Since I had felt quite underdressed the night previous at The Drugs’ Festival Psychedelique at Negative Space, for Nuit Blanche I dolled myself up with eyeliner, some pearls of Elise’s, and a blazer of mine that I pretty much never wear. Indeed, I felt like putting myself out there for a night I hoped to be a little more out-there than Winnipeg’s first stab at Nuit Blanche the previous year.
First up was the drawing competition happening at the Edge Gallery hosted by the Places for Peanuts drawing club. Having been friends with some of the Peanuts—who are mostly Art City employees/volunteers—but never having attended their drawing club, I was keen to get drawing, and started making scribbling after scribbling of shit and drawings of people shitting as soon as Janessa handed out the paper pads and pens. (A pad which I later passed on to Kelly Ruth that night.) Soon enough, Chesterfieldians Elise, Scott, Ryan, and I got to playing a game of visual Telephone to warm ourselves up for Drawball(?) taking the name of Team Ottoman[sp?]. Drawball, which is pretty much Pictionary on speed, felt like some sort of “bring it bring it” b-boy/b-girl battle, with the practiced Peanuts definitely strutting their stuff ’n’ scribbles, and taking home their Cracker Jack prizes. But fuck, how can someone draw “Deal with it”?! Continue reading “First Class Riot; Nuit Blanche 2011”
I’ve been listening to Fred Eaglesmith’s latest, 6 Volts, since it dropped into my mailbox a couple weeks back. The songs on 6 Volts are classic Fred, tunes of murder, love lost, guns and the Road. Recorded with one mic straight to tape, the disc has the mono immediacy of old Sun records, a sound even John Mellencamp has toying with of late.
Fred’s a road dog, traveling thousands of klicks a year, playing hundreds of shows in an endless cycle that takes him into every backwater, big town and metropolis in North America, and beyond. Three tunes in particular, maybe four, off 6 Volts really hone in on the reality of an aging troubadour who can’t quit grinding it out.
“Betty Oshawa” tells the tale of a musical partnership that fell apart, eponymous Betty making it big while the narrator bags groceries in his hometown. “Johnny Cash” takes issue with Johnny-come-lately-Johnny-fans, taking the fickle listener to task for not supporting an artist while they’re alive. “Trucker Speed” ain’t necessarily about a traveling singer, but it very well could be.
“Stars” hits home hardest. Fred talks straight up about gigging non-stop, playing small towns like you’re the biggest star. Long after the lights have gone down, the protagonist sings “My hands hurt from playing my guitar / All those nights in all those bars / We played like we were stars.” Fred mentions long time bandmate Willie P. Bennett, and laments how easy it is to think the good times will never end. Playing in a band, it’s easy to feel this way.
I’ve seen Fred play a couple times now, and I’ve missed him even more by bad timing and my own traveling. I met him once, out behind the Park Theatre a couple years back. Me and my buddy Woodtick were slamming the last of our beers before heading in to catch the opening act, the Ginn Sisters. As we were rounding the corner, there’s a van with Ontario plates sitting there with the door wide open on the side. Out rolls Fred, putting his socks on.
We stopped, and I made straight for Fred, extending my hand. We chatted him up, gave him one of our CDs to “listen to if you get sick of the radio.”
“You in a band?” he asked us. We nodded. Yessir. We put out our CD ourselves, we humble bragged. “That’s the only way to do it, boys,” he said. He looked at the CD briefly, set it aside, and finished pulling his socks on. Then he looked up at us.
“Never quit, boys,” he told us, looking us both in the eye. “Never quit.”
In the songs on 6 Volts, you know Fred really means it. He ain’t quitting anytime soon. Thank something for that.
After semi-voluntarily taking myself through the horrifying experience of Resistance, White Dog’s last tape, this is assuredly a cheerier time, with Chris Jaax recruiting his wife and son to comprise the White Dog Family Band. The synths drone and are arguably sci-fi. The ricochets of voices get wrapped up in the lurching machine of the drone. The tape moves from one atmosphere quickly to the next—though this is all in the same galaxy—with our space pilot Magnus Jaax yelling unintelligible orders and singing what would sound like madness, if it were coming from anyone but a seven-year-old or Damo Suzuki. There’s plenty of slug and chug that battles for the rest of side A—an immense trip. Side B is filled with a number of the same samples and sounds, but rearranged—like watching this space trip over again, but from a different porthole, with the wisdom of Lee Perry chiming in. This is definitely one of Prairie Fire Tapes’ most accessible releases, if you’re ever looking to escape the all-too-usual realms of music. (Prairie Fire Tapes, prairiefiretapes.com) Taylor Burgess
Of Fleet Foxes’ prior material, only the sun-dappled and inspired “Mykonos” managed to hook me on first listen. Apart from that selection off of the Sun Giant EP, Fleet Foxes’ previous releases have been comprised of the type of tunes that reward multiple listens and only slowly reveal themselves in all their intricate beauty.
