Weekend Mixed Bag

It's finally enjoyable to be outside in this god-damned city, so I don't have the patience necessary to sit around in front of a computer and type out a proper blog (next week, though), so here's a mixed-bag of mp3s for your weekend listening pleasure. BBQ something, designin' man Jay Delmarr is pushing the backalley BBQ as the hottest summer BBQ trend, hot on the heels of Orchid burgers.

House of Love - Salome.mp3

My girlfriend and I hit up a vernissage at the Skol Gallery earlier this week, and while waiting around for the French theorist to finish delivering his paper, we popped into Mars... I picked up a copy of the self-titled House of Love album for a decent price. I'd listened to the album over and over in Vancouver, but it was Duckworth's copy, so it was great to find a copy of it. This songs a particular favourite.

Sarah Vaughn - The Smiling Hour (Abre Alas).mp3

Last night I came upon some people preparing for a garage sale and managed to snag 15 or so great albums (including Dylan, CSNY, bizarrely a Mike Oldfield album, a tonne of Nina Simone, the Big Top Pee Wee soundtrack, etc.), and one of them was a 1979 Sarah Vaughn recorded called Copacabana that she had recorded in Brazil. The chorus is great! (Factory Records' Kalima did a cover of this that I'm trying to track down, too.)

Nina Simone - In The Morning.mp3

Nina Simone had a magnificent relationship to headwear (particulary wraps and turbans) that must be revived by young women today, and rescued from the gritty and grubby hippies. I found this LP last night, too. The song reminds me of Donovan's Colours. "That's the time, that's the time, I love the best!" wailed the dimunitive little Scot, and that's all good, but Christ, Nina Simone!


NEXT UP: Soft Machine, Etta James, maybe a return to the current decade?

I Have Been... And Returned!

Silver Apples I Have Known Love (1998) & Spectrum/Silver Apples Whirlwind (1998)

New York's Silver Apples duo (made up of drummer Danny Taylor and synth manipulator Simeon Coxe), composers of space-travel soundtracks and unapologetic champions of the banjo. Named after a line in Yeats' Song of the Wandering Angus, the group changed and set the standard by which. There would be no Suicide without The Silver Apples, and without Suicide, there would be no, well, you get the idea... (Seattle's Chromatics covered Program on their Plaster Hounds record (Windy & Carl covered it, too), and numerous groups have done the same, such as Meat Beat Manifesto, John Sims, Jessamine and Spectrum (a collaboration), but not as many as those who've pilfered from them.

Their first album, recorded in a cramped studio for Kapp Records by themselves, with no knowledge of recording technologies, and a producer who bowed out, citing possible mono as a reason for abstaining from the process, they recorded Oscillations, which led to: adding member Eileen Lewellen, an aborted in-store jam session with Steve Winwood (a frightened Simeon, not much of a virtuoso, ran out of the store claiming he was hung-over and going to throw up), sharing bills with The 1910 Fruitgum Company, Blue Cheer, Norman Mailer, Allan Ginsberg, The Fugs, and Tiny Tim, staying with The Dead at their San Fransiscan house (according to Simeon, the Dead didn't do much but smoke dope and noodle on their guitars), the airline Pan-Am suing them for $100,000 for the cover images on their second album, Contact, and having NY mayor Lindsay commissioning them to play and perform a song for the 1969 lunar landing viewing in Central Park. After Kapp Records went belly-up, Simeon returned to Alabama in a sailboat, sold some ice-cream, worked in television and advertising and returned to poetry and painting.

After a couple of one-off gigs throughout the 90s, a transformed and revitalized line-up reprised the whirring and looping oscillations that befuddled as many listeners then as it surprised and enchanted now, with Xian Hawkins (he now records as Sybarite, and has released an album with 4ad) and Michael Lerner flushing out Simeon's unique vision. Simeon dueted with Sonic Boom's (Spacemen 3) Spectrum in Boston and New York, performing the Apple's A Pox On You, which led to a later collaboration with S. Boom, the Apples/Spectrum split A Lake of Teardrops album, released on Space Age Recordings.

Spectrum/Silver
Apples - Whirlwind(1998).mp3

A third album, recorded at the Record Plant while the Jimi Hendrix Experience was recording was lost and disposed of, (probably sitting in someone's garage, waiting for Warren Hill to ferret it out), but a chance encounter with Danny Taylor revealed that he had a copy of those last recording sessions, and it was released in 1998 as Garden. Taylor rejoined the group, but touring was cut short in 1999 after a messy hit-and-run accident in 1999 that left Simeon with a broken neck, ending the Apples' return prematurely. To compound this, sadly, Danny Taylor died in New York on March 10th of this year.

The below track is from their 1998 return Beacon, a re-working of I Have Known Love, written by Eileen Lewellen.

Silver Apples - I Have Known Love (1998).mp3

Unique Cosmos of Sound

Can, Unknown Studio Fragment, 1973

My friend Victoria slags Can off as the quintessential boy band - the appeal of the group being mostly to males, like most other obscure German bands of a certain period of time, or (realistically), any period of time. I can see the argument, it's essentially true, but that's a terrible, terrible reason to dismiss what has to be the best German-Japanese collaboration since World War II!

The date on this song indicates that it probably would have been recorded during the sessions for Future Days, the final Can album to feature Damo Suzuki's vocals, at their own Inner Space studios. The great thing about a Can track like this - jamming, lengthy, is that essentially, one would simply clean up the production, and it could easily appear on a majority of the group's albums. This is what I imagined, before I was introduced to the grim reality of the situation, the Grateful Dead would sound like - 10 minute long songs with psyched-and-fuzzed out guitars, reverbed vocals, LSD freak-out, right? Unfortunately, the Grateful Dead played limp, hayseed boogie rock that only very confused American teenagers (and very stoned) born many years past the eclipse of a youth culture they idolize and pine for could love, and their best song was their only chart-topper, and embarassment to all true deadheads, Touch of Grey. Thurston Moore speaks their praises, though. I have a theory that, given all that time spent in New York at Marc Jacobs' shows and gallery openings, he needed a fairly large stick to weild against the preening and affected elite, and what better than an indigenous boogie-blues ensemble, terrible enough to withstand ironic detournement?

Can - Unknown Studio Fragment 1973.mp3

UP NEXT That new Eno album Another Day On Earth has leaked, we'll take a look!

Maybe Get Out To The Starting Line

Just the two on the right, thanks.

Given that Eno's newest album is to be his first stab at lyric-based pop music in 25 years or so (according to him), it's an appropriate time to resurrect what might have been if not another stab, at least a slash!

In 1990, Brian Eno and John Cale collaborated on the Wrong Way Up album, ostensibly a Cale solo album that led to a co-credit because of Eno's hijacking, or so some people might have you believe. (I'm suspicious, it wasn't James & Eno Laid, ya know). The album's 10 tracks of varied pastiche-work - music-box melody here, Hawaiian rhythm there, gospel harmonies punching in and out - tends to muddy the waters, but that's both strength and weakness.

