Pleasure Forever...

Pleasure Forever, now deceased, were one of those groups that I followed with a keen interest... In their first incarnation as Slaves, my interest was mostly because the band was comprised of 3/4 of The VSS (the other 1/4 being Sunny Kay, proprietor of GSL and current member of Yr Future), who had released "Nervous Circuits" which topped, and still tops, my list of favourite albums.

The VSS - In Miniature.mp3 from Nervous Circuits

Slaves released two EPs, one self-titled, and "The Devil's Pleasures", both of which were collected on a 1999 TroublemanUnlimited CD, also titled "The Devil's Pleasures." Sex, death, and gnostic rituals.

Slaves - Chemical Priest.mp3 from "The Devil's Pleasures".


After that, the group changed their name to Pleasure Forever, were signed to Sub Pop, and released two albums (self-titled and "Alter") as well as a single, neither of which sold stunningly well, but fared better critically and sold to that enthusiastic group of music buyers that might count Antioch Arrow's "Gems of Masochism" as a crucial album to have in their collections. The albums are evocative, droning, cabaret-tinged affairs, recalling the darker elements of The Doors and Echo & the Bunnymen or Crime & The City Solution, with the piano used as the lead instrument (as in the VSS) and that puts them in the same family as art-damaged groups such as The Get Hustle and Birdland. While "Alter" is a gorgeously textured and theatrical element, it's marred by the ill-advised move of having Rothbard record his vocals over a department store PA system. (Better than a vocoder, however: ahem, Trans Am).


Pleasure Forever - Goodnight.mp3 from the self-titled album.

Pleasure Forever - Wicked, Shivering Columbine.mp3 from Alter.





l-r: Jennifer Pearl, David Clifford, Kevin Garrison

David Clifford, the drummer, has moved on to Lion Fever, joining Jennifer Pearl, formerly of the Lost Kids and Kevin Garrison, of The Get Hustle and Angelhair (which, coincidentally enough, was the precursor band to The VSS, and one of the main architects of that Gravity Records-styled, "San Diego sound"* despite originating in Colarado.) As you can hear on the below track, their sound owes a lot to both The Lost Kids and The Starlite Desperation...

Lion Fever - Slave.mp3

Andrew Rothbard left Pleasure Forever in the fall of last year, and though Joshua Hughes and David Clifford had intended to carry on, nary a peep has been heard from them since then, outside of a one-off gig with a group called Coast Ghost and the Abandoned Meaner last November.

*Such as: Drive Like Jehu, The Swing Kids, The VSS, Antioch Arrow, The Crimson Curse, so on and so forth... Every single music-playing resident of San Diego seems to have moved to Portland in the past couple of years, much like the Victoria to Montreal exodus in Canada.

Another note: Lion Fever will be playing at the Dim Mak showcase at the Knitting Factory in New York City along with Montreal's Pony Up! a week from tonight, on Saturday, October 25th.

Les Georges Leningrad

Les Georges plug in the Juno 60 (or a DX7 or something), add some vocal delay, and bring out the most influential percussive instrument in the past two years, the cowbell, on sponsorships.mp3 off of their most recent album, "Sur les traces de Black Eskimo" on Alien8 recordings. Sponsorship scandal? Political wonk song?

Also, mythical creatures + British code-word for abrasive, back-alley homosexual sexual encounters. Anyone know when it's going to be announced?

All Panther bands stink.

On the invitation of Dr. Robin Simpson, esteemed colleague and now in the employ of psychonaut journal Warrior Magazine, I attended the opening of the W Hotel watering hole in Square Victoria last night. Flashing lights, music by my new nemesis DJ Adam Gollner, happy-dancing to New Order provided by Raf Katigbak (with Syd Barrett neck scarf),

According to ubsubstantiated rumour (the best kind), a member of one of those local buzz-bands left the bar with an unpaid $1200 tab.

