub Pop Records on February 28th.

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SATURDAY FEBRUARY 25

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 28

Romi Mayes & Jay Nowicki

Hey Ocean

w/guest Bobby Desjarlais

w/ Jack Straight

TUESDAY MARCH 6

THURSDAY MARCH 22

Amelia Curran

Crooked Brothers

SATURDAY APRIL 7

WEDNESDAY APRIL 11

Colleen Brown

Ten Second Epic

w/ Caracol

w/ Jenny Berkel Matt Colpitts

w/ the F-Holes

w/ The Dangerous Summer & The Red Threat

SATURDAY APRIL 21

SΔID THE WHΔLE w/ Chains of Love

ALL SHOW TICKETS AVAILABLE AT THE PARK THEATRE, MUSIC TRADER OR WWW.TICKETBREAK.COM/PARKTHEATRE DOORS 715PM SHOWS 8PM

PHOTO BY LINDSEY BOND

Curtis

nowosad a man about town

By Holden Bunko

Chances are if you are familiar with Winnipeg’s jazz scene, you have probably heard of today’s interviewee.

Curtis Nowosad has been an active and participating member of Winnipeg’s music community for many years, but has recently come into his own as a musician. Weekly gigs, cross-country tours, and even an upcoming album release means that Curtis is a pretty busy dude, yet he absolutely loves what he’s doing, and shows no signs of slowing down. With talent like his, we hope he never does.

Stylus: How long have you been drumming for?

Curtis Nowosad: Since I was twelve. I actually still play the same drum set. I’ve gotten a couple others, but my first drum set was a vintage Rogers. I got it from one of my drum teacher’s other students who was getting rid of it, and it was in shitty shape. But they’re super nice drums so I’ve restored them these past years so they actually look good for the first time.

Stylus: Are you recording at the moment?

CN: Yeah, I’m planning on putting a record out in September. It’s gonna basically be arrangements of contemporary pop, rock, hip-hop, and reggae tunes, but completely re-arranged for jazz. So I’ve got some Bob Marley, some Pink Floyd, some Tupac, Michael Jackson... If I hear a melody that sticks with me, something where I can figure out a way to make it interesting then I’ll use that. I mean that’s what they were doing in the thirties and forties, taking pop tunes and fixing them up a little bit.

Stylus: Do you have anyone working with you on the album?

CN: Well I’m doing all the arrangements but the band, as it stands, will be the faculty at the U of M, so it’s going to be Jimmy Greene, Derrick Gardner, Steve Kirby, Larry Roy, Will Bonness, and also Julian Bradford.

Stylus: Quite the team. When did you enroll at the U of M? CN: Fall 2006, I went in right of high school. Back then they didn’t actually have a drum professor or a jazz studies program. So I was actually taking lessons with Steve Kirby even though he is a bass player, but I got so much from taking lessons with www.stylusmagazine.ca

him. From the time I started my degree, I was on every single gig with him. So I was just continually getting my ass kicked. It was pretty hectic but very rewarding. So there were two years like that, and then in my third year the jazz studies program went through, but since it came in my third year I had to decide whether to finish a Bachelor in Music and do four year degree or do a Bachelor of Jazz Studies and do five, which seemed like the lesser of two evils. It was just kind of hard to be in school for five years. So I was in the first graduating class of the Bachelor of Jazz.

Stylus: When do you feel you started playing professionally?

CN: I started playing gigs in high school, probably in grade eleven or twelve, but I haven’t had a regular job since the summer after grade twelve, so since I started at the U of M I haven’t had a job of any kind, I was just playing music. Even that summer before I started, I was barely working at the job I was at. I always had to book off so many days because I had gigs that it kind of was just not worth it.

Stylus: Who are some of the other musicians in the city you have worked with?

CN: There are a couple of different groups that I have been playing with. One is a trio with Will Bonness and Julian Bradford. We have done quite a bit as a trio, and I’ve got some of our trio work on the record. There are also some younger guys I have played with who are still students at the U of M. There’s Niall Bakkestad-Legare, he’s a great tenor player and I’m pretty sure he’s still in his second year. Niall just exploded from the moment he got there. He’s studying under Jimmy Greene and doing everything Jimmy tells him. Aaron Shorr is another one and he’s actually doing a re-arrangement of Paul Simon’s Still Crazy After All These Years, like the whole record rearranged. I did a show in November that was Bob Marley’s Exodus, and Shorr was on the gig with me and that was in the same series. On February 2nd I’m playing with Karl Kohut who is a fantastic bass player. We’re doing another show of the same series, doing Radiohead’s Kid A. It’s going to be really electric and really cool, and this is all with Will and Julian as well. This is all at Aqua

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Books, that’s sort of like our home base of operations.

Stylus: Any plans for touring in the near future?

CN: I’ve been playing with Keith Price for a long time, he’s a guitar player. We actually used to play in a quintet a few years ago. There was myself, and Keith, and Julian Bradford, and Will Bonness, and Neil Watson. But Keith also has a trio which is myself and Julian Bradford, and we are doing a Western Canadian tour. So we are playing at the CCFM on February 7 and then we leave on the 8th. We’ll be gone for ten days. Then I come back for two days and then I’m doing a week of gigs in New York with Steve Kirby and Anthony Wonsey.

Stylus: Where are you planning to go on your tour?

CN: We are going to Brandon, Edmonton, Kelowna, a few other interior B.C. cities, and then Calgary, Lethbridge. It’s going to be a great tour. I mean I’m doing it with my friends, these guys were my wedding party. So it’s kind of like a road trip.

Stylus: Do you have any other gigs coming up in the city?

CN: I’m still ironing out the details, but I’m doing my own show at Aqua Books on March 2nd, because they will be moving to a new location at the end of March. I’m on the board, and it’s been an amazing learning experience. It’s great to be involved with everything, I mean Kelly Hughes has a lot of vision and a lot of great ideas. They are re-creating as a non-profit organization after the restaurant closed, so they are trying to sell off as many books as possible and move to a smaller space. We were just doing a demo there the other day and talking about how great that room sounds and it’s just going to get gutted, so my idea for March 2nd is to get maybe three, four, five bands and do a live recording.

That room sounds so good, especially for recording.

It’s all carpet and wood and it just sounds great.

You can catch Curtis Sundays at the King’s Head Pub and Tuesdays at Silver Heights Restaurant. He also has a radio show, Tomorrow is the Question, airing Thursdays from 4 - 5pm on UMFM 101.5 FM in Winnipeg and online at www.umfm.com.

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JÓHANN JÓHANNSSON Power of Dynamos

By Taylor Burgess

The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival is always expanding its forward thinking series and this year’s festival featured Stylus favourites Tim Hecker and Jóhann Jóhannsson, among many other established experimental composers. This isn’t the first that Winnipeg sees of Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, 41 years old.

Years ago, as part of the Núna Now festival, he led an awe-inducing concert—an interlocking of overbearing electronics, shoegaze atmospherics, and a proficient string quartet. His performance on NMF’s closing night, though maintaining those characteristic elements, will be a markedly different honour, as he is premiered a new composition. The piece, A Prayer to the Dynamo, comes rather quickly after his full-length album The Miners’ Hymns (a film soundtrack, to put it simply) yet the piece to make its world premiere has an entirely different concept behind its aura.

“I had a starting image—when I start a piece I always like to have some idea, or some abstract or notso-abstract image or concept before I start. The thing I was working with in this instance, and which I also take the title, is a chapter in The Education of Henry Adams, where Henry Adams describes a mystical experience he has at the World’s Fair in Paris, in the year 1900.”

Historian and novelist Adams attended an exhibit titled the Great Hall of Dynamos—large-scale and relatively new power converters, and he was amazed, ‘had a mystical experience,’ much in the same way that Jóhannsson was struck by Adams’ words.

“He wrote this whole chapter,” continues Jóhannsson, “which is very lyrical and beautiful, where he equates his experience in front of these dynamos to the power of religion and the power of the Marian cult. In it, he compares the power of medieval religion to twentieth century mechanical energy, manifested in the form of electrical energy. He found this strong interrelation between electric currents—steam and the electric currents—to the cross with the cathedral.”

It was a concept that the composer could relate to, as he laments we no longer experience trepidation at this

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still wondrous thing.

“We don’t really experience electricity like that. It’s so mundane and taken for granted. That’s what’s so amazing about reading the chapter— this was such a new, strong, mystical, and kind of unexplainable force. Of course, People were aware of the mechanics and the physics behind it, but it was still such an enormous and new source of power with ramifications of possibilities. He gives voice to this awe and fascination that it has.”

Jóhannsson took a poem from the chapter, its title for his composition, and used it as the basis of his piece. Where the free-flowing energy of Adams’ words took him were the modern-day dynamos of his native country land.

“In Iceland, the countryside is littered with power stations which genCKUW Fundrive 2012

erate power from waterfalls and thermal energy. So I went and recorded the sounds beside these places—the really powerful drones and the sounds of the dynamos in action.”

In addition to his field recordings, to begin and end the piece, Jóhannsson uses a 50 Hz hum, which occurs naturally in electricity, like when electronic gear is connected poorly.

Jóhannsson challenged himself to work with the harmonics in the tone.

Naturally, it’s his love of all things electric that set him on his current course of being a contemporary composer with his unique blend of influences.

“I come from a rock background.

I used to play in rock bands, like, wall of noise guitar, and I still do. I am very interested in the extremes of the spectrum—going from softly Feb10-17th

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and quietly to having this whole dynamic range, which is why it’s so amazing to work with a string section. If you amplify it, you can go up to a deafening noise. Like you say, this immersion, I like music that creates an atmosphere, an environment almost, to live in. It’s kind of ritualistic in a way.”