The midi-rock vibe hard was to ignore on a couple of the tracks - they'd be better served as bumper music for a campy sit-com, or the more flaccid elements of the Talking Heads (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah! chose to appropriate their feyness), but I got past that, justifying it as Eno Experimentalisationalism, and discovered a surprising album that I'd previously passed over. I'm chosen Spinning Away here, but Lay My Love and One Word are standouts, too. (Check out Eno's MS Paint-style album artwork for an extra treat)

The song is a little overwrought: the presence of aching strings and doubled-up vocals on the chorus atune the listener to the deep pathos and longing of these balding geniuses, and the repetition of the phrase "Pale Moonlight" fulfills some hidden 90s schmaltz quota. The rhythm of this song is calling out for an interpretative reggae version. (Oh Christ, I've just found out that Sugar Ray did a calypso version on The Beach soundtrack!) Anyways, mp3 below!

Brian Eno & John Cale - Spinning Away.mp3

Tomorrow night in Montreal (that's Tuesday), myself and Michelle Adelman will be DJing at The Green Room (5386 St. Laurent). Another fairly incoherent smattering of whatever you might download from this blog, plenty of surprises, drink specials, Yoko Ono, Can, and Michelle's extensive record collection are all on the plate. No cover, 'f course... 11pm-3am!

A bit of gossip: I've heard through the grapevine that Shepard Fairey, he of Andre The Giant Has A Posse, is now living Montreal.

NEXT UP

FINALLY, that CAN I've been promising!

Up on a hill, as the day dissolves!

My girlfriend and I went and saw Woody Allen's Melinda & Melinda last night, which wasn't the film that the critics in Cannes were surprised by, some of them actually enjoying it. I enjoyed it, but truthfully, I have enjoyed every single Woody Allen film on some level, and I find it very difficult to seperate the immersive experience of seeing a film at a theatre from the merits of the film. It's big! It's loud! It's dark! It usually takes a couple of days before I realize whether the film was actually bad or not. Sure, I'm some sort of noble savage - raised without television or movies until I reached the double digits, I'm still expecting the train to come out of the screen and run me over.

If it seems like I've turned into a fourty-five year old British punter in my absence (Keith West, Faust and what not), the blame is to be placed at the foot of my new roommate. He's got an extensive collection of old Mojo magazines that I've been thumbing through in my spare time. Thankfully that hasn't led to any unreasonable lusting after books chronicling the very minute details of The Beatles early days in Hamburg, or Lennon's holiday in Spain with his rumoured homosexual lover.

Sandie Shaw - the British square-jawed pop chanteuse, rose to prominence with 1964's There's Always Something There To Remind Me, won Eurovision in 1967 with Puppet On A String, and was an unqualified success in the rather tame world of bubblegum pop.

In 1969, EMI released Shaw's Reviewing The Situation album, comprised of remarkably prescient material for a pop singer at the time - it's hip, in other words. Nary a jazz crooner's ill-advised rendition of Eleanor Rigby to be found (Love Me Do stands in for that), and the ultimate cut-bin find. Dylan, The Lovin' Spoonful, The Beatles, and, as wel'll see below, a song from Oliver! and Led Zeppelin!

REVIEWING THE SITUATION

That's one Tull-like introduction, for Christ's sake! The title-track of the album - shimmies and shakes, staggering attitude, easily the best. Composed by Lionel Bart for the musical Oliver!, which my grandmother made me watch as a child, this is a swinging and rocking rendition, and her voice betrays none of the "slightness" and "wispyness" attributed to her by that intolerable arbitrator of music history's crimes and successes, The All Music Guide.

Sandie Shaw - Reviewing The Situation.mp3

YOUR TIME IS GONNA COME

The very first Led Zeppelin cover to appear on an album! A straight-ahead arrangement of the original, another dimension added by the song being done with a female voice. The production is remarkably tasteful, too. A true story: A couple of weeks ago, preparing to DJ at a local bar called the Green Room, I started cueing this song up, but couldn't get to it in time. The next song on the CD that was left in the other tray began, and it was the original Led Zeppelin version. Woah.

Sandie Shaw - Your Time Is Gonna Come.mp3

Smiths fans will probably be aware of her owing to Morrissey's championing of her and appearance on the second version of Hand In Glove, after which she returned to recording, graduated as a therapist from Oxford (!), works in television production, amongst many, many other accomplishments. (A regular Louise Brooks!) She recorded a song penned by Morrissey, too: Please Help The Cause Against Loneliness, and in 1986, released a song for the pompadoured Mancunian, Steven (You Don't Eat Meat), in which her voice adopts more of a Debbie Harry meets Siouxsie tone with some interesting
octave jumps. The chorus is, as one would expect, somewhat embarassing. You Don't Eat Meat, But You Eat Your Heart Out, Steven.

NEXT UP

Rare CAN, and Eno rediscovers Pop with a friend's help!

Lying On Your Back!

"Count the days into years
His eighty two brings many fears"

This particular excerpt being Grocer Jack (what's with British groups and songs about men named Jack?), sung by Tomorrow's vocalist Keith West and a precocious child chorus, and penned and produced by Mark Wirtz, who also produced Tomorrow's ode to the free ride, My White Bicycle. Named in homage to a habit of uber-creepy Kim Fowley, it's one of those lost psych-pop classic, and despite rocketing to the top of the charts, the recording session was so extraordinarily expensive, even in the context of Swingin' Sixties Spector-like vanity projects, that the label's enthusiasm quickly fizzled out (never there to begin with, a certain amount of hoodwinking was necessary to get the start-up money anyway) and decided not to fund the completion of the album. (Cherry Red issued an somewhat ramshackle compilation of related material from the Teenage Opera a couple of years back.) Those "lush" strings, choir, timpany, brass cost more money than EMI was willing to shell out. The introduction , the more sophisticated arrangements and changes, the tale of an unappreciated grocer stumbling and dying, a town only appreciating him in his passing, all of this places Excerpt in the same league as The Pretty Things' S.F. Sorrow album (clandestinely recorded at Abbey Road Studios during the night, after The Beatles were done their White Album sessions for the day, pinching George Harrison's sitar, or so the legend goes). Like its title character, Grocer Jack, Excerpt From A Teenage Opera is honoured and beloved post-humously, and it's a shame that Wirtz was never even given a fair chance to at least fail.

Keith West - Excerpt From A Teenage Opera.mp3

"It's a rainy Day, Sunshine Baby
It's a rainy day, Sunshine Girl!"

