After one of Fletcher Pratt’s latest sets, Guy from free grind band Tu Sufres (among other bands) commented that he dug all of Pratt’s set, except for the beats, because he doesn’t like beats at all.
“Really?!” said I. “I really enjoyed the beats.”
“Yeah, see, that’s why I don’t like beats,” he quipped. That motherfucker.
Either way, here’s Pratt’s newest release off his Soundcloud account, and, in Guy’s face, it starts with a beat. It, however, isn’t something to dance to–it’s definitely 5/4. Then, as the drums punch away, drones and twinkles entwine the piece until that sure beat speeds up, stays at double speed, and dissolves into a series of glitched-out purgatories.
It’ll be on a limited edition CDR of 50 titled DEATHDUBS on Snapped in Half. You can see Pratt play in his band Kkraakk!! open up for B.C.’s Anha this Friday at Freud’s Bathhouse and Diner.
The third compilation of obscure ’80s disco by DJ and musician Dompter Mooner–a.k.a. Elaste–is a CD that’ s outrageously fun and enjoyable. Super Motion Disco is acollection largely inspired by the Italian afrofunky disco of the ’70s and ’80s. The 14 lovingly selected tracks encompass “avantgardistic, galactic sounding disco, proto-techno, electronic new wave, and cheesy slow motion pop.” Yeah, this sounds like theingredients of pretentiousness all right, but Super Motion Disco is like any variety offreshly baked pastries: sure they can be reheated, and sure other people know how to bake, but they’ ll never taste the same as the way they used to. Still dubious? One listen and you’ll find yourself grooving along to tracks such as the zippy “Maccaroni Radio” (by Eddy Trauba & MM Greco) and the zappy “ The Shark Eats Ice” (Conrad Und Gregor Schnitzler), with your dad, your little sister, and your dog. The lyrics are more often than not super cheesy, (“Glaring Sound throbs / DJs turn the knobs”) but they’re so unabashedly sung, you’ll wonder why you even cared. The tracks of Super Motion Disco sound as fresh and fun now as they must have 30 years ago. There’ s a lot going on here, and it’s a rewarding and filling listen. (Compost Rec, www.compost-rec.com) Adrienne Yeung
My A.D.D.-free mind can’t handle the original, but this wicked slow-mo clip of Mary-Kate and Ashley’s post Full House career-saving videos seriously sounds like it’s from a chopped and screwed copy of 3 Feet High and Rising. lolllllllllllllllllllllllll
Melanie Valera couldn’t have picked a more apt moniker. As Tender Forever, Valera crafts curiously intimate, sparsely instrumented indie pop – previously seen on 2005’s The Soft and the Hardcore and 2007’s Wider – letting her pipes take centre stage to draw you in close. And close you get. Valera’s voice tends to wrap around you, going from hopeful staccato to desperate howls. Opening with “Got to Let Go,” on which Valera croons, “This song is not for you and it is meant to be/ Just a piece of something nice that you won’t get to see,” the album seems borne the eventual relief and release that comes from heartbreak, that pocket after the end of a relationship where emotions run free and wild, the realization that you’re better off alone. “Day Number” swiftly counts off phases of a dying relationship, followed by the musically optimistic, yet lyrically dark “But The Shape Is Wide.” No Snare – named not for instrumental patterns, but rather, as Valera sings on “The Snare That’s Gone,” “My heart was the snare you could hit anywhere” – is truly an album in the purest sense, a mood that carries through all nine tracks and belies song transitions, each number luring you further into an oddly soothing sorrow, flashes of synths, organs and various percussions. (K records, www.krecs.com) Brietta O’Leary
We who are in-tuned to the fainter vibrations know of ghosts and ghouls around all the time–but now that all Hallow’s Eve approaches, the supernatural bubbles to the surface of the mire more quickly. But F-L-A-M-M-A-R-I-O-N is a video installation at aceartinc. by Susan MacWilliam that explores the validity of an infamous Winnipeg seance, or lack thereof–and the jump cuts and repetition will either make you feel sickly uncomfortable, or just at home.
Last week, our very talented (and prolific) photographer Cheyenne Rae took a bunch of photos of one of her fav bands, the Wooden Sky. All the photos after the jump!
Grinderman is and isn’t Nick Cave at the same time. The faces may be the same – Grinderman’s cast is populated solely by members of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – the costumes are different. While Cave and the Bad Seeds are certainly rock musicians, their oft-furied instrumentation are often overshadowed by Cave’s favourite lyrical pastime – yelling at God. But on Grinderman 2, as much a sequel to 2007‘s self-titled debut Grinderman as possible, Cave and his posse let themselves shed the self-awareness present on so many Bad Seeds tracks, and give themselves license to rock, heavily and free of all inhibitions. Opener “Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man” lulls you in sparse, melancholic plucking, before pulling the curtains back for the real show – ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mr. Cave’s Axefest. Sit back, relax, and let the shredding guitar tear into your brain. Cave’s obsession with religion is still evident on tracks such as “Heathen Child,” his lyrical topics branch out to critiquing popular culture, and what could be interpreted as a series of bizarre pick-up lines. “Who needs a record player? You are my record player!” (Anti-, www.anti.com) Brietta O’Leary
This week, from September 27 to October 2, the UWSA is holding the fourth annual Freestyle festival; a week-long celebration of hip-hop music and culture highlighted by K’naan concert on Wednesday, September 29th, the visitation of Wild Style director Charlie Ahearn on Saturday, October 2nd at the Graffiti Gallery, and a free Class of Freestyle IV concert and CD release. To complement the arrival of Charlie Ahearn, this year’s edition features a special free screening of the 25th Anniversary Edition of the original hip-hop movie Wild Style on Wednesday, September 29.
