Category: News

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Coupla Qs: The Ripperz


Winnipeg’s The Ripperz (Chris Sawatzsky, Mark Wiebe, and Travis Warkentin) can largely attribute their amazing live act to their die hard fans. Their new album You Are the Moon comes out tomorrow when they play the West End Cultural Centre, doors opening at 7 p.m. Here’s a recent interview they did on Peg City Groove.

Kent Davies: You’ve been playing for ten years but it’s really been in the last few years that you’ve managed to put out a couple albums and get a huge following. What happened?
Mark Wiebe: Basically the lack of absence. Chris went to Vancouver for a couple years so we couldn’t do much with out him.
Chris Sawatzsky: Then I moved home and had a band to come home to. It energized us to take the band to another level.
KD: Basically your show has become one big rock-sing-a-long. Do you keep that in mind when you’re writing music?
CS: Yes I do. When I’m writing I always think this parts going to be awesome when the crowd sings it.
Darryl Reilly: Do you have a Ripperz Hymn book that you hand out before the show starts?
CS: We were joking about choir robes last show but there’s no lyric sheets. I don’t know if we’ve ever wrote up our lyrics. I’ve seen some people type them up and they’re quite wrong.
KD: Have you changed lyrics because people keep getting them wrong?
CS: No but we encourage our fans to just sing what you think is there.
MW: Whatever feels right for them.

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Tonstartssbandht Starts Shit

TONSTARTSSBANDHT- Hotel For Gods – (SIDE B) from Spencer Gilley on Vimeo.

Tired of life’s daily drags, its brumal breath on the back of your neck? Doing fine and want to be doing even finer still? TONSTARTSSBANDHT! Become enraptured in the music of these Floridian born brothers gone Montreal. The bros, Andy and Edwin White, also play in High Rise II and Superbud. With MC5 vigour Tonstartssbandht are kickin’ out extensive BJM style jams – psychedelic noise pop if you want to try to pin them – they’re one of those duos who “don’t give a fuck about genres or movements.”

This video for “Hotel for Gods” came out not long ago and was shot the same day as their interview on CKUT. Relish in your perceptions for a while. All filmed in the lowest quality: so colourful and homey mmm.

Scratch that! Just follow this link to side A, “Sinkhole Storm and Sandwich” and imbibe in the whole record! Recorded live on a four-track, each in one take. Available on Arbutus. Play ‘em and get lost, lost, lost.

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Redman // Beatnuts // Bone Thugs // Ghostface Killah and blah, blah, blah

Check out these listings updates for a few huuuuge upcoming hip-hop shows to the Peg, which kind of make up for that cancelled Ludacris/Rick Ross (get consciousness soon!)/Jim Jones event…. but just kind of..

Friday, October 21st, 2011
Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s Krayzie Bone + Wish Bone
w/ Young Kidd + Winnipeg’s Most
Marquee Lounge & Event Centre — 1875 Pembina Hwy
9pm

Sunday, October 23rd, 2011
Redman + Madchild
w/ Brakada + Finalie + Hip Hop Junkeez
RockBar –- 1931 Pembina Hwy
10pm

Tuesday, October 25th, 2011
The Beatnuts
w/ Co-op + DJ Lonnie CE
Greenroom –- 108 Osborne Village
10pm

Sunday, December 4th, 2011
Ghostface Killah
w/ Peter Jackson
Republic Nightclub –- 291 Bannatyne
9pm


Keep updated to Stylus’ Blah, Blah, Blah section on your left for every upcoming concert listing that is happening in Winnipeg.

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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.

Continue reading “((( send + receive ))) ticks on”

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Free film screening tonight from our friendly UWSA!


The University of Winnipeg Politics Students Society, along with the UWSA, Gallery 1C03, and Cinema Politica PRESENT
PLEASE VOTE FOR ME
Is democracy a universal value that suits human nature? Do elections inevitably lead to manipulation? Please Vote for Me is a portrait of a society and a town in through a school, its children and its families. Wuhan is a city about the size of London located in central China. It is here that director Weijun Chen has conducted an experiment in democracy. A Grade 3 class at Evergreen Primary School has their first encounter with democracy by holding an election to select a Class Monitor. Eight-year-olds compete against each other for the coveted position, abetted and egged on by teachers and doting parents. Elections in China take place only within the Communist Party, but recently millions of Chinese voted in their version of Pop Idol. The purpose of Weijun Chen’s experiment is to determine how democracy would be received if it came to China. PLEASE VOTE FOR ME is one of ten selected as part of the Why Democracy? project, which saw interpretations of democracy by 10 film makers from around the world broadcast on 42 television networks in October, 2007, to audiences of more than 300 million people in nearly every country in the world.

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Thus Far and Thenceforth

Week Thus Far goes further with Season Two
By Lara Violet

If you are still channel surfing, you may have caught wave of local Shaw TV comedy Week Thus Far, styled after late night talk shows with the host/guest/live band paradigm, but enjoying the zany liberties allotted to public access programming. If you have decided to take your television viewing habits into your own double-clicking hands online, you may be missing out on the bizarre beauty of local DIY TV.