Beloved by Julian Cope, collaborators with Tony Conrad, and German. A great song despite feeling too topical (Montreal's sadly not rushing into summer), this song is from Faust's second album Faust So Far. It builds with a great guitar bit (the tone sounds similar to the guitar used in OMD's The New Stone Age), 4/4 tom beat and piano repetition, adds Schulz-ian synths and a harmonica, before a superb saxophone bit carries us into the fade-out. Someone was taking note, perhaps? Faust also did a number of seperate versions of this song, some titled Stretch Over All Times and Ice Rain.

Faust - It's A Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl.mp3

NEXT UP

: Sandie Shaw, rare Can!

Like an English Summer...

COLDPLAY + BLACK MOUNTAIN UPDATE The Black Mountain / Coldplay tour is for 17 dates including the show at the White River Amphitheatre near Seattle, no Vancouver show.

Mary-Catharine introduced me to the French group, Konki Duet, after a copy of the album came into the office a couple of weeks ago. The tricky bit about writing about Konki Duet is avoiding mention of The Lapse and Blonde Redhead, given the shaded vocals of Japanese ex-pat Kumi (formerly of Crazy Curl), but that's a bit of laziness on my part: the group is as capable of speaking about the influence of Robert Wyatt as converging disparate aesthetic threads of aging Europe and the perceived dilettantism of Japanese sensibilities.

The album strikes deeper than the cabaret-pop revisionism or space-lounge of the previous Franco-Japanese collaborations that we've had a glimpse of in North America. It's as whimsical as anything by 60's baroque-poppers Left Banke or American duo Puerto Muerto, delicately constructed and playful without the silliness or affected daintiness of any myriad of artists who might meet the previous description. (More Vashti Bunyan than Joanna Newsom, say...)

Truthfully, there are some moments that fall flat or drag: the instrumentation is poorly served by the inclusion of a drum machine on a few tracks and those low moments could be resolved with a different production approach, but the songwriting is unimpeachable and thestand-out tracks resonate strongly. Album-closer Do! Family, for instance, begins as an organ and guitar lead surrounded by a trio of airy harmonized voices before a lifted arpeggiated motif (courtesy Philip Glass?) arrives and paints the song a sinister shade. The title track Il Fait Tout Gris, available below, is a cover of Visage's euro-synth hit Fade To Grey. (Listening to it, keener folks will probably notice that Visage is owed some unpaid royalties from Ladytron) Extracting a morose subtext from the original, Konki Duet amplifies the humanity of the song by replacing Visage's icy synth and programmed drums with violin and acoustic percussion. Their version is also mostly in French, and therefore, far more humanistic!

Additionally, Konki Duet are members of the Toxic Girls All Stars ensemble, along with members of The Very Ape, Noak Katoi, and Tam. More info on their various projects at wwww.thekonkiduet.com!

Konki Duet - Il Fait Tout Gris.mp3

Visage - Fade To Grey.mp3 Original Version



Tomorrow Faust vs. Keith West!

Mile Envy in Montreal

TUESDAY, MAY 24th

Tonight, DJ Prions en église guests at Mile Envy, with your hosts Luke Bradley and me, now known by my summer DJ name The Jah Watts Soundsystem. It's at The Green Room (5386 St. Laurent). 10pm, no cover, drink specials...

neu-wave / post-punk / manchester bullshit / hip hop summer jams / kosmische rock / etc.

Yellow Mountain?

I'm coming out of retirement to announce that, according to hearsay, grumbling and rumour, Coldplay have asked Vancouver's psych-kosmische kollectif Black Mountain to tour with them. You heard it here first!

Also, Victoria's Chet, who I wrote about a couple of months back, are halfway through their Canadian tour. If you're around when they're around, I not only highly recommend, but implore, that you go out and see them for yourself. The album's going to be released to stores (through Scratch Distribution) at the beginning of June, but they have copies of it available right now. It just came in at #39 on the Canadian campus charts!

Sunday, May 22
Montreal, QC @ Casa Del Popolo (w/ Courtney Wing)

Monday, May 23
Ottawa, ON @ The Manx (w/ The Flaps)

Wednesday, May 25
Peterborough, ON @ Grassroots Café (w/ Jay Spectre)

Thursday, May 26th
Guelph, ON @ The E-Bar – (w/ Selena Martin, Wayne Omaha)

Friday, May 27th
Toronto, ON @ Rancho Relaxo – (w/ The Great Lake Swimmers and Wayne of Cuff the Duke)

Sunday, May 29th
Thunder Bay, ON @ The Apollo

Monday, May 30th
Winnipeg, MB @ Music Trader – In store performance

Tuesday, May 31st
Saskatoon, SK @ The Basement

Wednesday, June 1st
Edmonton, AB @ Sidetrack Café – (w/ Fractal Pattern)

Thursday, June 2nd
Calgary, AB @ TBA

Friday, June 3rd
Nelson, BC @ The Royal

Saturday, June 4th
Vancouver, BC
9:00 pm at the Tahitian Twilight Lounge in the fabulous Waldorf Hotel with The London Apartments and Blackout Beach (Carey Mercer from Frog Eyes)

Saturday, June 11
Victoria, BC @ Hermann's with Great Aunt Ida



P.S. Deja Voodo.

Pre-Purim

Tonight at KOROVA (3908 St. Laurent), DJs Dan "Manachem" Seligman and Jew Watts III (that's me) celebrate the third day before Purim starts with a Pre-Purim Party... Gobble some hamantashens... Doors @ 10:30pm, no cover.

As well, it'll be a going-away party for Guillaume Decouflet, as he returns to Paris...

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As well, the POPMontreal website is up, with some minor scabs and scrapes... I've been busy on that, hence the lack of posts 'round these parts, but as Dylan "The Gambla from Nambla" Young reported in his last column in The Hour, the blog component there is ready to go, with contributions coming up from the finest French and English blowhards in the Montreal music scene...

DUCK YOU SUCKER!

I wrote about the Warrior Magazine launch last week, so I'm just giving everyone in Montreal a heads up about the event... It's tonight and Jean-Richard, described by R. Simpson as "man of 6000 songs" will be performing along with Raf Katigbak's Bold Saber duo... DJing by Polish non-homosexual duo Sons of Warsaw and the pride of Concordia University, Prions en Eglise.

1845 Ontario E. Which is not sadly, Pub Jacques Cartier...
9pm-3am, $4

Into The Impossible!

We Are Wolves are launching their debut album tomorrow night, at the split-level basement hell known as Le Local Musical guests include The Demon's Claw, franco troubadour Call Me Poupée, with DJing by KinKajou, Why? Alex Why?, 1 Speed Bike, and Cherry Cola. Ladies, fret not, bathroom lineups will be cut in half, as they've rented a porta-potty for the event!
Doors @ 8:30, 7154, St-Urbain, $8...

Warrior's Newest Issue

The erudite, handsomely-designed and journal of transcendent alternative music and arts culture, Warrior Magazine, which is more developed and impressive than its youth should allow, has just received it's third issue painter Pablo Amaringo, artwork by Michael Doerksen, Matt Moroz, Andrew Taggart, Aaron Maté's article on Haiti, more missives from the San Fran Psych Underground, a morning album list from Black Mountain's Matt Camarind*, and plenty more text and uneasy pop-cultural surveillance for the slacker grad student in us all...