On Helplessness Blues, “Montezuma” with its layered vocals and gentle lope recalls “White Winter Hymnal,” but as the lyrics suggest (“so now I am older / than my mother and father / when they had their daughter / now what does that say about me?”), Robin Pecknold and company are in a more reflective place following the success of their self-titled full-length. That album blew up big and they’d be forgiven for succumbing to the sophomore slump after non-stop touring, but instead they’ve managed to tap into the same rich vein of folk and classic rock on another dozen songs that seem as if they’ve been with us for years. “Battery Kinzie” with its magisterial percussion, and the epic eight-minute “The Shrine/An Argument” (with skronking sax!) are particular standouts, but there aren’t really any missteps to contrast those songs with. Burrow in and enjoy. (Sub Pop, www.subpop.com) Michael Elves
Simple Math was the third album released by Manchester Orchestra. They blew me away with this one—with songs that I haven’t ever seen so well written and sung. Manchester Orchestra is certainly one of Atlanta’s finest bands and Favorite Gentlemen Recordings and Columbia Records both recognized their great talent by signing them. The song “Simple Math” is just a song I had to put on repeat on my music player as I absolutely loved it. It comes out softly and then it brings in more guitar with louder vocals and more bass truly symbolizing the genre of rock. “Mighty” is a song that I also enjoyed very much mostly because of the great instrumental track. It begins with very low bass increasing the intensity of the song and you can actually feel the low bass as you listen to it through headphones. Throughout the song you can hear the riffs of the guitar over the thumping beat of the drums and bass. It’s a song that I found that had an excellent combination of instruments and vocals, as the vocals were loudly sung over the drums and bass. “Pensacola”—now that’s a song I just had to jam out and blast in my car. It’s fast-paced, and shortly in the middle of it the song, it slows down a bit and then goes back to fast paced guitar and vocals. I loved it. Simple Math is a very unique album and I enjoyed getting the pleasure to hear it. (Favorite Gentlemen, www.favoritegentlemen.com) Ben Sabic
Les Doigts de l’Homme’s latest album will bring you right back to the year 1910, as its title suggests. That year, a gypsy boy named Django Reinhardt was born. It took him less than 25 years to revolutionize the world of jazz and become a legend of the guitar, creating a new mix between American jazz and the traditional gypsy music of his community.
Now, the band is going go back to the roots of this music fusion. The album celebrates the 100th anniversary of Django Reinhardt’s birth, offering six covers of his songs, three new songs and eight covers of other traditional songs.
With no singing, this album is only dedicated to the purest tradition and expression of the style: improvisation. The solos will leave your ears and your brain awestruck and your mouth speechless. The speed in the interpretation is completely unbelievable, and the swinging accompaniment of the second guitar and the double bass will make your feet stamp.
The highlights of this album lie in the wonderful arrangement and interpretation of the waltz standard “Indifférence,” and the ballad “Russian Melody.” Standards like “I’ve Found a New Baby” or “Minor Swing,” are well executed and refreshed, and make for great listening.
However, the album tracks are uneven in length. During some tunes, the soloist seems to loose track of the melody, preferring to expose his technical virtuosity. If this trick works during two songs, you’ll then be overwhelmed by the hundreds of notes bombarding your ears non-stop.
In a nutshell, this album is certainly a good record and should please jazz lovers. That being said, the overwhelming virtuosity and the lack of melody highlights could be criticized, and lose your attention. If you are new to the style, your best pick might be to start with a best of the legend himself, Django Reinhardt. (Alma records, www.almarecords.com) Simon Delacroix
In this artycle, Philia leads us through nine ponderings on space)doxa, a concert series that has seen many seasons in the Graffiti Gallery, and is about to begin anew. If you’d like more information on the out-there series as we collectively hurtle through time, simply search for the space)doxa Facebook group. Tomorrow night is Midori Records‘ showcase as a part of the series, featuring Stylus & Weird Canadafavourite Fletcher Pratt.
Meditation One
Season nine of space)doxa started on Sunday, August 14, 2011 with a tour stop by Twin and their Assiniboine River Music Armada, followed on September 24, 2011 with a Midori Records showcase featuring Philia, Fletcher Pratt, Dusth and more! August 2003 was the debut performance of the series. Steve Wilson, Graffiti Art Programming Inc. executive director, was looking for a performance art series, and recruited me (Greg Hanec – Philia), Dave Dalgliesh, Nicole Shimonek, and Victoria Prince to each do one event per year. Dalgliesh utilized techno and dazzling video feedback, filling the walls with moving images. Hanec filled in with film loops galore. Shinonek’s event saw her trying to smash a coconut on the floor, but as my friend Michael said… “Her girl’s throw almost took off the head of the guy in the front row!”
