The Switches are a hit!

This indie rock group decided on the name of their band because they kept switching it so many times.  They felt the last name they came upon on would be a good permanent one.  And so, all you fellow indie rockers, we have “The Switches.”

This London bred band consists of Matt Bishop on guitar and stellar vocals; Thom Kirkpatrick with his skills on the bass; Ollie Thomas, backing vocals and guitar, and Jimmy Godfrey, rocking out on the drums.

“We’re just four regular guys who like to rock,” said Bishop.  The guys met in University in Surrey and have been jamming out for approximately the past three or four years now.

Describing the bands music in a general sense would be “guitar, bass, rock,” said Bishop.  In a personal sense Bishop continued to explain that the entire band does it’s share of singing.  “We’re a barber shop quartet within a rock group, like The Beatles meets the Beach Boys,” he explained.  On their myspace page it also mentioned Toronto as one of their many influences.  When asked, Bishop said he spends a lot of time in Toronto visiting friends and loves to go to Queen West.  “I love Toronto and hope they love me too,” he said kindly.

The band has been touring with The Bravery, who they think is an amazing band, and they love it!  Bishop finds it exciting and think touring with The Bravery will definitely widen their fan base.  The bigger the venue, the better for them, just more people to experience and dig their music.

The Switches influences come from a lot of 90’s Britpop music including the bands Menswear, Pulp, Sleeper, and Blur.  “We just like Britpop,” Bishop simply answered.  “Personally I’m into 70’s music like Roxy Music, and Blondie.” The guys were recently listening to the new Hives album and Bishop has been listening to a lot of, Of Montreal, Ratatat, and the Gorillaz B-sides.

They will be releasing their third record (their second full-length one) on March 18^th, titled “Lay Down The Law.”  They are currently touring in the States at the moment but will be making a stop at our very own Toronto’s Opera House on February 12^th with the Bravery.  The guys are stoked about coming and playing in the city again and it should be a stellar show.  Bishop said they played at the Mod Club last year with The Fratellis and had a blast.  You can check out more info, pics, and music at their www.myspace.com/weareswitches page or their official website, switchesmusic.co.uk.  If you end up digging this British indie sensation make sure you get your tickets before they sell out.

 -Danielle Cowie
 

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Un-zipping The XYZ Affair

Photo By: Meg Wachter

There is a new meaning behind The XYZ affair.  According to Wikipedia, with the help of many references, the XYZ Affair was “a 1797 diplomatic episode that worsened relations between France and the United States and led to the undeclared Quasi-War of 1798.”  When most (who have taken U.S history) hear this name they think exactly that, but there is a new meaning behind this name other than the terrible memories of the 1700’s. 

The XYZ affair is a talented four-piece indie rock band that resides in Brooklyn, New York.  The band mates consist of Alex Feder, guitar, and vocals; Russ Maschmeyer, guitar and keys; Chris Bonner, on bass guitar, and Sam Rockwell on the drums. 

Feder chose the name in ninth grade history class while learning about the 1797 happenings and thought it would be a cool name for a band.  He had a band in high school by that name which split and has since decided to keep the name with whichever band came up next.  Feder was in music school at New York University for jazz but decided he was not really into it.  He had a bunch of songs written and demoed as well.  The guys met at the University and have been contributing to the indie scene and getting along just great ever since.  The band originally was a five-piece and started back in 2002, but has only been a four-piece for the past two years.  Feder said, minus him, that all the guys in the band have a nine to five jobs.  Because of this, they do their touring on the weekends, driving around in their “old crappy van,” he jokingly said.  Feder says that things have definitely been picking up for them though.

When asking about their influences, Feder said, “we get a lot Weezer and Queen,” when talking about their album.  The band is greatly influenced by artists and bands such as The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, Sam Cook, and Otis Redding, to name a few.  However, why the band is compared to such bands as Queen is because of the loud guitars and melody that they are capable of creating.

This past summer the XYZ Affair filmed their music video for their tune ‘All My Friends,’ which features former TV stars for Nickelodeon. Also around the same time (this previous July), they were voted “band of the day,” on Spin.com.

They are currently on tour and made a stop at Toronto’s Drake Hotel on November 10^th, that being the first time they have performed in Toronto. This is a great way to promote their music all around because for the most part they tour New York, DC, Philadelphia, and Boston.  Feder says the guys are still figuring out what their exact plans are after this tour.  The band does plan on touring more and for a lengthier amount of time.  They hope to record and release a new record the middle of next year. To check out their tunes, learn more about the guys and band, or to check their tour line up visit their official website at www.thexyzaffair.com or go to their Myspace page at www.myspace.com/thexyzaffair 

-Danielle Cowie

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Rabbits, Party of Six?

When I caught up with White Rabbits in Chapel Hill, N.C., they were on the tail end of a tour that catapulted them out West and boomeranged them back East via the deep South. The night we spoke only one stop at D.C.'s Rock N Roll Hotel stood between them and the twin beds that awaited them in their recently adopted hometown of Bushwick, Brooklyn. Needless to say the guys were haggard but happy. Before a dinner break of burritos and beer, I spoke to Rabbits Alexander Even and Gregory Roberts about their recent  tour, the genesis of their name and moving forward.

Like a lot of indie rock bands teetering on full-blown fame, tour dates this past summer and early fall have brought the White Rabbits to venues that run the gamut. Over the last several weeks the lads have graced the stages at the legendary Filmore in San Francisco where they played with The Pogues, a coffee house in Spokane, and even found themselves performing under the blaring lights of David Letterman's Ed Sullivan Theater.

White Rabbits are a humble bunch, which I attribute to something my mom would probably describe as a "wholesome midwestern upbringing" in Missouri-as in "What have you heard from those nice boys in that band, you know, those nice midwestern boys from Missouri?"  They seem almost ignorant of the magnitude of their own talents, so when recounting their current tour experience, it's not surprising they don't so much brag about their accomplishments as seem baffled by them.

"This tour's been weird," says vocalist and guitar player Gregory Roberts. " One night we play with The Pogues and the next night we play a pizza parlor."

On playing the David Letterman show guitarist Alexander Even professes, "It was pretty surreal. I definitely felt out of my league. I was pretty nervous. It was really cold in that theater. It was a long day." he says humbly.

"We all came to the conclusion that we were the smallest band to ever play that show," adds Roberts. I disagreed with him, but then couldn't think of another band off the top of my head to counter that argument.

But what White Rabbits may currently lack in name recognition is more than made up for in their enthusiasm for and mastery of their music.

The energy of their recent CD release, Fortnightly (Say Hey Records, 2007),  is nonstop; no small feet considering that the first track, Kid On My Shoulders, starts off at breakneck speed with Stephen Patterson belting out vocals and banging out a piano riff that brings to mind the consistent chug of a train that carries through to the next offering, the popular track The Plot. And it never really lets up. It's like being strapped into the seat  of a roller coaster.

And their live shows are no different. Band members multitask and titles like "vocalist", "drummer" and "guitar player" become fluid as members exchange instrument duties. At the Chapel Hill show percussionist  Mathew Clark assists Stephen Patterson with keyboards during a performance of the Plot while guitarist Alexander Even bangs on drummer Matthew Clark's cymbal with a tambourine. It's apparent mere designations of "drummer" and "vocalist" lack the permanence in White Rabbits that might enjoy in other bands,

So what's in a name anyways?  As far as  the significance of the band's name, "White Rabbits", Even and Roberts tell me it doesn't really refer to anything in particular. "It was fairly ambiguous although in hindsight we do get a lot of psychedelic references and Lewis Carroll references. It just seemed like kind of a vague, harmless name at the time. I don't put too much stake in band names. I played in some bands with awful names growing up."

And speaking of growing up in Columbia, Missouri, the sonic influences that have been attributed to White Rabbits include calypso and ska, which is something that puzzles me given that Missouri seems  a bit tropically challenged due to its lack of proximity to beaches, girlie drinks with umbrellas, and the mean streets of London that birthed the ska movement.

"Jamie [Levinson, one of the band's drummer], and I were really into ska growing up." explains Roberts. "We were in  a ska band in highschool. I think what people perceive as kind of tropical influences is a natural gravitation towards percussion. Steve [Patterson the piano player and vocalist] went to school for drums.  He was actually the first drummer in White Rabbits. And the guy that produced our record is a drummer by nature. I guess we don't really sound like Missouri a band is supposed to sound like."

Before Greg and Alex leave to grab some burritos I inquire as to whether or not it's difficult for the Rabbits to get seated in restaurants. I mean there are SIX of them, plus a documentarian on the tour, which makes seven this evening. The guys inform me that half the band is vegetarian, so more often than not they don't eat together anyways. Greg jokes about the clout that membership as a White Rabbit brings in situations such as these,"When we do eat together we just tell them who we are and we get seated immediately." he quips. (Just so you know they got seated really quickly at the burrito place. Perhaps a harbinger of things to come.)

And indeed the future looks bright for the Rabbits. They'll start work on a CD after they get back to Bushwick. Says Roberts, "I think the goal is not not wait two or three years to put out a record. Luckily the demand is not too high for us now."

And what of that fabled loft that all six Rabbits have called home for the past two years?

Alexander Even provides an update:  "I just heard there is a broken window."

Despite the broken window, Roberts says,"I am very excited to be going back to New York City."

And after two years of living, eating and playing together Alex and Greg tell me that White Rabbits will be moving out of that loft in Bushwick  and splintering off into less communal living situations.

And by now White Rabbits are tucked snuggly in the their beds in Brooklyn for a well deserved long winter's nap. But, rest assured Rabbits, after the spring thaw we'll be eagerly awaiting the next offering. Girlie drinks and little paper umbrellas in hand.

-Amy Loeffler

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From the Sidelines of the City: An Interview with Cuff the Duke

Speaking from a cell phone on the TTC, Cuff the Duke front-man, Wayne Petti, seemed enthusiastic and eager to talk about the band’s new album, and their third, Sidelines of the City. “Well I think every musician thinks their new album is their greatest one,” he said with a laugh. Reviews have shown that critics agree that the band has produced an excellent album with Sidelines of the City, a title that refers to the band’s hometown of Oshawa, located just outside Toronto. “It is referring to Oshawa,” Petti confirmed. “But it’s also just about being on the outside, musically, of what would be considered typically trendy these days.” Cuff the Duke have always incorporated many influences in their music, from rock to country to folk and the new album is no different. Sidelines from the City features bluegrass-inspired traditional country sounds to mammoth Radiohead-like guitar solos and even Mariachi horns. “We always like to try new sounds on every album” says Petti. “It all just seems to come naturally. We experiment a lot.”

Coupled with the multi-faceted sound of the new record, Petti’s lyrics on the album reflect on a range of issues, including the Iraq war. “I generally stay away from writing political songs, but I felt I had to write something. It’s kind of hard to avoid it when [the Iraq war] is invading our culture [as Canadians] so much.” Petti explained. “The song, “The Ballad of the Tired Old Man” was actually inspired by a story I read in the New York Times, about a father, who was a soldier himself, and whose son had joined the army. At first he was really proud of his son but as the war has gone on he started to realize maybe it was a mistake.” When discussing the war Petti spoke passionately and with a note of disdain. “I don’t believe the news, when we’ve been lied to so much.  There was no good reason to start this war and I think we need to analyze what we’re fighting for. Democracy and safety? Or oil and control?” Though the references to the war that appear on the album are primarily to do with Iraq, Petti seemed equally opinionated about Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan. “Over 70 Canadians have died. I don’t agree with that.” he said. “Of course I support the troops and I don’t think we need an immediate withdrawal. But I don’t think we should extend the mission.”

While the album speaks on troubles of the world it in turn features references to Petti’s own personal tragedies. Recurring themes of death, loss and regret surface on many tracks, notably “Failure to Some”. “The son of a family friend of mine recently died” confessed Petti, “It’s tough when parents lose a child. It’s easy to be negative when things like that happen. The people I knew that are no longer in my life, that have passed; I try and remember the better times. I think that’s what I was trying to get across on the album.”  While some of the best tracks on the album deal with darker issues that’s not to say Sidelines from the City is a negative or melancholy album. “Rossland Square” a love letter to the band’s hometown of Oshawa encapsulates Petti’s feelings of nostalgia and fondness for the city that raised him. “I was visiting an old friend in Oshawa and we were driving around and just reminiscing about all the things we used to do and places we’d go. I had the song written musically and so I just started jotting down things I remembered about Oshawa. Like Bensley’s Open Stage. It was actually the first place I ever played at. I was all by myself, all freaked out,” he stopped to laugh. “I still see the owner, and you know I tip my hat to him. Without him and without that open stage, there would be no Cuff the Duke.” The song according to Petti has in turn been embraced by the people of Oshawa, a fact that sits well with the front man. “I’ve heard really positive things from Oshawa people. I even heard some say they want to make it the official song of the city” he joked.

Though Petti and Cuff the Duke may have started their careers playing acoustically in small bars in Oshawa the band have built up a sizeable fanbase, amassed great critical reviews and now play across the country and the world. The ability to play music for a living and to represent both Toronto and the larger Canadian music scene to the world seems a responsibility Cuff the Duke is willing to shoulder. “We want to take our music as far as we can. There are always going to be people who haven’t heard your music and we want to reach them. I think the Toronto music scene is incredible. Canada on a whole has the greatest music out there. We love touring with other Canadian bands, because there are so many great musicians all across the country. Great Lake Swimmers, Sun Parlour Players, Broken Social Scene, Spiral Beach, they are so many great Canadian bands out right now. “

Having been helped establish their careers by touring with bigger acts like The Sadies and Sloan, Cuff the Duke are just as eager to help out younger bands as they now headline shows. “We don’t have to, we want to” says Petti. Cuff the Duke are currently touring across the country as headliners promoting their new album aggressively. Anyone who has ever seen the band live can attest to their amazing showmanship and colossal sound on stage. It is not a show that should be missed but as for any secret to why their live show is so damn captivating, Petti summed it up as pure passion.  “Playing live has always been what we like. It’s the best part of playing music.”

After taking a short break for the holidays Cuff the Duke will be touring with Blue Rodeo in 2008 a band many critics have compared them to. “We’re all huge fans of Blue Rodeo” says Petti “So we don’t mind the comparison”. Toronto fans can catch Cuff the Duke Nov 29^th when they play the Mod Club.

www.cufftheduke.com

- Sam Stilson

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Sunparlour Players

The music started flowing in late 2004, early 2005 and started out as a solo project.  The solo then turned into a duo and eventually a trio but the Sunparlour Players are so much more than just a trio of stellar musicians.  The band consists of Andrew Penner, Dennis Van Dine, and Michael Rosenthal.  If one is lucky enough to see them perform live, they have been known to bring the strings, the horns and the choir section out at their shows.

“I started writing a lot of songs by myself.  That kind of started the Sunparlour Players,” said front man, Penner.  He started listening to a lot of gospel music, traveling a lot in 2004, as well as thinking a lot about where he was coming from.  This was just the beginning of another great band to come out of Toronto.  With influences ranging from Blind Willie Johnson, to Sam Cooke, to Pantera, their wide range of musical influences makes for a nice, unique sound and performance.

This month was the start of their tour, rocking around Canada, mainly playing with the two bands: The Acorn and Elliot BROOD.  On October 18^th the Sunparlour Players had their CD release party at the Rivoli for their re-released album ‘Hymns for the Happy,’ on Baudelaire, their new record label.  On the album you can hear guitars, banjos, bass, bass drums, whistles, bells, a glockenspiel, and many more instruments and things one wouldn’t hear on the average album.  Penner said they would be having their strings, horns, and choir section at the Rivoli.  The band members would have played between two and five instruments over then course of the night, which is common for the guys to do at shows. ‘Hymns for the Happy’ was re-released in mid September being re-mastered, re-mixed, and partially re-recorded.  Penner says the band feels great about the changes with ‘Hymns for the Happy,’ and their new label.

Penner says one of the best things that can and will come out of this tour is writing and making more, new music.  “I feel it’s coming and I feel good about it,” he said.  He wants to keep building on their music and thinks this tour will lay a foundation to “go out there again” and that it will lead into making a new record.  Penner is very passionate about his music and it shows in the way of the Sunparlour Players.  ‘Hymns for the Happy,’ is available in stores and online.  For more information on the Sunparlour Players and/or to jam out to their music, go to www.myspace.com/thesunparlour or www.sunparlourplayers.com.

-Danielle Cowie

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Mobius Band
Heaven
Misra/Ghostly

According to Wikipedia a Mobius band (more commonly known as a mobius strip) is: “a surface with only one side and only one boundary component…” The millennium brought out a new meaning of ‘Mobius band’; they are a stunning trio of talented musicians, consisting of Peter Sax, Noam Schatz, and Ben Sterling, that reside in Brooklyn, New York.

The three of them met up at Wesleyan University, which is located in Middletown, Connecticut. They eventually ended up moving to the rural town of Shutesbury, Western Massachusetts, creating massive sounds, wicked beats, and fantastic voices.  It was about six years ago when the music started flowing, ending up with a positive outcome.

Mobius Band’s new CD ‘Heaven’ just recently came out at the beginning of October. 

One interesting thing about this CD is that it uses circuit bending. Sax said that Schatz was at a show and witnessed the circuit bending first hand by a “masterful circuit bender,” as Sax puts it.  He was automatically fascinated and immediately interested.  Schatz would circuit bend keyboard, which is the result of the unique sound on the new CD.  To listen, it seems like any great beat, but to listen carefully it is a one of a kind sound that Schatz has created. This ended up having a huge influence on the sound.  Even though some songs off the CD are influenced by Sterling’s girlfriend running off with his old friend, but Sax said they like to keep it poppy and light because “there’s no need to paint them black.” 

They are now out touring around the United Stated and Canada in support of ‘Heaven.’  They started off in New York on October 1^st and will be coming to Toronto’s Horseshoe Tavern on November 7^th.  Tickets are only $11.50 but it is a 19 plus show.  Sax says that tour has been going really well so far and that “Toronto is awesome.”  They have met some friends from our town in the past and always have a great time when they come and perform in our hectic city.  The guys will be touring until December 2^nd, ending it off in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

To find more information about their new CD, biography, tour dates and/or to listen to their stellar new songs go to www.mobiusband.com or www.myspace.com/mobiusband.

-Danielle Cowie

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GOGOL BORDELLO

Worldwide critics and respected, popular magazines have quoted their live shows as legendary.  They have a unique sound and have been together for eight years.  They reside in the Lower East Side of New York when they’re not rocking the stage all over the world.  Gogol Bordello consists of, Eugene Hutz, on vocals; Eliot Ferguson, drums; Serget Ryabtsey, on violin; Yury Lemeshev, rocking the accordion; Thomas Gobena (being the newest addition to the band), on bass; Oren Kaplan, on the guitar; and Pamela Racine and Elizabeth Sun, in charge of percussion and dance.

Hutz is a descendent of Sirva roma Gypsies.  He also has family origins rooted in the Carpathian Mountains.  His grandmother is half Roma and he ended up learning about a lot of the gypsy culture through her.  This ended up reflecting in Gogol Bordello music and stage presence, which makes them the unique band they are today.

Hutz was originally from Kiev and ended up fleeing the region with his family because of the Chernobyl meltdown, a terrible happening in 1986 when one of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant’s reactors exploded.   Soon after that, Hutz and his parents immigrated to Vermont.  This was only the beginning of what is now one of the most entertaining bands today.

“We have no limitations on how we express ourselves,” Gobena explained on how their live shows have had such am impact on their fans and critics.  He describes them as crazy and full of energy and no show could is ever duplicated.  “It is such a blessing to be in the band,” Gobena said. 

Gogol Bordello is now touring in support of their album ‘SUPER TARANTA!’ being their fourth full-length album.  Gobena was stoked to be playing in Toronto.  “Toronto is one of the greatest cities.  I like the diversity.  It’s like New York,” He said.

New Rebel Intelligence is the theme of ‘SUPER TARANTA!’ Gobena said that this concept is still “a work in progress.” Basically, the way Gobena sees this concept is that everything is ruled by society so just be yourself because you have your own mind.  

The band just rocked our city on October 9th at the Kool Haus.  They will be traveling worldwide, pleasing their fans, and wooing more people with their rad stage presence and musical talent. They’ll be playing The Vegoose Festival, in Las Vegas, on October 27^th and will be wrapping their tour up in Sheffield, located in the UK, on December 18^th.

If you haven’t experienced this awesome gypsy punk band yet and would like to check them out, which is a wide decision, go to www.gogolbordello.com and you can check out their music at www.myspace.com/gogolbordello.

-Danielle Cowie

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Augie March Feature

Australia is a fascinating country filled with beautiful scenery, people, and accents.  It is also where the stellar five-piece band, Augie March, hails from.  They have been together for 11 years and have become the biggest thing in Australia since sliced bread, so to speak.

The band consists of Glenn Richards, singer/songwriter/guitar; David Williams, drummer; Adam Donovan, guitar; Edmondo Ammendola, bass; and Kiernan Box, keyboard/strings/horn arrangements.  The band first started out at a party and have been rocking the scene ever since.  Williams said that Box wasn’t introduced in the band until later on, when they were ready for a keyboardist. Williams described the connection with Ammendola as finding him “wandering the streets with a bass on his back.”

The bands name derives from the book, ‘The Adventures of Augie March,’ written by Canadian-born American author, Saul Bellow.  The bands influences range from classic Bob Dylan, The Band, Neil Young, into Jazz, to the bands in the 90’s such as Grant Lee Buffalo and Built To Spill, as well as folk music. Their music can be described as Indie Rock, Alternative Pop, Folk, and mellow music that can make any lighter in the room fire up.  In the past Augie March have been known to tour with great bands and artists such as Wilco, Gomez, Neil Finn, Powderfinger, Shane MacGowan, and The Dears.

Their newest album, ‘Moo, You Bloody Choir,’ was named after a lyric in the song ‘The Honey Month.’  “ Beneath the revving of a car, the evensong of the abattoir, moo, you bloody choir, moo and lo, lo and moan, moo, you huddled choir, moo and lo, how the night arrived with a blow,” are the bittersweet lyrics to go along with the intense line.  Richards was exposed to the sounds of cows entering an abattoir, which he described as a “mournful choir,” a pretty beautiful way to describe something so disturbing. The song ends with a sound clip of cows being slaughtered and having listened to the clip, Richards couldn’t be more precise with his description.

The band is touring in support of the new album.  The tour started off with them opening for talented, American musician, Andrew Bird, which they described as an honor and an amazing experience.

They graced Toronto on September 22^nd at Lees Palace, opening for ex-Beta Band members, The Aliens.  Their performance was tight and the mood was mellow, closing with their hit “One Crowded Hour,” pleasing the audience.  The tour is about half way over and they are having a blast.  There was talk about the band returning to Toronto sometime around February so keep those ears open and eyes peeled for dates in the New Year.  For more information on the band or to just jam out to their songs visit www.augiemarch.com, the official website, or their myspace page at: www.myspace.com/augiemarch.

-Danielle Cowie

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Shout Out Louds get secretive on their new album
The Swedish pop-rockers harbor some ill wills on their sophomore CD

Two albums in and the Shout Out Louds already appreciate the value of a good pop song.

With artists churning out tracks without giving them a second thought, it’s rare to hear bands actually trying to diversify their sound and better their music skills. But that’s what Swedish alt-rock-pop band the Shout Out Louds have succeeded in doing on their sophomore disc Our Ill Wills. Sounding not even remotely ill on the phone, SOL lead singer and lyricist Adam Olenius offered up some small insight about the band’s mindset on this album.

“The first release was more of a compilation, an EP but this one is more about what’s going on with us, in our life,” he said. “Music wise, there’s more instrumentation. We focused more on rhythm, drums, pianos and violins instead of the guitars doing all the work, like on the first record.”

Olenius mentioned the band was tired of the usual alternative-rock songs where the guitars always took centre stage so they switched things up a bit and gave the percussion and drums a little more playing time. Lyrically, he promised himself he would never write about life on tour but Olenius broke that pact and dabbled into the nomadic musician lifestyle for some inspiration on the album.

“It’s more about leaving people and coming back, not [exactly] about life on tour,” he specified. “It’s more about when you come home and how people and things change.”

Making sure not to spill any personal secrets of his own, Olenius coyly suggests listening to the record instead of trying to squeeze intimate stories out of him. But despite being tight-lipped, he’s surprisingly open to the idea of music loosening his jowls and revealing a darker, grittier side to the band.

“Songwriting is a way of letting go and revealing stuff [that] is hard to do in real life,” he said, admitting that the lyrics are a little bit meaner on this album. “I wanted to be more honest and I think you have to be honest to make a really good song.”

Well it’s a good thing Olenius likes honesty because when SOL hooked up with Peter, Bjorn and John partner Bjorn Yttling to produce the disc, Yttling was a little too forthcoming about why he wanted to work with them.

“He told me he hated our production on our first demo,” Olenius explained. “I told him if he could work for free, then he’d get hired.”

Unconventional meeting but smart nonetheless. Olenius is happy with the partnership and even more satisfied with the album’s outcome. Calling Our Ill Wills a “more cinematic” album, Olenius sums it up best when he chooses two extreme films as potential visions of the band’s music.

“A mix between The Night Before Christmas and Kramer vs. Kramer,” he said. “The strange, mysterious, darker world with a mix of realistic things.”

We’re sure life will continue to get more mysterious and strange for the band as they keep trekking on their tour – leading, obviously, to a whole new set of secrets.

www.shoutoutlouds.com

www.myspace.com/shoutoutlouds

-Antoinette Mercurio

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Aristo’s on Top Of The World with new album
Aristo goes mainstream but continues to keep it real on his debut LP

Sitting on top of the world can sometimes be a lonely place. But for ambitious people like Aristo, the top of the world is just the beginning.

The Guyana-born, Toronto-raised rapper is getting ready to release his debut album Top Of The World on October 16 and loneliness is the last thing on his mind. The Heyworld label release is a 15-track glimpse into Aristo’s life and contrary to popular hip-hop standards, it’s void of any blingin’, big pimpin’ Moet-drinkin’ clichés.

“The album is kind of like a rollercoaster,” Aristo said. “I mean, we’re having fun but then we get back to real-life situations.”

“To me, in order to get to the top of the world, you gotta go through your ups and downs to get there,” he went on to say.

It’s been somewhat of a lengthy journey for Aristo. For the past eight years, he’s made a name for himself on the underground hip-hip scene as a prolific freestyler and a mixtape aficionado – putting out more than a handful of mixtapes. After increasing demand on his MySpace for an official CD release, Aristo decided to give people a clearer version of himself and his sound.

“I felt I was developed enough as an artist to put out an album,” he said. “Everything on the album is a reflection of me. I definitely wanted to give the people something where they could think, ‘okay, I know what Aristo’s about.’”