This Saturday, while Montrealers are busy taxi-ing and metro-ing out to Le Locale to catch the We Are Wolves CD release show, Vancouverites will be formally introduced to Warrior Magazine with a launch party at the Butchershop. Montreal residents, being a couple of time zones to the right, will celebrate along with Warrior the following Saturday, 9pm at 1845 Ontario E, with performances by Bold Saber and DJing by Sons of Warsaw & Prions en Église.

*In the interests of full disclosure, I wrote the rather convoluted introduction...

"I'm sure the new unit is going to make great items for traditional CBC audiences, but they're not going to be attracting a new audience. And now you have this whole community of freelancers [at Radio Three] who were making really interesting art and stories and editorial positions on everything from Kyoto to new music and they will be gone. They'll be picked up by new-media companies and ad agencies and the whole vision will be lost. ... The private sector is totally into this stuff now and it makes me sad that the CBC doesn't realize the gem they developed. They could carry it so much further, but that would require a vision outside of their traditional fence."
-Outgoing CBC Radio 3 head, Robert Ouimet

Carl Wilson comments today on the CBC Radio 3 re-organization, and two paragraphs in and I'm already laughing out loud over his mentions of Mitsou and Nardwuar. The loss of Brave New Waves will hit hard not only because a valuable outlet for culture will have been lost (etc. etc.), but also for those who have Patti Schmidt as a landlady, who may face both rent increases and her, boozier and grumpier than before.

NONEWNEXTNOWWAVE

Robin Simpson, Pavilion Projects guru and a hotelier's "favourite dandy", resisted the siren's call of the lucrative life of blogging for some time, until recently. Nonewnextnowwave tackles the tough as nails, back-alley milieu of contemporary art and culture, pulling no punches and slogging his way through all of the smoke n' mirrors and esoteric vocab, a tarnished sash draped about his frame... There are mp3s, too.

Jordan Robson-Cramer

Jordan Robson-Cramer, left

Jordan Robson-Cramer's had his hand in a number of honey-jars (both musical and otherwise) over the last couple years, despite being only 20. My earliest recollection of him is a 2001 performance as a precocious 15 year old, fronting a group vaguely reminescient of Sonic Youth at an outdoor summer concert in Centennial Square in Victoria. From there he improvised the music for Dilemma Dilemma's first and only release, a 3" CD proclaimed to be "better than Black Dice" by Jesse F. Keeler, now of DFA1979 fame. He also recorded Fuck Me USA's first songs in his mother's basement, played in Victoria's Short Pants Romance, and stayed with them through their transition into the watershed psychic group Lakeboat. 21st Century Fox was another solo project of his, and he's been tinkering around non-stop in basements and apartments from Victoria to Montreal (where he now resides), without any of Daniel Johnston's nasty body-odour problems or messianic complex... Despite him telling me that he was somewhat unhappy with it, and that it doesn't represent what he's interested in doing right now, I'm posting an mp3 I got from him a while back...

XY Lover - In The Skull.mp3

Witness The Return.

To start off, I'll do some catching up. Below are links to mp3s that have been missing from this sight for the past two weeks or so, indexed with links to the posts that they originally appeared in...

Black Mountain - Tyrant.mp3 Unreleased!
Pink Mountaintops - Erected.mp3
ORIGINAL POST

Chet - Track 1.mp3
Chet - Pillow Talk In The Flames.mp3
ORIGINAL POST

Sunset Rubdown - I'll Believe In Anything, You'll Believe In Anything.mp3

ORIGINAL POST ...Some supplementary information, the Sunset Rubdown album, Snakes Got A Leg, will be released by Global Symphonic on June 21st.

Goldkicked

Hey all, first off, I'm looking into the server issues that I've been having right now, so it will be a little while before I return to posting mp3s, which is unfortunate, because I've got quite a few I'm really excited about coming up. However, when the space issue is fixed, all of the past mp3s I've posted (including the unreleased Black Mountain, Daddy's Hands, Sunset Rubdown mp3s and Wolf Parade, Atlas Strategic and Chet will be back up... At that point, I'll make one post referring to all the mp3s and previous posts, so you can sweep in and grab what you've been waiting for (and I know a bunch of you have) without having to endure jerk-off critiques by me, that is, unless you want to. So, once again, you will be able to come and download all of that stuff you've been pestering me for! Okay, hope you're all well...

goldkicks@gmail.com

YeShakingKing.

Yikes, it's been quite a while since I updated this... Unfortunately something happened with the server space that I had been storing mp3s on, which put me into a deep funk, because I wasn't going to be able to have any Daddy's Hands songs for you guys, or anybody else's songs, for that matter.

Duchess Says who systematically destroyed every other band at last Saturday's bill, including (in my opinion) New York's Japanther, return to the stage tonight to perform with Memphis' Lost Sounds. I recall picking up their album Black Wave out of curiousity in a bargain bin a couple of years ago in Victoria, and it was nothing if not embarassing and rightly relegated to the bargain bin, but perhaps they've improved (they did put out a split with The Vanishing)...
Duchess Says, Lost Sounds and Moustache at The Toc Toc, 6091 Ave. du Parc. Doors @ 9pm.

Alright, I downloaded the Johnny Boy single You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve off of another mp3 blog a while back, and despite the uncomfortable similarities between Johnny Boy's and U2's schlocky basslines, and the weird feeling that I get that if they ever manage to get over here they're going to be about as successful as Chumbawamba... Yes, despite all that, I'm really enjoying it - it's a pretty good morning song, damned epic enough not to bring you down but layered with enough studio trickery to keep you interested... It slipped into Pitchfork's top 100 singles of 2000-2004 at #95.

Johnny Boy - You Are The Generation... (XFM Version).mp3

Above is a low quality version of the single that Johnny Boy recorded at the British radio station XFM...

Ahhhh yes, I've just recalled that I initially downloaded that song off of Fluxblog, and it's still up there, so I'd recommend downloading it...

Ex-Dead Teenager & Black Mountain

Prior to Stephen McBean and Joshua Wells' involvement with the underappreciated touring troubadours Jerk With A Bomb and just after the demise of Gus, the two were members of Ex-Dead Teenager, a post-punk mish-mash of disco beats, synthesizer and tremolo-clipped guitar that pre-dated much of the revivalist stuff that would climb above-ground a couple of years later (much of it in the region, such as Hot Hot Heat, Radio Berlin, The Detroit Deathwatch and The Red Light Sting with close ties to the group). Victims for being either too ahead of the curve, or too unconcerned to care, probably the latter, the group put out two self-released cassettes (appeared on the infamous Go! compilation, which featured Danko Jones, the worst Filipino in modern rock music) and faded into the background, spoken of highly in certain areas in BC, the releases and videos of the band coveted by nerds such as myself. The song below is from the second self-released cassette, passed on to me by my friend Rick O'Dell.*

Ex-Dead Teenager - Bon Scott.mp3

And now the zeitgeist has caught up to Stephen McBean's current position on the astral plane, as lead songwriter for Black Mountain and Pink Mountaintops, both. Below's an unreleased Black Mountain track, and no, it's not a Judas Priest cover.