British Sea Power, that Brightonian group of the confusing stage arrangements, wheezy Eno & Bowie vocals, and wonkish lyrical content popped up a bit and then were quickly ignored by N. American press, released another album last month, "The Spirit of St. Louis" on Toyo*. Whether this Lindberghian album was released at this point to coincide with the release of Philip Roth's premise-laden "The Plot Against America" hasn't been mentioned yet. Any NME readers out there will recall that publication's adulation of BSP, which probably prompted Pitchfork to mention it and review the band terribly, or (if the reviewer was an honest sort) give them good marks in spite of it. Clueless comparisons to Joy Division have been made - I'm hard-pressed to hear the similarities. The group definetly owes something to Bowie (namely vocal stylings), but outside of that, the ethereal washiness must echo the sounds of Brighton beaches in foggy, miserable February.

Recent British naval exports purchased by Canadians haven't fared that well lately, however. Be wary!

CBC's Just Concerts site has a live recording of their performance at Richard's on Richards in Vancouver earlier this year available.

British Sea Power "Carrion" - Live at Glastonbury mp3 (from the Salty Water BSP fansite.

*No, not the home of Pink-And-Brown Toyo Records, the other one...

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This upcoming Wednesday, the 20th seems to be a busy enough night for shows, with 2/3 of Montreal's Wolf bands performing...

At The Electric Tractor, Baltimore's Double Dagger (who are said to resemble Le Shok more than Half-Japanese) are playing with AIDS Wolf, their first show in possibly as many months as it takes to make a baby. It's an early show, doors at 7pm or so.

Moving Units, the herky-jerky hi-hat riding group (with two kids from 31g's Festival of Dead Deer) play with The Chinese Stars (members of Arab on Radar and Six Finger Satellite), Kill Me Tomorrow, and Saturday Looks Good To Me at El Salon that same night.

Les Breastfeeders and We Are Wolves are at Cabaret La Tulipe, wherever the hell that might be, and Echo Kitty play with guests at Escogriffe.

GRAMMATICAL STYLE AND SMIRKING COMMENTARY IN THIS POST CRIBBED FROM "PSYCHOTIC REACTIONS & CARBARATOR DUNG" AND VARIOUS PITCHFORK ARTICLES. Obviously...

"...You always wondered why he was in the Travelling Willburries."

The single from the new Glass Candy and the Shattered Theatre album will be released tomorrow, on TroublemanUnlimited. I have to admit that the last album "Love Love Love", while representing the group well with some well-written songs, lost something in terms of production... Perhaps the mastering?

Glass Candy - Love Love Love.mp3

The Destroyer/Black Mountain split on Spirit of Orr Records is out - distributed by Scratch in Canada, you should be able to find it at Ditch Records in Victoria, BC... There's an mp3 below. A remix of "Druganaut" was released on Jagjaguwar Records earlier this year to be followed by a full-length to be released in January of 2005.


Black Mountain - Druganaut.mp3'

And Black Mountain's Steve McBean is, as many of you already know, skulking about, writing perverse songs under the moniker Pink Mountaintops. Unreleased mp3 below. (Thanks, Hive Studios!)

Pink Mountaintops - Erected.mp3

The Baron Samedi Ecstatic Soul Quintet, with returned globe-trotting frontman Steven Balogh, will be performing in Vancouver this Friday, October 16th @ the Astoria with The Christa Min, Cadeaux (with Rick O'Dell, formerly of Sharp Teeth), and YouSayParty!WeSayDie!.


October, 16 2004 at the Astoria
769 E. Hastings, Vancouver, BC

Various Bits...

The Boy Who Climbed Trees - Alex (l) and Jenn Wong (r)

Vancouver's Terminal City alternative weekly is undergoing some sort of transformations. Sometimes Goldkicks contributor (well, she's got the password anyway) and unabashed Weezer fan Jenn Wong will be appearing on the masthead as the new Music Editor. Congratulations!