For most, stepping away from the underground scene and trying to go mainstream can elicit some sour fans. And even though his first single “Playa 4 Life” is a sharp turn from his usual guttural, hardcore freestyles, Aristo feels assured that the real fans will stick by him – major label or not.

“The respect thing, coming from the streets and rapping about street stuff all the time, everybody’s gonna respect you for that,” he explained. “But there comes a point in everybody’s life where you gotta grow up and do different things and experiment.”

Despite trying the mainstream route, Aristo hasn’t forgone his underground pep. With tracks such as “Tried, Tried, Tried,” “Crazy” and “Missin U” – all dealing with life’s struggles and the sadness of street culture – it’s clear Aristo won’t lose any kind of respect.

The people’s rapper intends to check out the view at the top of the world for now. But he won’t be perched up there for long before moving onto the next big project.

“Right now, I feel I’m in a good position as an artist in Canada. I feel I have a lot of freedom to create my music,” he said. “[But] it’s a hard industry so I’m gonna try and make the best out of everything.”

“I want to get the best out of music and every opportunity I get, I’m gonna take full advantage of everything.”

www.myspace.com/aristoworld
www.aristo-online.com

-Antoinette Mercurio

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Electro beatmakers Project Jenny, Project Jan offer up some hip-hop hugs and rockin’ kisses on their debut LP XOXOXOXOXO

People often use boxes to hold or contain things. They’re labeled and packed away in storage, not given another thought.

New York-based duo Project Jenny, Project Jan don’t like boxes. They’d rather rock out to whatever fun beat catches their ear and run with it – full throttle. Their debut album XOXOXOXOXO follows that funky formula. Best described as electro-karaoke, PJ, PJ’s Sammy Rubin and Jeremy Haines took their maniacal production skills and paired them with some light-hearted lyrics to create an unusual yet eclectic album.

“I’ve always had problems with being boxed in,” Rubin said. “In our own way, we’re trying to avoid characterization.”

The 14-track LP, released on August 14 via Might Records, offers up some rock, dance and hip-hop elements that would ordinarily sound like a music experiment gone bad but surprisingly works well given today’s overly-perfected, uber-engineered albums. Both Haines and Rubin appreciate the diversity of multiple sounds coming together to create something new and fresh.

“A lot of times when we’re writing, we wanna use a lot of contrasting sounds, which results in contrasting genres colliding,” Haines said.

“We both have a lot of influences to draw from,” Rubin added on, quickly mentioning that both artists know they have a good song on their hands when Haines starts bopping his head and taking off his clothes.

Aphex Twin, Basement Jaxx and The Gorillaz are just some of the bands on PJ, PJ’s radar. Not prone to copying other artists’ styles, Haines and Rubin value being on the edge and thinking outside of the box. Rightfully so, it’s that kind of open-minded thinking that makes them stand out from other cookie-cutter groups and develop an identity that’s their own.

“We definitely wanna be ourselves,” Haines said, standing behind their album and personal sound.

As much as PJ, PJ are all about marrying different musical styles and genres, the duo are content just to be making music. To them, as long as Haines keeps dancing and taking his clothes off to Rubin’s beats, PJ, PJ have a place in the studio.

“I think our music is pretty accessible,” Rubin said. “If we’re having fun making music, we feel other people are gonna have fun listening to it.”

As their bio states, “it’s best not to ask too many questions and just enjoy the music.”

Project Jenny, Project Jan bust out some electro-karaoke grooves on September 21 at the Spin Gallery in Toronto.

www.projectjennyprojectjan.com

www.myspace.com/projectjennyprojectjan

-Antoinette Mercurio

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3 Inches of Blood storms the gates

Vancouver heavy metal band 3 Inches of Blood (3IOB) powered their way through various albums and lineup changes in the past three years.  Continuous touring and exposure via Road Runner Records has made this band the breath of fresh air that metal fans have been yearning for.

3IOB has two lead lyricists, Cam Pipes and Jamie Hooper, to get that Bruce Dickinson like high pitch crossed with the deep guttural vocals.  This combination sets the band out immediately from others. 

The influences for the lyrics, who are penned by both Pipes and Hooper, draws from the roots of the new wave of British heavy metal including Iron Maiden and Judas Priest.  At the same time, however, the lyrics weigh heavily on classical Viking mythology.  3IOB offers that escapist metal telling tales of everything from war to Orcs to a mythical beast named “Wykydtron”. 

Guitarist Shane Clark tells that “there’s lots of metaphors there…inner strength metaphors, but there’s definitely no political or religious agendas there.”

The band’s lyrics and sound is a counter-reaction to the current Nu-Metal/Metalcore scene.  Regardless of the fact that they are signed to the largest record label contributing to that very scene, Road Runner Records, the band is here to make the statement that they are the anti-nu-metal flag bearers. 

How is it that this virtually unknown band from Vancouver is able to be touring bands such as Hatebreed and Lamb of God?  The exposure any band gets from being signed to an American label. 

“It was definitely easier the route that we took because we got an American record deal,” Clark says regarding the success they have attained as an act originating from Canada, “if an act gets signed to a Canadian label the focus is on Canada…if you get a great deal in Canada it’s most likely going to stay there.”

With the backing of a major American Heavy Metal/Hard Rock label, 3IOB were able to land spots opening for British rock band The Darkness, back when The Darkness was noteworthy, playing one of the stages at Ozzfest and getting a single from their previous album into a video game. 

Don’t be confused though, the exposure that 3IOB has been receiving is due directly to constant touring.  Clark talks about the bands road show:

“There was no push for our last album.  It was basically just put in stores and that was it. In the past three years we’ve circled the States probably nine times.  Being on the road, grinding it out, getting the music to the people; that alone has gotten us to where we’re at now.  Touring leads to word of mouth and when word of mouth gets going that is what builds a fanbase.”

3 Inches of Blood may have an American record deal but are still very much flag bearing countrymen for the Canadian Heavy Metal scene.  From their thunderous live performances to the ear-piercing vocals to the empowering Nordic mythology induced lyrics 3 Inches of Blood has made their mark on Metal.  This is a modern throwback to the classical metal that fans of the genre have been eagerly wishing for.

 http://www.myspace.com/3iob

-Phil Kedrosky

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Benjy Ferree Speaks the Truth

As a former nanny to Hollywood royalty, it’s appropriate to employ film terminology when you talk about Benjy Ferree. He is the indie sleeper hit of the year. And fans often comment that they are puzzled by his relative persistent anonymity, even two years after the release of an EP.  In fact when I caught his show this year in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, the opening band didn’t even know how to pronounce his last name: “Is it ‘fairy’ or ‘fu-ree’?” the front man asked the sound guy over the crowd at the Local 506 (it’s the latter by the way).

Ferree comes to us from his native Washington, D.C. anointed by some of the city’s most iconoclastic and venerated musicians, most notably Fugazi’s, Brendan Canty. I really didn’t know what to expect from my meeting with him. I read terrible rumors on the Internet that he hates granting time with journalists.  A very abbreviated conversation I stumble upon online with the Washington Post seems to validate this theory. To top it off, the day before our meeting in Silver Spring, a Google search of the artist brings up a video spoof of a Charlie Rose-type show in which he and friend Ian Sevonius (The Make Up) poke fun at all the irrelevant questions that interviewers ask celebrities (questions like, “What is rock-n-roll’s mission?” Well, I wasn’t gonna ask that anyway.)  Ferree arrives in one of his trademark hats that he never seems to be without these days. Behind his Lennon inspired eyewear lie the palest shade of just-barely pastel blue eyes.  And despite a very good start on an auburn beard flecked with gray, he looks several birthdays shy of his 32 years.

Critics have acknowledged a warmth about his voice from his recordings.  And when he speaks the toasty, ground-coffee texture that I am familiar with from his freshman effort Leaving the Nest (Domino Records) falls on my ears like a combination of cinnamon sandpaper and a less gravely Rod Stewart.

His music is not easily categorized. Despite his homegrown appeal, he hesitates to call himself “indie.” Most indie rockers aren’t handed a world-wide distribution deal, the first for an American artist signed with Domino, the recording family he has been a part of since early this year. Perhaps a more apt description is garage/folk, what he calls his music if you look on his myspace page. But depending on what side of the Atlantic your eardrums happen to be on, he has been labeled confusingly enough by critics as both quintessentially American (which he takes as a complement) and alternatively British at the same time.  The spartan sound of some of the tracks on his cd has been compared to everything from the Beatles to the White Stripes.

The reference to Detroit’s rock-n-roll twin set probably has less to due with his vocal styling than the bass lines of the title track that reverberate in your bones, and the unfettered drumming of his sweaty, Laura Jean, on tracks like Dog Killers! One music reviewer went so far as to qualify the Jack White comparison with a “less weird” caveat. “Less weird?” he feigns annoyance. “Now that I take offense to.  I think I’m actually weirder than Jack White,” he chuckles. “No, I don’t take any offense to people telling me I’m like Jack White. He makes my life easier. But I could never be Jack White. I’m not coming from the same place.”  

And where Ferree came from is an intriguing tale. The back story behind Leaving the Nest starts with Ferree’s return to D.C. from Hollywood where he was employed most notably as an in-demand au pair. Legend has it he started bartending (not true he tells me, he was really the bar back) at Washington, D.C.’s Black Cat where he befriended Brendan Canty of Fugazi. Canty was, pardon the pun, instrumental in getting Ferree where he is today with his current label and mixed and produced his cd. I ask him, in general, if independent artists in DC are a very interconnected bunch. His initial reaction is a very blunt “no” but as he ponders the question, he changes his mind.

“I don’t really hang out with too many musicians, one of my best friends is a firefighter, an Arlington County firefighter, and he is, to me, like [actor and film director] John Cassevetes because he’s always telling me to be true.” “There are definitely some cool people here in D.C., but they’re not the cool, hipster musicians that are blowing up the charts. But yeah, I think there is camaraderie.” “As far as the people that have changed my life in this city: Brendan Canty [of Fugazi]; a true mentor to I’m sure hundreds of musicians in D.C. ‘cause he really gets involved in the scene, whatever that means. He’ll help anyone out that he believes is passionate about music. I do have great, I have amazing camaraderie,” he decides. “There’s a lot of camaraderie, I’m spoiled rotten.”

The reference to John Cassevetes seems off-handed, but the actor and film director looms large in his life philosophy. Ferree laments the lack of commitment he sees in some American artists today: “I expect a lot out of American artists because American artists are amazing. I’m just talking about expressing the truth, whatever truth that may be. John Cassevetes’ father sat him down when he realized he wanted to study acting and told him that he had to be true to each character, true to himself, true every step of the way.”

All of this talk about truth gives Ferree an intensity and genuineness.  You get the impression he’s the kind of person who doesn’t disappoint his friends. Ironically this intensity is tempered by what some critics have oft commented as the nursery rhyme-y and innocent nature of his lyrics. To which he readily admits is due to this time he spent as an au-pair writing songs for his charges in Hollywood. “I find adults to be absolutely boring,” he concedes. “I will never deny that. I wrote songs in front of kids, I made up songs with kids. I sang all the time.”

But if you think his debut cd is an anthem to Hollywood you’d be incorrect. Hollywood was half a lifetime ago for him now and he says the cd is really about a journey. The whole cd is a story really, and each song is a chapter of the story. “It’s about a boy who lives in a city that’s been destroyed, and he’s trying to get across the border to where his sweetheart lives. Where she lives is like an Eden, it’s untouched.”

That’s not to say that his time spent in Hollywood catering the kids of the upper-crust left no mark. Philosophically it had a profound effect on his artistic point of view. “Hollywood has influenced the rest of my future. I went there romanticizing what it was like to be a star. I always thought that to be a great artist you had to be up here…When I moved out there I babysat for David Lynch a few times. I didn’t find him weird at all. Like everybody thinks he’s this weird guy.  I actually thought he was pretty normal. I had chicken salad with him. That was a very, very important experience for me and just by chance I got to baby-sit for him.  He was just a dude, and I needed to see that. So foundationally the only thing Hollywood did for me was, well, it changed my life.” 

You can take the boy out of Hollywood, but perhaps not so easily the Hollywood out of the boy. I ask if he directed his new video for In the Countryside, the first track on his cd. “I didn’t direct it, I co-directed but they didn’t give me the credit. Everybody in that video they’re all friends of mine. One of the guys is the general manager at the Black Cat. One of the zombies, the guy with the dreads, he’s a bouncer at the bar where I’ve been working. It was cool. It was my idea and then I asked them [Seaworthy Films] to shoot it. I directed the kids. I was very proud of that video. And I was proud of working with those kids.”

If  Benjy Ferree were a preacher he would probably end every Sunday sermon with,” Be true to yourselves.” And that’s about all he’s asking from himself and other musicians. “If your from the suburbs, tell me what’s going on in the suburbs. If you’re a sensitive yuppie then lemme hear it. I don’t see anything wrong with that.  If it’s true, it is what it is.”

- Amy Loeffler

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Spiral Beach’s Sugary New Wave

Spiral Beach recently performed for their third year at Toronto’s 2007 North by Northeast Music Conference.  Their packed show at The Reverb further enforced the fact that they are a rising young talent on the Toronto music scene, with an exceptional live show that keeps their fans coming back for more.  When asked about the event though, Daniel Woodhead (Drums) doesn’t seem terribly enthusiastic.  “The North by Northeast Festival is more for groups that are looking to get signed, and is really pushed more for industry purposes, than for the love of music.  The shows are always really rushed because it’s all about the schedule.”  It’s easy to see why a group with such a lively stage presence would prefer to have as little constraints as possible when performing.  Perhaps leaving the stage after just two songs, before returning to complete their set was their way of poking fun at the efficiently run weekend festival.  With one self-titled album released in 2005, another album on the way, and opening gigs for The Hidden Cameras and Tokyo Police Club, Spiral Beach seem poised to breakthrough any day now.

Dorian Thornton (Bass), Maddy Wilde (Keyboard, Vocals), Airick Woodhead (Guitar, Vocals) and Daniel Woodhead (Drums) play a fun brand of new wave pop that will grab you from the get go.  The guitar work is fast and hard, the vocals are charming, and the rhythm section keeps the whole thing moving at a groovy pace.  If you visit their Myspace page there are three songs that will get stuck in your head for days; you’ve been warned.  I’ve been falling asleep humming these tracks and waking to find them still in my head the next morning.  There is no shortage of worldly influence, and the occasional hint of African or reggae music calls to mind the work of The Talking Heads and Blondie (the latter also applies to keyboardist Maddy’s cool and sexy vocal delivery.)  Daniel notes that much of the world sound stems from childhood experience, when he and Airick would spend much of their time at folk festivals where their father David Woodhead performed.  “There were so many people that were playing non-Western music, and it went far beyond just jamming.  It had attitude and excitement.” 

While their age may cause one to immediately lump Spiral Beach in with other young pop acts, it is extremely important to recognize that while the music is fun, it is simultaneously quite sophisticated and exciting.  It can sometimes be difficult for older audiences to get behind something this enjoyable, but Spiral Beach can definitely appeal to all who let their guards down in the name of having a good time.  This is the main reason why the group largely appeals to a younger audience more interested in enjoying the music than critiquing it.  Having a large teen following has led to most of Spiral Beach’s shows being all ages events.  While to some this may seem detrimental, Daniel Woodhead sees it as a win-win situation.  “I see no cons to it because we get to play to both audiences.  If people want to drink they can come and drink in the drinking area, but by allowing people under 19 into shows we know we will have an audience that dances the entire set.  All we want is to have a good time and for our audience to have a good time too.”   

“We just finished recording in a barn outside of Hamilton.  It was different from recording in our basement on the first one because we were completely isolated.  The whole thing was recorded live off the floor and we were really baked through the whole process.  We couldn’t even leave the barn because there was this huge goose outside that was constantly wandering around.  We had to stay inside because we knew that it would kill us.”  The new album was recorded by Hidden Cameras member Mike Olsen, who has also worked with Final Fantasy, The Organ and The Arcade Fire.  “We intended to have it mixed in New York by Scotty Hard who’s worked with Medeski, Martin & Wood and Wu-Tang Clan, but we ran out of money and ended up mixing here in Toronto ourselves. The album should be released in September, though the band has already got a chunk of new material they are playing along with the new album tracks at shows.  If their sophomore record matches, or ups the pop ante of the last one, then Spiral Beach could see their audience increase a great deal by this Fall, 

-Daniel Demois

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El-P Is Making His Kind Of Music

The indie rapper takes his obsessive personality and puts it to good use on his latest disc I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead

Hip hop’s biggest mantra is to keep it real. One finds it hard to believe that a rapper can “keep it real” when he’s wearing a Chinchilla fur coat, a blingin’ pinky ring and a behemoth-sized, diamond-encrusted chain hanging around his neck. Gone are the days of Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five’s “The Message” or Public Enemy’s “Fight The Power” call-to-arms. Today hip hop has lost its rap essence and replaced it with unnecessary entourages and useless materialism.

But thankfully there’s a silver lining in the cloud and it comes in the form of Brooklyn, New York rapper El-P (a.k.a. El-Producto). Born Jaime Meline, El-P has taken his brash attitude and channeled it towards the artistic up-keeping of hip hop.

“It’s not easy for me to do records but it’s not hard either. I put a lot of work into what I do,” the 32-year-old said. “It’s work but it’s a pleasurable work, one that I enjoy.”

It appears El-P isn’t the only one who enjoys his work. He’s cultivated a bit of a cult following since he first jumped onto the scene in the early-1990s. His latest release I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead hit fans with a harsh reality. Dealing with the theme of a post-9/11 New York, El-P used the album as a means to explore the bruised city’s atmosphere. He’s even gone so far as to call it his “post-traumatic stress album.”

“I think there’s something really sad and off-kilter about New York,” he explained. “On the record I say ‘brotherhood of the working wounded’ as a way to express the functionally lost.”

“We’re still getting up and going to work everyday and we’re still going out and we’re parting at night but something is really missing. We’ve been hurt badly and we didn’t really recover from it, only on the surface did we recover.”

As much as El-P took the brave step to express himself purely and honestly on his record, he doesn’t use the LP as a means to exploit it as a soundtrack to people’s lives.

“I don’t feel like I’m doing anyone else a favour by making songs like this,” he said. “I’m doing it because this is what I feel I need to do.”

Make no mistake about it though, even if El-P is making music for him, rest assured he’s making music that will most likely offend, insult even disgust you at times. His video for “Smithereens” is a violent piece of work that shows the rapper getting severely tortured and beaten by his captors.

“I don’t care if it upsets, I don’t care if it’s disturbing,” he brazenly admitted. “I hope it is actually because the whole point of that video was that it was so disturbing to me to see these images of human bondage, this very clean organized human bondage that seemed so shocking at first but then everyone just accepted it.”

It’s odd to hear an artist speak so freely and fearlessly about their work. But El-P is no ordinary artist. Void of any phony publicists and obnoxious rap crews, El-P stands behind, in front, on top and all over his work to deliver his own personal take on things. Whatever you do though, don’t call him a hero.

“I would never say that I am [a hero] ‘cause how could I know,” he said. “All I can do is just try to make the best, most genuine shit that I can possibly make and hope that it doesn’t suck basically.”

www.definitivejux.net/jukies/el-p/

www.myspace.com/elproducto

-Antoinette Mercurio 

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INTERVIEW with the band, Peel. 

Spill: Have you had any mainstream media coverage?

Peel: YES. I was on Page Six once for nearly punching an author.

S: Once you become popular with the masses do you think that will change

your direction musically or spiritually?

P:  That's a flattering set up. But I cannot answer, as I am a Discordant.

S: Did you form the band out of boredom and is urban angst and boredom

the "spirit" of your music? Is it the boredom that sometimes comes

with youth or is it something to do with where you are situated

geographically and culturally?

P: I didn't form the band, Derrick did; we love him for it, and he'll

never let us forget it.

S: As a band and personally have you traveled outside of the States and

do audiences outside of Texas relate to your music differently?

P: That is three questions. As a band we haven't traveled outside of

the states, but individually Allison studied in Russia, I went to

Japan in the winter to play blues guitar, apparently, and Josh leaves

this summer to work on Survivor in China.

S: Do the current politics of America influence your music (say the noise

and chaos in the music)?

P: I can't answer this because they're watching me.

S: The noisy guitar sound doesn't detract from the melody and soul of

your music, like a modern Television.  I noticed you like many of the

bands from that generation, your sound and style is compared to bands

like Velvet Underground, Flaming Lips etc.  Is this a deliberate

influence on your part or just the media labeling you?

P: Thank you. I think, like you, a lot of people are trying to pay us

a compliment; an unfortunate part of getting people to pay attention

to things has to name bands they know. Do we sound just like any

band? No, that's why I think you get the spectrum of comparisons.

Let's see what I can round up here..

S: Apples in Stereo Pavement Clap Your Hands Say Yeah Stereolab The Yeah Yeah Yeahs

The Get Up Kids The Pixies Rolling Stones Roxy Music Lou Reed Weezer

The Beta Band The Hold Steady Madness The Kinks Beck Superchunk The

Rembrandts Meat Puppets David Bowie Granddaddy The Velvet Underground

The Broken West The Futureheads The New Pornographers

S: The band is compared to bands from the Britain does the British sound

have much significance for you or any other band members?

P: I think so?

S: You are a young band, how did John Peel become an "inspiration" or is

it in name only?

P: We actually named ourselves after the MP3 blog reader Peel

(http://www.getpeel.com/) for OS X, even though it came out two years

after we formed.

S: How would you describe your sound and your vision for the band?

P: I try not to be in charge of sound and vision. I think we sound

like The Cars and we look like extras from the television show Weeds.

S: What do make of all these reality shows where pop stars are discovered

and groomed Do you find it unnatural or a legitimate route for a

singer or band to take if they want to be discovered?

P: It's about as natural as Columbus discovering America.

S: Do you do any writing yourself?  What do you do as a day job and does

it have any influence on your music?

P: At the recommendation of my lawyer, I will not answer this question.

S: Did you set out to become "indie" darlings or did it take you by surprise?

P: In setting goals, you have to set attainable goals. We just wanted

to make good songs and hang out. We were totally successful.

S: Are you plotting and planning anything in the near future that we can

look forward to, like a gig in Toronto?

P: Our goal is to play everywhere.

-Daria Lafontaine

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The Sea and Cake Stay Afloat

Since 1993, Chicago based band, The Sea and Cake, have managed to stay afloat in a time when music has become more about corporations and moneymaking.  Fourteen years and 7 albums since their self-titled debut, The Sea and Cake have released their newest album entitled Everybody.

This newest addition in fact is The Sea and Cake’s first album in nearly four years.  During this time the band pursued solo albums as well as international touring.  Everybody sees all the members coming back together to record another album for anyone who wants something other than what you get on the radio.

“We’re Art Rock mixed with experimental attitude,” Prekop says describing the sound of their music, “we want our music to reflect ideas beyond normalcy.”  The Sea and Cake has used everything from contemporary instruments to synthesizers when creating their music.  The music is positive and uplifting even for the most down and out people. 

For Everybody the band wanted to achieve a more realistic and natural sound.  The album sounds as though it could have been a live recording.  To achieve the desired sound for this album The Sea and Cake looked beyond their drummer John McEntire, who was also acting the part of their engineer, for recording efforts outside of the band.  They enlisted the talents of Brian Paulson, a producer whose experience includes work with Slint, Wilco, Angela Desveaux and hundreds of others.

The Sea and Cake touches on influences from a wide spectrum of sounds ranging from Brazilian to jazz to African guitars.  All of these have been prevalent in previous releases as well as in their latest.  With any new album with a new sound comes a new tour. 

“People don’t expect us to be as loud nor as heavy as we are when we play live,” Prekop notes.  “We enjoy playing energized shows where we can improvise on some of the songs from our albums, but there are also some songs that we play live just as they are on the album.” 

Prekop goes on to admit that before any show they feel nervous, but as soon as they play the first note of the first song that all slips away.  Perhaps it’s the couple of beers before the show or the response of the crowed, but regardless all members of the band have a general feeling of elation following the show.

The Sea and Cake have toured all around the World from Europe to Australia to Japan, where Prekop says they have been gaining popularity and the people are very responsive to the music.  By mid July the band will be back in the U.S. after a stint in Europe to play the Pitchfork Festival in their hometown of Chicago.  The festival is a celebration and tribute to Indie rock.

With the success of their change in sound and change in producers The Sea and Cake have had what some would call a rebirth in their musical inspiration.  Prekop also went on to comment that there could be a new album from the band sooner rather than later.

The Sea and Cake have been on tour now since the middle of May and will be playing in Toronto on Saturday June 2 at the Mod Club Theatre with The Zincs. 

-Phil Kedrosky

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PATRICK WOLF, POP MUSICS CLASSICAL SIDE

What happens when you combine a love for classical music and an ear for pop textures?  You end up with Patrick Wolf’s latest album, Magic Position.  Magic Position is a wonderful follow up to Wolf’s 2005, Wind in the Wires.  The album is a sleek 40 minute journey into Wolf’s personal balance of pop melodies, classical sensibilities, covering a diverse range of topics from love, joy and isolation, as well as collaborating with Marianne Faithfull and Edward Larrikin of Larrikin Love.  The true merit of this album lies within its diverse sounds and textures that Wolf provides though his ability to play the harp, clavinet, harpsichord, guitar, piano, autoharp, kantele, organ, mountain dulcimer, clavichord, harmonium, accordion, theremin, ukulele, viola and violin.  The album opens with Overture a marching beat with a backdrop of strings that pretty well sets the tone of the rest of the album letting you know this is not your regular pop album. Other notable tracks on the album include Magic Position, an instantly danceable upbeat song for the summer, The Stars a melancholically upbeat song that could have easily been a B-side for Broken Social Scene. 

Recently Patrick has been touring North America, doing shows with fellow Brit and break out sensation Amy Winehouse.  Spill was able to catch up with Patrick during his stop here in Toronto on May 13, and we discussed a wide range of topics including the recent misconceptions of his retirement as well as the growing interest in the media regarding his sexuality.

CAN YOU EXPLAIN HOW THE RECENT RETIREMENT RUMORS BEGAN?
I will never retire from music; I may one day retire from show business when I am about 78 and in the meantime try to take more rests in-between projects so that I have enough energy to do my best job. I’m not very good at remembering I have the same restrictions as the rest of us, flesh and bone.

HOW DID YOU HOOK UP WITH AMY WINEHOUSE FOR THE TOUR?
Our managers are good friends, and Amy was presented with my music as an option for support on her U.S tour and invited me along... It was a really fun tour to be on.