Black Mountain - Tyrant.mp3UNRELEASED


* Ex-Dead Teenager also spawned S.T.R.E.E.T.S. and Mercury The Winged Messenger.

Wolf Parade!

CBC Radio 3's most recent online edition, which will be replaced by a new one tomorrow, has a story on Wolf Parade to accompany the In Sessions tracks they recorded a little while back. It's also revealed that they've recorded a Blackout Beach song for an upcoming compilation to be released by the folks at The Believer magazine. (Blackout Beach being the solo vehicle for Frog Eyes frontman Cary Mercer...) Coupling this news with Dave Eggers adoration of The Arcade Fire and Tracy Maurice's design & illustration skills, means only one thing - a McSweeneys special "Montreal" issue is in the works. Hardy har har.

Victoria's Chet

The heart & soul of Victoria's Chet are Ryan Beattie and Patrick Beattie: brothers and professionally polite gentlemen-about-town... Ryan (guitar, vocals) works as a bartender at Logan's (formerly Thursdays), the only licensed venue of note in Victoria, and Patrick (organ/vocals) has recently been signed on to work at Ditch Records, the only record store of note in Victoria, and for the past two years they've pursued a . There are similarities in Ryan's voice to both Ron Sexsmith and Will Oldham, but Ryan pushes his voice to soaring falsetto heights, a more tuneful contrast to Cary Mercer of fellow Victorians Frog Eyes. Hank Pine plays cello and novice Alison Therriault (per)cusses...

Chet - Track 1.mp3

This is the first track from their forthcoming album - a dynamic and explosive charge out of the starting gates...

Chet - Pillow Talk In The Flames.mp3

The 8th track on Chet's second album Kauai, named after a Hawaiian island, will be released later this year by Vancouver's Hive-Fi Recordings, the label associated with recording studio juggernaut The Hive. Ryan knocks off solo sturm-und-drung stuff in his spare time, and Patrick spends some time with Bird Sounds of Canada and psych-all-star-ensemble Lakeboat. Their first album was self-released.
Chet's New Music Canada site
April 2004 interview with Chet, Discorder Magazine

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Also, thanks for the kind words from GreenIdeas and Said The Grammophone both... I suppose I'll have to start spell-checking now!

Panties. Boys. Shorts. Boys.

A couple of years ago, a Victorian cartoonist prodigy released a handsomely packaged CD of lo-fi bedroom bumps and grinds layered with Casio spread, effectively kick-starting a one-person campaign of hype in the area. At the time, I heralded Pantyboy as the third or fourth coming of the Messiah (at least the last one since the 19th century, not including the Jehovah Witness' close-calls and also rans), regarded his melodies as sublime and his lyrics as the whisperings of heaven. And then I saw him perform with a backing ensemble at Thursdays. With a gentleman in a poncho, who hogged the microphone and made uncomfortable jokes. I left, disappointed, ridiculed by my friends for my false prophecizing. And now, looking back on it, the first Unicorns performances in Victoria were somewhat disastrous, or at least, characterized by stop-start dynamics with more of an emphasis on the "stop", too. Pantyboy just had to harness that nervous energy, bundle it up and spurt it out like church picnic mustard. And he might just have done so at this point, but I'm on the other side of the country and I can't tell.

Pantyboy - Razor Sharp, No Brakes.mp3

This song's from that album Orgy of the Senses, the first thing I heard before the magic died. More information and MP3s are on his website, including a preview of his new video-game, as well as links to associated projects like Elephant Island and the only private eye alligator comic around Strange Journey.

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ADDENDA: Regarding yesterday's posts, I stumbled upon the newest S.T.R.E.E.T.S. website, which is quite a bit more advanced than their previous "flaming eyeball" and bloody font website... There are 4 mp3s up there, too.

Sunset Rubdown

Hopefully 2005 will be Global Symphonic's year - the West Coast label (jointly run by Carlos and Sean, in Victoria and Vancouver respectively) has been putting out a steady stream of quality releases by leftfield and pop-skewed artists for a number of years now, and despite a number of critically-heralded groups calling that label home (Frog Eyes, The Organ, 80's skate n' thrash revivalists S.T.R.E.E.T.S., Radio Berlin and A Luna Red) and their accompanying string of releases, they've been unable to break it as a cult label along the same lines as other West Coast projects like GSL or Dim Mak. It might be because the groups have less of the reek of novelty act or a major band association (Omar from the Mars Volta is now a co-owner of GSL), or because American distribution is a tough nut to crack, regardless it's a shame, and I imagine a series of stellar releases in the next coming months might raise the label's profile, including the Primes/Bakelite split 12", and the Book of Lists album...

All that being a pre-amble though, the release that will undoubtedly receive the most attention at first, and rightfully so, is the Sunset Rubdown album... Spencer Krug, vocalist and keyboardist of Montreal's Wolf Parade and currently in Europe supporting the Destroyer/Frog Eyes tour, recorded 12 tracks last year of Eno-esque vibrations, drones and well-crafted songs and released it in a pretty damn limited package of 3 mini-CDs. (I, and many others, managed to catch him opening up for Wolf Parade at last year's show in Spencer's loft) Global Symphonic will put this out later this year - I'm not quite sure if its going to utilize the same packaging, we'll see. Below you'll find the first track, propelled by that same overdriven Yamaha keyboard, and peppered with sparse percussion, ending with a key-shifting chorus and arpeggio.

Sunset Rubdown - Untitled Track 1.mp3

AIDS Wolf, Besnard Lakes.

Here are some shots, a couple of weeks old, of AIDSWolf and The Besnard Lakes (who'll be performing at SXSW next month) from their performance at Sala Rosa.

Chloe Lum of AIDS Wolf

Chris Taylor, AIDS Wolf

Jace of The Besnard Lakes

Jeremiah of The Besnard Lakes

BROKEUP.

And speaking of such things, here are some Barley-esque photographs from last night's Break Up Tonight show at the War Gallery, a new space that's opened up on the third floor of a building on lower St. Laurent. The event was well-attended, and despite some spotty sound issues (I'll admit, I was at the helm of the rickety system with two three-inch tall speakers that partially functioned as the PA), everyone had a grand time, the booze sold out and I played Contort Yrself twice...

Impromptu and Out-of-Tune Balladry

Gentleman behind the above...

Owner of Sneaker Freaker, now renamed...

Nathan Barley: In The Juice.