He comments that he doesn’t grandstand while on stage, for the sake of his compositions.

“When I perform, I don’t talk or address the audience because I don’t want to insert my personality into the experience. I just want to create a moment where you get lost or the saturation of the moment, where [the listener] becomes totally engaged in the constant experience.”

Jóhannsson’s use of dynamics is certainly something to experience firsthand, though they hold up just as well on record—like on The Miners’ Hymns, which was influenced by the loss of England’s coal mining industry, and the brass bands comprised of miners that still hold the torn communities together to this day.

But at the behest of Jóhannsson’s compositions, how do classically trained players contribute to his unusual sounds?

“Working with classical musicians, you have to speak their language. You have to basically communicate very clearly what you want to do. If you communicate very clearly on paper, then it works out fine. Of course, it’s preferable to work with players who are enthusiastic about new music and are kind of adventurous. And it’s great when classical musicians are, and can improvise a bit. And these days, a lot of young musicians are—they have a background in electronic music, in rock music and have a much more open approach—they’re flexible and they can approach different environments. It’s amazing when you can have the best of both worlds, when you can have players with amazing technical ability, but also a kind of flexibility and a kind of openness to other ways of working which are not purely academic or classical. I’m lucky to have worked with a lot of players like that. Most of the players on my records have a history like that.”

And thankfully, with the WSO having run its New Music Festival for 21 years, who better to play out Jóhannsson’s composition?

ckuw fundrive closer∫ disintegration records showcase ∫feb 17∫ lo pub∫$10 doors 9pm∫ bands 10pm fundrive 2012∫feb 10–17 pledge line 774-6877 fundrive .ckuw.ca

∆ c e rvsa ∆ n a w d ∆ no s.∆ ∆ s l o o n b rtoe r ∆ nn un ∆ c a ∆ ha

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BY N

RatTail

SELF-PROCLAIMED WEIRDOS

BY JANET ADAMANA

After only a few short years of writing, touring and performing, the slightly bizarre but incredibly creative Toronto trio RatTail continue their path of injecting contagious, raw, experimental pop into the Canadian indie music industry.

The band formed in 2009, after then-folksy singer/songwriter Jasmyn Burke joined forces with good friends bassist Ryan Mounsey and drummer Jesse Frank Matthews. The group has since turned into Toronto’s newest up and coming indie-pop group.

In June 2010, the band released their debut 7”, entitled George Mounsey EP, on Unfamiliar Records. It revved up the band and granted them plenty of exposure and positive reviews. With appearances on numerous websites and Best Of lists all over the blogosphere, RatTail was amped and ready to take the next step and promote the release across the country.

But before they embarked on their first western Canadian tour that year, a change in a band member’s life pulled one of them in a different direction.

“We were like, [Mounsey’s] having a baby, and we’ve always wanted to tour,” explains Burke, “but its hard to have a kid and be struggling with surviving while playing music. He has a little girl now, and he ended up moving out of town.”

Fortunately, the change was just a mild hiccup in the band’s touring plans. They quickly enlisted the help of friend and current RatTail bassist, Timy Fag. Armed with a complete line-up and a mutual gusto for the tour life, the three went on a seven-city western Canadian tour that spanned from Manitoba to British Columbia.

The band’s latest release, a ninetrack self-titled LP, garnered much anticipation and excitement since the news of its creation scattered the Internet last fall. It’s a record that took

several months and a re-recording to bring to life. Time and effort well spent to help create the trio’s funky musical time capsule.

“It’s a collection of all the songs we had been working on before and after [Timy Fag]. It’s a mixture of both those worlds,” says Burke. “I was glad to actually create the LP because it’s like a storybook of our lives over the last couple of years.”

Songs on the LP, released on January 31, range from typical indie-pop, far more unique and experimental to old rock and roll with a dash of some grunge, generating a cross-genre album which stems from the band

members’ individual musical tastes.

“It helps that we like different extreme sounds,” says Burke. “If I’m into a really poppy sound and [Matthews] is into some strange song I’ve never heard of, by some Iranian musician, you can put those two together and create something that’s interesting.”

Songs like album openers, “Soon Enough” and “Tip Toe” are fast, poppy and catchy as hell. They’ll have you dancing practically as soon as it starts.

“Go Green” starts off soothing with a deep steady beat and Burke’s soft vocals. They also have a mix of more mainstream radio-friendly tracks like “I Simply” and old school rock roots

on “Sicko.”

To perfectly compliment the band’s eccentric music is their equally distinctive music videos. One quick YouTube search of RatTail’s songs yields numerous artsy and whimsical videos for some of the band’s music.

The most recent and most notable video is “Sicko.” It’s made up of hilarious clips of feathered hair, spandex and male strippers from an old ’80s VHS tape, entitled Ladies Night. All their videos, as well as RatTail artwork, are done by jack-of-all-trades, Jesse Frank Matthews who, aside from RatTail, also produces music for his solo project, JFM. More promotion of the new RatTail album and touring are the first things on the band’s plate in the new year, as they are currently working on covering the continent.

“For us, the goal is to start doing things in the spring and summer. It’s actually really hard to tour in the dead of winter,” laughs Burke. “We’d like to do that and even try to go to the States.”

With gigs like NXNE YouLookDeath.ly Showcase, Halifax Pop Explosion, and even the Toronto International Film Festival, under their belt, it would seem natural for the trio to keep booking larger shows.

But for Burke, the highlights aren’t in the prestige of the gigs, but in the adventures that come from traveling to them.

“Touring is always a really interesting way of living life for a while,” she says. “I’ve always liked meeting all the different people from different parts of the country, and Canada’s really beautiful, so touring is really the thing I like the most.”

RatTail’s self-titled LP is available on iTunes and in stores through Unfamiliar Records and Outside Music.

Make sure to check out Rattailmusic. blogspot.com for updates, tour news and hilarious anecdotes from the band.

Work It Out Radio with the Work It Out Warriors Tuesdays & Thursdays, 7:30a.m. & 7:30p.m. on CKUW 95.9 FM or streaming online at www.ckuw.ca

Stylus: Work It Out Warriors! Please introduce yourselves and what you’ve been sent to do.

Tuff Strong: TUFF $TR0|\|G H3R3 !!!!! !’v3 B33N S3NT H3R3 TO W0RK !T 0UT A|\|D GET 3RRRRRRRRRRRB0EEEE L00000K!|\|’ S3XY N ST000NNN |\| |\| |\| G. no exceptions.

Skid: The name is Skid and I am here for a barbendin’, iron-annihilatin’, head-bangin’ good time.

Warrior: MY NAME IS WARRIOR! Stylus: Can you walk us through a typical episode of Work It Out Radio?

Skid: Each episode is designed to knock your socks off with an exercise of the day and heart-pounding segments teaching you how to eat like a champ and how to live like a champ.

Tuff Strong: WaLK!NG????? W3 N3V3R WaLK!NGG – W3 RRRRRRRRRU-

UUUUUNNNNNNNNNNing. W3 SH0\/\/ Y0UU 3RRR-T!NG U N33D 2 KN0W 2 G3T S3XY ‘‘‘N’’’ STR0NG. P0SES, M0VES NDDD ATT-!T-UDUDUDES!!

Warrior: I CAN’T LEAVE THE APARTMENT SINCE THE JUDGE TOLD ME NOT TO. WORK IT OUT RADIO HELPS ME GET MY AGGRESSION OUT AT HOME WHILE GIVING ME THE EXERCISE I NEED. Stylus: It’s usually taboo for radio stars to have their image readily available. Yet there are videos and extensive videos of you at ckuw.ca/ workitout. How does that make you feel?

Warrior: VIDEOS? WHAT VIDEOS? Tuff Strong: \(--)/ Skid: Why would I hide a head of hair like this from the world??

Stylus: What really PUMPS YOU UP?

Comic by Colton Balske // coltonbalske.com

Tuff Strong: FR3!GG!N G0000000000000000000000000000D MUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!K, NNNDD TH3 CUMPAN33 0F M! F3LL0W W0RK !T 0U+ \/\/ /\R!0RZ!!! \(>o<)/ !!!!!!!!!

Skid: Van Halen, my hair blowing in the wind when cruising on my hog, Captain Crunch cereal.

Warrior: PRIEST! Q: Why should people listen to Work It Out Radio?

Tuff Strong: W3’R3 0FF!C!AL!!!! R33EEELLLYY!! W3”V3 G0T TEEEEEEE-SHHHIIIIIIIRRRRRRTSS!!!

Warrior: BECAUSE IT’S THE ONLY WORK OUT THAT DOESN’T MAKE ME ANGRY AND YOU MAY LEARN SOMETHING? Skid: I only get paid if you do...

024 2009

Stylus Magazine

December/January

ILLUSTRATION BY NICK VAN DOESELAAR

BY NICK VAN DOESELAAR

Pulling their name from a news headline, Royal Canoe has been a Winnipeg synth-pop band of choice for over a year now. What used to be a recording project for Matt Peters (Waking Eyes), the band has been filled out with members of the Liptonians and Tele and together they embrace the old, wooden, and royal sound their name gives off, yet still adventuring headfirst into electro territory as a means of complimenting their sick hooks. Matt Peters and Bucky Driedger were kind enough to sit down and answer a few questions about where the band has been and their upcoming Extended Play.

Stylus: When did you come up with the idea of Royal Canoe and how did you know it could be something?

