YACHT – Light Touched Their Hands

By Taylor Benjamin Burgess

yachtRather than introduce the Portland electronic dance band YACHT conventionally, with a synopsis of their last album or a description of their music (because YACHT would encourage you to find that info on the internet), here are a couple excerpts from their book The Secret Teachings of the Mystery Lights, which they have been selling online and on tour:

“Yes, the Universe itself is God; science refuses to acknowledge this truth, and the churches hide it from us with the foils of ritual and history”

“There is no difference between the conflicts of individuals and those of the whole, other than scale. Our domestic arguments are rooted in the same human insecurities that cause wars.”

“God is the Universe and all it contains, including us, which makes each individual a member of a vast pantheon of small gods.”

Stylus caught up with the core duo of the band, Jona Bechtolt and Claire L. Evans, before their show at the Pyramid this past February. (You can find the review of the show here.)

Stylus: For this latest album, you’ve wrapped yourselves in a lot of mysticism, and you’re talking about seeing Marfa’s Mystery Lights* and you’re talking about life and the afterlife. How did that all come about?
Jona Bechtolt:
Well it all came from the actual experience of the Marfa Mystery Lights, which I first saw alone in 2005. And then the very next day, I randomly met Claire. And… yeah. I felt like that was a very serendipitous event, seeing the lights and then meeting Claire the next day. Claire and I became fast friends through Rob [Von Kieswetter, a.k.a. Bobby Birdman]. Then a year later, Claire and I went back to Marfa, saw the lights together, and through that shared experience, we decided right there and then that we had to move there. We had no intention of making an album, or even music, per se, we just wanted to go there and see what it was like to live amongst the lights on like a day-to-day level.
Claire L. Evans: It had a profound effect on us in a lot of ways. We saw it with our own eyes—there’s  binoculars out on the side of the road that the county put out there because it’s something that everyone’s going to notice. It’s like some sort of collective hypnosis or mass hysteria—it’s a real thing. And we’d never experienced something that was that real and also abstractly mysterious or inexplicable.
Jona Bechtolt: Right, as you were saying before [the interview], we love the internet. So we consider ourselves to be net natives, and we have the information at our fingertips. Anything you want to know, you Wikipedia or Google and you have an answer immediately. So this was something that was very real and unexplainable.
Stylus: On your latest album, you’re using a lot of reoccurring symbology, you were talking about triangles, and Claire, you have a triangle ring—
JB:
And we both have triangle tattoos. [They roll up their sleeves, and at the top of their forearm they each have an equilateral triangle—Evans’ is Black, and Bechtolt’s is white.]
Stylus: But do you think it’s important to create those symbols? Why do you think it’s important to have triangles everywhere when YACHT play?
CLE: We both found in the course of our long post-Marfa Lights research, which after we saw the lights, we got deeply into studying ritual history.
JB: Fringe religious cultures.
CLE: Cults, secret societies, esotericism, mysticism. For some reason it really piqued an interest in us, and we found that probably the most consistent reoccurring thing was the fact that the language of symbolism was profoundly important to any proper mystery school, any proper esoteric or fringe religious experience. And consistently, triangles came up a lot. You know, the Freemasons and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. And then of course, the ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, Pythagorean—I mean the triangle has come up so much to the point that we realize that that it’s one of humanity’s most universal symbols. It has something about the idea of a trinity or a triad, or a triangle has some kind of—we don’t know what it is, we haven’t unlocked it or unpacked it, but it has resonance that we found would probably work well for us. We realized that we wanted to have a symbol for the band because of our deep love of punk music. And how most, if not all, influential punk bands have these symbols that aren’t even logos, they’re really symbols, and it’s almost like some kind of tribal marker of identification. Like Black Flag’s stripes or the Germs’ circle—
JB: Crass.
CLE: You see them wearing that on a shirt, or tattooed, or on a patch—that doesn’t represent, “Oh, I’m into the Dead Kennedys.” It means that I am advertising myself as being part of a culture that transcends fashion and style and genre of music. It’s part of something bigger—it’s about ideology, personal philosophy, the choices that you decided to make, how you decided to pull yourself apart from the rest of the world. We want people to have that with our band—not that we want our band to be like punk music is, to have that profound cultural relevance, but we do like the idea that someone could wear a triangle and it would advertise not that they were into YACHT, but that they were a part of whatever culture it is that they decided to take from us. Or that we decided to build. I mean we’re trying to build some sort of alternative community that has a slightly punk spirit. It’s an evolving goal.