I'm in the middle of watching Chris Morris' new Channel 4 series >Nathan Barley... Admittedly, I hadn't heard of Chris Morris prior to reading something about a tongue-in-cheek special he did on paedophilia. The series is about Nathan Barley, a "self-facilitating media node" (a clueless and clued-in ponce and gizmo fetishist) and Dan Ashcroft, a self-loathing hipster journo who writes and rewrites the codes of "hip" by critiquing the pretentious sorts he sees around him.

Momus wrote about the series, commenting on its awareness of "the cockroach-like unkillability of fop subculture" and identifying the major conflict of the series as being "how to focus on attention-seeking narcissists without validating them beyond their wildest dreams". It strikes me that Dan Ashcroft's character bears many similarites to David Brooks, author of Bobos in Paradise, which, at the time I read it, struck me as a terribly stodgy critique of urban liberals, but now seems to have been a very astute forewarning of what has become, for better or for worse, the standard by which most young urban dwellers judge the standards of their life. Brooks saw Bobos (which isn't the zippiest term) as the convergence of the bohemian and the bourgeoisie, and whereas magazines like The Baffler critiqued that and huffed at the swift and exacting lifestyle and consumption changes that characterize this new animal's raison d'etre, Brooks ended up celebrating it. And perhaps Chris Morris' Nathan Barley series does the same thing - remains to be seen.

Theatre of Pain.

This Wednesday evening, at Saphir (3699 St. Laurent), I'll be DJing along with JRC for the tongue-in-cheek look at invasive media sensationalism and so forth. Given my status as a member of the Gwichen band, perhaps I'll do some Godspeed-like "noble savage" voice-overs on top of stop-start post-rock theatrics.

...And I'm DJing tonight at The War Gallery...

Atlas Strategic! Again!

As promised, here's another mp3 from Atlas Strategic (Dan Boeckner of Wolf Parade's old Victoria-based group), once again from the now out-of-print That's Familiar EP... I believe there are still copies of the first album, Rapture Ye Minions!, available for mail-order from Global Symphonic, and there are tracks available from that release on their New Music Canada website.

Atlas Strategic - The Day It Came To Earth.mp3

Craft, Donkeys, Clothing.

Tonight at The Long Hall (at 450 Beaumont, off of Ave. du Parc), there's an event called The Consistent Variable Project happening, involving a whole swatch of dedicated seamstresses, artists, crafty-types, designers and the sycophants and hang-abouts that populate their lives (myself included)...

I love Dylan Young like the black-spotted brother he is to me, but attaching the moniker "no-wave" to Montreal's finest pre-CEGEPian pop group Donkeyheart may bring out the sorts of people who covet the 1.5 Dancing Cigarettes releases to one of the 40 shows on their hectic Montreal tour. However, according to their blog, one of them has just discovered Nietzsche, it's a confusing time for all and the 21st century is no time for genre squabbles. Prepare for the ubermensch! They're performing tonight at El Salon to benefit Head & Hands. Doors at the usual time, I suspect, wear moustaches and infect thyself with syphilis in preperation.

Hailed by many as the next Donkeyheart, or possibly Telefauna's upstart younger brother, Code Pie mix up the best elements of Yo La Tengo and Bon Jovi. Jersey-Pop Frappe. Hidden In Buildings make you keenly aware of how long you've been standing for, Brian Lipson represents the hope for the future of Earnest Beard Rock (EBR for short), and Deadbush happen to be on the bill, too (and yes, Donkeyheart again!) for yet another Tsunami Relief benefit, this time at the Electric Tractor (6674 de l'Esplanade) on Saturday night.

On Monday, I'll be DJing at the BREAK Up TONIGHT fashion/music/art event, featuring items by Montreal designer Julie Clark (amongst others) at the War Gallery, 3676 St. Laurent. Hike up to the 3rd floor. Doors are @ 8pm.

Turkish Baths and Coming Attractions.

After much searching, an anonymous tipster has revealed to me the location (I suppose I could have looked in the Yellow Pages, nonetheless) of a real, Olde Worlde-style Turkish Bathhouse in Montreal. I will now be spending many countless hours sweating out the booze and indulging in growly discourse with Russian immigrants. Hopefully I won't have to spurn too many sexual advances...

Also, apologies for the sluggish (and sometimes non-existent) downloads on the site and the not-so-frequent posting, but coming up this weekend and throughout next week I'll have a review of the newest Droom album, some of that stuff from Atlas Strategic, a GoGoGoAirheart retrospective, Kosmische Rock mp3s, some interviews and a baker's dozen worth of mp3s from Vancouver and Victoria.

Tracy Maurice

Also, congratulations to Tracy Maurice, who received a Juno nomination for her packaging artwork for the Arcade Fire's debut album. She's up against the packaging for uhh, the most recent Bryan Adams, Avril Lavigne and Jakalope (did you buy that? Have you heard of them?!?!) albums, as well as he of the Roman-esque features (and another Ontario kid) Jesse F. Keeler, from Death From Above.

Arcade Fire - Power Out (demo).mp3

The above was stolen from the Arcade Fire fansite (geezus, kids work quick these days, huh?) Us Kids Know.

Sinoia Caves - Hawkwind - Ethiopiques

Finally, some mp3s for all of you...

Sinoia Caves - Naro Way.mp3

Prior to Jeremy Schmidt's involvement with kraut-rock and (avant? ha!)psychfiends Black Mountain, he released an album under the Sinoia Caves moniker entitled The Enchanted Persuader. There's a very pastoral and rural stream at work here, acoustic guitars over top of ARP synthesizer drones. Schmidt was also a member of Vancouver's under-appreciated stoner/space-rock group Orphan. In the summer of 2003 while I was living in Vancouver I happened to catch one of Jeremy's performances in the opium-poppy filled backyard of a house (now demolished) just off Main. The city was in the middle of its annual fireworks broohaha, which provided the perfect skyline backdrop to the evening. And I wasn't even stoned!

Hawkwind - Space Is Deep.mp3

...And all of that is a perfect segue into everyone's favourite space-rock group, Hawkwind.

Embwa Belew.mp3

To round out the set, here's a track from the third volume of the astonishing Ethiopiques collection, this one specializing in music from between the years of 1969 and 1975, played mostly by members of the police and military bands, who had been exposed to American soul & rock by US Peace Corps volunteers in the country at the time.

Jesus...

There are times when one encounters, on the internet, bold-faced lies and hyperbole and exagerration so foul and terrible and misleading that one has no choice but to break the silence of the keyboard and speak out, decrying the outright stupidity and misanthropic motivation behind such blog posts as this...

The Next Arcade Fire

Despite my Pentecostal upbringing, I do not see in the Arcade Fire the second coming of Christ, and I've never been overcome with any urge to talk in tongues or roll around the floor during their liveshow, nonetheless, the above post is such a blatant fabrication, so demeaning to the Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade both that it must be exposed.