WHO OR WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST INFLUENCE ON YOUR CURRENT ALBUM "MAGIC POSITION" AND WHAT IS CURRENTLY INFLUENCING YOU NOW?
Hans Christian Andersen and the Romantic Ideals from the 50's. Rather than focusing on bums and tits I wanted to focus on Technicolor bluebirds, green fields, summer evenings, milky ways, and long secret kisses in the apple orchard.

HOW HAVE YOU SEEN YOUR PROGRESSION FROM LYCANTHROPY TO MAGIC POSITION?
I have grown from being an 18 year old sorrowful teenager to being 23 and world traveled. I have explored so much of the planet and myself in the last five or six years, and discovered a lot of confidence and happiness on my way.

WITH ALL THE LEFT OVER MATERIAL FROM "MAGIC POSITION"WHEN CAN WE EXPECT TO SEE A FOLLOW UP ALBUM?
I will start producing in November; I have many songs ready to take to studio. I don’t want to make any promises for time of release, I need to make sure I teach myself how to cook and clean again, get some human skills back after life on the road.

HOW DO YOU PERCEIVE THE CANADIAN INDIE SCENE COMPARED TO SAY THE AMERICAN INDIE SCENE OR UK INDIE SCENE?
There is an amazing D.I.Y aesthetic to way allot of Canadian musicians work. Everyone presses up their own records to a really high quality and has their own self sufficient way of releasing records that I find really inspiring. It is an aesthetic that used to be and is no longer alive in The U.K unless we are talking about underground dance music. It seems that Canada still hasn’t had its enthusiasm for making music changed by the piracy of the internet.. I know many musicians that simply can’t be bothered now that everyone has to get full time jobs as they can no longer make a penny from making records.

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON INTERNET PIRACY, SEEING THAT A BIG CHUNKOF YOUR MATERIAL WAS RELEASED A HEAD OF SCHEDULE
Well, as it affected my record sales by a huge amount.. It means allot of doors are closed to me during this album campaign. I don’t understand how people want good videos, productions and artworks when they are not prepared to invest in an artists work and career.

DO YOU SEE IT AS SOMETHING THAT HAS HELPED YOU GET RECOGNITION WITH PEOPLE WHO MIGHT NOT HAVE BEEN TURNED ON TOO YOU?
I don’t pay attention too much to these issues anymore. It’s a job for the marketing department.

 THERE SEEMS TO BE SOME INTEREST IN YOUR SEXUALITY, DO YOU SEE THIS AS AN ANNOYANCE BECAUSE IF FORCES PEOPLE TO LOOK AT THINGS OTHER THAN YOUR MUSIC OR IS IT SOMETHING THAT COMES WITH FAME AND NOTORIETY
I don’t care at all; we human beings tend to want to know the surface details before venturing further into another persons work or art. I have become used to being judged or celebrated for things that I don’t particularly care much about. My romantic choices are personal, yet as a musician that puts all of his life into a public communication, I like it that there are as few boundaries between the personal and the public. To tell the truth, nobody ever asked me such questions before this third album. I am happy to be here on this earth as an inspiration and entertainment for all sexualities, ages, nationalities and genders. I just like singing and writing songs and handing them over from one animal to another.

WHATS WAS THE BEST GIG YOU'VE PLAYED, AND WHATS WAS THE WORST GIG?
The best gig is still yet to be played.. That’s what keeps you going. And I try not to keep the word "worst" in my vocabulary.. I try to always find a positive to any negative situation.

WHAT'S ON YOUR IPOD RIGHT NOW?
I have the new Bjork album on my lite portable karaoke machine that I got from Vienna airport, currently listening to Wanderlust. Amazing brass harmonies. Very relevant lyrics for someone that’s been touring this album since last November.

IF YOU COULD COLLABORATE WITH ANYONE PAST AND PRESENT WHO WOULD IT BE?
Klaus Nomi from the past and Joni Mitchell from the present. I think our voices are in quite similar octaves at the moment, she has been a constant inspiration my whole life, I am so excited she is to be releasing a new record.

IF YOU WEREN'T DOING MUSIC YOU WOULD BE
I wanted to be an inventor when I was younger.

YEARS DOWN THE ROAD WHERE WILL WE SEE PATRICK WOLF
Live from the pyramids in Egypt with a laser show and flying white horses!

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Something Obscene – An interview with Trans Am
– Andrew Seale

Deep within the gears of the machine sit the boys from Trans Am, wrenches in hand, scolding the fluidity of current social conscience.  They are poised on the brink of interrupting the very combustion that controls modern music and pushes “the scene” onwards. But while they sit waiting to unleash the chaos upon more than twenty five years of MTV controlled music, they contemplate what “Obscene Strategies” could be used to keep their music spontaneous.

There is nothing old fashioned about the way the synth-pop band makes music. In the studio sits a large dry erase board, that at any give moment could list a set of random instructions. This is the heart of the “Obscene Strategies” Trans Am use to create the sonic explorations that make up their discography.  The method was inspired by Brian Eno’s “Oblique Strategies,” a deck of cards with random instructions on them geared towards “loosening creative blockages.” The process for Eno’s version was simple; when a studio engineer was stumped they would draw a card from the deck. The card could suggest “Prepare the song at a slow pace, then it speed it up” to which the engineer would follow the instruction.

For Trans Am’s latest album, Sex Change, the band devised its own set of random instructions to add more creativity and, essentially chaos, to the project.

Nathan Means, bass player and vocalist, says the goal of “Obscene Strategies” is to step away from using cards.

“Everything was written on a dry erase board… This helps stop things from becoming too formalized,” says Means who called Auckland, New Zealand home during production of the album.

“One of OS’ main thrusts is to disrupt bad habits in the studio,” Means says. “All habits are bad habits in the studio – even OS… So you have to tear this down as well.”

The bass player, who also mans the synths, notes that dry erase boards remove the aspect of perpetually drawing the same OS card.

“What if you kept drawing the card “hose down the studio?” asks Means. “Well, that’s refreshing once, funny twice, and really hilarious the third time, but OS are very results-oriented and you wouldn’t get too much done if you were hosing down the studio every few hours.”

Not that residing in an immaculate studio would hinder creativity for a band that has produced eight albums since their inception in 1990.

Of course the “Obscene Strategies” method was at odds with the distance between band members. Although originally formed in the politically-supercharged capital of Washington, D.C., members abandoned their home after releasing their last album Liberation in 2004 and dispersed throughout the globe. Means went to Auckland, guitarist Phil Manley settled in San Francisco and drummer Sebastian Thomson divided his time between London and New York. The newly transcontinental group had to struggle against electronic communication to keep the band together.

“We composed music independently in our home studios and sent it around the world,” Means says. “But it was hard to rigorously enforce an OS regime on the others without some sort of CTV hookup so you can make sure they aren’t fucking around and using traditional recording techniques.” “Because of this security issue, it was easier to record when we were all in one place,” adds the bassist.  Sex Change isn’t entirely a by-product of obscure recording tactics and transcontinental file sharing. The album, started in 2006, was driven by the general desire of the band to create music.

“Making a Trans Am album isn’t like any process they might describe at, say, a community college creative writing class,” Means says. “The “inspiration” is you like making new music or that you need to make more money from a new album and tour, or both.” The music itself is driven by different sources of inspiration.

“On a more day-to-day, hands on level, the inspiration comes from fumbling around with instruments or melodies or rhythms or drugs or effects pedals,” says the bass player. “I would say we try to draw from as many sources as possible because it makes recording easier.” When the guys are actually together in the same studio, Means says they have a specific routine they fall into. “I basically sit back and eat Paninis – Seb secretly programs drum beats or adds percussion tracks that will save the song. Phil does lots of guitar overdubs,” he says. 

“Sometimes I yell at them (with my mouth full) about how much this song sucks. Then once the song is almost done, I rise up and play a beautiful, hypnotic melody over the end of the track to provide a graceful ending,” says the bassist, revealing his sense of humour.

“This is what “Exit Management Solutions” is all about.” Although the band is known for its instrumental sound, when lyrics are necessary they are usually the last part of the recording process. “The album could have been horrible, instead it’s pretty great,” Means said. “That’s rewarding.” Sex Change has the makings to be one of the band’s strongest albums to date. With its rhythmic synth-pop and disco undertones the album shows a maturing of the bands sound. Means admits the band has changed a lot over the past 17 years. “We aren’t totally drunk onstage anymore, which is generally good,” Means says before rethinking his answer. “Although when you do a stinker show, you can really remember all the details – which sucks.” The band is also more confident in its performance. “We don’t dance around the subject at hand: we just deliver a 45-60 minute set of high-quality entertainment.”

As for the future of Trans Am, Means and the band are prepared to, like the OS cards suggest, and give in to the randomness of society. “(We have) 25 shows in the US and Europe – Then it’s the great unknown.” Although the bands music wouldn’t sound out of place on a film score the band hasn’t gotten the right offer yet. “Aside from a few smaller independent or foreign films, we haven’t gotten practically any movie offers,” says the bassist, a little baffled. “Maybe it’s too obvious to use our music? I think we’d be up for composing a soundtrack as well.”

When you’re dealing with Trans Am and their “Obscene Strategies” you never know what you’ll come across. When asked if there are any producers the band would like to work with, Means displays his interest in getting an eclectic sound for every record.

“I don’t know –Dr. Dre?” says the musician. “We’d like to work with people who can make music sound spontaneous and fun, even if it’s really not.” 

Therein lies the beauty and spontaneity of Trans Am. For every corporate-bred, money grabbing pop album sits an enlightening musical experience, such as Sex Change waiting to disrupt society’s view on music. And who knows – maybe they’ll get to drop the wrench in the gears yet.

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The Wassabi Collective Jam To The Beat Of Their Own Drum\

The West Coast-bred collective stay true to their roots on their debut LP Stories Not Forgotten and make it a point to never forget where they come from.

Normally when a band describes what they’re about, they tend to embellish the facts. Information gets skewed, something gets lost in the translation and you’re left covering a band that’s so confusing you don’t know where the story begins. Thankfully The Wassabi Collective are clear about who they are and appreciate the path they’ve taken to get where they are that confusion seems like the last thing to cross one’s mind.

The Nelson, British Columbia quintet are an eclectic live band who dive into different musical genres to create their own unique sound. Imagine Bob Marley jamming with Sergio Mendes and Laurent Garnier manning the 1s and 2s. Sounds impossible but the Wassabi Collective manage to pull it together – not just live but enough to put together an album as well. Stories Not Forgotten is their debut LP and even though the CD isn’t slated for an official release until the fall, Wassabi haven’t wasted any time pressing some copies for Canadian Music Week.

Having released their Cato and Blue EPs in the past, guitarist and vocalist Brent ‘Gisto’ Hongisto feels Stories is a tighter collection of the band’s sound and lyrics.

“This one’s more refined and to the point,” he said. “A lot of the songs on the album are shorter, they’ve got verses and choruses where as in the past we’ve had longer, more jammed types of pieces that go through more places and end up being a lot longer.”

Gisto explained that the group – comprised of Melissa Meretsky, Jimmy Lewis, Scott Milne and Rahj Levinson – was intent on staying focused with this album to create a more intricate and cultivated sound.

“It’s the kind of music that climaxes,” he said. “It’ll build you up to a peak and then hold you there.”

Produced in their hometown of Nelson, it appears the laid back attitude usually associated with the west coast played a role in the band’s music. Much like the loose wild side of nature, Wassabi absorbed the atmosphere around them and released their energy into Stories.

“Our music has a free moving sound to it. The textures and the rhythms meld together in unique ways kind of like nature,” Gisto explained. “There are a lot of forests and mountains that surround us in Nelson and having all that around us all the time helps us think outside the box.”

Although Wassabi have been together for a number of years, their career has primarily been built on touring and live shows. In fact their touring was the inspiration for the album’s title.

“We’ve got lots of stories to tell and there’s lots of that in our music,” Gisto said. “One note or one beat of the drum in our music is kind of like the whole essence of everything we’ve experienced.”

To express music as something that takes you places and moves you through time is pretty ambitious. Gisto mentioned that their shows are like an experience with a lot of grooves to dance to. After seeing Wassabi perform at the Annex Wreck Room in Toronto during CMW, the crowd’s dance-fuelled and excited response to their set tells me Gisto wasn’t exaggerating.

“Through out all our lyrics and the vibe of our music, the theme is always positivity, self-motivation and trying to make a positive change for the world around you,” he went on to say.

Rest assured that Wassabi’s new album is an extension of their live shows – a still recording of their chance to get people moving, grooving and thinking all at the same time.

“It captures a moment in history,” Gisto said. “The stories and things we’ve been through we won’t forget them. We just keep taking them with us and keep going.”

The Wassabi Collective will continue singing about their Stories on March 23 when they perform at the Reverb in Toronto.

www.myspace.com/wassabicollective

www.wassabi.net

-Antoinette Mercurio

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Southern Belles and Magic Spells:The Pierces Talk Rock
The Pierces: Third Time’s a Charm
By John Tracey

Born and bred in Birmingham, Alabama, that dichotomous bastion of southern hospitality and terrible tragedy, the sisters Pierce spent their formative years preparing for a life in the spotlight.

“We always knew we’d do something with music,” says Catherine, younger of the two siblings. “We dabbled in other arts – we were ballet dancers for a long time and I’m a painter - but we always knew that was kind of the main thing we wanted to do.”

And she’s not being bombastic when she uses the word “always”.

“[Dad] had us singing as soon as we could speak pretty much,” she says seriously.

Ballet dancers since an early age, the Pierces’ long hours of practice saved them the agony of the typical high-school experience, furnishing them with the benefits of a home-schooled education from their boho parents (their mother is an artist, their father a musician).

“[A] lot of the girls in the ballet school were doing it because it gave you a lot more time to rehearse and train. We were a very close family, a very creative family, so it gave us a lot more opportunity to focus on what we wanted to focus on.”

Their education was anything but common; formal academics were heavily supplemented with classes in singing, dancing, theatre, painting, and writing. And what scholarship in hippie enlightenment could be complete without daily classes in daydreaming, spell-casting and herbology? Still, it was dad’s musical mentorship to which the sisters really responded; records by Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, and southern rock fave Alabama replaced textbooks.

“He’s always been in bands – well, not in the last few years – but he was in different bands for 40 years, just a lot of fun stuff. He was never a Stage Dad or anything, he just loved it and that kind of rubbed off on us.”

Combining their cultivated understanding of melody, harmony and lyricism with the discipline acquired through their ballet years, the Pierces were well-equipped for a career in song-craft.

“Being a performer in general helps you in other areas where you perform,” Catherine explains. “So we had a lot of experience being on stage, being in front of people… I guess it all kind of feeds off each other.”

On recording with her big sis (Catherine is 29; Allison, 31), Catherine is quite candid: sisterly squabbles can be frequent.

“We write our own songs, then she’ll put a harmony on mine or I’ll put a harmony on hers. [O]n this record we did collaborate on a few, but still, we never sat down in a room and said, ‘Alright, let’s write a song from scratch.’ When we just sit there and try to write together, we end up nit-picking and fighting over what word is going to be there, like ‘we should say dream, instead of cream’.

“We’ll fight over which songs are going on the record. There’s always more songs that we have than can go on it, so we’ll fight about ‘I want this one! This one’s my favorite – it has to go on there!’ In the end, we try to just step back and look at what’s best for the record as a whole.”

Now, after six creatively vexing years and two unsuccessful albums (2000’s The Pierces and 2005’s The Light of the Moon), Catherine and Allison have finally seen their dreams and hard work funneled into a project of their own vision. Thirteen Tales of Love & Revenge finds the Pierces ditching the slick-suited label-sharks who were more concerned with the girls’ jaw-dropping good looks than their considerable folk and pop sensibilities, and who ultimately ran roughshod over the sisters’ personal tastes and creative ideas.

“This time our producer was really open to whatever ideas we had,” Catherine enthuses. “The first record we didn’t know what we were doing, what we wanted; we were young. The second record, the producer was pretty controlling and had a specific vision that we did not share, but the label ended up liking his vision, so we kind of just had to go along with it. I guess we could have fought it a little more, but when you’re in the moment, you’re scared, you’re scared of losing your record deal, whatever. But this time we made the record on our own before we signed to the label and we just had fun. We just went in the studio and did whatever we wanted and came up with what you have now.”

And what exactly is this album? It’s Frente’s folk-pop meets Amy Winehouse’s boozy-cool meets the over-the-top theatrics of Rufus Wainwright. Current home Lizard King Records describes it as “a fever-induced gypsy sound”; in reality, it’s the all-or-nothing cry of pent-up artistic frustration bursting at the seams. From the surreptitious bits of dialogue in album opener “Secret” to the Lucinda Williams-style country rock of “The Power of…”; from the ‘60s spy movie lounge of “Turn on Billie” to the driving rhythm and ironic smarminess of single “Boring”, it’s Thirteen Tales in thirteen different styles, a hydra-headed document of the Pierces running amok in their own creativity. 

Recorded in Williamsburg after Catherine and Allison made the long trek northward to New York City, they recruited writer, multi-instrumentalist and brother-in-arms Roger Greenawalt (Adam Green, Ben Kweller) to oversee production duties; it was a fortuitous meeting of the minds. He co-wrote four songs and plays on every track on the album.

“[Roger] can play anything and he’s just kind of kooky and crazy; he’ll just pick up new instruments – you know, if you say, ‘let’s throw a banjo on this,’ he’ll just pull a banjo off the wall and puts it on there, no question.”

Catherine recently became engaged to Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond Jr., and, like all good rock n’ roll couples, they put familial duties aside and opted to tour the UK together instead (Hammond Jr. was touring behind his own solo album Yours to Keep). 

How did the transition from cohabitation to co-headlining go?

“It was great. We had a great tour with him. [The crowds] seemed to like it, for the most part. There were a couple crowds that were a little cool, but that always happens when you’re the opener. You know, they don’t know what to expect and whatever, but for the most part, we won them over and they were enthusiastic!”

Were they partial to any particular city?

“Glasgow was great. They were just really excited and enthusiastic and they seemed like they wanted to have a good time. Everyone said, the crowds there will either love you or hate you, and the fact that they loved us… it felt like we had won, or won them over anyway.”

Back now in their de facto new home of the Lower East Side, do they miss the South?

“I miss the weather. It’s really beautiful where we live. There’s not a lot of greenery in New York, so I guess I miss that the most. But I love New York and I love the people here and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else… The people, the food… the general vibe of it. There’s always something going on.”

Before we hang up, I have to get back to their home-schooled days; I can’t help but press Catherine on her spell-casting lessons. Does she have a favourite spell?

“When we’re talking about spells, it’s more about creating a positive idea of what you want in your life. So I guess that’s my favorite one: just that there’s something that you need in your life, something that would make you happy, just kind of pretend[ing] like it’s already happened or acting like it’s going to happen. That’s what we mean.”

By the way their career has been reborn, in the image they envisioned, and on their terms, it would seem as if her spells actually work.  Third time’s a charm, I guess.

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The Butterfly Explosion: The [P]luck of the Irish
By John Tracey

That most illustrious of Irish poets, W.B. Yeats, held a firm belief in the spiraling nature of history, what he called a “gyre”; that is, at some point over the course of an historical narrative, a moment would be reached wherein an entirely new historical age would be spawned. For whatever reason – fate, divine intervention, what have you – history stops unfolding in the expected manner and spirals off in another direction altogether; Yeats saw the Fall of Troy as just such a moment, labeling it the birth of the modern era. While it would seem a little rich to attribute such gravitas to the realm of pop music, it can certainly be said that an ample serving of old-fashioned luck significantly altered the career of Dublin’s feedback-frenzied revisionists, The Butterfly Explosion, transporting them from the pubs and clubs of Ireland to the ears of the top record label A&R reps hungry for the Next Big Thing.

“Out of the blue we sent in a CD to South By South West 2006,” the affable and appreciative singer, guitarist and band-progenitor ,Gazz Carr, gushes, discussing the annual Austin, Texas-based farmer’s market of what’s hot and what’s hotter in pop music. “We got selected which was a shock to us because we had only played a handful of gigs outside of Ireland. I’d love to meet the person that listened to our CD and said ‘Get these guys in’ ‘cause that’s really where the buzz started for us back home and across the water as well. It’s been busy ever since.”

With only three EP releases to their name, you can forgive yourself if you have not heard about The Butterfly Effect, yet. “Yet” being the operative word in that sentence: with their sensitive boy/beautiful girl vocal flirtings, layers of dreamy guitars awash in fuzzed-out electronics, and mid-tempo rhythmic pacing, the Dublin quintet gaze shoe-ward to the halcyon days of Slowdive, Lush, and, of course, their Irish brethren My Bloody Valentine. And people are noticing.

On their own shores, where the formerly favored punk rock formula of four boys, four jeans, and four cases of anemic undernourishment has given way to critical ennui, the Butterfly Explosion’s warm and narcotic cocoons have been welcomed with open arms. With songs floating well past the three-minute mark, the Butterfly Explosion reach to the visceral and reflective mind-set rather than the of-the-moment, instantly-dated, Attention Deficit Disorderly variety. Indeed, the several instrumentals found throughout their musical output evoke languid images at once glossy and foggy, creating sonic textures that would not be out of place on an Angelo Badalamenti film score.

Despite this, Carr stresses that this was not the band’s intent: “I wouldn’t say film is an influence, no. We kind of like creating soundscapes, layers of sounds and guitars and stuff. That’s just our approach, you know? But listening back to our instrumental tracks, I could certainly imagine them suiting films, yeah.”

As far as influences are concerned, the band wears them proudly on their sleeve.

“We’ve been compared to a lot of bands and we don’t hide the fact that we were influenced by bands like the Smashing Pumpkins, Explosions in the Sky and My Bloody Valentine,” Carr explains. “But I think from all of those influences we’ve developed our own sound. We made it our own, yeah.”

Their history is a short one, and speaks as much to fate as it does to their own talents. After finishing his studies at college, Carr began advertising for band members. “I had been writing songs for a couple of years, so I started putting ads out. The drummer, Peter [Savage] was the only one I knew; John [Canavan, guitarist] I met through an ad on the internet.” 

With the addition of Sorcha Brennan’s breathy vocals and ethereal keyboard work and Danny Conway’s crisp, guiding-light-through-the-haze drumming, it was nearly a year later before they put the full band in place.

“[Our sound] developed over a year of us playing together. I guess I had already written about twenty songs when the band formed over the previous year or two and it was a case of filtering out which ones had the vibes we were going for. We narrowed it down to about eight or nine songs from them; the band had a massive influence collectively over where the sound was going and it just became what it is now.” 

With a full line up of musicians and a unifying sound at the ready, the Butterfly Explosion were simply poised to begin the long and exhausting process of making a living doing what they loved.

“We recorded an EP, so that would have been two years ago. We put out a demo… it was kind of a slow start for us,” Carr reflects. “We thought it was a great EP, but when you’re unknown it’s hard to get interest and get people to listen to it.” 

And then the aforementioned fate came into play. Powerhouse performances at SXSW had label heads turning and it was not long before they signed to Killing Pop Records and were touring with a slew of hot indie rockers. History was indeed spiraling off in another direction for Carr and Co., a fact the singer graciously recognizes.

“[We’ve got to play] with a lot of cool bands... We managed to get hooked up with and play with Howling Bells last month at their Irish tour and 65 Days of Static are coming over in May to Ireland and we’re doing their Irish tour with them as well. Lots of other cool bands over the last year: Serena Maneesh, the Delays, Giant Drag…”

Evidently a big supporter of the pay-it-forward philosophy, Carr’s support for his peers is unbridled, and he goes on:

“One that we were most blown away by – I wouldn’t say we complement them, but we’re definitely the same kind of vibe - is a San Francisco band, Film School. We supported them at [New York’s] The Mercury Lounge last year and it’s not often you have all of us collectively saying, ‘Wow. They are amazing,” but we all did. To this day, they’re one of the best bands we’ve seen live. Fantastic sound.”

Of The Butterfly Explosion’s own live performances, Carr is passionate to say the least, and one can almost hear the smile of self-satisfaction crossing his face as he relishes recalling recent performances.  “We’re louder live. We kind of indulge in our effects on stage. Myself and John, the other guitarist, have a ridiculous rack of pedals.”

They are also known for throwing in a cover song or two, such as entwining the Simple Minds classic “Don’t You Forget About Me” into show staple “The Score”. “[There are] plenty of covers we’d like to perform,” Carr enthuses.  “I’m just a sucker for ‘80s tunes, to be honest; everything from Depeche Mode to the Cure to Duran Duran.”

Nevertheless, the band was not always so successful translating their pitch-perfect studio sessions to the stage. 

“I’ll admit it took us a couple of gigs with some of the songs [to get it right]. I have no problem admitting that the first time [we played] one of the tracks - “Sophia”… we played it live for the first time at a gig in New York last year and it sounded awful.  We didn’t know what to do; there’s no drums on the track so when we went home – we didn’t play it again in America on that particularly short tour – so when we went home we said, ‘we’re going to have to do this a different way live’. The way we do it live now is really, really powerful whereas we couldn’t really play it the way it was on CD ‘cause it was just too mellow, too quiet without the drums. But we just worked around it and found a way to play it live that sounds best. It was the same with a lot of the songs.”

As far as The Butterfly Explosion’s advice for struggling bands awaiting their life-changing Yeats-ian moment, Carr is low-key, but keen to expound the merits of self-promotion.

“Definitely patience is one thing, and trying to take things as far as you can on your own.

It’s energy-draining, but well worth it. It’s been two years now since we started and it was definitely a slow first year but the momentum has definitely gathered in the second year, the last year. We’re looking to take it a lot further. So [be] patient and keep driving.”

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Running in Circles: an interview with Rum Runner.
By: James Sandham

Calgary-based punk group Rum Runner have an odd promotional strategy: they track you after a bad review and tell you how indifferent they are to it. That, at least, was how I came to interview the band. I’d always heard the west is different, but this was new for me. But I guess that’s how they do PR out on the frontier.

Rum Runner have been around since late 2001, when, according to the group’s myspace (www.myspace.com/rumrunner), an elite handful of Calgary’s punky misfits “conceded that the real problem with punk rock was that its champions were always trying to usher it another step forward when it hadn't actually been properly acquainted with the past.” Seeing opportunity in this foible, the Rum Runner crew decided to “forfeit orthodoxy” and explore instead “the potential for rebel music to meld harmoniously with some of the twentieth century's most eclectic, if somewhat seedy, art forms. After all, why shouldn’t the grit of Delta blues, the street poetry of hardboiled fiction and the existentialism of film noir be embraced by a genre that was originally based on unorthodoxy itself? As there is no cogent answer to this question, Rum Runner was birthed out of absolute necessity.” In other words, taken aback by the unprecedented realization that punk might have “no future,” Rum Runner decided to do the classic punk act instead band.