Development of Week Thus Far began when producer Craig Ward got the job of “Master Controller” at Shaw, and approached future WTF host Dan Huen about starting a talk show. With various burgeoning ambitions to start a sketch comedy group, rounding up hilarious talent was almost instantaneous, even though the vision was uncertain. “Nobody knew what this was or was going to be, we knew we wanted jokes, a guest and a band. Beyond that we had nothing pre-conceived. The meetings began to be about whether or not we could actually provide the content,” writer/producer Tim Gray explained. Continue reading “Thus Far and Thenceforth”

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Local Filmmaker Torn over her Directoral Debut


By Dallas Kitchen

Local filmmaker Melissa Hiebert will see 16 months of late nights, stress and rewrites hit the screen when Torn premieres at Cinematheque, on July 28th.“I don’t think there was a moment during production when I wasn’t stressed. I’m a restless perfectionist,” admitted Hiebert as we sat in her backyard in the searing heat earlier this week.
Torn centres on a young woman named Rachel, whose flaws and insecurity begin to dissolve her life and relationships around her. Hiebert explains to me that she began writing Torn as a modern adaptation of Beauty and The Beast, from the female’s perspective. With each rewrite she began investing more of her own feelings and thoughts into the main character of Rachel. Melissa is quick to point out however, that Torn is in no way autobiographical of her own life. “Torn is about choice. That internal struggle many of us face everyday. Love and hate for ourselves. It’s a very intense emotion being torn between two very grave decisions.”
The actual filming took all of two weeks in the summer of 2010, starting August 1, with the average day lasting 12 hours. “We had a super small crew and some of the cast members helped set up the sets.” she tells me. Keeping with the norm of an indie production, everyone helped with everything. Being a completely independent film, funding for Torn came directly out of Hiebert’s pocket which she hopes to recoup some of the cost through ticket sales for the premiere, as well as DVD sales.
As we continue to sit in the 35°C sun, Melissa offers subtle indicators of her overwhelming and anxious feelings toward the upcoming premiere and the film’s reception. She runs a hand through her hair to brush it out of her face and falls back into the large wicker patio chair before explaining to me what she hopes viewers will get from the film. “I hope it just gets people thinking. It really asks a lot more questions than it answers about human relationships,” she explains. “It’s a huge story about consequences and living with those consequences.”
Torn premieres at Cinematheque on Thursday July 28 at 7 p.m. and there is a second screening on August 2. Tickets are still available for second show and can be bought at the door for $10.

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The Haunted Films of Michael Robinson


Today will be the third installation of Language Formed in Light, a series of experimental film screenings presented by PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts and curated by local filmmaker Clint Enns. For this screening, they’ll be bringing in the films of Michael Robinson, along with the filmmaker himself. His works are obvious appropriations of source material, manipulated and rearranged for fantastic criticisms and forlorn hopes. He was able to answer a handful of questions via email before flying into Winnipeg.

Stylus: Your work utilizes found footage. Where do you believe that the spirit of the original footage ends and the spirit of your film begins? Or do you believe that you’re uncovering hidden truths about the material, like Burroughs said of his Cut-Up Method? Continue reading “The Haunted Films of Michael Robinson”

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Two Women of Mountain Man: Winnipeg Folk Festival Day 4

Mountain Man photo by Taylor Burgess

When I met Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Meath behind Little Stage on the Prairie, Alexandra was writing down the lyrics to a Charlie Feathers song, and they both excused Molly Sarle, who was off relaxing on a magnetized mat. So the three of us went for a short walk away from the festival, mostly talking about fantasy novels and science fiction.

Stylus: In your career, how long have you been touring for?
Alexandra Sauser-Monnig: We started two years ago, but we’re not one of those bands that tours six months of the year.
Stylus: And how long were you playing shows for before you started touring?
Amelia Meath: I think we had three shows before we started touring. I booked an east coast tour for us—two weeks long. It was really hard, but we did it. We toured in my Prius.
ASM: We played a show in a field, we played a show in a weird coffee shop, we played in houses and backyards and porches and all sorts. For our friends, mostly.
Stylus: And what keeps you grounded while touring? Continue reading “Two Women of Mountain Man: Winnipeg Folk Festival Day 4”

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No Sleep Make Taylor Something Something: Winnipeg Folk Festival Day 3

Friday marks the first of the full-day experiences, opening up all the other stages than the Main Stage. Unfortunately, due to an emergency, I couldn’t get down to the festival until about three p.m. so I missed Dawes’ concert, but there was still plenty of shows that I was pumped to see. I arrived late to a workshop with Chuck Prophet, Mountain Man, M. Ward, and a member of Dawes (so pretty much every folky artist I wanted to see) and I got to see M. Ward play one song before he left in the middle of the workshop to catch a plane elsewhere. I didn’t notice much, but apparently the ladies of Mountain Man were really drowsy from arriving in the middle of the night. They still sounded rather charming.

Polaris-nominee Dan Mangan, pictured above, kicked off the Main Stage for the night rather explosively, with what I think has been the loudest Main Stage show this year so far. Mangan and his band must have consciously cranked their amps up, because before their last song,  Mangan said that he had heard complaints of the sound not being loud enough. He yelled out to the crowd if they could hear him, and then he tore through the security gate with a microphone and his guitar in tow, and started singing in the midst of the tarps. Continue reading “No Sleep Make Taylor Something Something: Winnipeg Folk Festival Day 3”