Meditation Two
Rob Menard of the Absent Sound puts on three amazing events called 20 Guitar Circular Wall Of Angelic Sound. Twenty plus guitarists on the floor and catwalks surrounding the audience in the middle. Graffiti Art Programming’s Steve Wilson would never be the same.
Meditation Three
Fantastic heavenly reverb in in the main space necessitates an event called eclectACOUSTIC.
This of course is a totally unplugged evening and has seen the likes of Timber Timbre, Doug and Jess (bluegrass), Ghost Bees, Dan Frechette, Twin, Nikki Komaksiutiksak (throat singer), Philia, Jeff Presslaff, Natalia Zielinski (solo classical violin), Suture (experimental freeform), the Flaming Trolley Marching Band (all 15 of them!), and more perform. Six annuals so far.
Meditation Four
NOISE. Lea Cummings (UK). NOISE. Ahna (BC). NOISE. RDC and Bomber (Calgary). NOISE. White Dog (Wpg). NOISE. Sigmund (Wpg). NOISE. This Camera is Red (Wpg). NOISE. NOISE. NOISE. NOISE. NOISE.
Meditation Five
This Camera is Red does a fifty minute noise set that I thought would shred the PA due to incredible volume levels. I had earlier asked him “Why Noise bands need so much volume?”
He said he’d… “probably just play ten minutes…”
Meditation Six
The audience sits mostly on the many couches strewn around the space. It feels like the world’s largest rec room. By far, the most attentive audiences in the city. Beautiful.
Meditation Seven
“A Pit: Epiphenomena”… “Paper”… “Amphiboly”… “Intervals”… Andrew Milne, Freya Olafson, DJ Brace, Sarah Otsuji, Philia, 6, Doreen Girard, Scott Ellenberger. Large scale performance art pieces, featuring the blending of many arts all at once, or in sequence.
Meditation Eight
Wide-eyed. Jaw-dropped. Dazed. Exulted.Silently sitting and slowly shaking their heads. This is the reaction of 90% of the musicians that play their first shows at the space.Touring bands will tell me it was the best show of the tour. This is neat. We only have ten people in the audience who paid admission, and the members of the other acts. Sixty people in the audience seems immense. Everyone sets up all at once, so no change-overs. Just play.
Meditation Nine
Originally called the Ideas and Methods Series… Next called the artIfactSERIES… Now called space)doxa… To discuss opinions on audio/visual/bodily art, using audio/visual/bodily art AND conversation = doxa. The lone parenthesis leaning toward the “space” means this is the “place” to do it in. This is neat.
There is a road that stretches back in time, back beyond the interweb, beyond compact discs, cassette tapes, vinyl records and gramophones. It winds between hills and hollers, follows riverbanks and lakeshores deep into the woods and across tall grass prairie. It picks up from quays and travels back across seas, crossing itself time and again in backwater voids, where wind whips dead branches against nothing and scavenger birds craw out in vain.
This is the same road Steve Earle and Dwight Yoakam sang about in the 80s, same road the Boss, and Dylan before him. Before them all, Hank Williams sang about this Lost Highway. The sands of time have largely obscured the names of those who sang about it before ol’ Hank, but their numbers are legion and their ghosts walk the road still.
This is the Lost Highway, the Thunder Road, Highway 51, Route 23. The Hillbilly Highway, the Nowhere Road. The low road. Maybe you’re walking it now, following your dreams up and down Pembina Highway or Portage Avenue, Highway One or 17.
I been on many of these roads, myself. I just cruised down a gooder: west on provincial Highway 2, with a south turn at Holland onto 34. 34 hits a stop at 3, then heads west again to 3A. Now you’re in country country.
The tiny village of Clearwater, MB has hosted the perennial Harvest Moon Festival for the past ten years. Formed as “a celebration of the harvest season, local food production, the area’s rich cultural heritage, and the bond between rural and urban folks,” the festival is like no other in Manitoba. A strong community dedicated to surviving against the economic and political forces that are draining people and money from the prairies, Clearwater is itself a beacon of potential for any community struggling to remain viable in the 21st century.
And the music is fucking good too. Highlights, for me, this year were the Deep Dark Woods, CKUW favourite Greg MacPherson and Ridley Bent’s Good Looking Country Band. Each delivered to-notch performances in weather bordering on frigid. Many other acts performed throughout the days, including Bog River and the Reverend Rambler, names to look for on the hillbilly highway in the months and years to come.
