666th Post - Grimes By Cotton Mouth

Grimes Devon (Cotton Mouth Remix)

"It's got samples from A Guy Called Gerald, Talking Heads, a miami bass group called Rican Crew, and most of the beat is from "Beat Bop" by Rammellzee and K.Rob, "produced" by Jean-Michel Basqiuat."
- Martin Horn, Cotton Mouth

Arbutus continues its long ascendancy to that great plane where crucial and relevant music is made with some more of their remixes. In this case, fellow Montreal-er and studio wizard (owner and producer at Digital Bird) Martin Horn, known to many as Cotton Mouth, takes a stab at Grimes' Devon and comes up with a beautiful Colin Newman-esque variation on an ethereal classic. 4AD or Mute should be on the phone in minutes.

Use Ether To Subdue Robber

Pop Winds In Harmony

Montreal's newest Great White Hope for pop redemption, the Silly Kissers, will be launching their new 10" Precious Necklace this Friday in the definitely unromantic concrete-bunker of the Torn Curtain. Along for the ride will be Grimes (that's Claire Boucher, who just released a cassette of her own), and Pop Winds. I've already covered the Silly Kissers and Grimes, as well as the solo work of Sean Nicholas Savage in previous posts (here, here and here), so my focus right now is the trio Pop Winds, who seem to be cut from the same cloth as Air France, Lemonade, Tanlines as well as other Sincerely Yours groups: re-formatting Afro-Caribbean poly-rhythms for the less-than-temperate regions of the earth. As superficial as the sampling or adopting of these 'tropical riddims' might be, it's nothing to get your Bermuda shorts in a bunch about - it's pop music, and it rarely gets as lyrically distasteful as 10cc's Dreadlock Holiday or the Bill Wyman song I posted yesterday (Je Suis en Rock Star). If anything, the song that comes to my mind is Siouxsiee & The Banshees' Hong Kong Garden.

So yes, fine, there are the vocal acrobatics and loops of Animal Collective, and those rhythms, but the sentiments and songs are expressed through the production and composition techniques of two very much-maligned genres - 80's industrial and goth. Whereas the post-electric explorations of musicians of that time (Death in June, Current 93 et al.) led to them marching in the wilderness of a martial-pastoral folk almost anti-modernist in its adoption of acoustic instruments, Pop Winds are more comfortable with studio technology, and (in so far as I can tell) less inclined to fascist imagery. And yes, we have a saxophone. (Say what you will about the excesses of the sax-drenched 80's, there's a sonic place the instrument occupies that no other instrument can really move around in.)

It's appropriate that a lot of the lofts and re-appropriated workspaces that house these musicians and events are dank, ranging from the cavernous to the claustrophobic. It's the perfect place to dream of tropical escape in the middle of a bleak Montreal winter. If you're in Montreal, you can catch Kyle Bennett, Devon Welsh & Austin Milne of Pop Winds in just such a place this Friday.

UPDATE: Via Twitter, Pop Winds are recording a new full-length right now at Master Tone in Montreal.

Silly Kissers / Grimes / Pop Winds
DJ sets by Why? Alex Why? and Rough Shape.
Friday, February 19th at the Torn Curtain

Grimes

Polaroids by Carlo Mollino, architect of the Societa Ippica Torinese

Grimes Caladan

Outremont's fleetest-of-foot hustlers Arbutus Records, home to the Silly Kissers and Blue Hawaii amongst others, released a couple of notable records earlier this week. The first is a 12" by frequently blogged Edmontonian transplant Sean Nicholas Savage, titled Spread Like a Butterfly and the second is Geidi Primes, a cassette release by Grimes (Claire Boucher), who carefully embroiders loops, delayed melodies and her own voice in a manner evocative of, but not derivative of, Kate Bush, Gang Gang Dance, and the less indulgent 4AD bands of years gone by. If you want to grab a copy, physical or otherwise, check out the Arbutus website, where it's also available as a free download.