“Rum Runner have been around since the autumn of 2001,” confirms Al, who, along with Rum Runner’s other six members, has apparently decided to eschew the bourgeois convention of surnames. They were initially “formed by Kurt, Mike and myself after our previous bands disintegrated.  Kurt and I had been playing together for a couple of years already when we heard Mike plays drums impressively and decided to hire him on. Mike now plays guitar for us.”

Since then, the six have released several albums, including A Tribute to the Pogues 7” (2003), Association (2004), Dead Men are Heavier than Broken Hearts 7” (2005), and their latest oeuvre, Rum Runner in Guns at Cyrano’s (2006). They have also, Al says, come to the rather disappointing realization that while “the best thing about Calgary’s punk scene is that there are a lot great bands here, the worst thing is that not too many people care.” Even the locals won’t give it up. “There’s a bunch of rednecks driving around in SUVs, disguised as business men,” says Al of his Alberta brethren.  “They’ll go see Shania Twain if their company buys them box seats but they won’t go see a local [band] play.”

Subsequently, “we tour as much as we can,” Al says. “But we’re all in school or involved with careers and girlfriends and such, and Rum Runner is just one priority among many. But we try to hit the road as much as possible on weekends and we’ll usually do something extensive at least once or twice a year.”

Nonetheless, and despite the difficulties, “I feel great about being an independent artist,” Al says.  “My best friends and I get to play music that we enjoy playing and we have a small but supportive fanbase and equally small and supportive record labels backing us up. It would be nice to do this as a living but I’m not interested in playing the kind of music that the general public wants to hear, no matter how much they paid me.”

Truly, spoken like a true punk.

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Dirty Penny

A Coin Worth Hanging On To

Dirty Penny has been a refreshing option in Toronto’s rock scene for seven years now.  I had the privilege of attending the bands’ recent comeback show at Clinton’s, their first show in almost a year.  The crowd welcomed back their local favourites enthusiastically, throwing inside jokes and requests at the stage with regularity.  On this evening the group is celebrating the release of their new album, Tada!  While they have released two EPs, this is their first full length, and it covers genres from Goth to disco. The show is a highly energetic affair, with the group sounding tight and comfortable on stage as they perform the new batch of songs.

One week after the show I spoke with vocalist Jason Cavener, guitarist Raja Khanna and guitarist/keyboardist Rich Lachman.  We met in Raja’s basement studio where I was pleasantly greeted with a homemade latte.  Addressing the issue of their name follows brief conversation on American remakes of Kurosawa films.  According to certain urban dictionaries Dirty Penny refers to what a certain part of the body tastes like.  The group insists that they had no idea their name made any reference to analingus, but has had the name since 2000 and haven’t considered changing it.  Jason explains, “I like the name because everybody’s always got a dirty penny.” Indeed. He also informs me that the band must contest not only with the connotations of their name but also with other groups blatantly stealing the name from them. “Some Motley Crue cover group in Texas, I think.  They didn’t even ask us! They just took it!  I’m taking care of that though.”

Tada! was recorded at Psychedome Studios over 3 ½ days. Raja notes that their producer refused almost every attempt to add special effects, and the studio wasn’t equipped with any of the synthesizers they were used to practicing with.  “Being surrounded by strictly pure sounding instruments, and working with these old Hammond organs really forced us to come up with new arrangements for all the songs, and the album certainly benefited.” Over the album’s 34 minutes the group plays a set that is at times ultra poppy, and at others dark and menacing.  The poster on a Winnebago outside the studio provided the band with an early option for a cover and title.  Raja shows me a picture of a cute little dog and along the side it reads “A Touch of Class.”  Several members thought that crossing out some letters and calling the album “A touch of Ass” would be an amusing reference to the connotations of their name.  In the end though they settled on Tada!, which doesn’t have connotations of ass or class.  Since naming the album the word ‘Tada’ has been added to the Oxford English Dictionary.  The band takes full credit for bringing this phrase to the mainstream.

Despite splitting heirs on the name of the album, the group comes together over their love of different music.  While each member has one artist and genre they praise above all else, they all have a similarly wide range of tastes.  It is this eclectic sound that comes out on the album.  Jason brings the humour into the band with his offbeat lyrics, and sites Ween as one of his influences.  It’s been suggested that the group has a very Velvet Underground sound, but Jason claims his vocal similarities to Lou Reed are the basis for this and insists that Reed is not his father.  Main composer Raja sites Bauhaus as his musical god, and the gothic new wave sound can be found on covers, “Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “Cigarettes and Whisky.”  While “Big Rock” always seemed like a cute little tune, Rich points out that by adding darker tones they are exposing the true spirit of the hedonist anthem.  Rich tends to bring more of a funk and disco style of play to the band. “I hate disco but it’s just so fun to play.” His funky keyboards and drummer Sarah Quinn’s percussion abound on “HLC,” which is a song that would not sound out of place on a Primus album.  “I think what we are trying to do is achieve a happy middle ground between Ween, Bauhaus and Abba.”  When asked if they make a conscious effort to give each song a different sound Rich says that ‘the music must excite them in order to make the album cut.’  Raja states that, “It is important that the music we play doesn’t sound derivative of anything else available.  The whole point is that only fresh and interesting music has ended up on the album.  Whenever we sound like somebody else Jay (Larson, bassist) is sure to speak up, and then we scrap that song.  He’s our quality control.”

While Dirty Penny’s music is at times quite heavy and ominous, the lyrics coupled with Jason’s unique vocals sound peculiar.  Some song concepts include Noah collecting animals for his arc, bathing infants, and needing a hip operation.  The video for “Bomb Ardier” (a song that sounds like Loaded-era Velvet Underground) has a bunch of heads with twirling nose hairs setting fire to the evil slumlord of Montreal.  The band jests that the song itself is their answer to anyone that ever wondered what Bombardier (snowmobiles/jet skis) actually means.  With all this humour involved I ask the band whether or not it is difficult to maintain their status as a rock group without moving into the novelty territory owned by Weird Al?  Jason admits that he never sits down and intentionally tries to write an amusing song. “I write lyrics like this because I could never go up there and sing about preachy things.  I just write lyrics that I will feel comfortable singing.  But I have no problem with being a novelty act.  I’d actually love to know how it feels to be a novelty.”

At the show the groups’ anthem and regular closer, “La Poutine” garners the largest amount of support.  The crowd cheers with anticipation at the first hints of the song’s psychedelic opening.  “It’s by no means our best song but the audience responds to it,” says Raja.  The band is currently rallying to have the song become Canada’s newest national anthem.  Jason claims, “It’s just obnoxious enough to get us the audience we need.  It’s getting airplay in Australia!”  They expect the song will soon take off in Amsterdam, a country fascinated with all things Canadian, and that it might be the perfect theme song for a Canadian Heritage commercial.  “We are pretty flagrantly looking for some product to attach our song too.  It was designed for a commercial.” Until the big corporations come knocking, Raja says the band is eager to start playing gigs again.  “We expect things to really take off when we find a country where payola is still legal.”

Tada! is in stores and available on iTunes, Pure Tracks and Amazon.  Check them out at ThatsMyDirtyPenny.com, or myspace.com/thatsmydirtypenny.

-Daniel Demois

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Kids On TV Mix It Up
By Antoinette Mercurio

If there’s one word to describe, Kids On TV, it’s wild. They are completely unrestrained, untamed and extremely foolish – but in a good way. This punk-disco-house band are so wickedly fun it seems fitting that they’ve named their debut LP Mixing Business With Pleasure. After a few years together and a slew of remixes under their belt KOTV – comprised of John Caffery, Scott Kerr (DJ alias Minus Smile) and Roxanne Luchak – got a couple of mics together, a busted laptop and hoped for the best. After chatting with band mates Caffery and Kerr, I wondered if mixing business with pleasure was always a good idea.

“Yes!” they both emphatically exclaim.

“The whole notion of labour is problematic when the definition includes that its gotta be unpleasant,” Kerr said.

“And why should our society be cursed to work all this time and not enjoy it?” Caffery added on. “A lot of people get a chance in life to pick a path where you can do something that’s more enjoyable.”

“So the album could be seen as kind of a manifesto for that worldview,” Kerr explained.

Their fun business outlook has worked to their advantage since they’ve garnered a bit of a cult following in the city as the go-to folks on where to find the hottest parties and killer music. But as much as KOTV are known for their over-the-top crazy parties and creative projects, it appears not everyone shares their liberal opinions.

On March 1, the band’s MySpace account was deleted without explanation or warning. They were given a flimsy email stating the regulations they might have crossed but no official reason as to why they were deleted.

“I think that the queer content of our music, of our imagery they may find it offensive or they may think it’s not appropriate for the public,” Caffery said. “But it’s all speculation ‘cause they won’t answer us.”

Caffery explained that the only response MySpace gave the group was that they can’t respond to specific deletions but the band must have violated one of the terms for this to happen.

“They sent us a list of reasons why we were deleted and the only thing that seemed to apply to us was sexually suggestive photos,” Caffery assumed. “To me the term sexually suggestive is so vague and so broad that it could really be anything.”

As much as this MySpace incident may have bruised their upbeat attitudes, the trio came back and fought harder. KOTV posted three more MySpace pages as a way to tell the corporate suits that they weren’t going away so easily. This might seem like a small feat to some but its actions such as this that really reflect KOTV’s fighting spirit. Beyond the glitzy costumes and exuberant parties is a band with a mission.

“We’re definitely a message band,” Caffery said. “We have things we want to say.”

“There’s a kind of edutainment aspect to it,” Kerr added on. “John’s lyrics often tell these first-person stories where somebody’s being oppressed and fights back and has their victory and that’s kind of the arc of the lyrics.”

As the principal songwriter in the band, Caffery not only delves into personal experiences for inspiration but he looks to the larger gay/activist community for some ideas.

“Part of what we do is we like to pay recognition to people who we feel are important,” Caffery explained.

KOTV is big on telling stories, not just accurately, but honouring those in the community who have taken a stand and stood their ground on important issues.

“It’s kind of like the story that we’re telling is a collected story of a larger group of people,” Kerr said. “Having community values and being liberated at any level is a huge source of strength and inspiration to us.”

This is the business side of KOTV. They may be having fun making music and throwing parties but behind the scenes their intentions are noble and socially conscious. They make no apologies for their work or beliefs and they encourage others to adopt the same attitude. Their dispute with MySpace might not ever be fully explained to them but they can’t be bothered to let that hold them back. KOTV aren’t changing for anyone and as Caffery tells me, the band aren’t going to let a little ignorance rain on their parade.

“They can delete us but they can’t make us disappear.”

Kids On TV are currently spreading some pleasure on tour in Europe. They’ll return to Toronto on May 25 for their album release event at Buddies In Bad Times Theatre. 

www.kidsontv.biz

www.myspace.com/kidsontv2

www.myspace.com/kidsontv3

www.myspace.com/kidsontv4

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Hardcore and Hair Metal
The Lost Civilizations

By Andrew Seale

The Bovine Sex Club is filled with the stench of weed, Jagermeister and leather. From the ceiling hang dirty thongs and disfigured dolls. The bar is packed with girls in studded-leather push up bras and tediously overdone make-up. Guys with hair past their shoulders stumble to the bar for more cheap whiskey. The speakers pound music from the likes of Cinderella, Poison and Helix. The year is 1982 – at least for tonight, and hair metal reigns.

The speakers cut out and all eyes turn to the stage. A tall figure with long, wavy hair dressed in a blue hoodie with the words “American Hardcore” on the front, climbs the worn wooden stairs. With the exception of a few clanking glasses, the entire congress of tattooed, forgotten souls look on as the charmingly frazzled man addresses the crowd. “Tonight we’re here to celebrate drinking beer, getting laid and kicking ass. We’re here to celebrate hair metal,” he yells.

The entire collective erupts with cheers and whistling. Above the crowd clenched fists are thrust as a sign of allegiance to the extinct art form that was hair metal. Tonight is a night of celebration. And at the centre of that celebration is Steven Blush, author of American Hair Metal. The night wages on as 80's metal tribute bands entertain the crowd. The bar is packed as more and more metalheads are assimilated into the masses. The party shows no signs of letting up until speakers explode or the Jager supply is exhausted. Blush watches with schoolboy intrigue.

Ten hours earlier I sit in the Sheraton hotel lobby watching the white-collar swine scurry to and fro. They barely notice the ringing of the fire alarm and electronic voice advising “This is just a test.” This is perhaps the least hardcore environment to meet up with one of the foremost musical historians of the forgotten hardcore music scene. But maybe that’s what it’s all about ­– the irony. Blush’s work is filled with stories of life after music. Who’s to say the white-collared men of this lobby and the skinheads of the former hardcore scene aren’t one and the same.

Blush grew up ten miles from the suburbs of New Jersey. He was an average teen raised on Zeppelin and Pink Floyd. In 1979, when Blush was fifteen, he went on an exchange to England. When he got there people were saying punk rock was over. The Sex Pistols had just broken up and everyone told him he’d missed it. But he caught a few shows and was hooked. He came back with a newfound respect for music. “I was a fan and there were three kids in my town who knew what this stuff was,” the journalist says as he sits in his hotel room.

At this point, most other kids in the town were into fixing cars and listening to metal. They didn’t subscribe to the anti-establishment style of music and outcast those who listened to it. “They wanted to kick your ass for wearing a button,” Blush says remembering high school. “It just made me more and more into it.”  But it was never really his music. Blush had come too late to bask in the teenage angst of punk-rock.  Instead he was treated to an endless legion of Sex Pistol knock offs and Clash clones. And then it all changed. In 1980, Blush went to George Washington College in D.C. for Political Science. He expected to find a music scene much like the one in New York.  “It was definitely different,” Blush says. “What was happening in D.C. was a new kind of music.”

On St. Valentine’s Day, 1981, when Blush was in his freshmen year of college, he went to see a show at the 9:30 club in Washington. The band was Black Flag.  The young political science major’s life was changed forever.  “That was it. I had discovered my version of punk,” the writer says. He loved all the other music but hardcore was his.  From then on, Blush’s life was devoted to hardcore. He became a promoter and helped to book touring bands.  “The first time I did it, I booked the Dead Kennedys in the school cafeteria and almost got thrown out of school,” Blush says with a grin. He went on to promote 20 shows and even managed a band called No Trend that toured with the Dead Kennedys.  “I saw all these things, I experienced the whole thing. I was in the middle of it,” says Blush as he glances out the window in his hotel room.

But it was short lived. Hardcore didn’t make it out of the eighties. Groups disappeared and like punk rock, were replaced by cheap imitators. It was time to let go.  “Somewhere in the mid-eighties, like everyone else in the book, I bailed on it. I just moved on. I got into new things.”  Blush worked as a Journalist in New York where he was an editor at Paper magazine and ran his own magazine, Seconds.  He was there at the height of the Grunge explosion led by Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney.  “I knew all the grunge bands because they were all hardcore kids,” says Blush. I can tell from his misdemeanor this is a man who lives and breathes music. Not one to namedrop, he mentions hanging out with Mudhoney and Soundgarden as though they’re nobodies.  “I was there at the heart of that,” Blush says.  “I just kind of burnt out on music after that."  Blush wandered through the nineties, distancing himself from the alternative music polluting the airwaves. It was a half-decade littered with boy bands and young girls in clothes too tight for their age.

In the mid-nineties, Rancid and Green Day helped to give way to a punk revival. DJs across North America spun radio-friendly tracks from punk bands.  In the midst of the punk revival Blush realized no one had recorded a proper history of punk that included hardcore.  Blush began researching for American Hardcore and eventually started writing the book when no one would give him an advance. So in 2001, after five years of working on the novel, Blush ran into his old friend, filmmaker Paul Rackman.  “He had heard about the book and came up to me a few days later and said let’s make the film,” says the journalist playing with the zipper on his American Hardcore hoodie.  So with the book published, Blush focused his spare time on the film and at the end of 2005 they submitted the rough cut to Sundance, not expecting to hear back.  “At the very last day, eight weeks later, they called us up and said ‘we love your film, come to Park City’ so we rush finished the film,” Blush says before adding with a small hint of pride, “Every showing of the film sold out.”

After Sundance, Blush was approached by Sony Picture Classics who said they ‘loved the film.’ However, being a graduate of the hardcore scene, Blush was weary of major labels and corporations. But Sony wasn’t looking for them to change the documentary.  “The film you see on the big screen is the one we cut on my couch with a six-pack,” says the writer.  With the success of American Hardcore on the screen and in print, Blush was on the prowl to find another hidden gem.   “I was in the car and I heard a song I thought was AC/DC or Aerosmith and it was Cinderella,” Blush says. “I was like ‘wow, that’s the music I used to ignore.’”  Having avoided MTV, Blush had been oblivious to the culture surrounding hair metal.

“I realized this was a true lost civilization,” Blush says. “Nirvana came onto the scene and it was like the Ice Age – They all died.”  The journalist found it strange how everything about hair metal that made it so popular and big didn’t exist in today’s music scene. “There are no remnants of it.”

Research for the book was painful and tedious. After realizing most musicians from the era were embarrassed of their creation, Blush resorted to flipping through dated copies of Hit Parader and other popular metal magazines.  “I bought hundreds and hundreds of old hair metal magazines and I read every one,” Blush says with a grin. “It was a really mind numbing experience, the writing’s terrible.”  From the quotes he was able to piece together a colourful and detailed history of the forgotten music scene.  “I’m kind of the perfect guy to write this book because I’ve got no baggage and no attachment,” admits Blush as his publicist gives me the two-minute mark.

With only a short time left I ask the musical archaeologist about the current music scene.

“I’m a little disappointed,” Blush says. “ There are a lot of good bands and a lot of killer records out there but I don’t see a scene. I don’t see a movement happening.”  “I might be mistaken but I thought rock and roll was part of a revolutionary fervor of kids. And that’s what I want to see.”  He notes that a music scene is never about the music, it’s about the scene and the fans that push it forward.  “Hardcore was this idea that you’d give up everything to spread the word of. It was like this religious cult,” Blush says before pointing out the similarities in hair metal. “People that were into hair metal, especially the girls, they gave their life to this stuff.”

That night as the show comes to an end, I catch Blush on the sidewalk. I shake his hand and thank him for the experience. He just grins and modestly thanks me for coming out. He turns and heads east on Queen Street, with corporate branding and neon signs flashing overhead.  I watch as he walks away amongst a sea of leather jacket-wearing, metalheads smoking cigarettes and talking about their day jobs. As I stand there amongst the tribe of hair metal lifers, it occurs to me hair metal may be dead, but the torch burns bright in those who gave their life for the scene. I turn and fade into the crowd of late night commuters and teenage angst driven punks. 

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Hanging out on Cloud 9: Cloud Cult Interview

Cloud Cult releases a gust of indie fresh air with their soul wrenching amalgam of acoustics and electronics. Pinned by various critics as “the best of 2005”, nominated as “Pop Album of the Year” by the Minnesota Music awards, and with a cult-like college following, Cloud Cult are proof a band can pave their way on their own terms: they’ve rejected the luxuries of major label offers to gain full autonomy to create music in an environmentally conscious way, proving unique in both their sound and practices.

Frontman Craig Minowa categorizes the music as decidedly “college indie rock, encompassing the freedom of expression” and lists his influences as “The Art of Noise, The Fall, Neutral Milk Hotel, Polyphonic Sprees and early Modest Mouse”.

The Meaning of Eight, their latest album, is doused with the number eight—three track titles (“Your 8^th Birthday”, “Shape of 8”, “2x2x2”), omni-present in the lyrics and visually depicted on the album’s gorgeous, but spooky painting covers. What is the meaning behind this? Minowa points to the claims of Carl Jung (inserted in the album’s sleeve) the number eight is a symbol of universalism, collective unconscious and connection. Interestingly these interpretations are consistent across history and among different cultures.

The lyrics, heavy with philosophical questioning of mortality, purpose and life lessons, are supported by an equal magnitude of instrumental depth unleashed by drums, bass, guitar, cello, and piano (among other instruments).  As Minowa says, the music is “meaty, not an easy listen, not the kind of music just for pure entertainment.”

Minowa views his music as “medicine, an emotional tool to help one through one’s struggles.” His battle to grasp and deal with his son’s unexpected death in 2002 translated to art with strong emotional resonance among listeners. Supporters of Cloud Cult’s Advice from the Happy Hippopotamus album communicated through fan mail that the album has helped them on very personal levels, which strengthened Craig’s feeling that “the music was moving in a positive direction.”

The band is also a leader and innovator of grass-roots approaches to music making. Minowa, an environmental science graduate, discovered he could harmoniously fuse together his two passions, music and the environment, and created the non-profit record label Earthology Record “out of necessity since there were no alternatives to produce music in a green friendly way.” By making the CD sleeves with recycled paper and omitting the toxin releasing jewel cases and PVC shrink wrap, he suggests that other bands could also make their cd replication green friendly, with the added bonus of saving money.

“There are solutions out there that are affordable, but just need a little effort to research,” he says. The band even calculates their energy consumption from touring and invests the same amount into wind energy.

But this isn’t all that distinguishes the band.  If you are lucky enough to catch them on tour you will be pleased by their heavy theatrics, what Minowa describes as “a celebratory ceremony,” a marriage of music, video screens, and live painters (who are also band members playing various instruments) that support his theory that the different mediums can enhance the experience.

In support of The Meaning of Eight, the band will be on a two-month tour in the U.S, with hopeful wishes of someday playing in Canada. Check them online at: http://www.cloudcult.com

 -*cAthy Lee-

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120 Days
By John Tracey

120 Days to Lift-Off

I’ve met a few Scandinavians before and their grasp of the English language never ceases to amaze me. “Oh, we had English classes in school,” they’ll usually reply modestly (Scandinavians are a demure bunch; well, not the Berserker Viking variety, but that was ages ago…). I too studied a language growing up: French. Apart from asking for a croissant, my capabilities are - comment est qu’on dit, “limited”? My quick chat with Jonas Hestvik Dahl, bassist of Norwegian phenomenon 120 Days, did little to alter my opinion of the northern Europeans’ Anglophonic abilities.

Having just arrived in Montreal, they are en route (there’s my French education put to work again) to Ottawa for the first stop of their North American tour. And while a cacophony of Norwegian voices, Ottawa-bound traffic noise, and the screeching wind of the 401 (made worse with the rhythmic opening and closing of the vehicle’s windows in time to someone’s smoking habits) sometimes made Dahl difficult to hear, it was a fitting backdrop for a conversation with a band often described as cold, mechanical, trance-inducing, and on-the-move.  But while 120 Days’ music is definitely moody, desolate and droning, make no mistake about it, it’s still rock n’ roll.

“It’s been five years since we got together,” Dahl says proudly, “when we were kids in Kristiansund, a very small town on the northwest coast of Norway. This will be our first show in North America on this tour. We did a couple of shows in London, like, the day before yesterday and the day before that, and they were great and they will be good over here as well.”

Anticipation has been building in North America for the chance to see these guys live, as it is their on-stage performance on which their reputation has been made. “[We] prefer playing the smaller clubs better because you get a more intense experience. It’s tightly packed into a dark room. In open air festivals, you play earlier in the day and people just wanting to drink beer.”

A career-making slot at By:Larm, Norway’s equivalent to South-By-Southwest, led to gigs at massive summer festivals in England and Spain, signings with Smalltown Supersound in Europe and Vice Records in North America, and recently, awards for Best New Rock Act and Best New Artist at the Norwegian Grammies. Comparisons to Krautrock acts like Can and Neu! are frequent, but this only touches on a narrow aspect of their sound. The self-titled debut is a descendant of Primal Scream’s XTRMNTR and Evil Heat albums; for every swoop over an icy soundscape, there is a deep, soulful artery winding beneath the surface.

“We listen to many kinds of music,” Dahl muses. “Everything from Steve Reich to Kraftwerk to the Velvet Underground to House music to The Knife.

I don’t think I could pinpoint just one [influence].”

Do they find any current artist to be creating anything similar to their music?

After a long pause, he says dubiously, “Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……. Well… well, I mean there’s people that we like, but I don’t think they’re doing anything we’re doing right now, no.”

And he is right. At least at their level, no one is making music like theirs.  Kasabian’s rave n’ roll might be an apt touchstone, but that band’s glam swagger is a far cry from 120 Days’ urgent sublimity. Sigur Ros souped up on a mitten-ful of ecstasy might be the most accurate comparison.

“In a way, each song is its own beast,” waxes Dahl. “It usually happens, like, we try to jam things out, going on for hours, building up the sound.  When we’re finished, we decide, ‘should this be a three or four minute pop song, or should this be something epic?’  A lot of songs were developed in the studio, written in the studio… it’s important to be able to recognize a studio album and a live concert are different things. Some things work on the album and they don’t work on stage. I think we got it right”

With three quarters of the band playing keyboards, it would seem like they knew from the start that 120 Days would be a different animal than the endless gangs of Strokes-wannabes currently on offer at an iTunes near you.

“We started out with a guitar, keyboards, bass, and, like, a regular drum kit.  And then the electronics kind of snuck on.  We bought some synthesizers, then we bought some more, then we bought some more, then we bought some more, and then we fell in love with them.  Just hang on a second, I have to light my cigarette…”

He takes a long haul off a cigarette and continues. “I mean, I love the Velvet Underground and I love Kraftwerk, so, you can do good things with both…

And you can also do crappy things with both. Everything can be done right and everything can be done wrong.”

While the profundity of that comment may be up for debate, it would seem that, so far, 120 Days seem to have done everything right.

After forming in late 2001, Adne Meisfjord (vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist), Arne Kvalvik (keyboards, electronic drums), Kjetil Oveson (keyboards), and Dahl needed to move to the big city to simply find an audience. Unfortunately, with Oslo’s soaring cost of living, they had to think outside the box, or rather, inside the box: they bought a used motor home, packed it full of gear and instruments, and just parked the old girl on a side-street. Along with Oslo’s high rent costs, however, are Oslo’s high drug addicts: continuous attempted break-ins by junkies forced the foursome out of the caravan in search of safer, more readily-defensible, environs.

A great story and one 120 Days’ PR peeps have not resisted hyping up. Indeed, their bio on Vice Records website has them living out of the caravan for a year; in fact, they only made it through a third of a year. Four months. 120 Days.

Despite this, Dahl insists their name is in reference to the Marquis de Sade’s piece-de-resistance, 120 Days of Sodom. The caustic satire of France’s pre-revolution bourgeoisie details a four month “weekend-in-the-country” chock full of fine wines and sins of the flesh. All manner of debauched excess is examined, from comparatively-innocent crimes like prostitution and foie-gras, to the heavier stuff of kidnap, rape, and torture.

“It’s from 120 Days of Sodom, yes. Have you read it?” he asks.

I indicated I had.

