Abandon all sense of normalcy: Julianna Barwick is her name but a choir of wordless voices is her music. Well, it has been, anyways. On her EP Florine, the Brooklyn-based performer made a distinct sound for herself by looping her vocals with lots of reverb. With a select few instruments on The Magic Place, her first for Asthmatic Kitty, Barwick has made nine songs that are multi-layered loops of pure bliss—echoes of choirs for contemplating the church of the Self. A language constructed is simply destructive. Barwick is true to what sounds right. With her voice, and without her words, it’s impossible to misinterpret her intentions, and what she sends out into the world. Pure, pure, pure. (Asthmatic Kitty, www.asthmatickitty.com) Taylor Burgess
LOST: Stan Getz and João Gilberto-Getz/Gilberto
These songs have been covered by numerous adult contemporary artists. However, comparing adult contemporary versions to the original is like holding up a mall-rat’s cheaply made sports jersey knock off to your parent’s old little league jersey. Please do not peg me as one that peddles the superiority of all things “vintage”. The fact of the matter is that Getz and Gilberto sound BETTER than most, maybe all the new jazz I have come across. It is delightfully smooth (though not superficial or unremarkable). Getz and Gilberto being the founding fathers of bossa nova jazz, blend rhythm guitar, saxophone, simple hi-hat/cymbal/snare rim beats and a slow and essential bass line. Along with the vocals (English or Portuguese) these elements create a dreamlike state of relaxation and appreciation. This is an album perfect for listening to as you are walking home on a sunny morning after a night of partying or lying on a beach or playing with your cat or cooking, the list goes on. The bottom line is that this music makes me incredibly happy and that’s not just because it reminds me of Peter Sellers from the 1968 film “The Party”. (Verve Records www.vervemusicgroup.com)
Cluster Festival Fries your Brain and Lightly Sautés your Ears
So, you think that you have it tough, loading up your drum kit, your Marshall stacks, and oh-so delicate guitars, and driving them off to some venue? Well, you’ve never heard about sonic cuisine.
“Sonic cuisine one of the things that gave us confidence to do Cluster Festival,” says one of the festival’s co-founders, Luke Nickel. While he and Heidi Ugrin were attending the University of Manitoba for their music degrees, they were also members of XIE, the eXperimental Improv Ensemble, and wanted to organize a fundraiser for Amnesty International. “We cooked a meal for something like 60 people. And we cooked it for them, in front of them, live on microphones, while making music,” says Nickel. “Which is kinda crazy. Three of us cooked a meal for 65 and had a convincing performance of music at the same time.”
“Yeah, just think of all the onions you need to cut for 60 people,” says Ugrin. “We made a three or four course meal.”
“And the fact that the place we were in didn’t have a kitchen. We had to bring the entire kitchen,” says Nickel.
Needless to say, after that performance, and working together in XIE for some time, Ugrin and Nickel felt pretty prepared to organize anything they wanted to.
Cluster Festival’s second year will host a trio of events at the tail end of this week, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.
The bar is set pretty high—last year’s festival included performances in Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall and 290 McDermot, including challenging (yet rewarding) contemporary dance, projections, art installations, and musical performances.
Within the experimental scene in Winnipeg (of which there’s quite a sizable one—what with the WSO’s New Music Festival, send + receive, and Groundswell), they recognized the need for more integrated arts, rather than multiple-disciplinary.
The difference between integrated arts and multiple-disciplinary arts is a semantic one, as Nickel notes, but still an important one. “You’re actually forming relations and collaborations within [the different art forms], and ‘multi-disciplinary’ doesn’t address that.”
Ugrin says that it means the artists are “not trying to slap on multiple disciplines for the sake of it, but only if works organically ask for different degrees of arts. It’s not just music and visual arts,” and she slaps her hands in different places to emphasize her point.
“Freyja Olfason, who is an intermedia artist,” Ugrin continues, “she is presenting her large, wonderful work Avatar, which incorporates dance, live video projection, webcam, Chat Roulette, music—that is basically our posterchild for integrated arts right there. That’s in the middle of our festival on Friday night.”