The end of PopMontreal doesn't mean that there's no live music going on for the next couple of weeks, just nothing that good. Paul Cargnello, probably the only Socialist to have licensed a song to almost-forgotten television series Dawson's Creek, is performing at Sala Rosa tomorrow (Thursday) night. Danko Jones, the most annoying Filipino to ever don a fedora (and I've seen a few tagalog films), will be performing another set of uninspired and lazily crafted "garage" rock on Friday night. At least they love him in Sweden. Also that night, Las Vegas' The Killers perform with Sea&Cake-in-disguise Ambulance Ltd. at Club Soda.

Sunday is kids-with-bikes-and-patches night at the Cryo Chamber, 1180 St-Antoine, as Japanther (not to be confused with The Panthers, the Brooklyn-based recently finding their stride as a Filter cover band) hit the city, reviving the hopes that lay dormant in the hearts of all Reversal of Man fans for the past couple of years...* Who's The Ghost, the double-bass n' drums trio featuring Brian Mitchell, formerly of Vancouver hardcore outfit September open up, along with Dataskin.

Now how often did I relate one band to another one in a snarky, flippant manner above? Having just passed my 24th birthday, I think it's safe to say I've turned into an embittered old man who's seen it all. I'll be balding, tubby and wearing an oversized Pixies t-shirt in about four months.

* Let me clarify something - I don't appreciate Japanther, I find them an artless and derivative group of poorly put-together Svenonius gestures, the members overly proud of their discovery of French situationist theory; a little like The International Noise Conspiracy if they smoked more pot and secretly coveted every issue of Vice.

After Expo67, Montreal was a barren cultural landscape of isolationist Ivory Tower academics and E-popping raver-hippy hybrids until PopMontreal came along...

The last night of the PopMontreal and no reported overdoses, which makes the event an unqualified success, though I'm wondering how many washes the pile of clothing in the corner of the room is going to take before it ceases reeking of cigarette smoke. I caught Frog Eyes on Wednesday night - they played a half hour set to a crowd of respectful, if slightly bewildered, CEGEP Tegan n' Sara fans... Genevieve et Mathieu's inspired performance at Pavilion 2 of old French children's songs, scronky no-wave missives and bewildering "House of The Rising Sun" re-works set the pace for a night of industrial strength boozing and dance-floor busting in an out-of-the-way venue that managed to bring out a more than respectable crowd. Robin Simpson's mischevious placement of the hide-a-bed promised a lot of action, but unfortunately didn't deliver any - although after a number of dixie cups of Griffon Blonde, I probably wouldn't have been able to stomach any spontaneous exhibitionistic practices. Though I spent most of last night in a corner, contemplating whether or not one could follow up Madness' "Our House" with Brian Eno's "Third Uncle" and other such demanding dilemmas, I did get to escape for a brief period when teetotalling Warren Hill spun a bit, and caught a glimpse of the free-styling action in the other room at the Long Haul space, which reached some sort of arbitrary capacity fairly early on into the night. Being a man of slight height, I only managed to see a Besnard Lake-ian thumping away at the bass guitar while a gentleman in an afro (HIP HOP WATCHERS, whom was that?) traded rhymes with a short, lil' hispanic man. That wasn't Kool Keith - that wasn't Beans!

Apparently Franz Ferdinand was delightful, as were the Dears, performing some sort of Rock Opera (a little early in the game for that sort of thing, don't you think? But when one begins grandiose and slightly baroque...). Donald K. Donald's Indian food was a little cold and the music videos projected on the backwall of the Main Hall (slash Mile End Cultural Centre) were perfect fodder for slack and lazy sarcastic commentary. "Is that Sook Yin Lee? What's she doing? She's a nurse now? A mail-order bride?" "A screamo band with a brass section? BRILLIANT!" I'm loathe to admit it, but I'd never heard of this gargantuan Torontonian power broker before, perhaps not following the careers of I Mother Earth or Remy Shand as closely as one would expect, and ol' D-Squared himself didn't even show up!

Late night party-attendees might want to keep this in mind for future soirees: waiting a couple of hours before ample coke-dust settles on the window-sill and taking it all up your nose about five minutes prior to 7am is probably the most cost-effective way to party... Alone. Others might try the approach covered in the most recent issue of New York magazine and long practiced by sensible sorts I've had the occasion to mingle with once or twice: snorting drugs prescribed for ADD.