“The entire book, or just parts of it?” He seemed genuinely curious. I told him I had studied it in school.

“Oh? Usually [our interviewers] have never read the book. Well, then you know it is a very special book. It is a book that leaves an impression on everyone who reads it and I think that it’s a piece of art that makes you think and see the world differently after you’ve read it. I think that’s an ideal for every kind of art.  It’s extreme, but it’s also a very good piece of art.  It’s really hard to say, ‘Why did he write that?’  There are a lot of different views on that.  We really like it.”

So it had nothing to do with the four months they spent perfecting their sound cooped up in a winnebago? Certainly the album’s cover art lends itself to that interpretation: 120 neat scratches on a grey slate wall, demarcating each cold, dark day in confinement.

“Well, yes, there was a lot of the same stuff going on in that wagon,” Dahl says laughingly. “Just kidding.” After a moment’s salacious reflection on some misdeed, he modifies that last statement:  “No, not really.”

I press a little further, asking about the band’s first name, The Beautiful People. Knowing Norway’s long-term fascination with Death Metal, was The Beautiful People a shout-out to the Marilyn Manson song of the same name?

Dahl laughs. Hard. “No, it’s not. No, it’s not. I can’t even remember why we picked that name. It’s a long time ago since we picked that name. We’re happy with the name we’ve got now, and we won’t be changing it any time in the near future.”

Speaking of the near future, I ask him if there is any particular goal they would like to accomplish.

“I think that the four of us… don’t have one goal; the thing for us is to continue to make music and to continue to express ourselves…You don’t think about high points anymore; to still be doing this is our high point, so to speak.”

Finally, I ask him what he would be doing if he wasn’t making music, the implied question being, ‘How would you make your living?’ Unfortunately, there are some nuances of English that may take a little getting used to; things can be misinterpreted.

He debates the question for a moment. “Um…I always thought… Call Girls. I think that would suit me fine, yes. That would be good for me.”

Hmmm, maybe Dahl’s grasp of the English language wasn’t as good as I first thought. Then again, considering the influence of de Sade, maybe he understood me just fine.

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Gritty With Soft Spots: Ohbijou's Carey Mecija Talks to Spill

I call Casey Mecija, lead vocalist, songwriter, and guitarist for Ohbijou, a little after noon. We are both on our lunch hour at our day jobs (Mecija works as a production assistant at CHUM), but through the phone her voice still carries the effervescent charm and sincerity she brings to her band's enchanting debut album, Swift Feet for Troubling Times. Her candor forgives my forgotten dictaphone and general awkward phone manner, and I settle into an interview with one of Toronto’s brightest indie balladeers.

Ohbijou started as [Mecija’s] solo bedroom project in the outskirts of Toronto. Realizing that her sister Jennifer was pretty great at the violin,  Mecija enlisted her help with the violin, as well as vocal harmonies and organs. As it goes with all big dreams, Brantford could not hold the Mecijas forever, and eventually they moved to downtown Toronto to attend Ryerson University. 

While at Ryerson they rounded out their lineup with a number of  like-minded individuals.  In addition to the Mecija sisters, Ohbijou became Heather Kirby (bass, banjo), James Bunton (drums, trumpet), Anissa Hart (cello), and Ryan Carley (keyboards, mallets, and harpsichord). Also included on the Swift Feet... are contributions from a number of their musical friends, lending to an impressive slew of instrumentation to the album.

But what’s in a name? When asked this question, Mecija replies that their name is a term of endearment that came out of nowhere in a romantic moment.  And verily, ÔOhbijou  does posses a sort of cute, faux francais romanticism that complements their sound perfectly.

Though Mecija does not strive to make particularly pretty, quiet music,  the end result is noticeably so. The songs are rooted in simple chords and melodies.  Mecija explains that to her, lyrics come first and the rest of the group tends to retain the hushed sparseness of the original singer songwriter pieces with an ethos that prizes lyrics and feelings over epic sound and catchiness.

As a band they appear very aware of when these basic melodies are lost through over-orchestration. This awareness of  the notes as well as the spaces,  (as Mecija has told the Eye Weekly) keeps their music from becoming overbearing but also subdues it, though the bands exploration within these parameters never fails to intrigue or entertain.

Listening to the songs of Swift Feet for Troubled Times, it is evident that Mecija has her finger firmly on the painful pulse of the irreconcilable relationship. When asked about why the figures in Mecija s songs are constantly dealing with the end of romance, her answer seems checked and somewhat self-conscious. As cheesy as it sounds, there’s a certain romance to living in a big city and [being] in a bad relationship that’s devastating yet romantic.   “Favourite Skin”  strikes an almost Margaret Atwood level of romantic malaise, though it is balanced playfully against an almost Dr. Suessian sense of rhyme. Lines like  These eyes are open like picture frames/ that look at lives passing in subtle ways,  build to a chorus of  And you are my favourite skin to wear/ whether here of there or everywhere.  The lightness of the rhyme scheme bellies the cruelly ravaged Ôskin of a once-lover.  This tension between innocence and bitter lessons learned in love is a dynamic that Mecija excels at and plans to revisit often in her song writing, though she by no means limits herself to the broken hearted.

Among other influences, Mecija’s lyrics very consciously reflect the streets, parks, and people that populate Toronto. When asked about her references to the CNE and Parkdale Dollarmart in, "To Rest in Peace on Righteous Tides",  she describes her city’s chief qualities as ones of grittiness with soft spots.   Though Mecija does not revel in Canadiana, she definitely wears her city and neighborhood (Parkdale) on her sleeve.

Despite Ohbijou's singular sound, they do find themselves walking the same musical lines as a number of others artists. The exercise of listing off influences and contemporaries is a tiresome one for Mecija, though she sees some similarity between her song writing and that of former Eric's Tripp-er, Julie Doroin. Both songwriters are no slouches when it comes to constructing minimalist songs set around painfully frank lyrics. 

Other kindred spirits that come to mind listening to Ohbijou are Yo La Tengo (the boy-girl  harmonies ) and Jenny Lewis, in the sense that their eclectic instrumentation informs what genres a song will dip into.  Heather's banjo turns the song into a banjo song.  Likewise, Jennifer's violin alternately trickles or flows like a some austere stream through the British countryside, adding deep currents of Black Box Recorder-style grief to more than one track.

Indeed, Ohbijou stands apart with each band member bringing their own strong character to the project and in turn offering a unique timbre that doesn’t really sound like anything else. At times beautiful and heart-wrenching ("Misty Eyes"), while at other times somber and brooding ("Widths and Curves"), Ohbijou are astonishingly delicate/classic balladry and composition that rivals anything to have come from this city or any other over the past few years.

Despite their recent successes, Mecija and company aren t content to rest on what laurels they've accumulate to date.  In the summer of 2006 Mecija and drummer Bunton began putting on shows in her basement to utilize  a lot of spare time.  "I have a dog that has hip displasia",  explains Mecija.  "I was using the parties to fundraise for its treatment.  It's the sort of sentiment that makes one want to yell ÔOhbijou  or some other form of random endearment for the band."

From this came the recently released, Friends in Bellwoods, compilation.  Realizing that they  had some pretty awesome friends,  (an understatement when those friends include Bry Webb on the Constantines, Kids on TV, Sebastien Grainger, formerly of Death From Above, and Gentleman Reg of the Hidden Cameras to name but a few,) the shows snowballed from their original cause into the double-disc fundraiser for the Daily Bread food bank.

Without exaggeration, the Friends in Bellwoods compilation is quite amazing in both its diversity as well as its overall unity and flow.  With over thirty-six tracks and more than two hours of campfire anthems, boy s club techno, and unadulterated indie pop and rock Mecija attributes its wholeness to the genres [actually] being fairly similar.  

The album seems to speak very well to an overall aesthetic that drew each musician to the project. Perhaps this points to the unique Queen West aesthetic or maybe just one that holds this circle of friends together. In any case, the record could easily serve as a Cliff Notes on a hugely important chunk of Toronto s current musical landscape.  Plus it s the only place to hear Bry Webb and Casey Mecija s sandpaper and silk cover of the Velvet Underground s  Sweet Nothings.   And seeing as the funds go to a noteworthy cause the album is a must-have for everybody who is anybody and those in between.

When asked to name her favourite acts, Mecija keeps it close to home, seeming to almost read off the list of artists on Friends in Bellwoods. Mecija says that she always says We re Marching On...  to answer that particular question, no surpass, seeing as it s Ohbijou pianist Ryan Carley s other band. She also lists  Germans, who have a new album out right now, Timber Tamber, The Acorns (out of Ottawa), and Jonas Bonetta,  just to name a few. Not surprisingly, Mecija likes to keep her tastes somewhat quiet and close to her heart and home, though she will shortly be leaving all things quiet and homey for the the often raucous and foreign rigors of the open road.

In addition to ending the month of February opening for Bright Eyes and playing Eye Magazine s Canadian Music Week showcase, Ohbijou are planning to charm the pants off of western Canadians during a summer tour, hitting a few festivals along the way with their guerilla heart-on-sleeveness.

Ohbijou is exited at the possibilities of reaching different audiences in and outside of Toronto and Southern Ontario. Their opening slot with Bright Eyes is part of gaining exposure to a whole new set of fans. Anyone who hopes to catch Ohbijou live will be treated to  pretty melodies and orchestrations [and] nice voices,  Mecija promises in her understated way.

After a summer of touring Ohbijou will be retiring to a cottage  to record with instruments, beer, and campfires,  with their sophomore album to be released sometime after that. Mecija notes that being bound by their full time jobs, Ohbijou is a band that will be taking off slowly rather than bursting onto the scene. Mecija voices her respect for those who can devote their lives to the the full time, unglamorous career of a full fledged touring musician. Unfortunately for her, it would seem that somebody has forgotten to tell her that her band has already burst onto the scene, and that their Bright Eyes opening slot and Summer tour is likely only the beginning.

Catch Ohbijou before they re charging forty bucks a la the Arcade Fire, at Eye Weekly s CMW showcase along with Frida Hyvonen and Under Byen at the Mod Club, March 8th.

www.ohbijou.com
http://www.myspace.com/ohbijou

By Christopher Langer

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Edgy Acoustic Songstress, Rayna Speaks From The Heart

In just under two years, Rayna has managed to teach herself how to play guitar, write a solid collection of heart felt songs, and get nominated as "Best Female Accoustic" by the Toronto Independent Music Awards.  With over 80,000 "Total Plays" of her songs on My Space, Rayna has gained a huge international following and has now just released a full length CD titled, "Empty Room."

On a freezing cold Saturday afternoon, Rayna welcomed me to her downtown home/ recording studio with her warmth and down to earth charm for a casual interview about her music, her drive and her inspiration.

I ask Rayna to describe her sound.  "Edgy acoustic." she says with conviction.  "Possibly alternative folk?" she then states in a question.  "It's not folk but I have an acoustic guitar, strong vocals and I write heart felt lyrics."   She hands me a copy of her newly pressed CD, "Empty Room."  As I remove the shrink wrap and take out the cover insert, Rayna points out that she feels strongly about including the lyrics in the package.

After listening to her CD, I can understand why her lyrics are so important to her.  Rayna's lyrics are highly reflective, introspective and real.  I ask her about what inspires her to write and where she gets her lyrical ideas.  "Definitely through personal experience," she says.  "I tend to go through something emotional whether it's good or bad and it's that emotion that I want to invoke into my music."

The first thing that struck me when I first listened to Rayna's music is the quality of her voice.  I ask Rayna who she has been compared to.  "Strangely enough," she responds, "I've got more people saying "I don't know who to compare you to."  She then goes on to mention comparisons to some top notch vocalists and songwriters of our time:  Dolores from the Cranberries, Sinead O'Connor, Sarah McLaughlin and Mazzy Star.

Rayna's influences range from the metal she listened to growing up to The Cure, Nine Inch Nails and Alice in Chains.  She laughs when I ask her what's in her MP3 player.  "Funny story,"she says,  "I put my I-Pod on shuffle the other day and it started with "Orinoco Flow" by Enya and the next tune I got was "A New Level" by Pantera.  So that's the kind of range of music that I listen to."

Rayna's speaks from the heart and her sincerity and passion comes across in her music.  When asked about how she want to be remembered, she replies, "I want to be remembered as someone who is very strong and very true to themselves.  I think if everyone were just honest with themselves in bringing about any art that they do, that would "cliché saying" make the world a better place."  

With the release of "Empty Room," Rayna's immediate goals are to get her music out there and acquire management and booking.  "I'm ready to go places," she says with bold confidence.  You can catch Rayna perform live at the Gladstone Hotel on March 18, 2007.  You can listen to her music and buy a copy of her latest release, "Empty Room" at www.rayna.ca or at www.myspace.com/raynamusic

Liz Lulu

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And it’s gonna be a hoedown. But for Gern and the Steel Workers, that’s not much of a change from their usual Montreal routine. They have, after all, spent at least the last four years doing just that, night after night, paving the way for the city’s burgeoning alt-country scene.

“We grew out of the Montreal acoustic folk/jam scene,” Gern says. “There’s some pretty good old-time country/bluegrass and hillbilly kind of stuff in Montreal right now. It’s the by-product, in a way, of the jam scene. We came out of things like Train Song Sundays, which is an event that has been happening here [in Montreal] for years and years – it’s sort of jam session/gig for a local band called the Dirty Old Band. Our band kind of became a more rehearsed version of that. We got together and kind of made it a little more formal as the years went on, which brought us to the line-up we have now,” which includes Felicity Hamer, Matt Watson, Shawn “Gus” Beauchamp, Roger Dawson, Kevin McNeilly, and Sean b’y Moore.

“There are still two founding members of the band,” Gern explains, “me and the telecaster player, Matt Watson. Felicity came in and joined the band right before our first real gig as the Steel Workers, so I guess she’d be the third of the founding members,” but there have been several switch-ups since the group started playing.

“We started as the Congregates,” Gern says, “although no one really liked the name, so we came up with ‘the Steel Workers.’ We used to play at the Metro on Tuesday nights (and get kicked out of there by the cops because we were too loud and whatnot). So we really grew out of that. There were guys that were coming to jam every week, so we took that and sort of made it more legit, started having regular rehearsals and going through the long line of other people who have passed through the band over the last four and a half, five years.”

The birth of the Steel Workers has been a long work in progress, but it’s one that has finally paid off with the explosion of the Montreal independent music scene. It started building in Montreal “say, eight years ago,” says Gern, and one of the biggest scenes to really take off was alt-country.

“It all comes out of these country jams,” Gern says. “You’ve got the Wheel Club up here that’s been having a hillbilly night for like, 43 years or something crazy like that, every Monday night. So that gave a lot of basis for the current stuff. There were a lot of guys playing banjo and mandolin, fiddle, guitar, good slap pickers, good finger pickers. Then they started breeding bass players. When it started to become an indie [rock] scene [in Montreal] I think that probably had the biggest influence on everything. It’s only really hitting now, people are only really noticing now, but this is something that has been going on for like five or six years… The alt-country scene has been a big aspect of all this and has been the one that’s paved the way for the others,” in a large part by allowing an assortment of venues to spring up and flourish.

“It’s pretty neat to see,” Gern says. “It’s shy of being a phenomenon, but it’s certainly something that’s come on in the last six years.”

But while Gern has been one of the Montreal alt-country scene’s biggest supporters, involved from the beginning as host (and bartender) of Train Song Sunday’s at the Wheel Club and bluegrass jams at Grumpy’s Bar, he “grew up listening to country and not liking it,” he says. Of course, this was “probably for more social or political reasons than anything,” and eventually he found himself coming back to country music later in life and finding “it was very accessible.”

“When you grow up listening to something like country, it gets engrained in your head, in your pulse, so when you come back to it later it all seems to make a lot of sense. I started writing stuff and it started to become more alt-country, and to make more sense like that,” Gern says.

Some things you just never grow out of. As far as this concerns the Steel Workers, it’s good news for music fans everywhere.

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“I oversee all aspects of the Festival,” Klygo explains, “from managing venues, coordinating sponsor/label showcases, overseeing the artist application and jury selection processes, dealing with the overall marketing and promotion for the Festival.”

Keeping on top of this would be, for most people, a logistical nightmare. But given Klygo’s credentials, indie fans can rest assured they’ve got the right guy on the job.

He has, after all, been involved with the Canadian music scene for most of his life – ever since graduating from the University of Waterloo in 1990. With a degree in Social Studies and Geography, he first worked in social services, a career which (lucky for the Canadian music scene) only lasted for about five to six years while his passion for music developed. Klygo went from merely being a concert- and record store-goer to paying closer attention to the indie scene and eventually writing about it for Exclaim! Magazine starting in 1993. Soon Klygo was publishing his own indie mag, Skull Geek, and by 1995 he was also releasing records from small but awesome bands like Pecola, Smallmouth, and Secret Agent.

Ten years later, Klygo is still releasing great independent music by the likes of Barzin, the Great Lake Swimmers, and the United Steel Workers of Montreal through his current label, (weewerk) Records, “a well known and influential alt-country, folk, and bluegrass genre independent record label and artist-management company with offices based in Toronto and Vancouver,” Klygo notes.

(weewerk)’s artists are now known around the world, but originally the label was founded as a simple art-and-music salon series, back around the end of 2002. It was based in the apartment of rock-mogul Klygo and his artist-curator friend Germaine Koh, at 620A Queen St. West.

“The key to the locale was the fact (weewerk) was perched on the second floor atop the
mighty, indie record store Rotate This on rugged but always forever culturally influential Queen Street West, just west of Bathurst,” says Klygo. “For me it was a return to a home-office space I lived in from 1997-2000, and actually was the first office space for my second label, Teenage USA Recordings. We took the space over from Andrew Scott, painter and drummer from Sloan.”

Not that it’s been easy though. After 17 years on the Toronto and Canadian music scenes, Klygo admits that while running any independent company is difficult at best, “in music it's even harder because indie music in general does not have a large fan base. If you are only pressing in the range of 500-2500 records, you just keep spending money to keep things moving forward. It's hard to break even when an artist is selling 5000 -10,000 records on the indie level – but when you factor in the investment of finances, time and
related expenses to have an artist or a band tour anywhere, you are looking at doing things for the love of it and certainly not financial gain.”

But despite such harsh realities, Klygo has persevered and now has the grassroots experience with which to relate to the musicians he now records through (weewerk). Plus, he says, “what makes me keep going is the small levels of success you see happen
and then advancing forward to higher goals… The value of small, independent entities like weewerk, Blocks Blocks Blocks, or Round Lake Centre Suicide Club, is that any
collective/person/band that has a keen and important focus and dedication to beauty over bucks is that the intregity of the project is apparent and feeds itself exponentially. This has nothing to do with business or industry standards; what it speaks to is doing something for a greater purpose and the right reason.”

If only everyone in the music game thought like that. But for Klygo, it’s just the way you’ve got to operate and is, after all, in his best interest. “Labels or bands out to make a quick buck on board the band wagon come and go so easily and quickly,” he says. “It’s no wonder people distrust the hype media creates around musicians.”

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As the Buck Brother’s lead singer, Andy Duke, explains, “we always like a challenge. So when it came time to come up with promo ideas for our album's release on 5 March in the UK, attempting to break a world record seemed like a very good idea. We love playing gigs. We love London. We love pushing ourselves. And love the fact that we've got fans willing to follow us around for 12 hours (which is a blessing in itself). So Hey baddah-bing [approximates a surprisingly convincing “New Yoik” accent] - let's attempt to play 30 gigs in one day and invite everyone to come along.”

Unfortunately, for their fans on this side of the pond, “coming along” to break records in London may not exactly be in the cards. But lucky for us, it’s only a matter of patience, because the Buck Brothers return to Canada for Canadian Music Week, March 7-10, and they’ll be ripping shit out at the Kathedral, 651 Queen St. W., starting just after 9:00 pm on March 10. After that it’s on the road, with stops scheduled for adoring fans in Windsor, Hamilton, Kitchener, Ottawa… right the way out to Montreal, then back to T.O. to hit the El Mo on March 22 for one last Canadian gig.

It’s sure to be good times. After all, last time they played Toronto, at 2006’s NXNE Festival, they arrived with a posse of female wrestlers who duked it out in front of the stage – an odd but complimentary ruse, given the Buck Brother’s lyrical penchant for all things crass, commercial, and contemporary (which might also explain why “Me” has been picked up as the soundtrack for the upcoming season of MTV’s “My Super Sweet Sixteen”).

But despite such signs of growing success, Duke explains that the indie festivals remain one of their greatest joys – especially the Toronto ones. “The closest UK equivalent to NXNE is probably In the City, which takes place in Manchester every October,” Duke says. “But the Canadian version is far more diverse than its British counterpart, and more enjoyable to attend. Showcases in the UK start at around 11 am and wind down at around midnight – whereas in Toronto it's more of a celebration of music and we didn't leave some venues until sunrise… Since our last visit [to T.O.] we've secured a record deal in Canada with Scratch Records/Fading Ways and we’re pleased to have a product to promote this time around (“Me” is released on 27 February). But as for the wrestlers – well, we urge everyone to come along and find out whether or not they’ll be making a special appearance that we've been planning for several months or not.”

Well let’s get ready to rumble.

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Kill the Lights: Ready for the Spotlight?

Kill the Lights’ guitarist and front-man Alex Hackett is nothing if not forthright regarding he and his band-mates’ musical experience - or lack thereof. When asked if he had ever received any professional training (he has an incredible voice), he whimsically replies, “No, no. Basically, I have no idea what we’re doing. Just belting it out.”

It’s this cavalier approach that makes Kill the Lights so appealing. The indie ensemble are first and foremost honest-to-goodness aficionados of the earnest, anthemic, and hook-driven rock n’ roll made popular in the ’80s by U2, the Smiths and James. And the fact that they are also quite good at putting their own touches on such well-trod territory does help of course.

Debut album Buffalo of Love, if a little obvious and tired in places, is a well-rounded soundtrack to a good night out in the city. Chock full of every attention-grabbing ploy in the book – handclaps, “woo hoo hoo” chants, energetic build-ups, grooving breakdowns, and every other rock tactic ever thieved from gospel music - the album showcases a band that, while still in the process of finding it’s own true footing, is nonetheless pretty damn impressive as is.

“[It was our] first time recording, figuring out what stuff sounds like when you record it. It was pretty weird, pretty hit and miss. We missed quite a few times, but we think we got some good stuff,” Hackett says.

The five member band (half of whom reside in Toronto; the rest call Montreal home), are all long-time friends from Knowlton, Quebec. But apart from a joint love for Britpop, their creative path was not clearly mapped out.

“None of us had played in bands for a long time. It was a lot of just dealing with what came out and picking the best of it. Obviously, we wanted a pop element; we wanted it to be accessible.  But at the same time we wanted it very modern sounding. We’re all big fans of Britpop, especially John [Dignard, bass] and I. We didn’t want it to sound too Canadiana; we wanted a more international sound.” 

Were there any bands particularly influential?

“Lately, I’ve been listening to the new TV on the Radio record a lot. Nothing too underground. Bloc Party. We’re definitely huge Smiths fans. Ride, early Blur…The Cure is one of my favourite bands ever. They have a wicked range of stuff. They have some fucking awful songs, but I kind of dig that.  [Some of] it can be so cheesy, but at the same time, when they hit the nail on the head, it’s fucking awesome, you know? That’s the kind of music we like to listen to. There’s a bit of mish-mash. [Second guitarist] Joe [Yarmush] is a big seventies rock guy, so that added a little something different.”

It’s this mish-mash factor that could pose a problem down the road. Like other artists who decline to categorize themselves in any one particular style or sound, they run the risk of not being included in any category at all. Indeed, according the band’s website bio, they admit being called “inconsistent” live because they like to try different things. Do they worry that by breaking off into so many different directions, they could be fragmenting the Kill the Lights sound as a whole?

“That’s a concern that’s been coming up more and more. You realize that from the marketing point of view, there are so many bands out there, people are only willing to give you one chance, and we’ve had that happen. We’ve played shows where one element [of our sound] happened to be more prominent and then we read a blog or write-up where [critics] have written, ‘This is a band who play this kind of music.’ And we’re shocked. We think, ‘Wow! That’s definitely not what we want to come across as.’ But maybe that’s what we came across as that night. So we’re starting to realize that it’s part of the game. Consistency, especially when you’re starting out, can be a virtue and that’s probably what people prefer. We’ve definitely become more conscious of that. Everything has become so fragmented for us lately, especially geographically, musically a little bit.  But we’re definitely hoping to survive the initial stages.”

Their first video, the loping shoegazer “Artic, At Dawn,” does little to dispel these concerns; with its Coldplay-esque vocals and hypnotic tempo, it’s the least similar to any of the urgent, danceable tracks that make up the rest of the album.

With his customary honesty, Hackett reflects: “Basically, it was pretty much out of our hands. This girl we know works for a video company and she liked the song. She applied for a grant to make a video and that was that. It was just a question of, ‘do we agree or not agree?’ So, of course, we said ‘yeah.’ It was a pretty weird experience, but hey, we got a video out of it. There was nothing in our control, but we couldn’t say no. It was cool; I don’t want to sound like it was a bad experience or anything, but yeah, it was a weird choice for our first video.”

Despite a couple of lesser creatures toward the front end of the album, Buffalo of Love quickly pulls up its tight jeans and delivers. “Lady Sniper,” featuring a nice turn by   keyboardist and sole female member Steph Hanna on back-up vocals, is a modern take on “New Year’s Day”, while elsewhere Hackett gives a credible rendition of David Byrne on “Bombs” (itself a credible rendition of Modest Mouse’s “Float On”). The indulgently grandiose “Palest Form of Sabotage,” is a guilty pleasure that must be epic at a live show.

I ask about the significance of the song “Orestes”, the Greek mythological prince killed his mother to avenge his father’s murder at her hands. Wracked with guilt, Orestes was chased by the Furies until he went mad.

“Some of us are kind of nerdy,” Hackett muses, chuckling. “I read through all that while at CEGEP [a university preparatory program in Quebec], and I was a big Greek myth fan, Roman history and all that. Our songs tend to be pretty abstract, in terms of significance. We generally like to take images and centre songs around the images. The actual idea behind that song was the kind of people who are constantly on the move and can never settle down. “Orestes” is about something chasing you, something pushing you, something driving you on and never really allowing you to settle down. Hunger, you know?”

Speaking of not settling down, I ask about their touring experience, specifically their recent opening slot for The Slip.

“That was great, awesome. Probably our first experience playing that many shows night after night, so that was cool.”

How many nights did they play?

Somewhat sheepishly, Hackett says, “We were only out four nights, but we didn’t know how exhausting that would be. Loading and unloading the van in the dead of winter, freezing our balls off. You have to have thick skin. You have to be energetic.” 

