Northern Touch Music Fesival

by Nigel Webber

“It’s hard to conceive that you can be something when you had nothing” – Choclair

Northern Touch Music Festival enters their sophomore year in 2018 expanded and with results on the promise of furthering local hip-hop, R&B and soul acts. The festival, taking place June 29 to July 1, draws their name and inspiration from a touchstone song in Canadian hip-hop. “Northern Touch” by Rascalz featuring Kardinal Offishall, Choclair, CheckMate and Thrust was an important record when released in 1999. Continue reading “Northern Touch Music Fesival”

.RU :: Underground tweenoise masters in the post-USSR


By Kristel Jax

In mid 2010, I started billing myself as a DJ who played Solntsetsvety. Solntsetsvety – or Солнцецветы, a Russian word that translates to Sun Flowers (abbreviated СЦ in Cyrillic) – is an artist network which has been spawning lo-fi tracks and albums ranging from harsh noise and pure experimental to transcendental kraut jams and lo-fi reggaes since the late ’90s. Solntsetsvety is based – sort of – in cities Minsk, Belarus and Moscow, Russia, and sort of on their website, lesom.ru. The groups belonging to Solntsetsvety were hard to penetrate, even armed with digital translation and English articles on David MacFadyen’s Far From Moscow blog. Solntsetsvety was magic – and a mystery too intense to shrug off. Continue reading “.RU :: Underground tweenoise masters in the post-USSR”