GrapeJuicePlus Blog

And a little bit of a palate cleanser, so I don't end this post on such a sour note, GrapeJuicePlus' another great mp3 blog to check out, there's some tracks from paisley-undergrounders Three O'Clock...

Mp3 Blogs

As I don't have the time to muck about and convert some mp3s until later, below's a list of damn good mp3 blogs...

20jazzfunkgreats

As far as I can tell, this is the only reference to Throbbing Gristle in a blog title around, and they usually post most of the stuff that it's in line with what I'm interested in. It's from Brighton in England, which I wouldn't be able to point out on a map (sadly),

An Idiot's Guide To Dreaming

Another British blog, which is appropriate, because as Robin Simpson said yesterday "the Brits love to gush". Recent posts include Momus, AK Momo, and Afrika Bambaataa, Martin Rev and Boyd Rice. The only people I'd trust to explain what the hell acid-house was.

Spoilt Victorian Child

And yet another British blog, with well-written posts on Malcolm McLaren's "Double Dutch" song, Adam and the Ants, Bow Wow Wow, and the now strangely ubiquitious Richard Harris.

Fluxblog

The original...

...Said The Gramophone

The other Wolf Parade obsessive 'round these parts, currently edited by Jordan Himmelfard. Out of Montreal.

Soul Sides

The more hip-hop and soul oriented on the list. The paragraphs read like the transcribed dialogue of a cartoon pimp cat sometimes, but it's tolerable.

Cocaine Blunts

Hands-down the best mp3blog out there with a focus on hip-hop, CB is the place to find hissy mp3s from old West Coast tapes you only wish your older siblings were cool enough to have had.


Mandatory Moustache All-Locals Series TONIGHT...

Former Blue Skies Turn Black house band Kiss Me Deadly perform along with Mia Verko, who unfortunately channel the more unexciting moments of Winnipeg bop-pop bands of years past (such as Painted Thin and the Bonaduces), and Crime Moth, whom I've never heard. The all-locals series has thrilled many a CEGEP student on Tuesdays past, and I assume tonight will be no exception. It's happening at Le Divan Orange (4234 St. Laurent), with a sliding scale door-price, and it's actually quite nicely set up in there, so show up around 8:30pm with your keenest attitude and cheapest cigarettes.

Shocktroops of Gentrification, Mythologization!

The usual cacophony of internet voices (this author included) have swelled up in disaffected resentment with the publication of the heavily-anticipated (you're lying if you say you weren't looking for it) NY Times article, which appeared in syndicated papers a couple of days prior, and follows Spin magazine's guide to Montreal. The prime complaint, as it always is and always will be, was that the article was unrepresentative of the actual music community and distorts what people are involved in. I'm of the opinion that most of music is a not entirely unappetizing mixture of sounds, artifice and posturing, and that these complaints are predicated on the existence of the authenticity of one particular's scenes creative endeavours, or at the least the striving for that authenticity, which is (once again) false, and a rather boring little way to box one's self and others in.

Then again, I'm a late-comer to the city, am still enchanted by it, even the quaint aspects that I should be shunning, and have none of the foresight of the more established veterans, who toil away on post-rock operettas and self-published chapbooks and home-brewed beer, and regard this as a, uhh, tsunami of hype that will wash over and in its wake, drag away those unable to clutch onto the palm trees of authentic creative experience. (To top that bit of tastelessness, I will later on be defending gentrification as the last hope for the crumbling inner cities with a variety of Sudden Infant-Death Syndrome metaphors...)

At the least, I would hope that many can use this article as an excuse to justify to Ontarian parents the lazy, shiftless, slumming bohemian lifestyle.

Besnard Lakes & Bionic

Sprawling psych-prog fetishists The Besnard Lakes and veterans of the Old Timers Hockey League Bionic square off tonight at Sala Rosa. Trivia bits: Jeremiah from Daddy's Hands now plays in The Besnard Lakes. Bionic's Jonathan Cummins has written a piece that, despite his many, many reservations printed in his latest Mirror column, will appear in this weekend's New York Times. Doors @ 9pm, $8.

CHROME

I'm sure a lot of you might be familiar with the name Helios Creed or Chrome's subsequent albums, but probably not the two tracks below (Jack Duckworth being an exception, of course). Chrome were founded by Damon Edge and Gary Spain in 1976, went out to release a ton of albums and only played two shows in their earlier days - the first in Italy at the request of eager and enthusiastic fans and the second in San Francisco, their hometown, both in August of 1981, after which Damon split the group and moved to Berlin to reform Chrome, while Helios formed his own group, releasing a string of albums, the later ones more dismal than the earlier. Damon died in 1995, his body remaining in his apartment for a month before being discovered... In 1996 Helios reformed Chrome, and toured in 1998 and briefly in 2000.

The first track is remarkably straight-ahead for Chrome, and one can imagine that The Calculators must have been taking notes before recording Circuit Breaking Silence. It's from the Moebius Tapes release.

Chrome - Something Rhythmic.mp3

This track is from their first album, The Visitaton which was recorded prior to Helios Creed joining the band. There are very heavy Television-like moments in this (unlike a band like the Strokes, who at one point were erroneously marked as sounding like Television by a lazy critic), not only in the vocals but the guitar theatrics as well. John Lambdin was in a Japanese psych band earlier in the 70s called The Flower Travellin' Band which could possibly account for some of the group's ability to transcend the caustic proto-punk and float about in the clouds. The very Eno-esque vocal-fadeout is nice, too.

Chrome - How Many Years Too Soon?.mp3

CBC Radio 3, Arcade Fire, AIDSWolf

CBC Radio 3's latest issue (#101) is a dense 101 in-concert sessions... Highlights are... #5 - Baron Samedi, Esq. with "Pride of Malabar", #8 - Blonde Redhead, #11 - British Sea Power, #26 - Destroyer, #54 - Manitoba, #64 - The Organ, #68 - The Pink Mountaintops, #84 - Spiritualized, #94 - Trans Am, #97 - The Unicorns.

There was a surprising turn-out for Dan Seligman's impromptu Sports Bar take-over. About 20-30 people showed up at Champ's last night to watch The Arcade Fire on Conan O'Brien. You can download a video of it below....

Arcade Fire on Conan O'Brien
AIDSWolf have an mp3 from their recording session with Arlen Thompson on Myspace. Geeks.

BLOW YR MIND!!!!!!!!!!

Two highly anticipated shows have been announced for April, both with features that may taint the overwhelmingly joyous psychedelic experiences. But you need that, it grounds you, ya know, stops you from dropping acid every week.

DOSE WITH: Amanita Muscaria.

On April 3rd, premiere group in bearded, dishevelled, forest-frolicking left-coast psychedelic mind-fucking Black Mountain Army will be at Sala Rosa, hopefully in ponchos. The first dark cloud on the golden horizon is the appearance of monotonous post-rockers The Album Leaf on the bill, and the second is the presence of the fourth-rate neutered indie wet noodles Crystal Skulls, who have certainly not earned the right to that moniker.
Black Mountain profile at Pitchfork

DOSE WITH: 2ci. Available by import from most Asian research chemical firms.