Matt Peters: There are two phases that we went through in the beginning. The first phase being me on my own recording songs for fun with friends that weren’t really anything. After 10 to 11 songs, I figured that it could pass for a record. After about two years of doing nothing with it, other than giving it to my friends to listen to, I thought that maybe we should do some live shows, so I called up Bucky Driedger and Matt Shellenberg (the Liptonians) who I know as good musicians. Then we got around to writing more songs as a group and that formed this new shape which is Phase Two, which is happening right now with being a band, not just a solo project or side project, but an actual band.

Stylus: What inspires everything that is to do with Royal Canoe?

MP: Hearing and seeing reactions from the crowds and fans really helps motivate us to say “Wow, we have done something great, lets keep going.” You always gotta be fresh with what you do. As of now we are a very strong band and we work very well together. That is the most important thing you can have in a band is a strong attachment as bandmates.

Stylus: What specific bands influence your sound?

MP: I guess you could say Outkast, and André 3000 for what they do for the production mainly. And Beck, I guess if you want to call them mainstream influences, we aren’t really shy about that. There are

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songs off the album Midnight Vultures by Beck, and there are many tracks where it’s exactly what I want my music to sound like.

Bucky Driedger: Everyone that was a teenager in the year 2000 will have Radiohead as an influence, even if you don’t like them, you won’t be able to avoid it. It’s hard to name bands but more little pieces of things that you like about them. I like lots of percussion and guitar things that TV on the Radio do. You just take little snippets of everything, which then becomes your own.

MP: For instance, Fever Ray and The Knife, we might have some same sounds as them but we have different ways of putting it together. We have finally gotten over the phobia of being too scatterbrained and not staying on a straight track, which was the trouble we had for four years. Now I think we have it under control.

Stylus: When I listen to Co-op Mode, every song is very “Royal Canoe.” It has a very distinct sound to it, and when I listen to some of your new stuff, it too is very Royal Canoe, but so different at the same time. What are changes that you are making from the last album to the next?

MP: What holds true from the first to the second album is the appreciation of certain grooves and styles that we’ve grown to love. We do a lot of sixteenth note pushes that are very technical but we just all appreciate deep grooves.

BD: Now we have two drummers, one analog and one acoustic, and that’s a big change from Co-op Mode. Lots more keyboards, falsetto vocals and octave vocals and a lot of bass. There is also a very different lyrical style from the last record.

MP: On Co-op Mode, all the songs were hanging off contrasts between comedic and tragic elements, all about characters pretty much. Everything from the last record is from an external position of us being the observer, nothing is directly connected to us or about us. Every song on the new record is personal and connected to Matt, Bucky and I, who are the main lyric writers in the band.

Stylus: Why are you releasing an EP rather than just releasing an album right away?

MP: The good thing about an EP is that you tell

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people, “OK here we are, this is what we are doing” and then you go from that into the record. There will be some crossover tracks from the EP to the record, but we don’t know for sure which ones yet.

BD: Here in Canada, whatever we release will be what the people hear first, so instead of having a long 75 min album that people have a hard time grasping, it’s nicer to give them a taste of what’s going down and to stay tuned if interested.

Stylus: Are you going to be touring after the EP is released?

BD: The EP is coming out sometime in February and after that we will tour Canada and the US after that until the album comes out.

MP: That’s how far in the future we know exactly, but we are open to be able to play a lot of show sand do whatever we can.

Stylus: What are you future dreams as a band?

MP: I think mainly I want to be a band that is consistent with bringing out new material on a regular basis and not one of those bands who only releases something every three to four years. We also want to have things released close to the time that it was actually created. Kind of like South Park and how every episode is made a week before it comes out and often they will reference things in culture and the news that happened that week. We hope to have lots of courage and not worry too much about anything.

Stylus: OK, to end this off, what would you tell or have someone read about Royal Canoe if they have never heard of it before?

BD: Basically we took a lot of time and care to this music and we made it the best we can. The music style and progressions were made from everything we had. And to have someone give it try would be amazing.

MP: How about “WE ARE NOT BLUES ROCK”?

Royal Canoe’s Extended Play drops Feb 17 at the WECC. Stay tuned to stylusmagazine.ca for the extended play of this interview.

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TO PIP,

PEOPLE

areTHE

WORST

BY TAYLOR BURGESS

PHOTO BY RYAN SIMMONS

Manitoba rapper Patrick Skene has been around for a number of years now, making hip-hop for the backpackers and the heads, like 2010’s mondo-catchy yet conscious “Tens of Dollars” off his last album Skid Row. On Feb 2, he released People are the Worst with the Greg MacPherson band and DJ Co-op in tow, and going for a short tour with the band including a stop in Skene’s hometown Brandon. When I had a chance to talk to Pip Skid, we touched on the new release, teaching kids to deal with their anger issues, and the influence of DJ Bunny, who Skene had the pleasure of working with on PATW. Stylus: Pip Skid, you’ve had some of these songs for as long as a couple years and I was wondering why record this collection of songs now?

Pip Skid: Well I was going to just dump them out but when I started re-recording them I was doing that with Ricardo Lopez, of Oldfolks Home. Ricardo convinced me to make more of a record of it and then through that process I wrote a bunch of newer songs. Which is fun, to work with Ricardo. He and I collaborating together made something I thought was worthy of being a record.

Stylus: Yeah, as a collection of songs, I think it holds together really well. How many of these songs did you have written before recording them?

PS: I would say I had about half of the songs finished, just sitting on my hard drive, left over from the Skid Row record. They ended up sitting unfinished because of our time push with Skid Row,

24 Stylus Magazine Feb/Mar 2012

and then we recorded and remixed all [the leftover tracks], and while that process was happening, the new ones came along. And then the one with DJ Bunny [“I Ain’t a Rapper, I’m a DJ”] is the one that meant the most to me. That was originally a song from his access TV show, Spot Lite which ran from 1990 to 1994, on TV. Hunnicutt would always tape that show on his Betamax and we would very religiously watch that. It was something we could hold on to, without there being very much rap around.

It inspired us and made us want to make rap. For those of you who haven’t seen that show, it’s just like a bunch of goofs playing, not just rap, but soca, all other types of music, dancing, and playing with the visual effects that they would have had. They look like a Tim and Eric episode or something.

Stylus: Who was DJ Bunny? A DJ on the show?

PS: DJ Bunny did it all. I mean he rapped, he DJed, he hosted. There were other rap guys, like MC Taco, and Chris Benzi, and DJ Steve. They were the generation of hip-hop before Farm Fresh and before Freak Show and Mood Ruff. Bunny is a pioneer and I was honoured to have him come down and be involved. Hunnicutt recreated the original beat for that song and Bunny did his original verse.

Stylus: Let’s talk about the title for a second, People are the Worst. What have people done to make you think that they are the worst?

PS: Well, for instance, today, I ran into a friend.

Even though she has laundry facilities in her apartment, she said she’s going to her parents’ to do laundry. For one, because their landlord won’t fix their

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plumbing, so their laundry ends up smelling like feces. And second of all, there’s been an epidemic where people have been stealing people’s laundry. I don’t know if you’ve ever had someone break into your house, but you just feel so violated. And, for me anyways, there’s a piece of me that I can never have back. And on and on and on and on. And I work with kids a lot. And you see that kids generally have a good heart inside of them. But I think that as they grow older, that’s just smashed from them.

Stylus: As you had mentioned, you work with youth in your program Make Rap Happen. I was wondering how you teach kids and what you tell them in order for them to deal with their anger issues?

PS: Well I teach art and rap from kids to teenagers and I guess drawing and painting and making music, for me, has always been a way of venting frustrations. I mean it’s a very classic sort of “art is therapy” or whatever it is. But it works and it’s real. When you empower people with the tools to do things, to be able to draw a comic book or write a song, I think it goes a long way. If you have the tools and the insight to go inside yourself and say what’s on your mind or bothering you, that’s huge. It’s also giving a voice to the voiceless, I think, which generally, in this world, not many people have a voice.

Be sure to support Pip Skid by grabbing People are the Worst on Marathon of Dope and to pay-whatyou-can.

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Local Spotlight

T. FULLER Eat your Beats Holy shit, what a banger.

Terrence Fuller (of KkrakK!! and Repulsive Bile) programs beats, which, on Side A, at first come off innocently enough, like an analog drum machine picking itself up by its bootstraps and taking a stroll through the jungle (though it sounds more like mellow

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industrial music than DnB). Like his KkrakK!!-mate’s music, Fuller’s tunes go at drag’s pace, however, he seems more interested in the minutiae of programmed, sequenced sounds like the headiest minimal electronic producers around.

On Side B, the heavy shit creeps in.

After some junked-up punk declares himself the master of the universe, the dark groove becomes more infectious. I am bewitched. Of the next track, I cannot refrain from referencing Daft Punk, if the Parisians had the initiative to reverse the polarity on all their gear. [Ed. note: Just a metaphor. Reversing polarity is dangerous and makes electronics malfunction, not sound better.] Dynamic, in the truest sense of the word. (Prairie Fire, prairiefiretapes.com) Taylor Burgess

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CRABSKULL Jovian Black Opera Welcome to the dark underbelly of all things sampledelic—a fine intersection of hip-hop, trip-hop and dub, achieved without the use of any computer gear. This 60-min album is all instrumental, mostly beat-driven, and isn’t afraid of zoning out and go-

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ing noir. Some of these cryptic, lessstraight ahead tracks go to territory somewhere between Panda Bear’s “I’m Not” and DJ Screw, and definitely make for the best genre-bending, hazy, brood-about-life listening.

