Photo by Lisa Varga, hair by Hanna Little, make-up by Lidia Najera, and accessories by Haberdashery
By Taylor Burgess
On one of the coldest nights in January, I bussed down to Albert Street to share a cup of tea with Kristel Jax and Mark Wohlgemuth, Alpha Couple and proprietors of Freud’s Bathhouse and Diner. Despite the splash they’ve made with the venue/gallery, and despite the fact that they’re soon leaving the space, they refused answering any questions about it. So instead, we talked about Stalingrad, an album that started when they lived in Toronto a year ago, named after the apartment they lived in that they had nicknamed. Continue reading “Alpha Couple – Doubts are real”
For a couple of years now, Curran Farris has been punishing our ears (in the most wonderful way possible) in metal powerhouse outfit Hide Your Daughters. With this crew, his modus is ripping faces and various other parts off with his twisted, tight and ear-smashingly loud riffs. More erudite local scenesters might have known him from another project, Husk, which similarly sought to cauliflower your ears, but first lulled you into a sense of security with quieter, almost droning, intros and asides in the vein of Isis or Pelican. Huge, echoing sounds that evoked more vast vistas than tense anger. Here existed a dichotomy in Farris which is now embodied in two quite separate parts. The aforementioned Hide Your Daughters taking care of the brain abusing and aural slashing, and the solo effort Greenhouse, which encompasses all that is serene, liquid and expansive about Farris’s playing. It is ambient at its truest, with droning guitar and occasional theremin painting nearly blank and formless structures of beauty, but somehow weaving them into a cohesive, gorgeous whole. We figured it would be of interest to see how the two sides of Curran Farris came together, so we did what any good journalist would do and asked him.
Stylus: After making a habit of playing in metal bands, why now ambient? Curran Farris: A couple years back I started listening to [ambient music] more. I got into it through non-ambient artists, like heavy bands that started into more experimental stuff. I’ve played guitar since grade five, and until last year had worked as a guitar teacher. I like doing ambient because it really allows me to turn off my “guitar player” brain. Stylus: Do you find it more challenging to write Hide Your Daughters licks or compose ambient songs?
CF: Well, the thing is, it’s not really “written;” it’s all improvised. It might just start out with an idea. Writing the structured stuff is always much harder, you have to consciously abide to all the rules. Stylus: Is either more satisfying?
CF: Not really. Stylus: Do your surroundings play a big part in your music? [Author inhales deeply of his own wafting genius.] Does the inherent placidity and grand scale of the prairies facilitate making ambient music?
CF: Um… not consciously. Stylus: So, why cassettes? I’m not sure I get this whole cassette revival.
CF: The two cassettes that I have out are with Prairie Fire Tapes, which is essentially the format that they put out. For whatever reason, tapes are popular. I have CD-Rs and stuff as well. I don’t get it either.
Myths are generally written-on-papyrus old; or passed-down-from-your-ancestors old. The notion of myths being modern seems paradoxical, but for Winnipeg band Les Jupes, and principal songwriter Mike Petkau Falk, myth-making is ever present; “I do feel that sometimes we don’t acknowledge the myths that we do have in our lives right now, the ones that our society has created on the one hand, but then also that we don’t purposefully create myths – that the notion of the parable or the notion of stories that also teach is not something that’s on the forefront of modern society’s consciousness really.”
And while Les Jupes’ debut album is entitled Modern Myths, Petkau Falk admits this stab at allegorical writing is “nothing so bold as ‘I’m going to write the modern myth for the modern age,’ these are stories about people dealing with their lives in this age and some of the things that we get hung up on are the thing that are most present in this time.” Continue reading “Les Jupes – Myth-making with the middle man”
Sick of top 10 lists? Frustrated by a sea of artists you loved this year mixed in with artists that you hated, mixed in with artists that you might love, but don’t have time to do the research on?
DJ Aubrey Beardsley’s Top 10 Free Albums of 2010 does the research for you. All you have to do is follow the links & click download. 100% legal downloads from 10 artists who want their mp3s on your harddrive – and who’s music deserves to be there – compiled by the house DJ at Freud’s Bathhouse & Diner.
Links from S4lem, Grimes, Lil B, Tri Angle Records, 2muchachos, & more. Music for every taste, from shoe-gaze to witch house; from Russian tweenoise to American folktronica.
Surf rockers, hold up those guitar necks! The Ventures are playing in Winnipeg next week, at the McPhillips Street station. Tickets are on sale for only $35 to see the classic guitar-band that wrote the theme to Hawaii Five-O and “Walk Don’t Run.” We will hopefully be sending a writer and photographer to cover all the twang and vibrato of the night.
