TONIGHT!

Hey all, I'm spinning tonight (That's Thursday evening - 1000 apologies for wrongly stating it was last night)at Robin Simpson's Pavilion 2 Event. Show up and heckle me from the floor as I spin nothing but over-indulgent pseudo-psychedelic trash. It's part of the PopMontreal festival. Details bellow.

A late-night actionist invocation, Pavilion Two presents: It's beautiful but things are gonna change. A sea of blood, tears, spittle, fumes and acrylics all illuminated by a rainbow. Leaving the stale smoke of after hours behind, Pavilion picks up the crowd and bids them good night into our prepared landscape.

Featuring a new body of work by Stéphanie Chabot
Performance by Geneviève et Matthieu
with DJs: Cécile Pétrole (ex-Nuance),Jay Watts III,Prions en Église

Pavilion Two
Thurs. Sept. 30th
12am - ?

LE LOCAL,
7154, St.Urbain
(metro Jean Talon)
Montreal

"Dance Destructive" vernissage

This week at Gallery X, Montreal-based artist Jody Ferguson exhibits five photographs in a series entitled "Dance Destructive."

The vernissage is tonight at 7pm.

Gallery X is located on the second floor in the Concordia Visual Arts building at the bottom of the Crescent and Rene Levesque intersection.

More information on upcoming shows, submission guidelines and art-star gossip: palephantoms@gmail.com

Lupid Festival.

As of today, Wolf Parade have left Montreal for the shady and dewy environs of Portland, Oregon, where they'll be recording at Herr Brock's studio. From there, there are planned performances for The Brickyard in Vancouver on October 28th, the 50/50 Art Collective' Hallowe'en bash on October 29th, All Tomorrow's Parties in Los Angeles at the beginning of November and a tour that sends them on their way home.

Arcade Fire show...

I was surprised to spy, upon entering the Citadel a bit late, that Jeremy Gara (formerly of Weights & Measures and all-around nice fellow) was playing with the Arcade Fire. Arlen Thompson, Wolf Parade's drummer, also joined them for the first song of their second set. The space was predictably packed, and the majority of the crowd well-behaved, obeying the posted signs prohibiting standing on the pews. Complaints? None really - the sound was a bit muddy every now and then, and it was damned hot, but that made the event a lot more reminiscent of the Pentecostal shake-fests of my youth, which gave me an occasional shiver.

Dan Seligman et al. pulled the feat off marvellously, especially when one considers just how busy they've all been preparing for PopMontreal. Alright, I'm off to montrealshows.com to check out what the armchair pedants are complaining about. It's a marvellous day out - lay about in the park.

Luke Ramsey Vernissage

image from mebeme.com

The opening for Victoria born n' bred artist Luke Ramsey's installation is tonight (Friday) at the Turf Gallery in Old Montreal (410 St. Pierre) at 5pm. Expect bunnies, graffiti-influenced illustration, hallucinogenic visions, comics and the like. The show runs until October 2nd. Bring galoshes.

Luke Ramsey's website

The best festival in Canada, unfortunately not featuring the best band in Canada (fuck the Trews, I can't handle the Trews, it's Wolf Parade(!), who will be off recording in Portland and playing All Tomorrow's Parties in LA on November 6th), PopMontreal is a week away, setting a mighty high bar for the Halifax Pop Explosion to reach for. HFP's confirmation of the appearance of SNFU secures them a modicum of respectability, of course. And ho! what's this, Three Inches of Blood is performing? I remember them! Their line-up shuffling, interband squabbles and prog-rock tendencies will only assure me of a place in history, twenty years hence, as the Syd Barrett to their Pink Floyd. Nosy reporters may find me at such a time paunchy, dazed and gardening outside my mother's flat.

In the next week, I'll post some choice picks from the PopMontreal lineup, not forgetting to plug the showcase I'm hosting for Montreal's own poorly-named but better-dressed Duran-Duran-redux group ECHOKITTY (oh yeah, and some other groups, too) on Saturday or the return of Robin Simpson's PAVILION PROJECT. Fresh from the land of pickled herring and a population obsessed with text-messaging, Simpson et. al return to prod, pontificate and err, ahh, play about with the audience's damnable regressive consciousness or what not.

This Friday, Andy Dixon, formerly of Vancouver's The Red Light Sting, co-owner of Ache Records, part-time programmer of internet porno websites and recent soundtrack provider to a skateboard shoe commercial finds his way to Montreal to perform as Secret Mommy, laptop tweaker in the IDM vein, along with pals Tinkertoy (the third product of the Kootenay Mountain region in British Columbia to make it this far east - the other two being Kokanee beer and dirty hippy-punks), Cailloux and Carbone, and DJs Utility and Ovalroster.

NEW MAPS / NOUVELLE CARTES
Friday, September 24th, 10pm
O Patro Vys (356 Mt.Royal E)
$6 adv./ $8 door

Vernissage: Montreal

Photographer/sculptor and former Victoria, BC resident Michael Doerksen will be exhibiting a series of photographs entitled "To Take The Air" tonight at Cafe X, located on the second floor of the Concordia University Visual Arts Building (corner of Rene Levesque & Crescent), at 7pm. The six photographs, taken of unaware subjects over a period of two years while engaged in what the over-eager post-Marxist theorists in anyone's first year Arts Methods course might title "psychogeographic practice" (a la Debord et al.) curdle the blood and remind us all of the impedements of frail human mortality on our deepest desires, etc. etc. etc.