Crabskull (a.k.a. Chrys Fournier, drummer of Scab Smoker, stoner metal band – which is a bit of a trip in itself, if you think about it) has a handle on his limited gear, making drama erupt from a well-placed, welldelayed horn stab, or quietly bringing up a snail-paced speed funk sample.

It’s pretty unassuming, if you were to just throw it on. But it’s a surreal, gothic world, if you choose to listen.

(Prairie Fire, prairiefiretapes.com) Taylor Burgess

Feb/Mar 2012 Stylus Magazine Dec 2011/Jan

25

Root Cellar

SHELLEY O’BRIEN Vivarium Although the album cover was shot in Iceland, the YouTuber-turnedtraveling-musician Shelley O’Brien has released an album full of Canadiana. She is fortunate to possess a voice that is casual and welcoming so it can softly waft and blend with the various instrumental components of her art. Performed by herself and Mathew Rogers, this album entices fingers to tap to the beat with heads bobbing along. The soft sounds speak to a love of natural beauty that drives some to partake in a spontaneous road trip into the back country; a feeling that is lost among those with a strongly urban upbringing. “Perfect Day” is one song that is hard to overlook. Another song to put on repeat is “From The Caribou,” featuring a chorus of powerful chanting that is excellent for a song dedicated to the incredible migration patterns of those great mammals. All in all, Vivarium is a wonderful compilation of songs that are easy to listen to. They please ears and excite them for future releases.

(Right On! Media, shelleyobrien.ca) Jesse Blackman

JOE HENRY Reverie Joe Henry – well respected songwriter, performer, and Grammy award winning producer – has described Reverie, his 12th studio solo album since 1986, as a “raucous and fractured and noisy affair,” and that doesn’t fall far from the mark. Raucous and noisy it may well be, but it is also a beau-

26 Stylus Magazine Feb/Mar 2012

tiful, dark escapade through sparse woods, fields fallow for winter, and backlanes cluttered with detritus of broken dreams. Musically, the album is acoustic, for the most part, and broodingly atmospheric. Lyrically, Henry’s pen seems inspired by Dylan by way of The Band, with a vocal delivery that reminds me of Waits, if Waits’ vocal chords were unravaged by smokes and hard liquor. There’s a lot going on here, and after repeated listens over the past month, I feel I’m still turning up new streets and discovering new haunts with each listen. Best enjoyed alone on gloomy afternoons, or in the background of a bizarre dinner party, with plenty of mulled wine. (Anti-, anti.com) Sheldon Birnie

NORTHCOTE Gather No Dust The debut full length from Victoriaby-way-of-Regina’s Northcote – a very royal pedigree if ever there was one – is an honest, guts-for-glory release from a guy who’s sure to go far.

Gather No Dust has got a good mix of roots rockers and introspective pieces. Northcote’s style reminds me of Chuck Ragan deep into a Tom Cochrane trip, and this is a good thing.

Lyrically, the album deals with the staples of the emerging punk turned roots rocker genre: finding oneself, the triumphs and failures of living for the next show, hard traveling, and maybe a broken heart here and there.

Northcote takes these themes on with dexterity. I keep finding new gems with each spin of the disc. Highlights for me include “Under the Streetlights” – complete with sensual sax solo – “The Beat,” and the prairie anthem “Take the Ride.” “Not a Home” is also a great little number, if you’re into melancholy; perfect for a dark winter morning. If you’re into bearded troubadours who wear their hearts on their sleeves, check this guy out. He’s the real deal. (Black Box Recordings, weareblackbox.com) Sheldon Birnie

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STEVE DAWSON Nightshade

One thing about Steve Dawson is that he is a Jack of all trades, and a master of all! Dawson has worked as a musician, mixer, and producer for many artists, including the likes of Oh My Darling, Jim Byrnes, The Sojourners, Old Man Luedecke, The Mississippi Sheiks Tribute Project, The Deep Dark Woods, and many many more. This work has earned him three Juno Awards as well as more than a dozen other awards for production. His success as a band member has come from

Great Uncles of the Revolution and Zulbot & Dawson, work that won him two more Junos. As for his solo project as a singer-songwriter, Dawson creates music with strong folk, roots, country, western and blues influences. His fifth solo album, Nightshade, is no different.

Like his previous solo releases, this record delivers the qualities of music that Dawson is known for.

Dark content, a smooth welcoming voice that is neither intimidating nor overpowering, and complexly

intriguing guitar riffs that build a complete sound and result in a great album. The one thing that Dawson didn’t make himself is the very attractive cover art, which was designed by Josh Rummen, and is extremely eye catching and wonderful to look at. Other than that Steve Dawson, just knocked a solo homer outta the park! (Black Hen Music, stevedawson.ca) Jesse Blackman

Ulteriors

DIXIE’S DEATH POOL The Man With Flowering Hands Lee Hutzulak’s latest work will change the way you think about any household object you lay your eyes upon.

The twelve tracks, some improvised, some not, all feature a mind-bending mix of homemade instruments (in one interview, Hutzulak mentions stretching lamp springs over a castiron frying pan) and live recordings.

Wild and wonderful as this idea is, it doesn’t always translate to good sound. On “Sunlight is Collecting On My Face,” there’s a consistent buzzing and static clicking that’s so annoying I just want to swat it away. “Science Fiction” closes with two minutes of nothing BUT this, which is only just bearable. It’s both fun and utterly hopeless to try and name the sounds I hear - a swing creaking, a vortex of chalk, an elephant in a monsoon, violins playing while spider silk streams out of the strings. Tiny monkey fart into junkyard tires. Yeah, okay, I know what this must sound like... Well, YOU give this a listen before bedtime and then tell me what you’re thinking, mister! This collage of sounds isn’t particularly charming or calming. In fact, when I hear horrible gnashing cat teeth, I don’t like it at all. But that doesn’t mean it’s not interesting or thought-provoking. Perhaps I should like it more because of that very fact.

Try it yourself. (Leisure Thief, dixiesdeathpool.com) Adrienne Yeung

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THE CATS’ ORCHESTRA Coffee Killer Coffee Killer collects a dozen songs

by Nicholay Syrov, experimental musician and poet based in Moscow.

Leaning toward the world-folky side of psychfolk and the majestic side of bedroom avant, Syrov goes one way then another. Blending sometimes cute, sometimes somber percussion, plucked guitar melodies, vocals, bells, fuzz and seemingly whatever is on hand into an assortment of tracks that seem very different but jigsaw together completely, gelled by Syrov’s obvious patience, talent, and understanding of space.

The Cats’ Orchestra brings something fresh to the indie table. Coffee Killer is reminiscent of the lo-fi, strange-butsincere, all over the place-ness of early Neutral Milk Hotel, while also baring an enticing element of exotic Russian folk roots. It’s music that comes across as truly refreshing from the first listen to the thirtieth, while bringing to mind a couple of completely out there (arguably unlistenable) 2010 releases

by Syrov’s compatriots, Noise Immunity.

Packaged in ornate, transparent slip cases designed by Joshua Tabbia of Already Dead Tapes, a label who made a name for themselves in 2011 as loving purveyors of experimental, well crafted, very limited cassettes, Coffee Killer is meant for those who want something different that’s actually different – something weird but not too weird; gloomy without the goth; fun, but not too fun. Only 7 copies of the original 40 were left the last time I checked, so get on this one fast. (Already Dead Tapes, alreadydeadtapes.wordpress.com) Kristel Jax

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ZS 33 33 is the deepest thing I’ve heard on headphones lately – I can see the room where it was recorded; I can feel the space and the concrete. Sounds in every corner seem to echo for the entire EP – yet it’s minimalism that makes these four recordings. More sparse and, for dire lack of a better phrase, conventional avant garde-y than 2010’s New Slaves – an LP of fever pitches and tuned-in complexities – 33 sees a band shutting the door on the outside world and soundtracking the abyss. There is no point of reference. There is only Zs – though track two, “33/,” might show some remnants of Vincent Gallo. Percussion, tenor sax and guitar meet in a primal,

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wordless, subterranean summit to dig, ping, and repeat against nothing soft, nothing glistening, just darkness and hard surface.

The press release from Northern Spy sort of calls this a dance record, which might read false at first listen. But trust me; I’ve danced to these tracks, completely without intention. It’s weird. I’m into it. Less than 15 minutes long though covering four sides of vinyl, 33 will likely be just a silkscreened blip on Zs’ discography, but it’s a blip with its own ecosystem, food chain, life threatening diseases and strange, unforgettable rituals. Northern Spy did some great things in 2011, and releasing this record in this format was one of them. (Northern Spy, norther-spy.com) Kristel Jax

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Iconoclast 800” and “I Remember a Rooftop,” are both decent, the former being a fine fast paced drinking tune and the latter an acoustic reflection tune. The cover of the Violent Femmes’ “I Held Her In My Arms” fits the album nicely and rounds off this nifty little package. It’s a must have for any Alkaline Trio fan, but as a whole this album could be skipped over easily. (Epitaph, epitaph. com) Scott Wolfe BOSTON STRANGLER Primitive Boston has always had a great scene for hardcore with bands such as Negative FX, Last Rights, Gang Green, SSD, Siege, Slapshot, and Mental in the past and more recently Rival Mob, Mind Eraser, No Tolerance, Men’s Interest to name a few. I would say that Boston Strangler is the best band out of the recent batch of Boston hardcore bands. This record seriously crushes.