You have to really want it, I suggest.

“The people who succeed do, yeah” Hackett deadpans.

The band plans to reunite for good in Montreal within the year. With a common headquarters, the release of Buffalo of Love in March, and a bevy of new tour dates, Kill the Lights are primed for success. But are they ready for the big, bad brights of the spotlight? Let’s hope so.     

- John Tracey

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To Hell with Sound Bites – We’re Talking Revolution
By James Sandham

The reason Laibach is one of today’s most unique, progressive, and challenging artistic outfits – and, undoubtedly, the reason why they have nonetheless failed to register as anything more than ambiguously notorious as far as mainstream international music markets go – is because they are more at home discussing ideas about post-territorial statehood than music or fashion or going on tour. It’s not the kind of stuff that translates very well into ten-second sound bites. Nor does it curry favour with anyone even mildly invested in the status quo.

On the other hand, this leaves Laibach free to be one of the few – if not the only – bands that can toss off statements during the course of an interview like “people need blood and they have to produce shit”, or “we are fascists as much as Hitler was an artist.” And not only can they do this without seeming out of context, they also manage to pull it off without seeming particularly crazy. And that, ultimately, is because Laibach is more than just a band. As they themselves describe it, Laibach is as much an idea, a mean of dissent, as it is a musical outfit.

This conceptual ambiguity owes primarily to Laibach’s macabre beginnings. In their words, Laibach formed “by coincidence of Time and Space in 1980, in the small industrial city of Trbovlje in Slovenia, Yugoslavia.” Although forbidden by official state decree shortly after forming (for use of a German name), Laibach not only survived but also perpetuated, eventually spawning the Neue Slowenische Kunst art movement. Then, with the emergence of new political, ideological and economic reorganization in Europe between 1990 and 1992 (the fall of the Berlin wall and the reunification of Germany, the decline of the Eastern bloc, war in Yugoslavia and the birth of new national entities), NSK reinvented itself, changing from an organization into a State.

“NSK State was created out of the art movement Neue Slowenische Kunst, which again was built around Laibach and Laibach’s manifestos,” the group explain. “The establishment of the larger movement and/or social organization helped Laibach to stay alive and to spread its virus into a various media. Its aim was to redefine the relation between art, ideology and politics. Its basic organizational principle was collectivism, its method of work was retro principle, and the movement was called retroavantguarda.”

Right. Try explaining that on Total Request Live. Some may dismiss it as insubstantial intellectual grandstanding, but it’s clear that in terms of political understanding, these guys are light-years ahead of Kanye West’s “George Bush hates black people.”

“The reason to create an NSK State was to keep Utopia real,” Laibach continue. “NSK membership was abolished and, technically speaking, everybody who can identify with NSK State codex could become an NSK passport holder and acquire the status of NSK citizen… Citizenship is therefore open to people all over the world, people of different religions, races, nationalities, sexes and beliefs. The right to citizenship is acquired through ownership of the NSK passport. Vital statistics of the passport bearer are logged in the NSK citizenship register. The passport is numbered and it is not transferable; its validity is limited and renewable.”

The NSK State is, in effect, “a state in Time,” Laibach say, “a state without territory – it denies the categories of fixed territory and the principle of national borders; it is therefore not based on national paradigm.  The organizational principle of NSK state is collective absolutism; the ‘head of the state’ is ‘Immanent-transcendent spirit.’ It has no formal government and no central committee.  It only has citizens, bureaucrats and executioners. The last two are dealing with technical issues and formalities. [NSK] State is based on self-management and non-alignment and it coexists as a parasite within existing, already established bodies on the entire area of Time… The official spoken language among the NSK citizens is the language of Babel,” Laibach conclude. “And today, the NSK State already has more citizens than the Vatican.”

The last band I heard deliver such a diatribe on the metaphysics of space, time, place and citizenship was, uh… no one. So clearly, you don’t even have to be a fan of the music to be a fan of the group. As the fans and NSK passport holders interviewed on Laibach’s latest DVD, Divided States of America, attest, Laibach offers more than just sounds; more importantly, they provide food for thought.

But as far as their actual music is concerned, Laibach explain that “we deal with pop music and its mass perception. Volk [their latest album] is specifically dealing with pop/folk culture and cultural imperialism. Songs on the album are based on national anthems. We consider anthems great pop songs and great pop songs as great anthems. Pop is music for sheep and we are wolves disguised as shepherds.”

And what do they hope to accomplish or affect with their music?

“We want to accomplish Eternity and to affect Humanity,” Laibach reply. The artist’s role is “to be the engineer of the human souls.”

Provocative. But that’s where I cut the interview. Before my mind blew.

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“Leviride: It’s not just Rock and Roll – It’s Emotional Therapy”

Like the music he creates, there’s a certain emotional ambiguity about Leviride’s lead vocalist, Paul Lahey. At first glance, things appear pretty straightforward: Leviride’s music is basic, four-on-the-floor, guitar-driven rock and roll. But give their latest disc, Night of the Drive-by, a couple spins and you start to notice that for all the howling guitar and rollicking percussion, there’s actually a slightly sorrowful undercurrent that runs through the music and distinguishes Leviride from the good-times rock and roll genre into which they initially seem to so easily fit. It’s this subtle but ubiquitous emotional depth that provides Drive-by with its resonance, and which makes Leviride more than a stale rock archetype, but rather a dynamic and human band.

And Lahey, as Leviride’s principle songwriter, is to a large degree the root of this – which, of course, he modestly denies.

“I may be the primary songwriter in the band, but by no means does that mean I write everything by myself. As a group of people working together, we have a chemistry despite our different personalities and tastes and backgrounds and things. We’ve somehow managed to glue together and find a common theme, and that theme is that we all love big rock and roll bands, playing guitar; you know, that kind of thing – power.”

But, Lahey says, power’s not the only reason why he’s in it. “What really appeals to me about music is its therapy,” he says. “For me it’s therapy. It really is. For me, it’s the opportunity, whether you’re in the rehearsal room or up on the stage or studio or whatever, to get up and whatever it is that I feel like getting out of my system or talking about, I have the luxury of coming up with the melody, writing the lyrics and then just exploding and getting it out.”

“To me,” Lahey continues, “each song is really just a snapshot of a point in time on a personal level. But my songs aren’t always experience based. Sometimes they’re just about something one hopes for, wishes for – or is just depressed about, or happy about – or whatever. They’re just a reflection of one’s life. That’s what music is to me, or at least that’s what I’ve come to learn is the inspiration. There’s no point trying to script something you think might be cool because it usually tends to be pretty shit when you do that.”

It’s a lesson that has taken Lahey several years to learn. After all, he admits, “musically, I’m a bit of a late bloomer. [Granted,] I’ve been singing since I was a kid, in choirs and that sort of thing; and I got in my first rock band when I was fifteen, fourteen, something like that; and prior to this band I used to be in a local group that did okay for a while in the late 90s called Dionysian Smile – but beyond that I don’t have much of a [formal] musical background. I was self-taught on guitar, a self-practicing songwriter… [so] it’s an accurate comment that [Leviride] has been a long time coming for me. I’ve done a lot of things with different people over the years, but I only really felt with [Night of the Drive-by] that I’ve got something to actually be a little bit proud of,” he says.

Proud of, yes, but not, Lahey explains, wildly expectant. “I think we’re getting there,” he says of his music, “but sitting back and listening to Drive-by, and even Frank [Gryner’s] post-recording comments on it, it was like, you know, this is one of those albums that’s not going to be a smash hit. For example, when Metric came out with that song ‘Combat Baby’, it just jumped all over the radio. But we’re not that kind of band, and I suspect we never will be. But I’m not bothered by that. To some extent we all chase that elusive rock and roll dream, but I’m not so certain that’s what we’re after anymore. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love the opportunity to make even as much money as I make now at my day job from music – that would be ultimate success for me; we don’t necessarily have to be as big as, say, Avril Lavigne or something – but I don’t know, I think it really depends on your perspective and what you’re going after. Here’s the best way I can sum it up: I once had the opportunity to speak to Martin Tielli from the Rheostatics, and I asked him point blank, ‘what advice do you have for a guy like me.’ He paused for a second and then he looked at me and said, ‘it’s simple, man, always entertain yourself. And don’t quit. Don’t ever quit.’ He told me that about five years ago and I’ve been trying to live that ever since. We have a lot of fun in this band and I think that’s one of the strengths of this group. We’re all genuinely friends.”

Lahey is, if nothing else, a realist. And it’s this realism, this rough and rugged experience of working from the ground up – “I’ve never tasted the good life,” he says – that anchors Leviride’s epic sound in something foundational and concrete.

On the other hand, he says, “we now have an indie label here in Canada, Addictive Records, and through them we have distribution with Universal Music… [Plus,] getting involved with our producer, Frank Gryner, who’s living out in LA and has produced some names, and his sister, Emm Gryner, who’s doing some pretty cool things, having these people coming to us and saying they want to work with us, this is a level of acceptance we’ve never known and it’s very exciting.” So despite the realism, Lahey nonetheless manages to make room for some optimism.

But ultimately, Lahey says, all you can do is follow the words of Martin Tielli and “entertain yourself and have fun. And don’t give up on yourself. I was one of those guys that would live and die by that elusive dream of getting signed and getting famous, but I no longer suffer from that. Being a Canadian musician, you’re really kidding yourself. There’s really a very select few who ever get to that level. I’m more about improving as a songwriter and a musician and having fun. I think if you do that, you’ll always be very pleased with the end result. We approach it with a healthy sense of humour… We just do what we do and have fun doing it.”

See for yourself on February 2, at O’Grady’s, 171 College Street in Toronto, or February 22 at El Mocambo, 474 Spadina Avenue in Toronto.

- James Sandham

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Interview with Pete Tong

Pete Tong, world renowned British DJ, radio host and producer recently played at the Government as part of his North American tour.  Here is part of the interview I had the opportunity of doing with him minutes before he took the stage and woke up the city with his scintillating set.

Music is your calling and you were djing weddings at 15, did you know music was going to be such a big part of your life when you were young or was it something that just sort of happened?

Yeh, it kind of unraveled really, I always wanted it to be a part of my life but I started djing at a time when it was considered to be a hobby not a career so I always got a “proper” job along side it. Which is why I ended up with this convoluted kind of life, partly behind a desk, partly behind a set of turntables in a club and partly on the radio. It was all a case of like how to legitimize yourself and actually make a living doing this.

Full Frequency Range Recordings, your label, has been producing so many amazing artists, when is your next release coming out?

Who’s your favorite up and coming artists, producers?

That’s 3 questions in one!

I suppose I’ve been checking for Arme recently, they did an amazing essential mix for me recently for the BBC, they are two guys based in Berlin and signed a collective. The music they make and mix for other people is of the highest quality. I guess I’ve enjoyed them more than any other kind of electronic producers this year.  FFR actually have been running their label since 2000 so I stopped doing that but I’ve just started to do a little more of that type of work, I guess you would call it A&R, again I might get back into it next year, I’m not sure!

In terms of my own albums, I do a couple of mixed cd’s every year which are kind of like souvenirs to go with different sections of the year.  I do one with Pasha, which obviously represents the 17 weeklong residencies on Friday nights in the summer.

I did a TV project with Universal of the essential hits, which celebrates the autumn.

Is music in your genes or are you the “black sheep of music” in your family?

On my mother and father’s side, there was no music really. My dad just bought a lot of records; I suppose that had a lot of influence. My godmother was an opera singer in Italy in the 1940’s and 50’s that was always of interest to me.

Who was the most unusual guest on your radio show?

Nobody that unusual really, nobody that surprising, people involved in clubbing world come in all shapes, sizes and forms. Some of the maddest people tend to be the promoters rather than the dj’s, they are very colourful and some make fools of themselves on many occasions.

What is your “world view” on clubbing and it’s future?

I travel around the world and the markets are all at different stages. The new markets are full of excitement and naiveté When you go to places like former Eastern Europe and Russia and the Middle East where they’re just desperate to get involved in music and escape some of the problems over there. It was really sad to see what happened in Beirut. It was just starting to rebuild itself, it was just the most amazing new market but now it is all shattered and pushed back about 5 years. As far as the markets that have done it all and seen it all, like the UK. It’s a different story. The UK. Is actually in a healthy place right now, the UK has rebuilt and reinvented itself in the last 4 or 5 years and from my experience in America and Canada, in the last year especially it’s starting to come back as well. I mean in Canada, it never really went away; I mean, we are sitting in the Government right now!

Canada has always impressed me with the consistent quality when I’ve gone around the 4 corners of North America; the sweetness of the product has really impressed me!

What is your next goal in terms of the multi-media world, what are you working on?

I think there’s so much choice now, so many exciting things have cropped up, and things in the next year are going to get a little simpler for the consumer, for the punter. There’s so many websites, so many my spaces, so many bibos, so many pod casts, so many video casts. I think we’re going through a period now where if you are old enough, or got the means to afford a phone, a computer, a TV etc. then we are so bombarded with so much choice, so somewhere to kind of navigate through all that would be good.

The strongest thing for me as a personal… (I hate to call myself a brand) is to guide people through all that, the kind of madness of choice, and maybe there’s something in that, so I’ve been working that as a project.

I think you’ve been working on that your whole career!

Laughs trying!

Laughs again, he’s plotting his comeback movie. When the film was written, we had about 3 endings, maybe 4. It kind of got knocked back by the few people that had influence that could change it and it kind of simplified the whole thing, so that you got the ending that you got, which is he walked away from it all!

What do like better, East Enders or Coronation Street?

Laughs- Desperate Housewives!

- Daria Lafontaine

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Seeing Stars?
Stars of Track and Field

Before getting off the phone with Daniel Orvik, drummer, programmer, and one-third of Stars of Track and Field, current darlings of indie rock Next Big Thing lists everywhere, I ask him a fairly left-field question about Motley Crue. Given that SOTAF’s amalgam of lush guitars, swooping melancholy anthems, and spooky, electronic atmospherics have little to do with the hairspray and leather of the 1980s sultans of sleaze, I tentatively ask the soft-spoken Orvik if he’s heard about the upcoming Motley Crue biopic, based on their collective autobiography, The Dirt.

“I fucking love those guys, man! I grew up on [Crue’s 1981 debut] Too Fast for Love!” Orvik says.

I explain that the band themselves are played by no name actors, but that Val Kilmer’s playing “Diamond” David Lee Roth and Christopher Walken has snagged the role of the original Iron Man himself, Ozzy Osbourne.

Emboldened by Orvik’s enthusiasm, I press on: Who would play the roles of Stars of Track and Field in the big screen version of their lives?

“Man, I wish I had a couple of minutes… You already mentioned Christopher Walken. Damn that’s a good one… That’s a cool question… but I’m going to need a couple of hours to come up with a good answer. Alright, I’ll get up, have a shower, go down to the bakery with my laptop and fire you off an e-mail with my answer.” We hung up shortly after, but somehow I was sure he would send that e-mail. Because as humble as Orvik might appear to be, who can resist casting for yourself in the film of your own life?

By all accounts, 2006 was a big year for Orvik, a native of Portland, Oregon. Along with band-mates Kevin Calaba (vocals/guitar/keyboards) and Jason Bell (guitar/vocals), Orvik saw his star rise quickly.  Heavily hyped after their SXSW appearance, they were tipped as the #4 “Band to Watch in 2006” by the festival’s executive producer. Their debut LP Centuries of Love and War was available exclusively on iTunes three months in advance of its November 2006 release date, a sure sign of success and forward momentum in the digital music revolution.

Bolstered by tours supporting The Twilight Singers and Jeremy Enigk, further kudos came in the form of the coveted “Buzz band” title at New York’s CMJ festival in November. Capping it all off, muscular single “Movies in Antarctica” was included in the New York Post’s list of “Best Songs to Download from 2006”

Not bad for a band who, finding themselves without a bassist a couple of years ago, faced the daunting task of either recruiting and training a replacement, or else reshuffling the cabinet, switching instruments, and going it alone. Spotting a chance to move in an entirely different direction, they forewent the added body and opted for some digital help. Strapping on the ear-goggles, the band hit the practice sessions armed with laptops and a renewed zeal for making music. As singer Kevin Calaba notes, the new direction allowed them “to finally embrace all our influences and add the colours of Aphex Twin and Pink Floyd to a palette that already included The Beatles and My Blooody Valentine.”

Orvik’s musical tastes are even more far ranging. “I’ve been listening in the past couple of years to children’s music and Mexican radio more than alternative rock radio music. I like techno. I like the whole fucking thing, listening to all kinds of stuff. Jason and Kevin’s influences are just as diverse,” he says.

Along with Tony Lash (whose producing credits include the Dandy Warhols and Elliot Smith) and Jeff Saltzman (who has worked with Stephen Malkmus), SOTAF took to the studio to record their first long-player. And while Centuries of Love and War benefits from a definite and unifying sound, combining doom, gloom and glitchy paranoia with uplifting choruses and walls of U2-esque jangley guitars, the compositional process came together naturally, with no particular style or sound in mind.

“The songwriting is really song specific,” Orvik explains. “Kevin and Jason come up with a song idea. Sometimes it’s a pretty well arranged chord progression [paired] with a set of words; sometimes it’s just under way and we kind of pick up the ball from there. It happens very organically. It’s never the same with two songs and that’s what keeps it exciting. Once in a while, we’ll just sit down, we’ll be jamming, and somebody will do something and the song will come out of nowhere. We try not to be too formulaic with the process because we feel that flexibility with the process is part of what gets us off – keeping things fresh.”

The lyrical themes stretch from love and loss to angst and anger at the state of the world. With tracks such as “Centuries”, “Real Time” and “Lullaby for a G.I.”, social and political commentary seem to be comfortable mining territory for the songwriters.

“I think… deep down inside we all want to find art out there, or some other catalyst, which helps us tap into our sense of sadness… It is a sad world in many ways and we are angry at a lot of things. It’s right up there with sex. I mean, sadness and sex; is there anything really more interesting to talk about? I don’t think we’ve got too far into the sex – with music at least – or maybe we have, I don’t know, I haven’t heard any feedback on that. [But] we’re pretty discontented people. When you look at the world, there’s a lot to be discontented about. It’s just like the bumper sticker says, ‘If you’re not outraged, then you’re not paying enough attention.’”

Did they ever fear that SOTAF could be contracting the much-mocked Bono Syndrome, that taken too far this commentary could be seen as preachy self-gratification?

“I think we’re going to use our poetic license to say whatever we want and I think that’s within the artist’s right,” Orvik contends. “I’m not really concerned about the Bono Syndrome. I don’t think our lyrics are overtly offensive. If people do find them offensive, my advice is to go listen to something else. It’s not our goal to come out with a sledgehammer and build the themes on anything… we’re not coming out to bash this or that. We just want to present some ideas and shed some light on our views and hopefully not spoon-feed or shove any ideas down people’s throats.  Bring an idea to the table and let them decide themselves what they think is the message.  I think it’s pretty open to interpretation – but obviously there is an undertone, for sure.”

How did the addition of the electronic ‘fourth member’ translate to the stage?

“Really well, really well,” Orvik says. “We don’t sound the same as we do in the studio; it’s louder, it’s alive. And I don’t think it’s on the top of our list to recreate our studio sound. Our studio sound is very produced, while live it’s a lot more raw. We’re just more interested in getting out and getting on stage and really having a good time of it and letting go and getting the energy up.”

Indeed, amidst all the peaks and praise of the past year, Orvik enthusiastically points to touring as his highlight. “Touring, for sure. I love Toronto… Can’t get over New York City. Every time we go there it’s a great time and every time we leave I find myself looking over my shoulder with a sigh. Always sad to leave there. Love Chicago, Philadelphia…”

Modestly, he directs the spotlight to tour-mate Jeremy Enigk, singer-songwriter and ex-frontman of Sunny Day Real Estate: “Recording was great, but touring with Jeremy Enigk was definitely a far-out experience. Moving around with a bunch of his buddies who were a crack up… I can’t speak for the other guys,” Orvik recalls jokingly, “but I’d say aside from Kevin’s basket-weaving - his new hobby - it would probably rank in the top for them, too. 

Finally, I ask about the Belle & Sebastian connection. The Scottish twee-meets-electro pop outfit’s 1997 breakthrough album features lead track “Stars of Track and Field”.  Somewhat listlessly, Orvik responds, “[Our band name] is a tribute to the band.  We get asked that a lot and there’s really not too much to say about it.  I wasn’t really responsible for coming up with the name of the band, so when I’m asked about it I usually just make up a bad joke and lie about what happened.  It’s really just they’re a great band, it’s a great song. A lot of other bands have done the same thing, so I think we’ve followed in their footsteps.  We just like the sound of it.”

As promised, I received an email from Orvik soon after the conclusion of our interview, with his cast for the as-yet-be-released Stars of Track and Fields bio-pic:

Okay, here's my idea:

Jason: Leonardo DiCaprio
Kevin: Jake Gyllenhall

Dan: Elijah Wood

So his band mates are played by two of Hollywood’s more formidable studs, and for himself he chooses a Hobbit. Good to see the newfound rock star status isn’t going to his head. 

- John Tracey

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Great Lake Swimmers

Ask Tony Dekker of Toronto indie group the Great Lake Swimmers why he makes music and he replies bluntly.

“I don’t really understand it myself,” he says. “Why any one would choose a lifestyle like this seems completely ridiculous from my perspective.”

Dekker’s perspective is, of course, that of a struggling (though increasingly recognized) indie artist. He’s living the lifestyle that is, in his own words, a ridiculous choice. It seems paradoxical – that is, until you realize that in Dekker’s case, it wasn’t so much a choice as a necessity to do what he does.

“I feel compelled to do it, like there’s a fire in me, or a really bad itch,” he says of crafting the Great Lake Swimmers’ drifting, ambient form of folk. “Sometimes it’s just as natural as taking a deep breath of air. I guess I do it because it’s like breathing to me. I would need to do it regardless of my situation.”

And indeed, with a little help from his friends, Dekker has been creating music “regardless of his situation” for several years now.

“Great Lake Swimmers started off essentially as a solo project,” he explains. “When I first moved to the city [of Toronto] and started playing the songs live, I crossed paths with a few like-minded musicians who helped me record the parts for the first [self-titled] record [released in 2003], and occasionally played with me at live shows. That was the start of a revolving door of different backing members for the first couple years. The core members these days, Erik Arnesen and Colin Huebert, came to the project in the same sort of way. I met Colin on my first tour out East, when I was doing shows with his band Ten Year Drought. By the end of the tour he was drumming on my songs almost every night and we sort of continued that when he moved to Toronto shortly thereafter. With Erik, I was actually playing drums for his rockabilly/surf band the Donnellys. I knew he could play the banjo really well so when I started to get busy with my own stuff, and his band went on hiatus, I asked him to help out. We’ve since done five or six tours together.”

They also finished the Great Lake Swimmers’ second album, Bodies and Minds, which was released in March of 2005. Soft, sweet, melodic – and at times haunting – the album hovers somewhere between ambient folk and alt-country, but with a distinctive, atmospheric sound all to itself – likely a result of Dekker’s offbeat choice of recording space. GLS’s first release was, after all, recorded in an abandoned grain silo, while their second was done at a lakeside church in rural Ontario.

“The choice of location, rather than studio, has become pretty important to me as a recording tool,” Dekker explains. “In a way, we’re using the space as an instrument, or as an aural backdrop, if that makes sense. It provides continuity and a common thread for the records, and also emphasizes the process of making the record. When the raw tracks are done with a lot of ambient sound, it becomes a lot harder to fake it in the mixing room, and I like that aspect of it. You can’t get around the fact that the sound was captured in a specific place at a specific time. Also, you can’t get that kind of reverb out of a little box or an effects unit. It makes the experience more real to me.”

Abandoned grain silos and rural churches aren’t the only places GLS has brought Dekker. “We’ve had some great opportunities to travel and play really nice shows,” he says, a master of the understatement. “We’ve opened for Andrew Bird at La Cigale in Paris, and played with Feist in New York City. We’ve also played in tiny venues – one that springs to mind was in Jackson, Mississippi, and that felt really good.”

But while his experiences exploring the world are clearly unforgettable, of even greater importance to Dekker are his experiences exploring the music. “The moments that I value the most are the ones where I feel lost in the dark and the music is lighting the way,” he confesses. “I really felt that way with the first record, completely lost in the dark, where the songs were little refractions of light. Writing and recording are really the most important aspects of it for me.”

That act of hands-on writing and recording is what Dekker cites as one of the most appealing aspects of working as an independent artist. Currently with indie lable weewerk, Dekker explains that “the pros [of working with an independent label] are definitely that you have a lot of control over your destiny and you have the opportunity to build something out of nothing, from the ground up. The effects of hard work are more noticeable I suppose.

“The ironic down side to that, of course, is that there is a lot of work involved and that gives you less time to be a writer or an artist or whatever, when you’re helping to oversee a lot of the other details to help it run smoothly. But overall I’m happy with how things are happening because in the end it is a really gratifying way of doing things. For the initial pressings of the first record, by myself at first, and then with a few other people, I put together every copy by hand. It felt good, and feels good, to dedicate yourself to something so entirely that in the end you feel like you are delivering something that has permanence, or at least that you feel strongly enough to go to those lengths.

“In the end,” he concludes, the work “is its own reward, and the delivery itself is gratifying enough.”

At least, it is until the fame, coke, and hookers arrive.

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Two Ton Boa Interview

“People in the orchestra always make jokes about the oboe players being neurotic,” says Sherry Fraser, the driving force behind rock outfit Two Ton Boa and a classically trained oboe player herself. If she serves as any kind of example in this regard, those “jokes” may be pretty accurate.

“Oh man, I’m sorry, I’m totally tripping over myself,” says Fraser in response to an interview question – about herself. “I guess I don’t know. But I guess that’s the wrong answer? I’m really sorry.” She sounds flustered – neurotic, one might even say. But then again, maybe that’s to be expected of this self-described “spatial” thinker. The linearity of verbal communication has, after all, never been of interest to her – which is good news for rock fans. Because otherwise, instead of crafting the dark, ambient soundscapes that characterize Two Ton Boa, Fraser would likely be pooting away on an oboe somewhere.

But luckily for the rock world, Fraser “kind of realized I didn’t have the personality to do the classical career. I wanted to create things. If I was going to pursue a classical career… I’d have had to devote myself [to it] utterly and completely… It was really a matter of whether I wanted to exclude all the other things that were happening. I was starting to sing, to play bass, and I was having fun. I was having fun not being restricted to reading music. For the first time I was really creating things and not just writing sheet music. I found I really like rock music,” she explains.