Being the first hip-hop movie released at such an early stage in the genre’s development, Wild Style helped present and popularize the culture to a wide audience in a pre-internet society. I see it as being a snapshot of a very young and almost unrecognizable culture when compared to today’s view of hip hop and the abundance of violence and misogyny represented in its mainstream music. Having been formed in the neighbourhoods with some of the worst living conditions in North America, hip hop always manages to find itself in the middle of controversy.
Those looking to explore these arguments about the negativity surrounding the culture of hip hop may do so at a screening of Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes on Tuesday, September 28th. Following the screening, a discussion addressing the sexism and homophobia in a testosterone fueled hip-hop culture will take place, giving everyone a chance to voice their opinions about what is wrong with the culture.
But the lyrics and the images represented in them are not all that the hip-hop culture has to offer the world. The Freestyle festival has put together a number of workshops concerning the other elements of hip-hop. To kick off the week’s festivities, the Graffiti Gallery is putting together an hour-long graffiti art workshop at Spence Street on Monday from 12:30 PM, an excellent opportunity for anyone enamoured by the almost-indiscernible pieces they see on the streets on a daily basis to learn from Winnipeg’s premier graffiti art gallery.
Some of Winnipeg’s best local talent have signed on this year to lead some of the Freestyle workshops. For anyone interested in the art of beat making or DJing, Kutdown is leading workshop sessions from 12:30 on Tuesday, September 28th and Thursday, September 30th for beat making and DJing respectively, with DJ Co-op accompanying him for the session on Thursday. To finish off the workshops, the “Godfather of Winnipeg B-Boying” B-boy Bob will be hosting a breakdancing workshop in the Bulman MPR on Friday, October 1st from 12:30 to 1:30 PM. From what I’ve heard, the breakdancing workshop has been the most popular so far so be sure to register to be guaranteed a spot in the workshop!
Alas, the life the of a University student is a busy one, and time is limited; if you can’t make it to the workshops you want, you can still join in the celebration of hip-hop culture by tuning in to CKUW 95.9 FM from 1 to 2:00 PM Monday to Friday for a special Freestyle radio series.
Remember, both film screenings, the Charlie Ahearn artist talk, and all of the workshops are free of charge, so be sure to come out for what should be a memorable Freestyle IV!
So Women are playing tomorrow, September 25, at the Albert, and we have a feature article on them and their kick-ass new album Public Strain coming out in a couple weeks. I know, Stylus is absolutely the worst at timing things out.
But, so everyone can win, check out half of the interview today, see Women slay tomorrow, and then get their album at the show or on Tuesday (official release dates–not so passé!) Aaaannnnnnnnd pick up a copy of Stylus in a couple weeks. Hhh’okay? Hhh’okay.
People love a spectacle, and on Tuesday a spectacle is what people got as the Flaming Lips brought their raucous live show to Winnipeg’s Burton Cummings Theatre along with Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti. It was loud, it was long, but most of all it was fun.
The evening began with L.A.’s Ariel Pink, who brought his DIY bedroom-recording aesthetic on stage for the first time in Winnipeg. One of the strengths of Ariel Pink’s entire project is its ability to force people to think critically about what they’re listening too. It doesn’t take long upon hearing The Doldrums or Worn Copy to notice that something is going horribly wrong in this music. His music is almost always a bloody mess, through which the listener is invited to wade through discovering one hell of a good song. In concert, this mess was brought even further to the forefront. Whether it was through technical difficulties, off-key singing, or at times atrocious sound quality (done, I believe, both intentionally and unintentionally), Ariel Pink’s set kept the audience off-balance as everything appeared at all times on the verge of utter collapse. What surprised me most about this was that, in actually fact, it made for an even more rewarding live experience. Ariel Pink is sloppy. In fact in many ways it’s his sloppiness that makes him so loveable – introducing a sense of struggle and chaos into his blissful pop songs. Well on Tuesday, while blazing through a set comprised almost exclusively of songs from this year’s killer record Before Today, (the lone exception being “Gettin’ High in the Morning” from 2006’s House Arrest) it was Ariel Pink’s sloppiness that shone through most clearly.
And then there were the Flaming Lips. Exploding onto stage through the open legs of a woman projected onto their extremely large background screen, the Flaming Lips pummeled the crowd with a 2-hour set of some of their most jarring psychedelic songs. It was ridiculous. There were confetti cannons, giant balloons, streamers, a bear, giant hands with lasers shooting out of them and of course the space ball, all vying for the audiences full attention in front of an endless barrage of strobe lights (so powerful that it warranted a warning from Lips lead-singer Wayne Coyne prior to the concert), and dizzying video projections. It was a spectacle.
Unfortunately, as amazing, and as fun as the stage show was, the songs themselves were less so. Put blankly, the set-list could have been better, as the band decided to go, for the most part, with upbeat and in your face songs leaving out many of the more subtle elements of their catalog. (Nothing from The Soft Bulletin? Really???) They wanted to blow us all apart, and their song selection was indicative of that, with the strongest moments coming from songs such as “She Don’t Use Jelly” or “The Sparrow Looks Up at The Machine.” What this made for in turn, was a tempo that simply could have been better maintained. That said, given how awesome the stage show was, the concert turned out to be a total blast, exciting for even the most stubborn of fans.