The drumming stands out in comparison to a lot of hardcore bands these days and the riffs are very well done, very reminiscent of the earlier Boston bands in sound. Great record. (Self released, no website) Kevin Strang DISCHARGE 7-INCH RE-ISSUES Havoc records has recently re-issued the first five Discharge seven inches, Realities of War, Decontrol, State Violence, Fight Back, and Never Again.

These records defined the raw punk sound in the early ’80s. Discharge has had literally hundreds of clones, but these records still stand above the rest being some of the best punk records of all time. (Havoc Records, havocrex. com) Kevin Strang ALKALINE TRIO Damnesia Initially I was a little confused and skeptical as to what semi-acoustic means/would bring to a punk band.

Essentially, this album is a collection of fan favorites with two additional songs performed in this “semi-acoustic” fashion. Upon first listen I was pleasantly surprised. A lot of the songs still carry themselves nicely despite the electric guitar being swapped for acoustic. Opener “Calling all Skeletons” is fantastic, letting the lyrics and voice take center stage while not sacrificing too much of that rock vibe, while “Every Thug Needs A Lady” goes the way of reducing and stripping the entire song down to bare bones.

The two new tracks, “Olde English

28 Stylus Magazine Feb/Mar 2012

MILK MUSIC Beyond living Milk Music self-released this album a year ago and it was on many top 10 lists of 2010. It quickly sold out.

Thankfully Perennial Records recently did another pressing of it because this record is great. Perfect melody driven classic sounding guitar, bass and drums stuff in the vein of Dinosaur Jr. and Husker Du. Catchy Stuff.

(Perennial Records, perennialdeath. com) Kevin Strang SERENGHETTO Serenghetto This band is going to be coming here sometime in the next few months.

Serenghetto is great modern noisier garage-rock. Each member regularly gets to use the mic, which at first I was unsure of but it ended up being a highlight. Fun stuff. Go check them out when they are in town. It should be a good show. This album is available for free download on bandcamp.

(Independent, serenghetto.bandcamp. com) Kevin Strang

CHECK KITTIE OUT AT THE PARK THEATRE ON THURS. APRIL 19

Failed You” wastes no time getting right down into the relentless heaviness which is maintained through the album by such tracks as “We are the Lamb” and “Empires, Pt.2.” Aside from the incredible title track, “Come Around” is another high point, finding a nice balance between the harsh and sung vocals of the Lander sisters.

“Ugly” is in a similar style as “Come Around,” neatly tucked away near the

FUCK DETECTOR Self-titled 7” Fuck Detector is a mid-west punk band from Fargo. They are making their way to Winnipeg sometime in February. Keep yours eyes out for the show. They add a lot of great noisy twists to the traditional pop punk sound on this record and the vocals are great. This record is free to check out on Bandcamp or can be bought from their label. Not to be missed. (dumbchoice records, dumbchoicerecords.com) Kevin Strang KITTIE I’ve Failed You Right off the bat, you get your ass handed to you on the sixth album by these hard rocking Canadian ladies.

Female talent is much underrepresented in this genre but Kittie put any and all doubt to bed with this release. Opener and title track “I’ve

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album’s end. Just when you could not possible destroy anything more in your general vicinity, the wall of noise brings you back for another rowdy few minutes before the sludgy album closer, “Time Never Heals.” This is certainly the best album Kittie has done to date and a great place to start for new listeners. (Entertainment One, entertainmentonegroup.com) Scott Wolfe

Mental Notes can find online) all lead me to wonder if this is Williams’ criticism of the current pop landscape. Or maybe, after a run of a couple great albums, this is simply a misstep. Critical though it may be, if it takes me 11 tracks to get to something that I’d like to listen to more than once (“Fall Up”), you have a problem. (Pirates Blend, piratesblend.com) Devin King SAUL WILLIAMS Volcanic Sunlight I wonder if Saul Williams is trying to be subversive with his latest album, Volcanic Sunlight. Williams has always incorporated elements of rock into his work, but this piece moves into a terrain more seemingly influenced by mainstream dance pop music (the synth stabs in “Look to the Sun” emphasize this). I have to wonder if this is subversion of the existing pop landscape as Williams sees it, because he seems like a smart guy and is a great poet. The highlight of the album is the first fifteen or so seconds which is just Williams speaking without music. Overall though, the writing lacks the urgency of other releases – there’s no call to arms here as in “List of Demands.” The dance influence, lack of urgent lyrics, coupled with extraordinarily flat production (I’d love to blame someone for this but my promo copy doesn’t name a producer nor does any information I

THE WEEKND Echoes Of Silence Abel Tesfaye’s third mixtape of 2011 wastes no time letting us know where he’s at, as Tesfaye head-longs into an impassioned cover of Jackson’s “Dirty Diana,” a song which repeatedly refers to a super-minx groupie as “dirty.”

Echoes of Silence sees Tesfaye dwelling heavily on the dark side of success, as well as the usual collection of sad, drugged out girl-pals and gloomy downtown-glitz debauchery.

The first stand-out track is “Montreal,” where Tesfaye waxes about regret over his looping, melancholy rendition of France Gall’s Serge Gainsbourg-penned ’60s hit “Laisse Tomber les Filles” (which, in the words of April March, loosely translates to “Hang Up the Chick Habit”).

Title considered, “Montreal” is exactly the simple, refreshing and clever content The Weeknd has proven capable of this year.

“Initiation” is another favourite. Vocals slide up and down in pitch in

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The Weeknd’s spell. A 21-year-old Ontario artist making smart, soulful, well produced, melancholy R&B about strippers, hi-rise condos, his journey through a life full of art, substances, and miserable, vapid girls, and the development of an urban masculinity that’s both highly sensitive and jaded beyond hope, still seem deeply important. Sure, Drake got there first – but The Weeknd does it darker.

This is an impressive, talented artist shining at a key time in his budding career and if this work wasn’t getting the hype it’s seen so far, abroad and especially at home, there would be a problem. (Independent, the-weekend-xo.com) Kristel Jax

THE WEEKND

THE WEEKND

Jukebot NANS & NAT The Right Words There’s music that people to dance to, and there’s music that people listen to – and The Right Words stays resolutely on the dance-only side of the line. From the first couple seconds, it’s clear that the Montreal-based duo’s debut CD is pure catchy electro-pop running in the same direction as The Golden Filter and La Roux. This is an album that I feel kind of embarrassed about liking, because there’s not much here besides cheesy synths, fast beats, and repetitive vocals to carry the songs through. Each track is an oddly infectious mix of what sounds like children’s toy phone noises, Nat’s clear and steady voice, and the playlist

a way that’s fresh, clean and smart, while lyrics like “killing serotonin in that two floor loft in the middle, we be choking” demonstrate the insider, self-referential shit that fans – myself included – love. References to the Weeknd’s ultra-tragic “xo” logo abound throughout the tape, while on other tracks Tasfaye busts out lines like “I’ve been good since ‘Thursday’” and “you could have been that ‘Lonely Star.’” It’s a brilliant move, especially in the Weeknd universe.

Echoes of Silence lags at times, maybe because there was a rush to put out three album-length releases in one year or maybe because expectations are higher now, but that same lonely feeling permeates and there’s little that actually disappoints or breaks

at the first nightclub you hit up when you turned 18 in 1985. The Right Words is fun and doesn’t take itself too seriously, but all the same, there are some problems. There are just way too many disjointed, extraneous effects, as well as uninspired melodies where it seems they forgot some lyrics and filled in blanks in the beats with repeated lines and “oh”s. Ultimately, though, the catchiness of the songs is the album’s saving grace. (Independent, nansnat.com) Adrienne Yeung DELHI 2 DUBLIN Planet: Electrified Remixes Delhi 2 Dublin is an incredible act.

They are most acclaimed for their energetic live performances since the

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group’s birth in 2006, and less recognized for their recorded releases.

The frustration of being purely a successful live act may have been part of the reason that D2D gave their 2010 release Planet Electrified to ten of their favourite producers to remix.

Planet Electrified features some of the best D2D material such as “Tommy,” “The Happy Track,” “S.O.S.,” and “Harmonizin,” which are all staples of their live appearances. But those who worry about tinkering with the oneof-a-kind Punjabi-Celtic sound, fear not: the apple does not fall far from the tree when it comes to the remixed version, and that isn’t so bad. By starting with such complex and exciting creations redeveloping the genius is a

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very risky endeavour for any producer, but the changes that were made subtly make D2D just a squeeze closer to club tracks. The answer to the tough challenge of new art comes best from Poirier Soca Chutney’s “The Answer” and Sub Swara’s “Laughing Buddha.”

These cuts use heavy repetition of the of D2D sounds in producing a completely new song that clearly possesses D2D roots, but are also fearless in the face of experimentation. Aside from the remixes, D2D also added a new song to this album, “Give It Away,” which kicks off Planet Electrified: Remixes with all the wild excitement of what is expected from Delhi 2 Dublin. (Independent, delhi2dublin.com) Jesse Blackman

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Under The Needle ROCOCODE Guns, Sex & Glory Rococode is the latest addition to Winnipeg’s own ever-awesome musical family that is Head in the Sand.

Rhythmically steady and amplified, four-piece Rococode hail from Vancouver. The compelling, stimulating and dynamic new album from the band, aptly titled Guns, Sex & Glory, begins with “Concentrate on Me” - an acidic neon “Alice fell down the rabbit hole” sensation. It sets the pace for the next three tracks on the album, with “Empire” following things up – a romantic and fiery-eyed tune that’s a real pop gem – and “Blood,” which drips and throbs with the anthemic Rococode brood. Several songs are presented here in duality (specifically “Concentrate on Me,” “Concentrate on You,” and “Ghost I” & “Ghost II”) to show contrasts and dynamics. For example, whereas “Concentrate on Me” opens with synthetic claps and drums, “Concentrate on You” is more acoustic and softened with lead female vocals.