Of course, the result of choosing rock and roll over classical is that “I have no money. No salary. And so I miss classical music in a way. I miss playing in an orchestra and feeling that acoustic sound all around me. But the thing I love about rock music is that I love to write and to discover, and just to discover new soundscapes. I just feel like there’s this mystery that’s always there with creating and with music… I feel like I create a world and that I’m on a journey.”

It’s a good description of TTB’s second release and debut LP, Parasiticide, released this month on Kill Rock Stars. Decidedly non-cerebral, the album is a darkly emotional trip through Fraser’s psyche. Compared in her press material to “nightmares” and a “dream universe,” Fraser concurs that while those are “someone else’s words, I would agree with part of it. I definitely feel that when I’m writing music I go into another zone, another plane.”

“But to tell you the truth,” she continues, “I’m not trying to create any kind of darkness. I actually feel like I’m fighting it. I feel like when I write, that’s my struggle to stay alive, in the sense that – at least as far as “Cash Machine” [Parasiticide’s opening track] goes – that’s my way of bearing the weight of the structures we live within. I mean, I’m trying to write music and stay afloat with absolutely no money. I mean, we’re all stuck inside of it, this structure, and I suppose I’m just stating something about what I see in our culture. There are all these claims about what the higher ideals are in our country, and I’m just not seeing that. I mean, what’s really running the machine here?

“But that’s just my feeling about it… My music is based in feeling. I just have a feeling, an energy, and it comes out when I’m playing a bass line or, literally, it’s dream music sometimes. I wake sometimes – the song ‘HERarchy,’ for example, came from a dream. The basic melody did, at least, and the sound of it, and the sounds of the girls singing. I literally woke up with it in my head and I just ran over to my four-track and played it out.”

Sound a little crazy? Fraser would be the first to agree with you. But that’s the point. There’s no logic to her music. It’s an emotion you have to experience. Experience it live for yourself when Two Ton Boa launch their American tour this fall. Find out more at www.twotonboa.com.

- James Sandham

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The Tyde Drifts into Toronto

Darren Rademaker, frontman for LA indie surf outfit The Tyde, is sitting on a beat up couch in the back of the Horseshoe Tavern wiping his nose. He sniffs and mutters something under his breath about “this fucking cold.” But it happens. Especially when you tour like the Tyde.

“We played a show last night in Chicago,” Rademaker says. “Then we drove straight to Toronto.” He sniffs. “It was a long drive. We didn’t get in till pretty early in the morning.” What’s more, this is only halfway through the tour. Still ahead are Montreal, New York, Atlanta, Nashville and, ultimately, Austin, home to the Tyde’s tour mates, the Black Angels.

But all in all, Rademaker’s handling the travails of the travelling musician pretty well. After all, he’s been doing this for close to two decades. The Tyde, formed in 2000, is only his most recent musical endeavour.

“I’ve had a couple groups, a couple 80s groups,” Rademaker says with a self-conscious smile. “And a couple 90s groups. But [the Tyde] is the band I like the most, because from the beginning I made the decision that I’m going to write all the songs and anyone who wants to play with me can. I totally encourage that. I always got bogged down with my other bands by having someone else who wanted to write the songs.” And that’s no good, because “then you’re not playing your music and not doing what you really want to do,” Rademaker explains.

Which is not to say he’s a control freak. Far from it. In fact, when asked what advice he could give after his experiences on the road and as a musician, Rademaker replies that we should all just “enjoy life. Listen to a lot of music. And try surfing when you can.” I don’t think you can get much more laid back than that without going catatonic.

But it’s a personal philosophy that Rademaker lives by and which has served him well. Surfing is a prominent theme on the Tyde’s third and most recent release, Three’s Company, and enjoying life and listening to a lot of music seems to be Rademaker’s full-time occupation, more or less.

“As a musician, you’re on tour, and you’re sort of selling yourself,” he explains, “but you’re also just travelling and singing a song, not just trying to sell records. You’re just out there saying ‘hey, this is what I’m about.’ I feel like there’s some sort of magic involved somehow that has allowed me to just tour around and share my music. Whatever band I’ve had, they’ve never been really mega popular, but it’s always been just enough to get out there… I just think of all the bands back in LA who wish they could be out there doing this, you know, playing Toronto tonight,” he says.

Or, for that matter, any of the numerous other city’s the Tyde have played.

“My favourite place to play is London, England,” Rademaker says. “Or Japan,” where they played the Udo Music Festival earlier this year.

“Oddly, we’ve actually done more tours of England than we’ve done tours of the States,” he says. “And we’ve done Spain and other parts of Europe. And Japan. This is only our second tour of the States even though this is our third album.

“If there’s a difference between playing North America and Europe, it’s that the crowds in Europe are more knowledgeable about the music and they seem to really get into it. You tend to see more people in England who know all the words and really get fanatical about it. Which isn’t to say you can’t have a bad show there – or a good show in North America. But in England they just seem more psyched about the music in some weird way.”

That point is brought home powerfully and painfully about twenty minutes later as the Tyde take to the stage. There are maybe 20 or 30 people who have showed up to hear Rademaker croon about surfing, love, life, and friends. But that’s just the way it goes sometimes. And as Rademaker says, his bands have “never been really mega popular, but it’s always been just enough to get out there.” What more could a mellow surfer ask for?

By James Sandham

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Phatt al – People Having a Terrific Time Always

I had the pleasure of sitting down and having a chat with up and coming rapster Mike Wilson, AKA Phatt al, one of Toronto’s hardest working musicians. With al, there’s never a dull moment. On top of doing his own thing as Phatt al, he also co-manages and performs in the sizzling hot Nu Funk set God Made Me Funky.

The results of years of hard work are evident, with three discs under his hat, including his latest, Transistor, released on his very own New Empire Entertainment label, a review in “The Source”, playing with various musicians like Len (“Steal my Sunshine”), Raggadeath and Jacksoul, just to name a few.

It all started with Three Blind Mice, al’s first band which also included his younger brother. But when their manager promised things he couldn’t deliver, then, as now, he got the ball rolling himself.

“I ended up going to a lot of house parties and trying to rap with whoever I could. I’d go to a whole bunch of different neighbourhoods and just meet people, younger cats like me who were also into this, and try to get on to producers.”

All this networking eventually led him to a place called Fresh Arts, a government youth organization for “inner-city kids,” and although al wasn’t exactly inner-city, these sessions gave him more opportunities to try and find his rap style. But it wouldn’t be until the new decade, in 2000, when he hooked up with Divine Styler, (widely regarded as a hip hop icon), that he would finally find his own voice.

“I started to realize what I could do. What I could contribute, to not only the music scene, and not only to hip-hop, but to art in general.”

Now armed with the skill that only comes with experience, al demonstrates time and time again that he can stand with the best of them. Refusing to stay locked in any mould, al, unlike most of his peers, is not afraid to incorporate his rock and jazz influences into his beats.

“It’s been such a journey meeting a band like Jacksoul, who introduced me to the live element of music. Then meeting jazz musicians and starting to understand the fundamentals of jazz as it related to hip-hop. I then dug myself a little niche by doing my own thing.”

So far nobody is complaining.

The upbeat and lively party known as Transistor, al’s most ambitious disc to date, managed to snag the #1 spot on the Earshot! national charts in Canada, with the second single “The Drift” (featuring Lorraine Reid), spinning on both college stations and the commercial radio station Flow 93.5.

The musical evolution continues with God Made Me Funky, a Nu Funk project that al is very excited about. With a blend of Soul, R&B, Hip-Hop, Jazz and of course Funk with a modern twist, GMMF are set to take the world by storm. After releasing their self titled debut, they won the Toronto Independent music Award for Best R&B group, played numerous festivals and had their tunes featured in the popular TMN show “G-Spot.”

When asked if he feels he’s reached a defining moment in his career, he responds by saying it’s definitely a beginning. The new band has allowed him to broaden his musical horizons. “This is really a cool project because it has allowed me to dig into my old-school hip-hop roots. It’s a fun record.”

Fun is what music is all about.

The new GMMF disc, featuring Phat al, will be unleashed October10, with a CD release party to follow at the Opera House October 13. They’ll be sure to bring the house down so don’t miss it!

www.myspace.com/phattal

www.godmademefunky.com

-Charmaine Merchant

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Charlotte Martin

Charlotte Martin has found her niche, for now.

A child of musical parents, for Martin music was more of a compulsion than a decision that she came to growing up. "Like eating, I feel I have no other choice but to make music, it's the only job I have ever had and I love it," she replies when I ask her why she makes music, a question that often weeds out the dabblers from the die-hards.

This songbird has moxie and with the label that she and her musical partner and husband, Ken Andrews, founded and now run with two others, Dinosaur Fight Records, she has hit a point that she is comfortable with and proud of in her music. Previously signed with RCA, Martin went on to release two full-length albums, 'In Parentheses' and 'On Your Shore', in the five years that she was with the major label which afforded her many advantages at the expense of steering her own artistic ship. "An advantage of being with a major label is that I got to tour a lot, which put me in a position to have my own crowd, my own following as well as being able to step up and have the 'balls' to be able to make the move to an indie label to make this record," she notes graciously of the tough transition into the world of 'Doing-It-All-Yourself'.

No stranger to the independent music world, Martin seems to have had that dedicated sensibility about her all along, one that does not involve the words “selling out" or viewing sacrifice as a negative thing. The imminent release of her third album, Stromata, out on September 12, is being lauded as her most intimate offering, a very personal collection of songs that sound at first like a mix of Kate Bush and Tori Amos, until halfway through the album, where you will hear Charlotte in a way that is incomparable to another artist, notably a female electronic artist. "I feel like I found my own sound and my own voice…it is a lyrical turning point where I wasn’t afraid to write the songs that I did. Before that, when I was with RCA, I didn’t have the maturity as a writer to write them or live them or be able to have the know-how or the chops [to make this album turn out the way it did]."

Charlotte Martin has moved in many directions since turning her full attention to the process of her music and its many avenues, including production and experimentation. While in the past she had stuck to pounding out acoustic pieces based around the piano, Stromata has Martin's fingerprints all over it, and one can literally feel her within the music. Considering she views the process as more important than the final product, Martin is fit to steer this ship, her own, into unchartered territory, which, come to think of it, holds little that she has not tried. Martin notes that, "I didn’t have much of an opinion on production and the process through which one makes music and through the learning process, I have grown so much."

And already a veteran of the music industry, Martin knows that even though the album is finished, there is no end, only the beginning of a new process - the promotion side and inevitable tour that follows the making of an album. And even when the album is being mixed, sampled, layered, dubbed, and right up until the moment it is released to the public, there is the crippling fear of reception. Martin knows that vulnerability all too well and feels that making this record got her through the last two years which have been heaped with heart break, joy, disappointment and courage, the most unnerving part is "how the album will be received and what it will mean to people," she notes, with an understanding adopted along the way.

Charlotte Martin will release her third full-length album on September 12 in Denver where for the first time, she will be touring with a drummer, which is strange for her as she has only ever toured alone. As for an appearance north of the border, Martin is unsure as to whether she will be a headlining act or a supporting artist in Toronto, but she says she will make it here at some point along the way.

www.charlottemartin.com

-Jessica Shulist

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Black Angels Musical Equivalent of Brown Acid

The Black Angels have a bio to make most bands seem blander than Kenny G. Organ player Jennifer Raines grew up in a mortuary, guitarist Christian Bland is the son of a Texan preacher man, drummer Stephanie Bailey and vocalist Alex Maas believe a little girl in a red linen dress haunts the group’s home, and bassist Nate Ryan was born on a cult compound. It’s the kind of crowd you expect to meet half way into a bad acid trip. And it does a lot to explain the Black Angels’ droning, mescaline-rock sound.

“Yeah,” says Bland, “Nate Ryan, his parents were in a cult out in Utah when he was born. I think that his parents got out of that cult pretty soon after… maybe about a year. He doesn’t carry too much trauma,” he jokes.

“But it’s kind of funny you said [earlier in the interview that] our music sounds like it’s from a cult. We actually all live together in this house over in Austin, and at night there’s some strange things that go on in the house, out on those Texan outskirts.”

So the Black Angels, you could say, don’t stray far from their roots and this applies musically as well. Not only have they taken their name from the Velvet Underground’s “The Black Angels Death Song,” they’ve also made off with a sizeable piece of the Underground’s musical repertoire.

At least, that’s how it sounds. The Angels’ music may be original compositions, but their sound is straight out of 1970s New York and LA rock and roll. If Jim Morrison and Lou Reed met while tripping the light fantastic over the astral plane, the Black Angels’ debut LP, Passover, is a close approximation of what it might sound like. It’s freaky, hallucinogenic “native American drone’n’roll,” to reference the Angels’ own self-assigned genre, a hypnotic and enveloping sound that immediately surrounds the listener.

“A lot of us are really into Velvet Underground, the Doors, and that kinda old ‘droney’ sound,” says Bland. The appeal “is what that music does. It’s not really something to dance to, but it’s kind of a ceremonial sound, an experience. All of us are really into that, so it’s fortunate we all found each other.”

“A lot of [the compositional process] is that we’ll just go into our practice space and just get on an instrument – whatever we’re feeling – and then just start to jam. If it seems the jam is cool and it’s a nice groove, we’ll make it into a song, structure it up a little bit,” Bland explains. Given the Angels’ sound, it’s a process that couldn’t be more appropriate.

Blurry, ghostly, and tribally rhythmic, The Black Angels take the listener to Morrison’s proverbial desert. Thus located, Passover is a gruelling march through the themes of fear, paranoia and war, all rendered through the buzzing, confused lens of the anomic nomad.

It’s a sound born of experience. As Bland says, “we were out [on the road] for all of June. Then we were back here in Austin for seven days, then we left and played a festival… then one in Seattle, and one in Kansas, and we just got back last Monday [Aug. 7].”

And what a long, strange trip it’s been. “In Austin,” Bland says, “there’s definitely been a positive reaction. But it has been tougher in other cities. I think we were in Dallas, and we were doing “The First Vietnamese War,” and someone out in the crowd was a soldier, we found out later, who had fought in Desert Storm in the early 1990s. When the song was done he just stood up and said ‘fuck you hippies – you guys weren’t even in Vietnam.’ We were all like ‘what?’ and he just stormed out of the room and took all his buddies with him. So it was pretty weird. But that’s not that common. Generally it’s been pretty positive. At the other end of the spectrum there’s been soldiers who have come back from the most recent war – in Iraq – and they’ve come up and said how much our songs mean to them, and they can identify. It ranges from one end to the other.”

Get in on the trip yourself. The Black Angels are tentatively scheduled to hit Toronto this fall with the Black Keys. Check out the band’s myspace at www.myspace.com/theblackangels, or visit www.theblackangels.com.

-James Sandham

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“The blues are nothing but a good person feeling down, and I got tired of feeling down.” The Buck Brothers’ Andy Duke Speaks.

By: James Sandham

The Buck Brothers “met in a very un-rock and roll location,” says frontman Andy Duke. “The three of us met accidentally in a Buddhist disco. None of us are practicing Buddhists. We don’t have anything against the faith, but we kind of ended up there through friends of friends… It was in a really boring suburb of London [UK] – boring apart from the fact that it had this Buddhist disco. Basically everybody there had a very specific look that was very different from the way the three of us looked, so we all ended up gravitating toward one corner where there were some rather fantastic veggie hors d’oeuvres, and the three of us got to talking, very much aware that we were sticking out like sore thumbs, and one thing led to anther. We were all musicians going through rough patches in the projects we were involved with, and really just as a joke more than anything else we got together because we thought it was so odd to meet in such a bizarre setting, and that ended up becoming the embryo for Buck Brothers.”

It’s a beginning not unbefitting the London punk-pop threesome. Like their initial meeting, the band itself is somewhat improbable, quirky and, like a Buddhist disco pasted onto a boring London suburb, a mishmash of influences and pop archetypes juxtaposed together so perfectly they move from being mere kitsch to biting social satire.

Of course, explains Duke, to be such conveyers of satire hadn’t always been the plan. There was, in fact, no plan to speak of when the Buck Brothers first formed.

“A band can plan things too much and try too much to fit into a certain mould or genre – I think the expression is ‘being hoisted by one’s own petard’ – and my previous bands certainly did that,” Duke says. “If we were trying to jump on the bandwagon it was already too late, or if we were trying to do something unique it was too unique; but the big word there is ‘try,’ and with the Buck Brothers it’s very organic. The only thing we really cared about was that we were doing something we enjoyed and that we were catchy, you know, that we’d be able to hum to ourselves while cycling home.”

The Brothers seem to have succeeded on both fronts and more. Their music is instantly catchy; as immediately appealing after a superficial spin as it is once the time has been taken to appreciate the lyrics. The band has appealed to an audience broad enough to surprise even the band.

“There was a fear,” Duke explains, that “we were too poppy for the punk people and too punky for the pop people, and too ragged for the people who were into emo, and that was a really big fear, so we managed almost by accident to appeal to a much wider cross section of people than we could have envisioned. When we realized that audiences that had never heard us before were being incredibly positive and enjoying what we were doing, it became an absolute joy to book tours and make it happen – all though DIY – and that same vibe a year on is still at the forefront.”

Duke credits the Buck Brother’s DIY ethos with much of the band’s success. “When we formed, DIY was a necessity,” he says. “Being able to get the name out there when you’re trying to break as a new band is very difficult. Even if you’ve just recorded an EP, promoters will want to hear an album. If you’ve recorded your album, they want to hear a second album. So because of that we certainly had to have a very strong DIY ethic.”

But while a DIY ethic was initially a necessity for the Buck Brothers, it has since become a fundamental part of the band and one of its most rewarding aspects. As Duke explains, “two of us had been in bands that had indie deals in the past, and inasmuch as every deal that has been signed has been celebrated with big bottles of champagne, you find yourself very much serving a company and it becomes a job. We treat our band like [a job] anyway, but it becomes less that we’re working for a company and we tend to think of ourselves more as a self-employed band - we get to be the board of directors and figure out what we think is of sufficient quality to make it onto the CD and the live shows.”

Of course, says Duke, to be independent and in ownership of your band and its future is not without its moments of uncertainty. “There are dark moments of soul constantly,” he confides. But “one thing that helps is a collective belief in what we’re doing. If I’m going through a horrible-moody-git phase, the law of averages says my two other brothers in crime will be able to pull me up and vice versa… Particularly financially, the constant dark moments of the soul are hard to deal with. But inevitably when that happens there’s always one little piece of good news that ends up helping. It could be a new song, it could be radio play somewhere, and that makes it all seem that much more worthwhile. But you know it’s not easy. If there were a made-for-TV film about us there would be some very bad acting and tears.”

Insecurities and uncertainties aside, the Buck Brothers nonetheless manage to pursue music on their own terms, setting their own standards and creative focus. While more commercial punk-pop outfits pursue tired and superficial themes of love lost at the mini-mall – “the middle-class blues,” as Duke refers to it – the Buck Brothers’ current album and breakout debut, “Me,” is centred on the slightly more esoteric and certainly more stimulating concepts of self and identity.

“Buck Brothers formed around one song which was ‘Which Me Do You Like,’” Duke says. “The embryo for that was really just being aware of the different types of hats and masks that people wear in relationships. Particularly as a musician, people meet you on stage, or off stage, and they assume that person is like that 24/7, and if they see that same person, you know, in a dressing gown at home doing the dishes, that then creates a whole new image and ties into a whole host of different things… I found the world being more and more involved with labels, particularly my own world, and it was starting to affect my relationship with family members and in terms of my love life and things, so [‘Me’] was just a way of addressing that… I read a lot of interviews with celebrities where people will meet celebrities, particularly comedians, and assume that they’re that funny person all the time, but life isn’t like that, nor do I think anybody should be like that – it would be too one-dimensional. So [‘Me’] was a way of addressing that. And to a certain extent probably there’s a subconscious element of having previous bands and labels saying ‘we’d sign you but we need you to be a bit more like this, we need you to be more like that’ – well ‘which me do you like?’” says Duke, quoting from the chorus of the bands’ knockout single.

Group as well as self-identity is also addressed on “Me.” As Duke explains, “in the last five years with satellite and cable television, and with people having access to North American television via downloading, people [in the UK] are very switched on. In terms of your average person living in Essex, Donald Trump is a household name. And blessed Paris Hilton graces our screens constantly – and not always in night vision either – and I think inasmuch as people can talk about an Americanization of the world [in media and culture, it] is a reality and Hollywood does dictate what we wear and what we watch, as much as we deny it here [in Britain], so addressing that was quite appealing.”

But the Buck Brothers were never meant to be a sociology dissertation, and as complex as some of the band’s themes are, “we still all love girls in skirts and boots on bikes,” says Duke, referring to the second single from “Me,” also featured on this year’s NXNE Northernline compilation.

Songs of both varieties are mixed throughout the album, all powered by the Brothers’ driving pop-punk-new-wave guitar, giving the album a sound and feel somewhere between the ironic sensibility of Franz Ferdinand and the stripped down ethic of Joy Division. But despite parallels to such modern masters, UK critics have often dismissed the Brothers’ music as banal. They don’t understand, Duke opines, that the banal masks “a dry sense of humour beneath a lot of the seemingly light-hearted things.” In fact, Duke explains, appearances aside, “Me” features “melancholy galore” – but presented through satire and tempered by perspective.

“When I was a kid starting out,” he explains, “I wanted to be a tortured artist. I wanted to be a Nick Drake, a Thom Yorke, a ‘my goodness, this person’s incredibly, incredibly tortured,’ but in the last couple years I have suffered tremendous losses (I lost both my parents which is an absolutely monumental loss over the past three years), so when I finally had a badge to wear without having to build up to it and sort of have the middle-class blues, I realized that life is really far too short and I didn’t want to concentrate on swirling, dark melodies about the human condition and existentialism anymore, and as soon as I realized I didn’t have that agenda anymore in myself, and I could write about things that amused me, or mock myself, I just found myself enjoying life a hell of a lot more. I realized that life had dealt me a really, really bad series of cards, but instead of writing about ‘my dark chasm’ I realized I wanted to concentrate on girls, skirts, boots, and redheaded women. I found that to be a much easier means of cheering myself up. The blues are nothing but a good person feeling down, and I got tired of feeling down.”

And that’s probably the best way to describe the Buck Brothers. While they do address some fairly serious and complex issues, they do so without feeling down, without getting wrapped up in the self-indulgent oppression of the tortured artist. They can thus address the perils of Americanization just as comfortably as they can the joys of redheaded women. This is exactly what “Me” is about – multidimensionality. It doesn’t make their music any less powerful – just a hell of lot more fun.

See for yourself at www.myspace.com/buckbrothers or www.buckbrothers.net

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Amer Diab Interview

Amer Diab (Toronto’s own stalwart indie country crooner) talks shop with Spill writer Christopher Langer. They discuss the ins and outs of his music and new album (There/After) as well as Kevin Drew’s broth-buying tendencies. Stand by for adventure!

Spill Magazine: So who are you, what do you do, and how long have you been in an Amer Diab tribute band?

Amer Diab: My name is Amer Diab. I've been singing and playing guitar in the only existing Amer Diab tribute band in the world for five years; excluding Tiny Amer Diab which is an Amer Diab tribute band composed entirely of little people. Before that I just played guitar for other people... actually I still do that, but only when the money is good.

SM: This one's the obligatory question for the kids- what's your connection to Broken Social Scene?

AD: Andrew Whiteman and Brendan Canning from BSS played on my first album, The Year of the Apology. Other than that there's no real connection. Every now and again I bump into Kevin Drew at a bar and we say hi and chat. I've also chatted with him at the Price Chopper where he was buying broth for his sick girlfriend. They're all nice guys.

SM: Any thoughts on Arabic pop singer Amr Diab? You and he are after all google neighbours.

AD: I haven't heard any of his music. My only thought on him is that I wish he had a different name.

SM: Would you tell us a little bit about your new album? Any interesting things happen before or during its recording?

AD: A lot of interesting things happened during the recording of the album. George W. Bush was re-elected as president of the USA and Stephen Harper was elected Prime Minister of Canada. I had a failed attempt at recording for a label, but I felt I had to nix the whole thing two songs into the process after some unpleasantness. I ended up producing the album myself and I'm very happy with that because ultimately I'm the only one who can answer for it. Although, I don't want to come across as one of those anti-label musicians... that's not the case.

SM: What would your reaction be if I used the word 'mature' to describe your sound?

AD: It depends on what was meant by the word 'mature.' If it means that I've been around the block and that I choose my words and the sounds that surround them carefully, then I'd be fine with that. If it means that I sound like music that should be played in an elevator, then I wouldn't be that happy, unless it was a really nice elevator with a walk-in humidor, lounge area, and functioning bidet.

SM: Another word I'd use to describe your live show is 'taut.' You and your backing band seem to have great chemistry. How have you attained and how do you maintain this?

AD: Well, we're good friends first and foremost. Plus, I levy $5 fines when they make mistakes during rehearsal, $10 fines if they make mistakes during shows, and $50 fines if they speak out of turn.

SM: Who would you say your music is aimed at, in terms of both who your songs are directed to and what market they are meant to attract or who seems attracted to them?

AD: I don't really aim my songs at anyone as far as who they're "meant to attract." I write and play songs the only way I know how and I'm just thankful that people seem to like them. I know that songs do get written for certain demographics, but songwriting is too much of a personal thing for me to turn it into a marketing exercise.

SM: In what sense do you relate yourself to the 'alt country' crowd? Also would you say that this genre is unique in that its biggest names are women?

AD: Are the biggest names women? I'm not sure if I'd agree with you there. I think 'alt-country' is just a term to distinguish things away from what was once called 'New Country,' which is really just straight pop music played with country instrumentation. If Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, or The Band were new artists coming out today, they'd be labeled as alt-country. I like country music a lot, but I'm not sure if I'm an alt-country musician. Other people can make that distinction if they feel they need to.

SM: Live I've seen you perform a stomping hillbilly cover of Prince's Purple Rain, which has a crowd-pleasing tongue-in-cheek appeal to it. On the other hand, your own material is obviously not comedic by any stretch of the imagination. How would you describe the mood of your songs, and how seriously do you take yourself?

AD: I have a great deal of respect for Prince. I would never do a cover of a song in order to make fun of it. I only cover songs that I really like and I try to put my own stamp on it. As far as my own songs, I think people tend to miss the humour in them because I direct it at myself and it's mistaken as self-pity. (Poor me, no one understands my sense of humour). I don't take myself that seriously at all... I do take songwriting and musicianship seriously though.

SM: What do you think about Toronto's scene these days? Who in your mind are three other bands from Toronto that I should check out?

