On October 2nd, I'll be moderating a discussion for the symposium portion of the Pop Montreal International Music Festival called From The Crate to the Dropbox. Panelists for the discussion include Jason Sigal, the Managing Director of the Free Music Archive; Yuani Fragata, Executive Producer of Radio-Canada's Bande à part program, Mike Silver (known to most as CFCF), and one more TBA. The event starts at 2pm, and takes place at the Agora Hydro-Quebec at 200 Sherbrooke Ouest.
This Friday, the Creamery presents a very special evening with two of Montreal's funnest DJs and swellest fellows, CFCF and Trebek. This is part of a new monthly series, and support will provided by residents Advaance and myself, Jay Watts III. $5 at the door (cheap), drink specials and lots of fun.
Tokyo Thursdays are such an unholy union of music, people, and drinks that the club got busted last time, and is out for the count this week. That's why the whole evening is moving into exile. Under the watchful eye of our Chiang Kia Shek Lookout, we'll be moving a little further south for a temporary stay in the old digs of Panthere Noire - last summer's flash-in-the-pan club that unceremoniously disappeared after a couple of months.
This Thursday, and this Thursday only, I'll be playing along with CFCF (Mike Silver), which is always a bunch of fun and sometimes involves a bit too much talk about Fleetwood Mac.
If you're like me, you probably love Cut Copy and don't like Elton John. Well, Cut Copy have been notoriously slack in the music-making department since their last album, but thank God friends and fellow countrymen Knightlife have stepped in to fill some of the void for polished floor-filling electro-house. As for Mr. John, I've never been much of a fan, despite my mother's undying love for the little guy. Nonetheless, this edit courtesy of recovering English acid-house head Ashley Beedle passes the dancefloor test.
There are some days when I want to listen to music that sounds like re-imaginings of the score to the film To Live & Die in LA or Michael Mann's Heat, a film which (somehow) is experiencing a real zeitgeist moment amongst friends, acquaintances and peers - in conversations, with musicians (CFCF, in particular), and weird books. Art Linson's What Just Happened? Bitter Tales From The Front Line, for example, I picked up a couple of days ago because I needed something trashy to read and I figured the presence of some David Mamet stories would make it interesting...
And then there are times when tasteful waves of pop washing over an ambient soundscape with a polished studio sheen is so incredibly off-putting that instead of evoking the emotional ennui of two of the American acting profession's greatest talents locked in a moral and mortal battle against each other and their own ennui, etc., I just think of the heavy-handed intros to Don Henley songs from the 80's or commercials for Scandinavian airlines. In other words, the emotional manipulation and trickery that this particular type of music depends on becomes so evident that I think, fuck it, Eno is just some asshole in a turtleneck and linen-pants, (like a new step-father who's also really, really into Eastern mysticism and jazz fusion) and I wish he'd been able to turn up that god-damn harp music and never burdened us with Discreet Music and 30+ years of the horrors it hath wrought.
This weekend, I happened upon Montreal's premier indie-craft fair, Puces Pop, which, already, I mean, right there, in that sentence, there's an intolerable level of genre cues, of a rough-around-the-edges but soft-in-the-centre aesthetic that in small levels is endearing, like a girlfriend in first year at art school, but as you become older evolves into this sexless aesthetic, this way of avoiding engagement with the world. In earlier times involved putting together a K Records-style band that performed in socks and sang about cats. Nowadays, it's selling crafts on Etsy and making clocks out of vintage cameras and fashioning necklaces and earrings with feathers. Anne Geddes for the college-educated! (On the extreme side of that, it's Ariel Pink side-projects and bad facial hair and dream-catchers and Arthur magazine and Fecal Face.) So, yeah, that was distressing.
In moments of distress such as this, I'm not one of those people that goes the other way completely, opting to put on Slayer to clear the air, so I take refuge in what any self-respecting white asshole does when he becomes disturbed at the inauthentic blah-blah in his paltry subculture or suffers some artistic crises, I listen to race music. (Don't like music? Check out The Wire.)
And because New Orleans has recently suffered and continues to suffer, that's gotta be where the soul is, right? So, above, after the obligatory charcoal-grey fluorescent-lit pop snooze-a-thon, you'll find some classic New Orleans songs to assuage during times of crisis and clear the air. If you're looking for something similarly sinister to supplement your recent viewing of Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans I'd recommend the 1987 film Angel Heart, which gives you creepiness and soulfulness in equal measure, Charlotte Rampling, Robert DeNiro as a hard-boiled egg eating manifestation of Satan, Mickey Rourke, and Lisa Bonet of The Cosby Show topless.
I made my way yesterday to see Desire, Glass Candy and Cosmo Vitelli at Juste Pour Rire. Missed the Cocktail Club DJ set, and caught the last half of Desire, which (as Feeling Nouveau mentioned earlier today) wasn't the wildest in terms of stage performance, but that will come soon enough.