Guns, Sex & Glory feels exciting and hopeful at some points, while also raw and channeling frustration at others (“Death of a Payphone”). Guns, Sex & Glory is consistently ear-pleasing, with lead vocals from Laura Smith and Andrew Braun. (Head in the Sand, headinthesand.ca) Victoria King FOAM LAKE Force and Matter Foam Lake takes its name from a Saskatchewan town, population 1,433.

Just looking at that number makes me break out into claustrophobic sweat! Thankfully their sound is quite the opposite – expansive and rich in variety and mood and what can be done with guitars and keyboards. As sounds vibrate and spin into “Black Hole,” a song as calming as the middle of a storm, you’ll hear a place where violins and lazy tempos swing in perfect harmony. “Baggage” is lit by steady and sturdy drums, and “True Hearts” is chock full of catchy energy.

Influences range from My Bloody Valentine to the Ramones. All four band members are brothers, and are involved in separate musical projects including Chiba, Slow Down, Molasses, and the Warbrides. This is the first

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time they’ve worked together, though, and in the debut CD, Force and Matter sounds pretty strong and cohesive, coming together in a sound that’s thoughtful and lively. (Independent, foamlakeband.com) Adrienne Yeung CRYSTAL STILTS Radiant Door EP It’s another release from the Brooklyn psych-pop quintet, Crystal Stilts! Following six months after their second full-length, In Love With Oblivion, the Stilts beam out the Radiant Door EP. The band’s been around since 2003, only releasing their first full length in 2008 after a slew of EPs and singles. Kickin’ things off with the buoyant rocker “Dark Eyes,” Crystal Stilts set the tone for a hazy summer soundtrack, conjuring up nostalgia for The Doors and the Velvet Underground. This terse five song disc thumps along at a lively pace with its dreamy title track only to lay down a cool Lee Hazlewood cover, “Still As the Night.” Its bodacious bluesiness makes the song perfect for late night roaming or cruisin’ – sounds like it should be in a Tarantino film! Next up, the Stilts cover the Blue Orchids

with “Low Profile” before gracefully closing things up with the album’s longest track, “Frost Inside the Asylum,” which is near six minutes in length.

Brad Hargett sings with a baritone similar to Calvin Johnson or Ian Curtis, only more laid back, while the rest of music only pokes at Beat Happening poppiness and Joy Division gloom.

Awfully pleasant little platter – and boy, what a year for Crystal Stilts!

(Sacred Bones Records, sacredbonesrecords.com) Cole Snyder PALEY & FRANCIS Paley & Francis This eponymous release from two alternative giants – Reid Paley and Black Francis – likely should have caused some sort of stir amongst music nerds, but it came as some surprise to open it up in the Stylus office. I’ve been a big fan of Francis since I discovered his solo stuff and his work with the Pixies back in middle school.

His first two albums with The Catholics are solid gold, and still set the standard as far as alternative bar band rock goes. This album finds the two collaborators – Francis has produced Paley’s recent solo output – playing

musical ping pong over the course of a lost weekend in Nashville. Backed by a sick, sick band including Muscle Shoals legends Spooner Oldham and David Hood (who provided back up for classic recordings by Percy Sledge, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Aretha Franklin to name but a few) and Nashville jack of all trades Harry Stinson (Steve Earle, Corb Lund, George Jones, etc., etc.), the tunes are tight alright. Lyrically, a couple of the tunes are catchy, but I found most just didn’t cut the mustard. Paley’s “Ugly Life” and Francis’ “Magic Cup” are nice, but nothing on the disc blows me away. Enjoyable if you’re a Francis die hard, and not a bad listen by any means, but nothing much to write home about. (Sonic Unyon, sonicunyon.com) Sheldon Birnie TONY SLY Sad Bear This second solo release from Tony Sly – former front-man of ’90s whinypunk-heroes No Use For A Name – is for the most part a painful way to spend 30-odd minutes of your life.

Tunes like “Therapy,” “Discomfort Inn,” and “In The End” are nauseatCRYSTAL STILTS

PHOTO BY STEVEN PAN

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ing at best, though a couple of the tracks, like the opening “Dark Corner” and “Burgies, Basics and You,” almost save the disc from being a complete wash. Following the current trend of punk rock front men – see Frank Turner, Chuck Ragan, and Tim Barry for good examples – going all solo and working-class hero, Sly’s effort here leans heavily towards themes explored during his time during No Use: personal trials and tribulations of the suburban white male at the end of the American Empire. If you can still stomach No Use’s output after all these years, you’ll probably enjoy this platter, appropriately titled Sad Bear.

If you’re like me, though, and you skipped through their tunes on any of the first four Fat comps to get to Propagandhi or Sick of It All tracks, you’ll probably fucking hate this album. (Fat Wreck Chords, fatwreck.com) Sheldon Birnie BRY WEBB The Provider Beautiful record. If you were a fan of The Constantines you will love this.

Nice and mellow folk tones with a punch. Backed by a bass and slide guitar duo, Bry Webb of The Constantines plays guitar and sings on this, his first solo effort. “Rivers of Gold “is the stand out track. Think of Jason Molina or Neil Young. This is a solid great batch of quiet country tunes.

(Idee Fixe Records, ideefixerecords. com) Kevin Strang JOHN CALE EP: Extra Playful Though at this point in his career John Cale could put out any sort of crazy recording he wants (see Lulu as evidence), he has opted instead to release EP: Extra Playful. The EP is a pretty straightforward record, maybe the most pop release of his output.

Opening track “Catastrofuk” is the most mainstream track on the album with buzzing synths, “do-do-dos” and handclaps – just try to forget about that title. It’s a really great song, mostly unhindered by the weak, heavy-handed (but socially conscious) lyrics. The weak lyrics continue in the next track “Whaddaya Mean by That,” which rhymes “that” with “that,” but demonstrates Cale’s ability to write a focused, contemplative pop song. These two tracks, released as a single, would have been a great way to renew his musical career. Unfortunately the next tracks are less consistent. “Hey Ray” is a quasi-hip hop song with heavy beat, spoken word in the style of William Shatner. Though similarly processed beats work on the next track, “Pile a l’Heure,” the unnecessary inclusion of autotuned vocals detracts from the

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song. In the end, the title is appropriate. It certainly sounds like Cale is having fun, but sometimes it seems like fun at the expense of quality. With further time, it would stand to reason that Cale will showcase himself as one of the most enduring creative acts of his generation. (Double Six Records, doublesixrecords.com) Devin King

TOM WAITS Bad As Me Tom Waits has crafted many an odd album in his extensive career. I mean, there is some pretty weird shit out there that some folks would simply turn their nose up at and quickly dismiss. Waits’ progressive edge has allowed him to explore some dark and weird territory in the past but on his latest offering he has somehow managed to pump the brakes enough to craft an absolutely phenomenal album from front to back that sounds great… wait for it…on the first listen.

Yes, you don’t have to repeatedly listen to Bad As Me in order to digest it. Everything flows so nicely. Don’t get me wrong: the edge this man possesses will never leave his songwriting. But on Bad as Me he manages to restrain and harness that aspect of his style, which makes his music so interesting, enough to craft another masterpiece. “Chicago” kicks things off on a high note, while “Raised Right Man” is one of those songs that Tom Waits just makes work. The album highlight, for me, is the military like “Hell Broke Luce.” All the rockers are nicely balanced by mid- and slower-tempo tracks keeping things fresh, not that there was any risk of that: It’s fucking Tom Waits! It took a long time for some new original work, but the Waits was worth it. (Anti-, anti.com) Scott Wolfe PENGUIN PRISON Penguin Prison It’s always hard to review an album when there’s only stuff to pick out, and nothing to pick at. But I suppose I have to start somewhere. The beautiful packaging, done in two-dimensional graphic watercolor shapes (and thankfully not a penguin or prison in sight) is just as detailed and bold, fun and sleek, as the disco-pop sounds

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that it surrounds. The musician behind the sound, New York based Chris Glover, delivers performances more subdued than Michael Jackson’s, but gives us sounds that are just as flamboyant, spotlight-and-smoke worthy, and unbelievably danceable.

You can almost hear Glover’s impish grin as he sings “Don’t Fuck With My Money,” which sounds like a joyful sun-lit celebration in the city streets.

Indeed, the music video captures this energy, documentary-style, in a four minute glimpse of Occupy Wall Street. Glover’s elastic voice darts all around on each track, hitting heavenly falsettos and rolling-current lows.

There are ever-changing backgrounds of shimmering synths, clublike beats, swaying choruses, and solid drums.

Everything is so deliberate, and perfectly done, listening to this album feels like scaling a cliff 3000m above the Amazon – with a harness, safety net, lights crew, medical and videographer close behind in a helicopter.

Exhilarating, and yet nothing can go wrong. (Downtown Records, downtownrecords.com) Adrienne Yeung THE DØ Both Ways Open Jaws The Dø – pronounced as in “do-remi” – have now released their second album Both Ways Open Jaws to the North American market. That was about a year quicker than their 2008 debut, A Mouthful, which didn’t hit our shelves till 2010. There’s probably a good reason this one got here in such a timelier manner: the folks at Six Degrees must’ve realized this duo’s eclectic indie pop would hook and intrigue music lovers across our continent.