*The Marfa Lights are unexplained lights that appear, occasionally and unpredictably, in the night sky over a specific plot of land near the town of Marfa, Texas.

Melodies on Mercredi – Tunes for the Taking, Pudding for Purchase

By Jenny Henkelman

carlyguitarThe West End Cultural Centre is putting all of its new space to good use. The new building has plenty of space for, say, visual art as well as the beautiful tunes we’re accustomed to hearing at Winnipeg’s best listening room. This spring, the Melodies on Mercredi series is bringing the two together and providing a showcase for emerging artists all at the same time. And also pudding cups.
Maybe you saw the first edition in February, with Kipp Kocay and a display of work by the photography collective f/action. April 7 will bring a new version with music by Del Barber and Carly Dow. For the visual component, art students at Daniel MacIntyre Collegiate are creating works inspired by the singer-songwriters’ music. “It is very exciting and honoring to be part of the Melodies on Mercredi series,” says Carly Dow. “The WECC is one of my favourite venues in the city. I love the idea of combining visual art with music, and I am glad to see so much support for upcoming artists!”

The fact that high school-age artists will be creating visual art to go with her folky songs is pretty appropriate for Dow, given that she herself picked up the guitar in grade ten. “I was extremely inspired after hearing a cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ at a Remembrance Day service.  A lot of my close friends were also very involved in music at the time, and they had a huge influence on my songwriting and performing.”

High school wasn’t the only place Dow found a supportive community for making music; like a growing roster of Winnipeg folkies (from Cara Luft to the Fo!ps), she participated in the Winnipeg Folk Festival’s Young Performers program. “I learned a lot and made many personal connections through those experiences,” she says. “Each of my mentors have been amazing (Luke Doucet, Carolyn Mark, Cara Luft, Amelia Curran), and I would definitely recommend the program to any young artists who are interested in getting exposure. Winnipeg has a fantastic folk music community, and I’ve seen a passion and love for music here like nowhere else.”

The Lytics – Ingredients for a New Recipe

By Sabrina Carnevale
TheLytics_PhotobyCheyenneRaWinnipeg’s hip-hop community has been a tight-knit one since the 1990s. Even today, local hip-hop acts turn out to play live every other week and usually to a packed house. So when the Lytics, made up of brothers Alex “B-Flat” Sannie, Andrew “A-Nice” Sannie, Anthony “Ashy” Sannie as well as their cousin Mungala “Munga” Londe, came on the scene in 2003, these sweet-faced 20-somethings were the new kids on the block.
“You have so many artists [in Winnipeg] who are able to make music inexpensively and as frequent as they want and, as a result, there are tons of hip hop shows,” says eldest brother B-Flat, 29. “Whether we feel totally a part of it, I don’t know.”

The Lytics make music on their own terms—no one tells them they have to sound a certain way. In that respect, they don’t necessarily feel they fit into just one of Winnipeg’s musical niches.

Continue reading “The Lytics – Ingredients for a New Recipe”

Makeout Videotape – I Guess the Lord Must Be in Vancouver

By Taylor Benjamin Burgess

mvAfter his band’s show at the Lo Pub, Mac DeMarco, the pop-sensible singer and guitarist of the duo Makeout Videotape, is listing off what he writes songs about. Once he got tired of writing about girls, he started writing about less meaningful stuff—like eating things, and his job of teaching old Vietnamese women how to use computers. Or at least that’s what he said. He turns to his drummer, Alex Calder. “I write a lot of songs about Alex too. He’s having a rough time in his life right now.”
Calder shakes his head, smiling, like he knows that he wouldn’t be able to stop DeMarco even if he tried. “No, I’m not really, but go on.”