On April 29th, Caribou, who will have finished practicing in Toronto for a month or so prior, will be performing at El Salon. Let us all pray that the good vibes flowing from the astral plane and into our third eyes somehow manages to fix the sound-system and purge the room of its "suburban all-ages" atmosphere. The Junior Boys and The Russian Futurists provide pleasant diversions from the main event.

The AutoVauds head off for San Francisco tomorrow for the Film Festival there, and thus celebrate tonight at Korova (3908 St. Laurent) for Totally Tuesday, Slutsky and Tom Mix spin the records while others discuss the minute details of mid-90s GSL releases. Riveting stuff...

Cancer Bats

Toronto's "hardcore kids in search of a new genre" Cancer Bats, fronted by Montreal's Liam whatshizname perform a set of drop-D acid rock to a crowd of irritated and bickering messageboard hounds at 2106 de Bleury tonight. In the wake of Spin Magazine's guide to Montreal and Dylan Young's shocking and inflammatory column in last week's issue of The Hour, tempers have flared and the self-loathing trust-funded and movers-and-shakers have squared off over such life-or-death matters as myths surrounding festival entrance fees and over-promotion of events.

Cancer Bats - Technolocron.mp3
Cancer Bats - Shillelagh.mp3

Satyr-like Rich from Vancouver.

Rich is a fresh-faced Vancouver music enthusiast who hosts a radio show on CJSF with the unfortunate name of How To Bowl. Perhaps it was a ska show at one point, but now he plays Daddy's Hands and Ex-Dead Teenager. Good enough for me. MP3s of past shows with heavy Vancouver content are available for all of you ahead-of-the-gamers looking for the next Montreal.

T. Rex and Primal Scream and Duchess Says

Released in March of 1975, the T. Rex album Bolan's Zip Gun was met with silence from the charts in England, despite being a stripped-down version saved from the synth-heavy excess of the two previous albums (Tanx and Zinc Alloy). Bolan's spry poetry is absent and Tony Visconti's production is missing on this album as well, making the whole album sound like a parody of mid-career T. Rex: absurd boogie-minded riffs with nary a hook in sight, oppressive backing vocals that practically drown out the rest of the instrumentation, and Bolan would later go on to proclaim that Zip Gun was the worst record he'd ever made.

T Rex - Golden Belt.mp3

Golden Belt begins with a steam-engine harmonica, syncopated percussive and piano flourishes and Gloria Jones wailing her northern soul out. It's crowded and excessive and bloated, just like Bolan at the time of the recording in 1974, hanging out in California with Harry Nilsson. "I did nothing but sit in the sun and drink brandy all day".

Primal Scream's 2000 album XTRMNTR! is one primordial slab of fuzzed out guitars and synthesizers, massive and imposing drums and penetrating basslines performed by an ensemble cast of some of the most influential performers of British music in the past 15 years or so... Fronted by former Jesus & Mary Chain drummer Bobby Gillespie, the album includes contributions from Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, Manni of The Stone Roses, Bernard Sumner of New Order, programming by Tim Goldsworthy of New York post-punk production house and label DFA and production by Dan The Automator and The Chemical Brothers, who I don't really care for. It's a great testament to the ability of middle-aged British people to outperform their peers across the pond. And it was released by Creation Records, too. Right!

Primal Scream - Kill All Hippies.mp3

Kill All Hippies resonates with any Montreal resident who has the misfortune of living within earshot of the Sunday tam-tams, a drum-circle gathering of the great unwashed spiritual seekers (who are even more insidious for being so deliberately naive/drug-addled that they seem strangely incapable of harming anyone) and McGill students unsure of what happened to Pearl Jam's fanbase and seeking answers amongst the first group. Bobby Gillespie's falsetto, Einsturzindesque drums, dualing basslines and squealing LFO-heavy synths articulate the the pursuit of new musical frontiers in the face of millenial paranoia and so forth! Was there a better album-opener in 2000?

from the Montreal Mirror...

For my money (or my parent's), Duchess Says have managed to capture something definite and strong with their new lineup that's often lacking in similarily-oriented Montreal bands (the We Are Wolves mp3s, for example, are a tad bit disappointing, unfortunately), it could be the addition of a new drummer, or a fresh determination to undermine people's expectations, but whatever it is, this track CUT UP is a suitable chaser for the previous Primal Scream (and even bears some similarities to the follower ACCELERATOR on the Primal Scream album)...

Duchess Says - CCCUTUUPP.mp3

Hot Springs, Dream Catcher, Unireverse and Michael Doerksen.

Hot Springs @ Musique-Plus

Earlier last night, I went and caught the Hot Springs at Musique-Plus, the Quebecois affiliate of Canada's Muchmusic. There was a flurry of heavily accented French and free Jos Louis treats available after the performance.

DreamCatcher @ The Electric Tractor

One half of Suicide meets Flux Information Sciences without any stage presence whatsoever, unfortunately...

The Unireverse @ The Electric Tractor

Three men with an array of synthesizers, a tape machine and a drum machine performing songs, one being an ode to failed 20th century attempts to build infrastructure on the sun.

l-r: Bearded man with Michael Doerksen.

AutoVaud Wrap-Up and Friday Night Calendar.

I attended last night's Automatic Vaudeville Shandfest at the Main Hall. Taking cinematic cues from both Sergei Eisenstein and Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev, the first two films, Shand and Shand Zweiss, of the nine-part cycle delved deeply into the very grim recesses of humanity's unconsciousness and the Mythic in the most Jungian manner I've seen in cinema in some time. The feature film of the night Apartment Complex marked a turn away from some of the more elaborate and fantastic works of Autovaud's past, and was essentially a Vanity Film about a Vanity Film, eliciting equal amounts of accusations that the emperor wore no clothes and declarations of genius. In my mind, the film positioned itself in such a slippery manner that criticisms are difficult to level at it, and I do have to admit that I preferred 2004's landmark docu-drama The Recommendations, but the film is still a worthy addition to their catalogue.

Now that all of the New Year's resolutions have run their course and failed to stick, Montreal can return to the debaucherous and over-stimulated lifestyle it is recognized the world across for. Some events happening tonight...

Unireverse, Dreamcatcher, Scream Baby Scream @ The Electric Tractor - 6674 De L'Esplanade at St-Zotique. $6.

The Blend-In Blind Inn, Duchess Says, Darryl Balls, Anfan @ La Sala Rossa. $10.

Duchess Says will be performing after a collaborative and improvisational set, so get stoned beforehand.

A bit of an interesting addendum: Arlen of Wolf Parade was responsible for recording AIDSWOLF yesterday. Any idea on who's going to release it?