Like Lykke Li? Austra? Pop music that is innovative and moves beyond a simple do-re-mi? You might like The Dø. Hailing from Helsinki and Paris, Dan Levy and Olivia Merilahti play a multitude of instruments: flute, saxophone, harp, xylophone... plus the usual keyboards, guitars and percussion. They even show influence from jazz, hip-hop, electronica, traditional folk and classical music. The Dø go from dark to light, with one extreme of downright saccharine cutesiness – note “The Calendar” – compared to the brooding rhythms and almost punky lyricism of “Gonna Be Sick!”

Recommended tracks? Check out “Slippery Slope,” “Too Insistent” and “Dust It Off.” (Six Degrees, sixdegreesrecords.com) Cole Snyder LECHEROUS GAZE Lecherous Gaze Complete rock ’n’ roll, is that a genre?

Even if it doesn’t exist yet it should apply to Lecherous Gaze’s robust and bodacious self-titled release. Born out

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of the punk group Annihilation Time, Lecherous Gaze is a new Oakland creation that, with their first release for Tee Pee Records, has created the love child of modern material and ’70s hair metal sounds. Featuring raunchy guitar and bass riffs, and exhilarating fast-paced drumming from Graham Clise, Chris Grande and Noel Sullivan respectively, the instruments are excellently complimented by Lakis Panagiotopulos’s smooth and raspy vocals with low intensity and catchy lyrics. These elements might just have this album “sold on you!” Unfortunately, there is only about fifteen minutes of music making up four songs, so this quickie may not leave you fully satisfied, but at least you’ll be lusting for more! (Tee Pee Records, lecherousgaze.com) Jesse Blackman RATTAIL RatTail With a slightly strange name, and some equally strange surprises in their songs, RatTail, the self-proclaimed “oddballs” of Toronto’s indie pop scene, pump out a debut album that’s slightly experimental, yet catchy and playful. Bassist Tim Fagan, drummer Jesse Frank Matthews and singer/ guitarist Jasmyn Burke sprinkle this heavily danceable self-titled album with unexpected noises and chants, on top of skillful playing and Burke’s unique and memorable vocals.

The record’s only slow point is the mellow offering “Go Green.” However, Burke’s vocal talent and passion is especially prominent and unforgettable in this song. She sings soft and calm through each verse, and slowly builds up to powerfully wail out the last chorus, sending chills and causing me to just stop and relish in her enchanting fervor.

“Gasmask,” hands-down the strangest song on the album, is haunting yet catchy, and the best example of RatTail’s quirky sound. Burke and her boys start off with a strong toe-tapping rhythm, but quickly, and almost without warning, change pace and move into a sequence of mumbling, chanting, and animal noises, like a musical exorcism taking place over a steady thumping drum and bass beat.

Another notable track is “Sicko,” a song whose intro would perfectly underline the beginning of a fight scene in an action movie. The song mixes the badass riffs of old school rock and Burke’s feminine vocals.

Overall, the trio, combine their eccentric musical minds with a no-holdsbarred approach to create nine unconventional and peculiar tracks that are full of fun. (Unfamiliar Records/Outside Music, unfamiliarrecords.com) Janet Adamana

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Guns, Sex & Glory

“Rococode is as crisp and catchy a s t h e y c o m e .” – s o f t s i g n a l

headinthesand.ca

Greg MacPherson Disintegration Blues DIS001 Out now

Disintegration Blues greg Macpherson

Cannon Bros.

Firecracker/Cloudglow DIS002 Out now

Upcoming: Nova Slow Dancers Haunter Voit DISIntegratIOn.ca

Never have we felt more at home in church than Tim Hecker emptying seats at Westminister United Church for the WSO’s New Music Festival on Sunday, Jan. 29th

Live Bait TIM HECKER + GUESTS @ Westminister United Church Sunday, Jan 29th, 2012

By Colburne Poapst Concert Two of the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s New Music Festival was an interesting event as it mixed the ambient noise work of Canadian artist Tim Hecker, with more conventional classical compositions. It was a night of contrasts that was as visible in the mix of scattered hipsters amongst regular WSO patrons as it was in the variety of artists that took the stage. The show took place in the beautiful, century-old Westminster United Church in Wolseley. Of the eight classical pieces that made up the first half of the program, the two solo cello works really stood out: Kaija Saariaho’s “Spins and Spells,” and WSO composer-in-residence Vincent Ho’s piece, “Stigmata.” “Spins and Spells” is a piece of sprawling violence, mixed with moments of haunting delicacy. Cellist Yuri Hooker played passionately, capturing the many bow textures that accent the work. The movement of “Stigmata,” from sections of plucked notes to slow, ominous bow work is something that will not soon be forgotten. Minna Rose Chung’s treatment of the work was admirable as she brought out the after-the-storm, meditative qualities of Ho’s piece.

The second half of the program was a reworking of Tim Hecker’s latest album Ravedeath, 1972, for organ. However, it was more like a usual Hecker show, with him surrounded by his laptop, a keyboard and mixing boards; the organ seemed to be more of an accessory. The set opened with the first song from Ravedeath, 1972, “The Piano Drop.”

The song built perfectly to its climax of stuttered organ stabs dancing through walls of distortion, as the startled audience members, predominantly of

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PHOTO BY ANDREW MAZURAK

the senior category, began to realize why the ushers were handing out ear plugs before the show and scrambled to fix them in place. The set progressed through the first half of Ravedeath, 1972, only live the songs take on all new power. Blown through a quality PA system the full texture of every sound is amplified and revealed to have so many more layers than the typical headphone or stereo set could dream of capturing. The effect was stunning as Heckers music quaked through the very foundations of the church and his set built up to a point where even the pews came to life and began to loudly vibrate, rattling their way into Hecker’s soundscapes, but, far from being an annoyance, added to the power of the music. Hecker’s music is a physical experience, best felt live than heard on CD or vinyl.

As the show was drawing to a close, “Chimeras,” off of the album Harmony in Ultraviolet, flowed over a descent of high, screeching tones and overtook the room with its beautiful haunt. Slowly, the song aired out over the crowd and faded into the rafters as Hecker turned away from the organ and his electronics, and walked off the stage as casually as he walked on at the beginning. All that the crowd was left with was a yearning for more music, as even the older audience seemed to have settled into Hecker’s sprawling drones.

The concert was a testament to the deconstruction of the power structures of music, brought on by the emergence of technology as an important factor in musical creation. Inherent in the placement of Hecker following more conventionally trained musicians is a reaction against power structures once prominent in music. Classical music does not need to occupy its own realm beyond the sounds of untrained musicians. The WSO placed Hecker as the marquee performer, not because he is a musical prodigy, but because of the way his music inspires love, hate, despair and hope in the listener, just as good classical music does. Like Hecker, the

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WSO understands the equal worth of music that can affect the listener in this way. And, in contrast to the organic instruments used by the classical musician, Hecker uses electronics to create his sounds, signifying the importance of new technology to the power of his music. The fact that the WSO brought Hecker into the city as a premier composer, equal to his classically-trained contemporaries, is a testament to the open-minded, forward-thinking direction NMF curators, Alexander Mickelthwate and Vincent Ho, have taken the festival.

BIG FUN FESTIVAL SECRET SHOW /w Pip Skid and West Broadway Hip Hop Orchestra @ A Secret Location...

Saturday, Jan 28th, 2012

By Ryan Simmons I showed up at the Big Fun “Secret Show” at 1 a.m. to see the West Broadway Hip Hop Orchestra. The music was amicable and upbeat. The kids looked like they were having fun.

After their set, I ducked into the green room. Pip Skid was pacing back and forth deep in thought, meditating on how awful it is to be a Manitoban in order to rouse his irrepressible pessimism up to performance level. I grabbed his used Robin’s Donuts cup, filled it with flat ginger ale and got ready to take in the spectacle.

The show may be the craziest I’ve seen Pip and Dj Co-op do. Partial male nudity and pant-dropping was in full effect. Nestor Wynrush was on hand for an incredible rendition of “Pip’s Kid.” DJ Co-op ended things by pouring a can of root beer over Pip’s head. A poignant way to end a festival.

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Kontroller Deux Ex: Human Revolution

By Kabir Kaler Hello gamers. Today we will be meeting with the multimillion dollar man (literally), named Adam Jensen in the newly (relatively) released game Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a prequel to the critically acclaimed game, Deus Ex for pc in 2000. It was called the best pc game of all time in pc gamers’ top 100 pc games.

You are Adam Jensen, head of security for one of the biggest corporation; Sarif Industries in the year 2027. This is the year where private corporations now overshadow the government and everyone has a dirty little secret. The game starts with you taking a stroll in your building when it appears you are under attack from a group of terrorists.

You go to intercept them and stop them but fail horribly, for they leave you at death’s doorstep. In order to save you, your boss orders you to be augmented to be “something above human”. Now you are a cybernetic man with abilities that leave little to imagination hell bent on finding the people who did this.

The art design is a futuristic style with authentic North American and Chinese architectures. Everything in this game screams future from the guns, the furniture (including the skinniest computers you’ve ever seen), to the appearance of the people with their new prosthetics. This game has 2 open areas, and lots of unique mission based environments. One example is near the beginning when you return from sick leave and you must enter an occupied factory. This factory has offices; cardboard boxes etc.., everything

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an actual factory does have. While another mission is happening in a harbor with boats, crates, water (obviously) even security gates. Even though each level is unique, there is still that realism that makes it believable that this could be our future we are looking at. There is also a dark overtone surrounding the visuals that makes it clear that though this is a futuristic world, it is a dark one, filled with mystery, conspiracies, and lies; lots and lots of lies. The weapons are on par with the environment; futuristic, yet dark. Some weapons expand when you equip them and it shows on screen and vice versa.