This Thursday, taking place at Crescent Fort Rouge United Church in Osborne Village, organist Alexandra Fol will be playing a number of pieces, half of which were written for the festival. And for the second half of the evening, Trio ’86 will be playing a set original works by Cluster’s creators. “We’re going to be projecting images all over the pipe organ, essentially the front wall, as our way to transform the space.” Giorgio Magnanensi will also be doing electronic improvisations to start off both halves of the night.
And on this Saturday, the Cluster organizers are promising one hell of a warehouse party, with BLITZ. It’s going to be three open floors of beatnik poetry, DJs, Wallballs, and way more.
So the three nights of Cluster Festival should be interesting, to say the least. And what the festival creators have to share are nothing but thanks, and encouragement.
“I’m 22, and we’ve done this thing,” says Nickel. “People should think to themselves, ‘What does Winnipeg need?’ And then do it. Whoever feels that something is lacking, should go and create that venue for themselves.”
Lost: I Want To Be your Man
Emma Cloney – Something to Say
Emma Cloney’s debut Something to Say has the sound of an old favourite. Like something pulled out of a box of long forgotten albums. Maybe it’s that Gordon Lightfoot influence she nods to. Or her adherence to a classic folk sound tempered by her feminine rumbling voice. A voice that takes you back to the female artists boom of an early Lilith Fair variety (think Jewel, McLachlin, Harris). And by familiar we don’t mean tired but comforting. Perhaps, even a breath of fresh air. Assuming, of course, you appreciate a roots sound that gets at times a little Country. Representing Manitoba in the Canadian music scene, Cloney stays true to her love of a more traditional folk sound embracing the classic instruments of her genre like the fiddle, mandolin, upright bass and banjo. No electric guitar, no skinny jeans, just a girl and her guitar singing about rivers, home and her family. Song not to miss on this one: a hootenanny of a track entitled, “Daddy’s Guild Guitar.” But for a more contemporary listener “Love the Way You Love Me” will suit you fine. (STUDIO 11, www.studio11audio.com, www.emmacloney.com) Cindy Doyle
First Class Riot: Captain’s first blog
Hey everyone out there in blog land, mark this as another step on our slow transition from the print world to online. I’m going to start blogging about my musical/artistic endeavors, identifying what the fuck I like about music, what I dislike about music journalism, what writers are getting me hot, etc. etc.
So, first up: why did I hate M.I.A. last year? I didn’t buy /\/\/\Y/\, unlike her last two albums, which I ate up. I loved the video for “Born Free,” and I even pitted it against Gaga’s epic “Telephone” in all of their ridiculously epic proportions. I generally hate location sound (or any extra sound) being used for music videos, but still “Born Free” is the shit, a raucous quasi-political shocker. That and a sample of “Ghost Rider” by Suicide go a long way. Checking out other songs on the album off Youtube has been either an earful of gross or great.
And before that, there was the NY Times piece that Maya took offence to, and tweeted writer Lynn Hirschberg’s phone number. The piece had some wonderful background on M.I.A., who was the newest sensation after “Paper Planes” exploded, and her all-too-brief preggerz performance on the Grammys. In the profile piece was a couple of quotes, mostly out-of-context and off-the-cuff, that made M.I.A.’s political stance seem closer to totalitarian. Laaaaaaaaaaaame. In defence of his piece on Billy Joel, Chuck Klosterman said that profile writing is a pretty rudimentary process–you take the most interesting things that people say, and write around them. Still, creative liberties, framing, and a simple sentence can mislead any reader who just accepts an implicit opinion as fact, like hinting that M.I.A. is a self-conscious terrorist. (I can’t wait until someone uses that quote against me.)
Maybe it was some of the bad reviews of the album that kept me away, or maybe some of the negative press. But I think part of it had to do with witch house. Srsly. Maybe the blogs were reposting pictures of ’80s goths, but whenever I would listen to White Ring’s “IxC999”;
That flow? The distorted drum machine tom-toms? The gunshots? This has M.I.A. written all over it. And when M.I.A. zigged and went the way of experimental, I suppose I zagged, and wanted something catchier.
