Year: 2011

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The Pains of Being Pure at Heart + Suuns // 09-28-11 // Lo Pub

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart in Winnipeg
Photo by Mike Chiasson at the Lo Pub in Winnipeg.

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart were recently in Winnipeg to play an amalgamated show with Montréal’s Suuns at the Lo Pub. Opening for these two would-have-been separate shows were Jersey’s Big Troubles and Montréal-based Valleys. Tons of the Stylus fam was on hand to take in this faux Battle of the Bands: National Edition that saw each act compliment one another as if it were a single renegade tour of rising face melters.
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Bog River – Muddy and Simple


Photo by Brendan McGuire
By Victoria King

It’s a near perfect August evening – hot without being sweltering, vanilla ice cream in a cup and conversation about music, travel and inspiration with one of the city’s newest and arguably most talented groups, Bog River.

“In the ninth grade, I had a really awesome band teacher who just made me want to go to band camp every year. He just made me love music,” Ben Hadaller of the local folk trio tells me as the four of us sit around a picnic table at Sub Zero Ice Cream. Carly Dow, lead vocalist of the group, jokes that the extent of her family’s influence in her musicality came from the occasional inebriated family member banging on a piano at parties. On her left, Dave Barchyn, former associate at a music store, explains that, “If you work at a music store long enough, you end up owning a music store.”
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White Dog – Noise Below the Wall


Photo by Cole Peters
By Taylor Burgess

For Cole Peters and Chris Jacques two years ago, it all began as an outlet to release their music but since Prairie Fire Tapes’ inception, Jacques has made seven albums under the name White Dog—some really cool and psychedelic, but most others approach horrifying parts of your brain. Since he’s going to be a performer at this year’s send + receive festival, both of his tape labels are releasing killer stuff, and his own music is taking wild turns, Jacques welcomed me up to his “East Berlin” office space which he shares with No List Records so we could discuss shit.
Mostly, I just wanted to know why his music is usually such a head-trip.
“It’s not meant to be creepy or dark or anything,” he said. It’s because of being a high school guidance councilor that he internalizes a lot of the darker side of the human nature. “I deal with people every day in their psychological needs and hear lots of crazy shit from kids and then their parents about what’s going on in their lives. My teaching has always dealt with people who are marginalized, or downtrodden, abused, and all that kinds of crazy shit. I’m a history student, so a lot of that stuff—things about rebellions and resistance come through as themes in my stuff a lot of time.”
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((( send + receive ))) ticks on

The year marches mercilessly on and it’s already time for my favourite festival in Winnipeg, send + receive, an exploration of experimental music, sound, and media. This year’s acts and installations revolve around the ideas of Noise & Disruption–and since Noise is any undesirable sound, I know it’s difficult to fathom not only one night of reveling in it, but half a week’s worth. Regardless, the noise music scene here (albeit small) is thriving and revolves around s + r, and this year is a good showcase of  a few of them.

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Frenchies? Swooooooooooooooooooooooooooon

KARKWA W/ AIDAN KNIGHT
@ WECC
Thursday, September 29, 2011
By Victoria King

As if there weren’t already loads of benefits to knowing French, (eg: a decent-paying government job, an upper hand in travelling abroad and a couple nifty pick-up lines to whip out once and a while) now there’s Karkwa.

I really shouldn’t say ‘now’ though. The guys in Karkwa have been playing and recording together for 14 years, with their most popular and recent album of being 2011’s Le Chemins de Verre which earned the band the Polaris Prize. And FYI, that year’s nominees included favourites like Tegan & Sara, The Sadies and Broken Social Scene. Before I’d listened to their latest album earlier that day, I really wasn’t too sure of what to expect and was only looking forward to the opener of the show, Aidan Knight. Not a big deal, but I sorta fell in love with LCDV not long after hitting play.
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Hillbilly Highway – High & Lonesome Times

Sometimes when you’re cruising down the highway, some slick somebody cuts you off and burns away, leaving you in their dust.