The other component of the exhibit might be titled "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" as Doerksen fells his 2003 sculpture "Boy Falling From 10 Feet For Infinity" (thus making the infinite finite in one fell hack, or maybe a couple) in the courtyard of the building. Shazam!

FashionWeek Round-Up

BACKSTAGE ON THE SET OF CALIGULA.

Hint Magazine has photos from the runways and backstages of the various Fashionweeks for Spring 2005. Nothing too wild or special, outside of Japanese boys dressed in mock-samurai and face-masks made of braided hair. A hoodless-windbreaker mysteriously popped up in the Givenchy collection, and it wasn't under a blazer either, confusing about 70 or so people in Williamsburg. The Helmut Lang male line features bizarre knotted-rope accessories attached to belts, curious little additions in a far too kitschy n' gay showing, perhaps designed with the need for overweight Eurotrash queens to have something to drag their lily-faced and drugged rent boys by in mind. Some of the Hermes models looked like sissified Depression-era Oakies, Galiano turned in an embarassing homage to "Gangs of New York" and the Wild West, and turbans appeared in a couple of collections ('classically'-inspired Imitation of Christ, for example.) Paris was arty, Milan was airy, and Brazil had a tropically baroque feel - sounds predictable enough, huh?

Warrior Magazine Launch

STOLEN FROM WEST-COAST HIPPY PUBLICATION, Discorder

Warrior Magazine is celebrating the its inaggaural issue tomorrow night (Friday, September 17th) with a launch party at the new (as of this summer) Greenland Productions run Mile End Cultural Centre... Invite-only schmoozing and guestlist-addicts before hand at 8pm, followed by general admission at 3am, with DJing by Swayz Matez, Brian Fairy, Bliss and Miss Matches, as well as "prize giveaways and the hottest tote-bags and tie-die Tees to ever hit the block." Unquote.

This first issue has an interview with RISD alumni Animal Collective, manipulated-by-Andrew-Loog-Oldham and Piano Magic collaborator Vashti Bunyan and Patrick Swayze. Ugh. Is Patrick Swayze undergoing a revival of the sorts that propelled Bill Murray into the hearts of every Johnny-Come-Lately Kinks fan? Warrior Magazine promises great things, such as engendering creative and political spaces free of commercial constraints with a bit of the "seamless psychedelic explosion," etc. etc. Let's all bite our tongues, cross our fingers and hope that this doesn't turn out to be another Trucker Magazine, or (god help us all) Nightlife Magazine. Kinda suspicious that the Arcade Fire aren't featured on the cover though, perhaps it isn't published in Montreal.

Mile End Cultural Center: 5390 St. Laurent

Pie-Eaters.

Nicholas and Father. 2004.

Let's all hope that you made it out to the Young People's Foundation vernissage at Lemon-Lime (3697 St. Laurent) tonight - 840 (or so) pieces crafted by the collective in one maddening 24 hour streak - like a more art-oriented "24" with less kidnapping and less Kiefer... There's an after-party at Korova. All genuine and earnest human beings should petition the management to rid that establishment of the one specific DJ who dropped tracks by The Stone Temple Pilots, Bjork and Radiohead in quick succession. He can return to his in-house gig as Mcgill Residence Party DJ.

The YPF also have an online version of their Yearbook up now, in the style of Tiger Magazine.

My co-worker Sarah and Chloe were involved in an ass-punching altercation at Buono Nuotte (I'm well aware of just how incorrect that spelling is) last night and also saw that fat black guy from American Idol that they named the sandwich after, Ruben.

Happy birthday Timmy!

Victoria, BC residents... THE RETURN OF LAKEBOAT Tonight, at the Open Space Art Gallery, with Ghosts, Sound Stories and Run Chico Run. 7pm. $5.

I've got a miserable cold. Well, I missed the tete-a-tete of the two Daves (Dave Wanger vs. Dave Lewkewitch) at the 10 Commandments/Charter Cruise performance on Friday at Barfly, opting to spend the night in after a day of serving bloody caesars. Mr. Wanger, formerly of Daddy's Hands, M Blanket and a couple of other "seminal" Victoria bands, will be returning back to the island tip below the 49th parallel, prodigal-son like, to settle into his new role as father. Hmmm...

Tonight, newlywed songsters Phil (of the Microphones) and Victorian resident and illustrator (of the neo-baroque variety) Geneviève Castrée perform at Sala Rossa, as Mount Eerie and Woelv. Songs about summer love, running around in socks and kittens and the like will be on the agenda, as well as re-creating the myths of childhood. Bring a bib.

This Thursday, at the Cafe X, located in the Concordia VA Building on Rene Levesque, the very first vernissage is being held, from 7-9pm. Various mixed media contributions from Cafe staff for the first show... Booze and all that, of course.

Electro-new-wave quartet Duchess Says will be performing, along with Ground Lift, DJ Romeo Casio and DJ Prions en Eglise, at O Patro Vys (on Mt. Royal) on Saturday, September 11th.

Also on that night, duo the Fiery Furnaces perform at El Salon (has the sound got any better there?) with White Magic, fronted by Mira Billotte of Quix*o*tic and expanding the boundaries of the psych-folk informed that's been flourishing as of late, thanks in no small part to the free, newspring publication Arthur Magazine, which is one publication that thankfully isn't following the rest of the indie publishing flock in attempting to mimic Vice Magazine. (Witness Toronot's Trucker Magazine (is that even publishing) and wince.)

And, as you've probably heard, Wolf Parade will not be playing Pop Montreal (they were originally slotted to perform with Mission of Burma) due to family commitments. They'll be recording soon, though.