But that’s neither here nor there. I’m going to finally check out /\/\/\Y/\ and counterpart B-side mixtape Vicki Leekx for myself, like any truly discerning person.
trolling so hard
ENSIFERUM, FINNTROLL, and ROTTEN SOUND
February 17, 2011
@ the Zoo
By D.C.S. Murray
Last night I lived out a fantasy that I’ve had since I was about sixteen years old, to see Finnish folk-metal act Finntroll perform live. Finntroll play a unique variety of extreme metal blended with traditional Finnish polka music called ‘Humppa’, they sing about the exploits of the troll-king ‘Rivfader’ and they dress up in full troll regalia when they perform live. Combined with the opening band Ensiferum (also Finnish, but these guys dress up and sing about Iron-age warriors instead of Trolls). I was sure that I was headed into a dark and nerdy place that would leave me in desperate need of some D&D afterward. I was definitely surprised.
The show was happening at the Zoo, a venue that I ashamedly had never been to before. Due to an unfortunate scheduling conflict I arrived late, missing the first band, Barren Earth. We entered just as “Rotten Sound” was getting into full-swing. Even though they were by far the least nerdy band there I do have to mention these guys. It was grind music at it’s absolute best; uber-fast and ultra-heavy, ballsy enough to break straight into a D-beat for no reason at all, and mature enough not to be wearing corpse-paint and Mayhem t-shirts. They were the exact opposite reason I was there, nonetheless I enjoyed it immensely and would definitely recommend them to anyone who is bored of entry-level death-metal and fashioncore.
After a short cigarette break and several very confused partial conversations, we found out that Finntroll would be coming on first and playing a shorter set due to the entire band being under the weather. This was about when I noticed it: You would think that a show where three out of the four acts have something or other to do with ancient mythology the crowd would be a rather homogenous group of 18 to 20-something males who all knew each other from Comic-Con, but as I stood staring at the excited faces I saw something very different. Woolen-capped hipster babes sat astride the shoulders of behemoth vikings, and men who looked like my 51-year-old father sporting celtic-knot t-shirts were playing pool with long haired death metal kids. On my way to the bathroom I accidentally bumped into a very-large biker type and almost spilled his beer. Being the spineless whelp I am, apologies began tumbling forth from my mouth. He smiled, let out a hearty-laugh and said the smartest thing I’d heard all night. “Don’t worry about it, Bro. We’re all here for the same thing.” It was true, as I made my way through the crowd and the band began to play my fantasy commenced and everyone in the audience became one.
Guitarist Skrymer was sporting war paint that curled down his face, chest, and back like the gnarled roots of Yggdrasil while vocalist Vreth commanded us to do his bidding from his perch on top of the monitor. Snot poured from the nostrils of these men like fountains and dark bags under their eyes were apparent through the make-up but that only seemed to make them play more intensely. Though their set was only about 45 minutes and consisted of a lot of new material that I was unfamiliar with, every moment of Finntroll’s performance was engrossing. Filled with chunky polka bass beats and some seriously soviet vocal breakdowns, they proved that a little influenza will not stop an army of angry Trolls. I emerged from the mosh-pit drenched with the collective perspiration of what now felt like my family. I was 16 again.
My last surprise of the night came in the form of Ensiferum, the band that was supposed to open for Finntroll. I had earlier dismissed Ensiferum as “uninspired garbage metal that all sounds the same.” I would like to take this moment to apologize to Ensiferum and all of their fans. They were not only fast-loud and loaded with songs about traversing the frozen wasteland (a subject that we’re all too familiar with) but they also have melodies simple enough that anyone in the audience can and are encouraged to sing along with. The musicianship was complex but not masturbatory. Even though the lyrical themes are so specific, the music and the atmosphere of this band seemed to grab everyone in the room, get them blood-drunk and rally them together into a rag-tag army of misfits.
In summation, Rotten Sound gave me something to think about, Finntroll gave me release and Ensiferum gave me a swift kick in the ass that I won’t soon forget.