DeMarco continues on, kind of innocently, “I dunno, he moved to Vancouver to go—”

“Jesus Christ,” Calder utters and puts his head in his hands.

Continue reading “Makeout Videotape – I Guess the Lord Must Be in Vancouver”

Basia Bulat: Breaking Hearts and Autoharp Strings

basia

Watching Basia Bulat onstage, you can’t help but feel that her throaty alto was made for the resonance of the West End. She has this energy, present and exuberant that’s perfect for this sort of listening room.

On this tour, supporting her second album Heart of My Own, she’s accompanied by her brother, Bobby, on percussion and Allison Stewart on backing vocals and viola. (Sadly absent was Holly Rancher. Where in the world is Holly Rancher? Better check her blog to find out.)

Bobby matched his sister’s exuberance and Alison provided the stoic reserve that both  she and Holly are known for (some people find this off-putting, but I’ve always felt it balances out Basia’s energy perfectly).

Continue reading “Basia Bulat: Breaking Hearts and Autoharp Strings”

Eve Rice – From Vav Jungle to DJ Beekeeni

By Cindy Doyle

everice

Eve Rice is no stranger to Winnipeg’s music scene. Whether you know her as the electro-charged, sex kitten Vav Jungle or as DJ Beekeeni, if you’ve been to dance parties, various openings or even fundraisers around the city this past year, it is likely that Rice has made you dance at least once. Rice was part of the lineup for Stylus’ 20th birthday bash this past October; this January, Stylus sat down and talked to one of Winnipeg’s most renowned music veterans about her plans for the future and her ideas about making and loving music as we embark on a new decade.

Continue reading “Eve Rice – From Vav Jungle to DJ Beekeeni”

The Pack A.D. – The Pack is Back

By Kent Davies

packad

Maya Miller + Becky Black = the Pack A.D. Much has been said about this bad-ass East Van duo. Their brand of gritty, bluesy garage punk has captivated most critics and scored them legions of fans throughout the world. Beyond a doubt, Becky Black has one of the best voices in Canadian indie rock; her teetering, earth-shattering cries coupled with Maya Miller’s thunderous drumming contains all the emotional punch of a hellfire sermon given by King Kong. Those who were fortunate enough to catch their live show at the Albert on their last tour can attest to the spiritually jarring effect you get when witnessing these women in action. Stylus caught up with the pair as they finished up their latest album in Vancouver.

Continue reading “The Pack A.D. – The Pack is Back”

Ian La Rue and the Condor – Small Chest Muscles, Huge Wingspan

By Jenny Henkelman

Photo by Andrew Workman
Photo by Andrew Workman

“I’m cooking on the tour,” Matt Magura announces between bites of his “Little Tadpole” breakfast at the Toad in the Hole on a Saturday afternoon. “I’ve got a Magic Bullet and a butane stove. I’m going to make fucking curry wraps. Smoothies every morning!” Bassist Louis Levèsque Coté is agreeable to the notion; he and Ian La Rue start discussing the possibility of getting an inverter so that the Magic Bullet and possibly a rice cooker could be operated while the van is in motion.

This kind of creativity is surely inevitable when you have seasoned musicians looking forward to a tour. These guys have been around. When Ian La Rue and the Condor (drummer Magura, Coté, and guitarist Andrew Workman) list their other current and previous bands, the lists are long and overlapping. La Rue and Coté have both done stints in Boats and the Paperbacks, for instance. Workman has played in everything from the Horribly Awfuls to Cone Five.

But this is the first time this particular combination has come about, and that, Coté says, is all because of La Rue. “The Condor wouldn’t be a band outside of Ian,” he says. For La Rue, though, having the Condor behind him is a dream come true. “I’ve been looking forward to making a full band record for my whole life. This is it—kinda like the pinnacle of my career,” he says of the new record, titled A History in Layers. “It was a big move on a couple levels, because I always recorded my own stuff, played all my own stuff. So this is the first time I’ve let someone else record it.”

Continue reading “Ian La Rue and the Condor – Small Chest Muscles, Huge Wingspan”