This week, I was going to write about the Times Change(d), as beauty a rest-stop on the Hillbilly Highway as any in the free world. See, there’s a film coming out about the joint this Thursday at the Times itself, with screening and performances by Times regulars Andrew Neville & the Poor Choices and Guerrillas of Soul.

But Kent Davies beat me to it, the truck driving son of a gun. And he did a good job of it too, summing up the event and the beauty of the bar succinctly. Like an experienced vet; like a pro. Read about it on the Uniter’s blog.
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Besnard Lakes // 09-30-11 // WECC


Photo by Andrew Vineberg.

This past week, two huge previous Polaris nominees stormed through the West End Cultural Centre–The Besnard Lakes who, as you can tell from above, played with their purple haze of their smoke machine and bright lights and Malajube who played with their mystique Français and proggy catchy numbers. After the jump are some photos of those bands and The Soft Province (who, in case you’re as confused as I was, features Jace from Besnard Lakes as well) as taken by Andrew Vineberg and stay tuned for a review. Continue reading “Besnard Lakes // 09-30-11 // WECC”

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Burnt Witch Survivors Group – Support EP

rock and roll. this is dirty, distorted and extremely unslick. i can hear traces of the cows, jon spencer and a little hot snakes. uncomplicated and joyously so. this is rock and roll in its truest form. nice to see it coming from a local act. do yourself a favour track this record down and crank it out of your car stereo driving through the suburbs. then go see them, raise a bottle of standard and bask in the sounds. “party with ghosts” and “come out! get in!” are standouts. (Independent, myspace.com/bwsgmusic) c.frsn for Stylus Magazine
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This Hisses – Surf Noir

The local trio released their debut album this summer and even with the massive amount of hype surrounding the band and this release, This Hisses deliver! Everyone has probably seen this band perform live at one point or another and therefore is surely aware of the incredible energy this act brings to the stage. Amazingly on the record this energy transitions quite well. “Lycanthrope” starts of the album nicely with a haunting howl and shredding guitar followed by the equally exciting “Bad Vacation” – the latter song by the way, has a pretty awesome back-story behind it evolving a sketchy motel in Regina. The listener is brought right back down to ground state with a couple of nicely slowed down tracks, especially the stellar “Keep What’s Good In Your Heart” which smooth things over before the listener is shot right back into a circle pit of intensity with the upbeat and catchy “Swagger” and “Silver Dagger.” My only problem with Surf Noir is that I feel like the bass is drowned out by the guitar a lot of the time, I personally love the fat bass lines captured in the live show but it seems at times on the album the guitar steals the show, not that that’s a bad thing but as a bass player I am totally biased in that respect. Oh yeah and one more fucking problem… it’s over to soon, eight beefy songs is nothing to complain about but I for one am going to need more in the near future. (Transistor 66, www.transistor66.com) Scott Wolfe for Stylus Magazine
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Tim Hoover – More Napkins

Known as the beloved DJ Co-op, Tim Hoover is making a new reputation for himself, if that’s possible. This tape/digi-download heads into trip-hop and post rock territory over a span of 60 minutes, which is like a total 180 considering his use of party hip-hop and indie samples for his Co-operation mashup albums. So, rather than matching Fugazi to M.I.A. (which was four whole years before Wugazi, mind you), Hoover’s flexing his melodic muscles, which are in full force, in alternation with his beat programming, which here lies somewhere between glitch and hip hop. I was actually taken aback at how much of this music is original, and the samples, used sparingly, usually add such depth to the mix. The melodies, reminiscent of Godspeed (his comparison, though an apt one) sing colourfully and even more brilliantly once they’re up against electronic beats and hip-hop samples. I have to agree that this is headphone music—but once you’re in that world with your ’buds in, every little twitch and glitch stands out, and you’re in quite for the meditative ride. (Woven//Dub Ditch Picnic, wovenrecords.ca//dubditchpicnicrecords.blogspot.com) Taylor Burgess