The last time I had seen Glass Candy was about six years ago in Victoria, having formed a band (which will not be named, save me some face here) for the express intention of opening for them. When I first moved to Montreal Glass Candy was playing with Duchess Says (which was their second show, Johnny told me last night), but, and my memory's hazy on this, I ended up missing them or coming too late. Either way, a number of fate's machinations made it so that I didn't get the chance to see them until last night, at Pop Montreal, and it was a great performance. Old classics, exceptional sound, great lights, and a fuller and more solid stage performance, with Ida No pulling out a series of aerobic dance moves... If my hangover today is any evidence, there's a good reason why I don't remember how Cosmo Vitelli sounded.
Tonight there's an embarrassment of riches (as per usual at Pop), and you already have my Os Mutantes & Plaza Musique recommendation (more Plaza than Os Mutantes, if I'm being honest) but if you're looking for something a little more clubby and fun, Upper Class Recordings' showcase is at Divan Orange and includes hometown balearic remix hero CFCF, DVAS, and recently transplant to Montreal, Cadence Weapon. As well, The Cansecos and Silly Kissers are playing earlier, so you'll have some time to perfect the stand-nod-clap look. A lotta the post-French Touch retro-wave club stuff (the DVAS song above included) isn't the most ground-breaking in terms of songwriting or what it brings to the table, but I like to think of it, like a lot of good dance and pop music, as being craft more than art. And it's fun to dance to. Should be enough.
It would also be re-miss of me not to mention Karnival, Poirier's new night, which debuts at Club Soda. Featuring Mad Decent's Paul Devro (and former Vancouver boy) and a helluva lotta bass. Check out the FB page here.
I was out earlier with fine young gentlemen/Hyphy Juice importers Phil Aubin (Hovatron!) & Seb Diamond (known collectively as Mofomatronix, and also just super dudes, with blog here) and small-talk turned to more small-talk about side-chaining, samples, and this song, specifically. The sampled song is Final Edition's I Can Do It (Anyway You Want), and Ducksauce = Armand van Helden & Montreal's own A-Trak, record out on the rolling Fool's Gold concern. After that, we went to the new Bofinger on Parc, dined in a suitably carnivore manner and enjoyed the last little bit of sunshine that summer has to offer.
These two kids (along with Brendan Duvall) are also bringing up The Juan MacLean for a special DJ set on the 17th of September, along with hometown hero CFCF.
We're in the final stretch of the Montreal Jazz Fest, and while it was kind of interesting to press myself up against 100,000 other people for Patrick Watson's performance on Sunday night, truthfully, I've neglected my duties as a newly minted Quebecker (I declared my residency last Friday, after five years of living here), which, at this time, include wandering buzzed around the Quartier de Spectacle, fondling produce at a Farmer's Market or two, and playing pétanque in a city park.
Yes, I've been lazy, but now I'm summoning up all the civic pride I can to get involved, even if that means sitting in a dark theatre on a summer evening. (Thankfully, the weather's been mostly miserable...) The Just For Laughs Festival, widely known across the rest of Canada as the place where they film all of the filler stand-up comedy for Saturday night emergency programming on CTV, is here, and truthfully, I can take or leave stand-up comedy and comics. (And circus acts and the tam-tams and many other of Montreal's summer delights. Thank God they don't hold poetry slams outdoors.) But as it goes, there's something very compelling about this year's festival, and that's a screening of two episodes of a new television series on Canada's Showcase network (which re-broadcasts American cable shows, used to show a blue movie or two, and occasionally produces some Canadian shows) which stars two of the principals involved with last year's film, Who is K.K. Downey?, which premiered at Fantasia.
Kidnapper Films' Pat Kiely and Matt Silver make an appearance as the Tak Brothers, in an episode of a new five-part series called The Foundation, which is screening two episodes at the Just For Laughs festival. (Contrary to past years with this blog, I won't delve needlessly and deeply into the arcane details and connections, I'll just say that these are two very talented and very hard-working young men, and their lengthy CVs attest to that.)
From the trailer, it looks like it's just as funny, quick, offensive, and also features just as many questionable hairstyles and incidents of hard-drug use. Mike Wilmot (from It's All Gone, Pete Tong) stars as a morally bankrupt family patriarch, with Mike Dowse (Fubar, It's All Gone, Pete Tong) at the helm.
I'll have a brief Q&A to post with the duo in the next day or so, but in the meantime, to give you a bit of context, here are some audio pieces. The first is a mock college radio show hosted by Terrance and Theo Huxtable that takes place prior to the events in Who Is K.K. Downey, and features an animated and aggravating caller, as well as selections from the film's spectacular soundtrack (Miracle Fortress, CFCF, Duchess Says, and others.). Unfortunately, we weren't able to re-create the smooth reggae sounds that follow on The Natty Dred Show. Production was by Ali Rahman and Martin Horn of Digital Bird Studios, with a little help from yours truly.
Against Film Schools is a 2008 piece produced by Cristal Duhaime, who works on CBC Radio 1's Wiretap with Jonathan Goldstein, for the sadly short-lived and ambitious Savfaire magazine. The voice you'll hear is that of Matt Silver, expounding wisdom to the fresh and naive souls who wish to make it as film-makers.