Solidarity Rockers: Kids on Fire
By Kent Davies
Winnipeg punk-rockers Kids on Fire have accomplished a lot in the few short years they’ve been playing. Comprised of local ska/punk vets Ian Lodewyks (Subcity/ the Barrymores), Steve Hallick (the Resistance/ the Crackdown) and Leif Gobeil (Vibrating Beds/ the Afterbeat), KOF’s infectious sound is a perfect combo of hardcore, street punk and Clash-inspired rock that you can’t help but pay attention to. Since their 2009 self-titled debut, they’ve played to packed audiences and came second in last year’s Uptown reader’s poll for both best new band and best local release. Now they’re set to embark on the rarest of touring opportunities: teaming up with non-profit group Solidarity Rock to play Cuba. Not only will KOF be playing shows across Cuba they’ll be bringing down much-needed instruments and equipment for aspiring Cuban musicians. Stylus recently caught up with KOF before their headlining gig at the 6th annual tribute to Joe Strummer, a benefit for Solidarity Rock. Continue reading “Solidarity Rockers: Kids on Fire”
Dangercat – Out of the Bag
By Riel Lynch
The four of us and the Russian Prince sat down. If you haven’t met him before, I don’ t recommend doing so. After editing out a ton of swears, inaudible slurs, and ridiculous
off-topic stories (all on my behalf), this is what I got.
Stylus: Who are you and what instruments do you play?
Keith Dueck: I’ m Keith Dueck and I play guitar and sing.
Kevin Klassen: Uhhhhhhh…
Ryan Roemer: This is Kevin Klassen and he plays drums. He’s a little drunk. I’m Ryan Roemer and I play the bass. Occasionally I sing when Keith isn’t shooting me the ol’ stink eye.
Stylus: How do you want portray yourselves as a band?
RR: Real nice guys, us in our defining moment, something for our grandchildren to look back at.
KK: I think we could finally make it somewhere.
Stylus: And where would that “somewhere” be?
RR: We’d like to work on getting signed, and we’re recording a full length album in February.
KD: We’re on the cusp of it. We’re working hard to eventually work hard… Actually, we’ve finally made it to where we want. We’re all so comfortable with each other. We can sit down and have a song written in 10 minutes. We don’t take it so seriously, it’s all for fun. I don’t think we sound like anyone out there.
Stylus: What is a Dangercat? Are you guys dangercats?
RR: It’s just a really aggressive style… No, take this one Keith.
KD: To be honest, it’s just a reference from Fubar.
KK: Are you serious?
RR: We are dangercats. Woman is a dangercat. We had to pick something, plus we just liked it.
Stylus: What influences Dangercat musically?
KD: Drugs and alcohol. Nineties rock and pop-punk bands, like Saves the Day, Moves your Life, Hot Water Music, and Blink 182 obviously.
KK: Godsmack. Lamb of God.
RR: A lot of Nine Inch Nails too.
Stylus: Besides those bands, what influences you when writing?
KD: I’m under the influence most of the time. Wait, is my mom going to be reading this?
RR: Drugs and alcohol don’t influence us, it’s just something we do that shows in our music.
Stylus: That’s an influence…
RR: Okay, I was trying to avoid it but, yeah, we like to party!
KD: The song “Go Wolves,” is one I wrote when I was losing my mind on mushrooms.
Stylus: How often do you jam?
RR: Twice a week, but all of our song ideas come between three to eight a.m.
KD: I prefer to write alone on acoustic, then bring it to jam. All together we make it
sound better.
You can download Dangercat’s four-track demo at http://dangercat.bandcamp.com.
Alpha Couple – Doubts are real
By Taylor Burgess
On one of the coldest nights in January, I bussed down to Albert Street to share a cup of tea with Kristel Jax and Mark Wohlgemuth, Alpha Couple and proprietors of Freud’s Bathhouse and Diner. Despite the splash they’ve made with the venue/gallery, and despite the fact that they’re soon leaving the space, they refused answering any questions about it. So instead, we talked about Stalingrad, an album that started when they lived in Toronto a year ago, named after the apartment they lived in that they had nicknamed. Continue reading “Alpha Couple – Doubts are real”