Mission of Burma will be performing in about 15 minutes at Cabaret, though I'm sure it's a long shot to get in at this point, even with one of those fancy Pony or Nokia passes dangling about your neck. But then, those in the know will be making their way to Miami tonight, to capture a performance sponsored both by Deeselig's own Dingrod (arguably the biggest street-legal in this city) and Zellers. Heart of Amulet, a duo stuffed to the neck with a pervasive sense of historical importance and thematic brilliance (????) perform at 1:48am exactly, just after The Faggot Face Forskins and prior to Burning Pit of Hell and Cougars Are Lovers, Too. Pack yourself into the only venue in the festival with a noticable Russian mafioso presence and enjoy the plywood interior design scheme and stale beer.

The Forms didn't make it across the border, thus forfeiting their match against locals EchoKitty. Sending in a Helmet coverband as their replacement didn't achieve the desired effect either, though the one dreadlocked and braided-bearded gentleman (I had once shared a taxicab to Old Montreal with his companion, who was just at that time peaking on mushrooms) who had recently sucked back some LSD really dug them.

More PopMontreal stuff, including photos and snarky comments about industry people with bad pants/hair to follow in the next few days...

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.

Videokill! in Montreal!

The immensely popular Vancouver-based indie music video event Videokill! is coming to Montreal in October. Organizers Lindsay Sung and Heather Trawick will be making the trek out, and guest curators are the Cafe X curators Pale Phantoms (hey, c'est moi and artist/swell person Tracy Maurice!)...

The most recent Videokill! in Vancouver on August 12th was well-attended and featured videos by Black Mountain, Radio Berlin, Wolf Parade, They Shoot Horses Don't They?, Sparkle Motion, T.A.L.A.Band, Black Rice, The Beans, Heavy Party, Channels 3 & 4 and performances by Primes and Bakelite.

Any bands interested in including a video for exhibition should contact palephantoms@gmail.com, and prepare to have either a hard copy of the video available or it available on the internet for consideration. Submissions should be in before September 20th.

Drinko Bingo: Selfhood as the eternal soul.

Victoria breeding.

Victorian ex-pats can take comfort in the return of Drinko Bingo this Wednesday at Pharmacie Esperanza. Hosted by Carlin & Jennie, the evening promises prizes, booze and the assorted cast of art students and layabouts. DJing by Warren Hill (former synth-player for Radio Berlin!) and Jay Watts III (that's me!). Show up around 9pm. Dress well. People appreciate it, they really do.

Wednesday, August 18th
@ Pharmacie Esperanza / 5490 St-Laurent

Soul Jazz DJ.

This upcoming Saturday sees another show by personal favourites Duchess Says: the Quebec-city dark new-wave transplants will be performing at a Fluodata zine benefit at the Jupiter Room along with Dark Mana, a group fronted by ex-Short Pants Romance bassist and 21st Century Fox dynamo Jordan Robson-Cramer (Jordan Robson-Spector to those who've witnessed him at the controls of an impromptu basement recording studio) and Mary-May. Duchess Says are one of the numerous factors leading to a critical and popular re-assessment of groundbreaking art-damaged synth-fuckups Six Finger Satellite, who deserved the interest and attention that the inferior Brainiac received. Stop by Cheap Thrills sometime and you'll notice they've re-stocked all the albums, previously only available in bargain bins.

On Friday, Vice Recording's Death From Above 1979 (re-christened to avoid confusion with, and litigation from New York's DFA Recordings) return to Montreal, fresh from a Japanese tour with Toronto's GGBB Controller.Controller. DJ Cherry Cola spins the original songs interpreted last time by We Are Wolves.

Friday, August 20 Death From Above 1979, Controller.Controller, DJ Cherry Cola @ El Salon (St. Laurent)

Saturday, August 21 Oneida, Horsey Craze, Lullabye Arkestra @ La Sala Rossa (St. Laurent)