Keep your eyes on the road. It has a way of winding somewhere strange.
By David Nowacki Astron-6 are deviants. Astron-6 are pagan goat-worshippers. Astron-6 sacrifice small mammals for no reason but for their own fetishistic delights. Astron-6 are rotted barnacles on the hull of Hollywood. Astron-6 are sadomasochistic pain farmers. Astron-6 would cause the Marquis de Sade to dry heave. Astron-6 is like Chernobyl, if Chernobyl made films. Since 2007, Astron-6 has been spreading their vile trash through the Internet (a common home for most garbage). Ostensibly from Winnipeg, but more likely churned out from a vomitous carcass pit, Astron-6 consists of five filmmakers (Matthew Kennedy, Adam Brooks, Conor Sweeney, Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski) who revel in the filth, surrealism and violence of ’80s genre flicks. They recently were noticed by the industry’s premier purveyor of pulp, Troma Entertainment, who opted to produce their first feature-length film, Father’s Day. I managed to lure Conor Sweeney, the pervert, into my interview dungeon, and here’s what he had to say for himself:
Stylus: What is it about this genre of film that attracts you?
Conor Sweeney: They’re basically the movies you were MOST restricted from seeing as a kid. Sex comedies and Reagan Era action movies were as well, but exploitation movies had everything from all genres that were off-limits. And they had the coolest covers. That’s what drew us to them as kids. As filmmakers, it’s basically a genre that you can do anything in and get away with. You can be visually and thematically very surreal and still have a movie that people take seriously. Stylus: What are your hopes for Astron-6, what is the group’s plan for the future?
CS: Chronologically: Father’s Day gets released, it gets rave reviews, after opening overseas peace is realized in the Middle East, followup film offers roll in, Roger Ebert teaches himself how to speak without a lower jaw in order to rave about us, we’re able to support ourselves with our art, suicide pact comes to fruition, little boy in the future makes an Astron-6 tribute on Virtual-YouTube that gets a few hundred hits. Stylus: Why the renewed attention and interest in grindhouse/exploitation pictures (i.e. Hobo With A Shotgun, Grindhouse, Machete, etc.)?
CS: I think it’s really a nostalgia thing. It reminds a huge group of people of being young and thrilled by the taboo of the horror section at the VHS rental store, or sleazy grindhouse theatres that used to line 42nd street in Manhattan. Exploitation is like the middle sibling of the genre family, it’s the weirdo, and that’s exciting. Not to say middle children are exciting, they’re the worst, but I’m just trying to make the point that it’s a genre that excites people, and the fun aspect of it was abandoned for a long time. These movies bring that back. They don’t take themselves seriously, but they still have balls and that’s what pulls people in. Stylus: Does Winnipeg have a movie scene that’s receptive to this genre?
CS: Not at all, unfortunately. We’ve hit nothing but brick walls and animosity when we’ve tried to get any funding from within the city. We made movies here for years, and tried to get funding for years and were continually rejected. It’s fine if Winnipeg is trying to present itself a certain way, but the Canadian film industry is so at risk of becoming completely irrelevant for that reason: very few people give edgy or truly ambitious movies a chance. For all those reasons, we had to take our idea to the states, so Father’s Day is an American release. We tried very hard to get funding to make a Canadian feature over the years to no avail. Having said that, there are great people in Winnipeg that have helped us more than we can say. Guy Maddin was nothing but helpful to us completely out of goodwill. John Kozak was the same way. If it wasn’t for guys like that we wouldn’t have been able to make the movie at all. Stylus: Does everybody get a chance to be responsible for different aspects of the film-making, or do you have set jobs?
CS: Jer does the music and titles and some after-effects, Steve does miniature work and some After Effects, Matt and I write, direct and act, and Adam has had his hand in basically every pot for Father’s Day. When it comes to onset stuff we’re all doing the same thing together. The Communist Manifesto influenced us a lot. Steve is partial to Mein Kampf. Stylus: Will Father’s Day be playing in any theatres in Winnipeg at any point?
CS: Yes, but I can’t say where until Troma books the theatre. But I promise that there will be a premiere here. If it doesn’t happen I give you permission to personally take it up with them. Stylus: How important has the Internet been to Astron-6?
CS: It’s where we started, and we wouldn’t have half of the recognition we have now (which isn’t really anything) without it. Stylus: For fans of your films, any recommended films/places to find similar films?
CS:They Call Her One Eye,Evil Dead, Suspiria,Wet Hot American Summer,My Left Foot,Sophie’s Choice,Fast Five. Movie Village in Osborne is great for obscure and foreign movies with a pretty good variety of pornography.
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.