The detail on the gun is well done and different for each. The last aspects are the people presiding in these areas.

They stay in place and their body language screams busy and seem to have a glimmer of life in them when they talk to you or doing other activities. They don’t seriously add to the environment and they don’t do anything but talk and die if you so choose to shoot them.

The game play in this game is one with many layers (like an onion but it doesn’t make you cry). They are stealth, augmentation, gun play, speech and hacking. Each level; be mission or open world, has a lot of debris to help you stay unnoticed. This helps you get the jump on your enemies; whether they are light infantry or heavy. But like many things in this game stealth is a choice but staying unnoticed does have its rewards (more exp is one).

Augmentation is the big incentive game play wise. You get praxis kits to choose which augment you want. Each is different and helps you depending on how you want to play the game. For example, I like to be stealthy so I chose to upgrade to a cloak to go invisible.

Special skills like this cost more due to

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their overall advantage but help more in the long run. You get praxis kits from level ups or you can buy them. You use an energy bar when you use most of your special skills. Your energy bar is important because it allows you to do certain activities, each one draining it and with this restriction it makes you think and conserve, instead of wasting it.

Gun play is the next layer in the game and it is as important as augmentations. There are a handful of guns that you can use and none of them the same. Each handles differently and is suited for different situation; an example is you don’t want to use a handgun in a room full of guys carrying smgs.

You have an inventory system which limits how many items you can carry.

You also have the ability to upgrade your guns with kits found both in the environment and in stores. This makes you choose your type of gun and forget the others. You can shoot from the hip which is what is mainly used and you can look down on the sight of the gun to be more accurate. But unlike other shooters you have to press the button again to get out of it instead of coming out of it automatically. The talking is deep and provides a nonviolent way to get to your objective. When you start a conversation there will be an intro that will give you some back story to help you choose the options: which a couple will be given to you. There is no need to win these conversations since there are multiple ways to get to your objective but winning them feels satisfying and finishing a quest becomes easier.

Since this is the future, security is now electronic and password protected.

In order to bypass the security you need to hack them; unless you have found the pass code. Hacking is a little

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mini game in which you got to go to point A to B in the time frame given.

Failing alerts any guards you haven’t dispatched and a cooling off period will appear making you wait until you can try again.

The presentation of the game is that of mystery and unknown. This idea is woven into the core of the game. The sounds made from both the environment and the people match the situation; from being alarmed at your presence, to having normal conversations. The animations have no glitches, nor does the environment. This game is rated M and with good reason. You periodically kill people; showing blood, offensive language, and the sexual themes are there.

This game is overall well made; having a deep game play set, good visuals and voice acting. The game does give off a possible futuristic style with the environment and the people; though sometimes the open world does seem to be too close together and the regular people in the street seem like filler. The one thing I really like about this game is it has good replay value due to your choice as to how you want to play the game; not to mention the trophies.

There is also some dlc called the missing link but unless you enjoy this game a lot I don’t recommend buying it at the price it is now. As good as this game is its still missing that one key factor to make it perfect. Regardless it is still a good game and I give this 8.5 augments out of 10.

Just an interesting fact, this game was made in Eidos, Montreal. This is actually the first Canadian game I have reviewed and while playing and reviewing this gave me a certain pride. You can see the hard work that they put in this game and I thank them for it.

FEARof MUSIC The Insiders: Affinity Groups and Why Hating Nickelback is Acceptable

By Devin King For many, the act of appreciating music is not simply a private act. We tend to interact in communities. This could mean playing music for company, dancing at a club, or participating on a comment thread online, among many other examples. James Paul Gee, a linguist in the area of video games, has noted that video games compel their audiences to acquire shared language and practices. Gee refers to these communities as “semiotic domains.” By this, he means “an area or set of activities where people think, act and value in certain ways.”

Realms of both video games and music constitute semiotic domains. Gee refers to the audience of a particular semiotic domain as an “affinity group.”

(Within these, there are often many affinity groups – think of the myriad of genres within rock or pop.) Those within the affinity group are the insiders, able to distinguish an insider from an outsider by the thoughts, actions and values of the individual. It sounds pretentious, but it’s something we do consistently as members of affinity groups in video games, sports, current affairs, vehicle maintenance and, yes, music.

One criticism I’ve heard of Stylus (indeed, of my own writing) is that people don’t understand what’s being said in the writing. In this, we can see that there’s an element of insider/ outsider at play. The authors of Stylus (consciously or unconsciously) are writing for a particular audience – their own affinity group, or at least one inside their broader semiotic domain. It’s not meant to exclude others, but it might inherently do so, as it has for some I know. Stylus, as a representative of the independent music community, represents one way the af-

www.stylusmagazine.ca

finity group might – perhaps should – think. This is why the philosophical divide of mainstream vs. independent is so pronounced. It’s two dedicated affinity groups whose values clash, but whose appreciations fall into the same broad semiotic domain (“Music”).

In indie, showing your specific knowledge might take the form of knowing a particular genre or band – for example, “You don’t know what chillwave is?” Not knowing chillwave might make you more of an outsider.

It also might mean showing disdain for a mainstream artist. Take, for example, one of the important (if not

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stereotypical) values of the independent music affinity group...

Nickelback became the target of two different petitions (in Winnipeg and Detroit), both seeking to avoid having the mainstream band come to a city. Petitions such as these demonstrate a very public example of affinity groups at play. Just because it’s an insider group doesn’t mean the group is small. An insider group could be huge, as long as everyone shares the thoughts, actions and values. But this doesn’t mean that everyone who hates Nickelback is part of that affinity group.

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Where things sometimes get convoluted is when a member of an affinity group can transgress the established norms. Over recent years, this took the form of irony and/or nostalgia. This allowed songs such as “Don’t Stop Believin’” – a song which only topped at #62 on the British charts in 1981 – to achieve a height of #6 on those same charts in 2010.

When Carl Wilson chose to write about the popularity of Celine Dion’s The Power of Love, it was a shock to many music listeners. Though Wilson wouldn’t say he liked the album, he talked about how odd it was that an album that is so titanically popular could be reviled by so many. The reason for this is, again, two competing affinity groups. One of these groups might be smaller, but clearly uses print and online media to discuss, dissect and dissuade. The other doesn’t seem to participate in media in the same way, but instead exerts buying power. While the critics – and critics are often the torchbearers of any affinity group – may not agree with the cultural ubiquity of Celine or Nickelback, it evidences that there isn’t a “right” answer to music. Though those in both affinity groups would like to claim otherwise, it instead demonstrates that the seemingly private world of music plays out in a larger, more community-based way of experience.

Recognizing affinity groups doesn’t have a necessarily practical purpose, but it does help to understand why there might be so much bad blood towards certain artists/ trends/genres. And in understanding semiotic domains, and recognizing that mainstream and independent both fall under the wide umbrella of Music, maybe we can understand each other a bit better and our rationales for liking whatever music we like. At the very least, it might help to quell some pointless arguments in YouTube comments.

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Weird ShitwithKEnt DAviEs

VOTE WEIRD! With the upcoming American election, those of you with cable may have been exposed to the ridiculous, ignorant, or downright crazy antics of the candidates running for the Republican Party ticket.

It seems the new Republican strategy is to usurp a proud tradition of fringe candidates like The Rent Is Too Damn High Party’s Jimmy McMillan or “Mandatory Toothbrushing” lawmaker Vermin Supreme who may not have a chance in hell but are otherwise weirdoes we can all get behind.

I am outraged that this relatively new breed of weirdo Republicans are being thrown into the mainstream spotlight. This takes away from hardworking independent fringe candidates who are attempting to blow your minds if not your votes in American communities everywhere.

Take for instance Robert John Burck otherwise known as New York’s Naked Cowboy. This seminude street performer has promised an unapolo-

getic campaign committed to America’s border, language (probably English) and culture and plans to lead the Tea Party Movement into the oval office.

Wait… he seems just like all the rest.

Well, how about another fringe candidate/musician that is truly independent not only politically but also musically? 41-year-old Michigan native Lee Abramson, a Jewish musician and entrepreneur who suffers from ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) says he would provide a much-needed perspective to the oval office. His official press release/album one-sheet claims he is “arguably the greatest musician since King David” and although a devoted Jew he is also the first person to sell pork rinds on the Internet.

As President, one of Abramson’s first official acts would be the immediate removal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and use them to seal the border with Mexico (but only to combat drug trafficking). He supports the use of MDMA in a controlled setting for treating veterans with PTSD and favors the creation of a new health care program called “Americare.” Although inexperienced in the ways of politics his entrepreneurial experience

has led to the “selling of 1000 CDs out of the back of a truck.”

But that’s not all.

When people subscribe to his campaign newsletter, they get Abramson’s campaign song “Shalom” in their inbox. If Abramson’s politics don’t inspire you perhaps his wonderfully distinct music will. While his early blues-rock tracks like “Reenlistment blues” are mildly appealing, it’s the new music he created despite his disability that is so uniquely mind-blowing. Utilizing a computer and music notation software, Abramson has managed to painstaking create a series of atmospheric numbers of exceptional poetic power. The dream like soundscapes coupled with Abramson’s computer-doctored, bionic voice and satirical mind is something to behold. Songs like “With Passion” and “Pardoning Courage” reveal his creativity, humor and philosophy. While his music may not get him to the White House it certainly should peak the interest of outsider culture vultures everywhere.

Get on the Lee Abramson bandwagon at http:// leeabramson.com. Vote Lee!

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