AD: I think Toronto has a great music scene and it always will. There's something for everyone here and we're spoiled rotten. You should check out 1) Paul Emery & The Dickens (who i mention in one of my songs), 2)Lindy, and 3)The Diableros (no relation).

www.amerdiab.ca

-Christopher Langer

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The Creeping Nobodies Intervew

The Creeping Nobodies bring so much to the plate. Their great live show can not be missed and their new album The Sound of Joy provides an intensely thoughtful addition to the post-punk revivalist camp. They also smell good, I assume... anyway, we continue our stalker-like coverage of the Nobodies with an interview with lead vocalist/guitarist Derek Westerholm, who critiques my grammar while discussing the band, the album, and the rest.

Spill Magazine: Where does your name The Creeping Nobodies come from? It feels like it might be some sort of fancy-pants literati thing.

Derek Westerholm: It is, indeed, stolen. If I told you where from, it would ruin it for you, really, wouldn't it?

SM: I suppose. You all seem like pretty nice genuine people. Do you get that a lot? If so, is this something that's helping you make headway in the music world? What sort of general band philosophy do you folks follow?

DW: Being nice might be the one thing that doesn't help you make headway in the music world, and it certainly doesn't make any difference to the music or art you make. I'm sure history has proven that as many un-nice people have made interesting art and music as nice people. Being genuine, however, seems to me to be somewhat related to the art one makes, in that it probably means a genuine person will make art that is genuine, heart-felt & passionate. The general band philosophy is make music we all like.

SM: There seems to be a marked difference between your band's live and recorded sounds. The same songs from The Sound of Joy have a sort of raw drive to them at the bar, but on the album the same songs feel more like lab experiments. What do you think about this or attribute it to?

DW: I think the difference is a recording studio and a live setting are so completely different that it is impossible to treat them in exactly the same way. More and more we aim to capture the same energy of a live show in the studio, but really, making music to listen to on record is much different than making music to watch in a live setting. The performance required in a studio seems be different than the one required in a club in front of people. Therefore, it seems that the approach should be somewhat different also, though, ideally, both should be equally rewarding to the audience.

SM: While gathering your material for the new album did you ever have to shake off the urge to toss in a token ballad? I think the album's better without one, but do you feel any peer pressure to slow down and gush on unrequited love or something?

DW: No. And if we did feel it, it wouldn't be because of peer pressure. But, no we haven't.

SM: I've listened to your album about a bajillion times, but I'm still having trouble figuring out what the lyrics are all about. Sometimes they seem to be political (Concrete), but it could be political or using politics allegorically? Conversely, on other songs (Hollow Stems, A Hunter's Will) the lyrics seem there more for texture and rhythm than to make us ponder the meaning of life. Could you maybe shed some light on this? I'd appreciate it, as it would mean less thinking for me that way.

DW: No, no... thinking is good. That's the point. And it seems your thinking is clear & doing its job. The lyrics are a bit of all of the above, really. The lyrics should work on many levels. I think that's the best way to respect the intelligence of your audience. Yes... sometimes the lyrics are very political. Yes... sometimes they are allegorical. Yes, sometimes they are written with texture and rhythm in mind. Yes, sometimes they also ponder the meaning of life. Sometimes they are playful, sometimes they are serious, sometimes they are meant to be literal, sometimes not so much. If we are all really lucky, all the above and more will be true. I would like to think that the lyrics mean many things to many people & that they would continue to unravel new meanings and relations with each listen and consideration of them.

SM: You have three singers. How does the band divide song writing and vocal duties? It seems very communal, as so many of the tracks on The Sound of Joy feature two or more singers.

DW: The music & lyric writing is completely collaborative. Generally (but not always) the person singing the lyrics is the person who wrote them. "Treachery" features four different voices. I sing my own lyrics, Matt wrote the "Burnt black ships come hither by water" line, Sarah wrote the first lyrics that she sings. Valerie writes most of the lyrics that she sings. Sometimes one or another of us will comment or edit or suggest changes to one part or another, but really every song on the album is the product of the five people playing on it.

SM: If I'm not mistaken, you've gone through some personal changes in the past. What effect did this have on The Creeping Nobodies? Was there that moment where you thought about closing shop altogether? If so, when?

DW: Personal changes, Personnel changes. Yes. True. The band is collaborative and always has been, so it's always had its effect, but we've always been excited about the music we've made.

SM: You've had the opportunity to play with quite a few talented bands over the last couple of years, including Old Time Relijun last fall and Man Man just last week at Pop Montreal. What have the career highlights been for you so far, in terms of who you've played with or any off the record tour malarky?

DW: Don't really think of it as career highlights so much as moments we've been happy to be part of. Playing with The Ex was exciting, as they are one of the most incredible bands I can think of. All our touring experiences have been special for all kinds of different reasons. Old Time Relijun were great fun to tour with and wonderful to play with, but so have been literally hundreds of others. Les Angles Morts, Aids Wolf, Sentai, Lenin I Shumov, Rozasia, Anagram, The Constantines, Wire, Do Make Say Think, Athletic Automaton, No Dynamics, NTX/Indian Jewelry, Deep Dark United, They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, The Wharton Tiers Ensemble, Japanther, Pony Da Look, Gris Gris, N!fty, and, oh, so many more to mention... it's impossible to pick just one or two experiences and call them a highlight.

SM: How was it working with Wharton Tiers on your new album? Your sound is maybe less noise-oriented then some bands that he's worked with previously (Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr), so how did your sound and his idea of your sound come together in the studio?

DW: Wharton Tiers was a pleasure to work with. He had tape rolling seemingly moments after walking into his studio and was able to capture what was going on in the room almost instantly to tape. The hardest thing was deciding how to mix it all. In many ways, it seems what he captured in the moment as we were recording was better than anything we tried to "mix down" afterwards. He worked intuitively and left us with a wealth of excellently recorded material to work with. It was a pleasure from start to finish each of the times we worked with him.

SM: You're on Blocks in Canada. Are there labels outside of the Great White North that you appreciate and maybe like to cozy up to a little?

DW: Blocks is fantastic and doing wonderful things. (Not just in terms of music.) We'd love also to find a home outside Canada, yes. U.S. & European distribution would definitely be appreciated. There are a lot of great mid to small labels out there doing great stuff, too many to mention.

SM: Is there anything you need to get off your chest? This would be a good place to air any dirty laundry or throw out meaningless yet hurtful accusations to our readers.

DW: Meaningless? Hurtful? No. No.

SM: This one is stupid, but do you watch much television? I've been realizing that I watch about ten hours a day, and I'm wondering whether it's running my life. Do you have a closer connection to Marla Shapiro than to your mother as do I, or are you in the TV-scorning camp? I suppose this is more life advice than an interview question. Sorry.

DW: I watch a lot less than 10 hours, though I find DVDs with an entire season's worth of episodes to be strangely addictive. Luckily, I am in possession of such items very rarely. Life advice? I don't know who Marla Shapiro is, so I can't help you. But I offer no scorn. Make of your time what you will.

The Creeping Nobodies and their zen-like control of grammar, spelling, and personal/personnel habits are currently resting up after a short American tour. They play Ebar in Guelph on June 22nd.

www.thecreepingnobodies.com

-Christopher Langer

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Blocks Recording Club

Steve Kado is a busy guy. I sat down (via internet) with the general co-ordinator of the Blocks Recording Club as he attempted in vain to teach me the mechanics of the co-op (which sounds like it’s run by Tommy Douglas), the future of Blocks, and, well- he had to explain the whole co-op thing more than a few times.

Spill Magazine: So who are you, where do you work, and what do you do?

Steve Kado: I'm Steve Kado, along with Mark McClean I founded the Blocks Recording Club. Shortly after founding the thing with me Mark moved to Ottawa and his whole life changed. So I started putting out records under the club name. Things were very modest and I did almost everything. Now we've grown, incorporated as a worker's co-op and I only do some ofthe work.

SM: How long has Blocks been the force that it is, and if we needed to pigeonhole you guys, what genres do you concentrate on?

SK: We don't concentrate on genres. Genres are kind of a waste of time in my opinion; we don't concentrate on anything really. We are a group of self-motivated musicians who want to work together to release our own music. That's what we are. Genre is not important at all. We're united in wanting to do things differently, that is what keeps us together. I would argue that blocks isn't a force. We're more of a field?

SM: How is the Blocks Recording Club different from your garden-variety indie label? How do artists become members of the club? What is your general mandate?

SK: Well, first off, as a worker's co-op the people who work at blocks are the people who own blocks. The people who work at blocks are the people who put records out on blocks. There is no professional 'label' staff, just a bunch of musicians figuring this stuff out and working things out for themselves. So in this respect we're quite different from a garden variety label. The Club also isn't allowed to retain any funds for itself; all excess profit should get divided amongst the membership. There is no excess profit - nor is there likely to be any excess profit for some time. Membership is complex, and more so because we still haven't finished writing our official bylaws which will govern how we operate and accept members etc. Right now, we're operating with adhoc membership based on who has already worked with blocks pre-co-op.

SM: You know, you see lots of new countries with leaders who say there’ll be elections some day, but that day never comes. The Congo’s Mobutu comes to mind. Not to make light of the situation (Africa or label politics, whichever is more personally irksome), but when do you see these elections happening? Since your founders are still running the label, and I’m wondering at what point the U.N. will have to be sent in to restore democracy?

SK: This is a great question. There are elections every September at blocks. I got voted in to work on founding things and next September I have to win a mandate again. I think we've written it in that no one can serve two consecutive terms on the board, but the bylaws aren't complete so that might change, but yeah, I’d love to have a motivated and 'together' individual take on running Blocks, I’d love to work on other things for a while. It'd be a nice break.

SM: Personally, I enjoy a number of blocks artists, namely the Creeping Nobodies and the Diskettes. Other artists (i.e. Ninja High School, Hank, and of course the much heralded Final Fantasy) are generating some great press at home and abroad. Do you have any new projects on the horizon that you’re exited about?

SK: Yeah, we're going to put out some more Bob Wiseman records and also a record by Fucked Up. I see the record with Fucked Up as extremely important. Indie Rock lately has largely become just a new catch all for a kind of very commercial adult contemporary pop music, it's largely divorced from its economically independent underground roots in the 80's. Times were, back then, when Independent Music was what everyone, punks, stoners, proto-grunge, indie pop were all in it together. There are posters of Beat Happening playing shows with Black Flag. The point is, somewhere along the line indie rock ditches punk rock and eventually we end up with Death Cab For Cutie and Clap Your Hands and Say Yeah!

The situation is terrible.

Meanwhile, Punk Rock loses most of the smarter kids and ends up turning into a bunch of jocks trying to act as 'un-gay' as possible while living a primarily homo-social life...anyway... I'm stoked to work with a hardcore band because over all it seems like our goals and preferred ways of working are similar and in many cases the same, lots of stuff is different between the world of Fucked Up and ours but it's time to work that stuff out and bring people together.

SM: It seems that success is usually accompanied by growth. Otherwise some sort of per capita inflationary index will destroy you, or so says CTV Business World. Does Blocks have any intentions to expand their distribution outside of Canada? Have any majors expressed an interest in buying you out and or cracking open your bones and feasting on your marrow?

SK: Well, we CAN'T sell to majors by virtue of our structure. So that's the end of that one. But yeah, I'd love to get distribution outside of Canada. It'd be really good for our membership if we had that kind of distribution.

SM: Let’s just say that I’m going to start a label. Tomorrow, if I get out of bed by noon. What advice would you have for somebody such as myself?

SK: Well, it's lots of work. The easy stuff is really easy though, all you need to make a batch of CDs is a few hundred dollars and then you can find interesting ways of packaging it yourself that won't break the bank and you're in business. I'd say the best advice would be to start now(!) and also work with your friends and with music you care about. If that's all in place it's pretty hard for people to question your motives or what not.

TM: How do you stay a Torontocentric label? Is this something that you'll have to expand from in the future or will this be the end-all and be-all of Blocks?

SK: No. We’re from Toronto. You can't work in a worker's co-op by remote control. Live here, work here, and be on blocks. It all goes together.

www.blocksblocksblocks.com

-Christopher Langer

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The Miniatures
By: Farren Whittaker

The Miniatures eh? A new buzz-band in the primordial ooze teeming with life that is Toronto's music scene may have just been given the jolt that will give them legs and allow them to walk upright. How's that for a visual' But in all seriousness, this band is a whole lot of right on, folks.  

The debut single 'Dead Flowers'  from the album  sharing the same name has given the band that ever important street buzz and, all touring aside, have made a pretty good name for themselves in the GTA's radio scene. In a recent interview I got to ask a few questions about the past, the present and wait for it, the future.  

With a few minutes to spare for the press, front man Ian Smith calls on time and with an enthusiasm I didn't expect from a band that is surely exhausted by this time of night. He's genuinely excited about having an opportunity to talk about his music and is easy to talk to from the beginning. He doesn't leave the impression that he's in a rush, nor does he exude anything negative; as he talks to me about the strain of touring, the pressure of being a buzz band and the fun they are having along the way. Ian sounds like a guy who really loves getting up in the morning. On his way out to another show, the band has big plans for a Horseshoe gig in Toronto; I am flattered to be invited.  

Out of Kitchener, Ontario and the pride of their loyal and ever-expanding fan base, The Miniatures put in a lot of time playing small venues to build that live sound and stage presence so elusive for many indie bands. The guys are reputed to rock just as well on stage as they do under studio conditions.  

Now looking forward to hitting the studio again and touring themselves to death, Ian loses no enthusiasm when he reveals an aggressive and grueling schedule for the coming months. This band will really have to push themselves in order to mold their recent success into a lasting legacy. Fortunately, they seem to have a good grasp on how to make that happen.  

Another 'little' gem from the folks at Maple music, The Miniatures bring elements both popular and unique to indie rock. The sound weighs heavily on the voice and creative direction of Ian Smith, who is credited with many of the songwriting and composition credits throughout the band's sophomore release. A little synth, a little rock and rhythm guitar, and maybe a little Elvis Costello thrown in the mix round this album to 10 tracks of well written, well produced and very talented music.

Mecca Normal

Mecca Normal - Attractions and Subtractions

'I stand there by the stove, in my slutty outfit, the total of which probably cost me $15, including my $1 panties and my Value Village bra... I try to see what he's doing, but I'm pinned beneath him. I hear him stretching the condom like he's making a balloon animal. He gives up and I lie there under him - two hundred and thirty pounds. He says, "Am I crushing you?"'

The printed lyrics of "Attraction is Ephemeral" are what intrigue me to know more. What sort of woman would I find behind them?

Jean Smith's The Observer reflects the on-line dating she's been doing, including her profile picture as the cover of her latest offering. This inspired the course of my questioning, on-line style, keyed in to the quickly probing way computer interactions happen and her typed back answers.

Why would you want to expose some of your most vulnerable/potentially embarrassing dating parts of your life?

The essence of the work doesn't stem from a desire to expose myself. I wrote about my experiences because writing how I process information -- the desired result is to understand myself and others better. I cannot do that by being anything less than accountable to myself. I don't have any urge to reveal things about the exact people involved; unless they step forward and say -- that's me -- the exact people aren't identified. The vignettes are specific in a way that I believe makes them universal -- people may see themselves through my detailed accounts, and possibly understand something new in so doing. I am documenting an awareness of myself as an artist. I have been doing this since age 13. I am now 46.

Have you regretted any of your admissions?

No.

What do you get from music that you don't in your other artistic outlets?

I love to sing. I like being in front of an audience. I love working with David.

What makes David Lester a musical partner for you?

David is inspiring in both the way he conducts his life and his artistic pursuits. As a musical partner he is responsive yet he sticks to his convictions.

What have you found out about men through on-line postings and interactions that you wouldn't have learned otherwise?

I suppose I have learned that men appreciate and maybe even require the path to be cleared and signs be given before they typically risk making their moves.

Does it make it easier to divulge personal facts that you might not regularly to a computer screen person because they don't seem real?

No. People seem real to me. I think the type of communication people have is less filtered than traditional social exchanges. Maybe people, somewhat less responsible for what their exterior presence may reveal are less inhibited; there can be a kind of closeness online that is less typical in face to face meetings. I don't see this way to relate as less than traditional methods -- it is different and new. I'm sure some people originally condemned the telephone as a method to communicate, but we have since developed an understanding of speaking without the physical body being visible.

You have associated yourself with the riot grrrl movement. What are your thoughts on Courtney Love?

Mecca Normal was frequently named as an inspiration to the Riot Girl originators. I don't have any profound thoughts on Courtney Love.

Why is sex/power seen as so dangerous in many ways for women but not men?

Women have a long history of being judged negatively for being overly sexual -- female values decrease as a woman increases her experiences with men. Women are discouraged from having power because it will make them less desirable to men. These are biological and psychological positions that have been fortified into our social structure. Women who are overly-sexual are dangerous to men because they may have criteria based in their own pleasure and their understanding of sex -- any individual man might not measure up. Sexuality and power in women have a profound affect on the heterosexual male ego. I have wondered if men seek virgins because women who have not had sex won't have anything to compare a man's performance to.

What is the scariest thing about performing?

I don't actually find performing to be scary. I've been doing it over 20 years. The scariest part of being a performer is trying to pay the rent over a lifetime and staying healthy and safe -- not making bad choices that could ruin the framework for what I want to do.

What is more fascinating about on-line dating than random accidents/electricity of daily life?

Maybe you think by on-line dating I mean that the date takes place on-line (?) -- on-line is simply the point of becoming aware of the other person and establishing communication through written words and photos. Beyond that, if the person has work on-line, it can be interesting to see what they are involved in prior to meeting and there is the whole aspect of research available -- google. I don't know that on-line dating is more fascinating. It is different way to meet people which, ideally, results in a face to face meeting as soon as there is a connection can be established. An hour after first meeting on-line -- meet for coffee. I'm not into long drawn-out communication in email or chat. I am very busy and I don't drink so I don't go to bars. I am on the computer a lot, writing, booking shows, and I like the way on-line interactions alter the solitude of writing and yet I can control how much involvement I have. I like using my intuition, common sense and the criteria I have created. I obviously meet and interact with a lot of people in real life, so on-line isn't the only way I have to meet men. On-line I am dealing with intellect and communication skills -- both of which are very important to me. When I meet someone, there is a basis for conversation -- the method of meeting becomes a topic; there is a small amount of history available to explore in person. And I have a passion for documentation -- on-line you have conversations in writing.

Do you think the world would be better if we were all paired up? How?

No. I'm actually very happy as a single person. I'm not really looking for a traditional pair up. I am looking for a partner for specific activities -- sex, laughing, conversation and possibly some sort of a creative partnership. To a larger extent, I'm looking for a man with whom I there isn't drama and negativity to deal with. I guess the looking has become a sort of art project of its own -- how I do it, how it shifts as I keep doing it.

If you could change one thing about all governments what would it be?

All governments would be required to spend the vast majority of time and energy on the welfare of people and in advancing and maintaining the infrastructure of society. Far less time would be spent on issues related to governance.

Why be an observer?

Being an observer doesn't preclude being a participant. Observing is crucial to critical thinking. I reflect back what I observe. The dictionary, I see, says an observer is one who takes notes, but does not participate. I guess my songs are the notes I take. Maybe I am not totally willing to participate in traditional romantic dynamics. In meeting men who have set ideas about how these things go -- romance, relationships -- I do feel quite unlike what they seem to expect.

From a previous interview you said:

"Who says that violin, the bow vibrating over one note, is 'suspense'. I would re-write the musical equivalent of suspense according to the film, using fewer instrument-generated sounds."

What would you think is more effective, and what instruments/sounds would you use?

Maybe I would use a fishing reel -- I remember loving the sound of my Dad's old reel; speeding up and slowing down as he brought in a fish (or a chunk of kelp). I like to listen to sounds that are unrelated to the making of sounds. I like the sound of airplanes. There was a laminating machine at an old job that worked at variable speeds -- I made a comment to its operate, a Filipino guy, about being an instrument and he smiled and recognized what I was saying -- turned out he was a singer/songwriter and political activist in the Philippines. So my one weird comment lead to a new understanding of a person. Or maybe I'd use the sound of a fish boat way in the distance, across the water -- that deep chugging sound. I might speed it up or slow it down and use it in an arrangement with the sound of chalk marking an empty terracotta flower pot. I'm just not into using clichés and sentimentality in my work. I'm not saying that using tried and true methods to evoke appropriate responses isn't effective. As we evolve as humans, we require a broader range of stimuli from which to select. Having come this far with documenting the history of culture, and making it available, I think the mind is more able to accommodate abstractions on general themes. Humans are required to function selectively within a huge array of styles and their associations. Rather than repeating existing forms, I am interested in looking into the corners and allowing new associations to appear. Sometimes this happens on an intuitive level that becomes clear after the fact. For instance, on the song Dark Side of Maria on our new CD, I have a line about Australian school girls. In the back ground vocals, right at that point, I made a sound like a didgeridoo. I didn't plan to, but there it was. Maybe it wouldn't sound like a didgeridoo if I hadn't said the word Australian; but once it was there I had to think about removing it because it seemed like it might be a corny thing to have. I left it in because it sounded good and because it wasn't planned and it didn't seem too obvious.

Your comments about movies, makes me want to know what are your favourite: movie, band, fashion designer?

movie : Harold & Maude band : Can fashion designer : guess I'll say Vivienne Westwood

www.killrockstars.com

Heather Rayment

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Forward, Russia!

Sometimes you get lucky. And sometimes, if you're Rob Higgins, the creative and vocal force behind Dearly Beloved, you get really lucky - and then you get smacked back down again. But that's the fuel of the creative process - sweet success and bitter disappointment. You get high and you get low, and that's just life.

 Rob's life, as a musician at least, started with his return to  Toronto. It was the first step in a career path dreamed of by many but almost universally disdained by "those who know." A sucker for instability, Rob had been living on the west coast, studying film until one day the interest just wasn't there anymore.

 "I just decided I didn't want to pursue film. I wanted to be a song writer," he says. And so, bucking the conventional wisdom of teachers, guidance councillors and parents everywhere, he made it happen - easily.

 "I got out of film and moved back to Toronto from Vancouver," he  explains. "The day I moved back here I heard Change of Heart was auditioning bass players on the radio. So I went and auditioned against like 35 other guys." And somehow, he got the job.

 "That was within, like, three weeks of leaving Vancouver and coming  here," he says. Young, naïve, and completely inexperienced, he went for the audition with what may euphemistically be called an open mind.

 "I went for the audition but I didn't really know who [the band was],"  he says, sounding almost incredulous as he thinks back on the experience. "I didn't know anything about them but it turned out there were some super well respected indie band from around here with major cred. I didn't know who [indie legend] Ian Blurton was - I didn't know anything of anything because I'd been out west for four years. I walked into their rehearsal room and the amp they had there, I just turned it up to ten on all the dials and said 'let's do this.' So we jammed and they offered me the gig. I've been playing music full time pretty much ever since."

 Dearly Beloved is only the most recent project Higgins is working on. Since landing his initial gig those many years ago he has had a variety of platforms on which to hone his musical skills.

 "I played in a band called By Divine Right for a while, and I made a record with a band called Tristan Psionic. After that I made my own record under the name Rocket Science. It was a solo record but I did it with a couple of guys from Change of Heart. Then I put one out last year under the name Doctor - that came out through Maple," Higgins says.

 "[Change of Heart] were the Hip's opening band for forever," he  continues. "I've been around a little bit. During the midst of all this madness the Our Lady Peace guys have asked me to play bass twice for them. because twice Duncan needed time off from Our Lady Peace - he wanted to have a baby or something, and once he was sick - so both times I went out and played bass for them for two months at a time in the US."

 But this year, Higgins says, "I wanted to create a vehicle for myself  that I didn't have to collaborate with anybody on, and a vehicle for myself to make records with for a number of years. So I create Dearly Beloved."

 Already the subject of considerable media buzz, Dearly Beloved launch their debut album July 11th with a free outdoor show at Sam's on Yonge Street. Before that, they'll play Toronto's EdgeFest. Then, Higgins says, "we're out on the road at the end of July for a month and a bit. We leave July 28th and we kick it off with a show in Toronto with C'Mon and Bionic, and then we head out east for a month with Aide-de-Camp and Corey from the Trailer Park Boys. We come back and head west in September."

 Rob Higgins may sound like the man who stole the life you always  wanted. But it doesn't come without pain - especially his work as Dearly Beloved. Despite the upbeat, danceable feel to the album, the inspiration comes from a paradoxically painful, personal experience.

 "I've had some trying experiences the last 12 months," Higgins  explains. "My father passed away a couple of weeks ago and I spent the last 18 months with him in hospital. The Doctor gig dissipated at about the same time my dad was diagnosed with cancer again, so at the same time that my musical project was sort of falling apart my dad got sick. So not only did I not have anything to do, I also had to devote a lot of my time to just being with my dad in the hospital. I ended up splitting my time between writing and spending time in the hospital and that's where Dearly Beloved came  from."

 "It was just an extension of that experience," Higgins continues. "The reason I gave it that name was because the easiest thing to do during that time was to just come home and feel like shit and feel sorry for yourself and for my dad and just wanna bury my head in the sand, but it was love that kinda got me through that, and looking around at all the people who have had love for me in my life I felt blessed. What got me through every day seeing my dad deteriorate in the hospital was knowing how loved I was, and that's where Dearly Beloved came from as a concept."

 "It's mortality. The record's about strength, both depleted and  gathering. For my father it was depleting and for me it was gathering because, as hard as those experiences are, they kind of make you stronger in other ways. That 's what the majority of the record's about. For example, "The Ride," the first song on the record, that's about these panic attacks that developed a few months into spending time with my dad in the hospital - I guess it sort of became too much and I started having these crazy anxiety attacks where my heart would palpitate and my arms would go numb and I wouldn't be able to see very well. I had these attacks even in L.A. when I was mixing the record. and ended up in hospital like four times. It was all during the course of making the record, so it was painful, man."

 "But it was funny, because the analogy that's often used when making a tough record is that it's like giving birth to a child cause it takes so long, and it's honest, and it's painful - and it should be all those things if you're writing about something that's genuine - and it was literally nine months to the day that we started the process of making the record and mastered the album. The album was mastered nine months later to the day."

 And so, in cosmologically apt manner, Dearly Beloved's debut You Are  the Jaguar is now a reality, the bastard son of fortune and suffering. Also featuring Niva Chow, Damon Richardson, Alex O'Reilly, and John Pogue, it marks a cataclysmic and profoundly personal point in Higgins career. But as Rob says, "it's an honest record, it's an honest event, it's an honest affair, and it is what it is. This is my life and I wrote about it. I can't really hide from that, you know?"

James Sandham

Ladyhawk

L-R: Josh Brisco, Todd Clarke, Po Kadot, and Easy Reissner (Not pictured: Jason 331/3)

Whether you live in a city or a small town, it is imperative to create your own world, a reality in which you see yourself existing as naturally and happily as possible. However, that can be difficult to achieve without an imagination - something that all five members of Square Root of Margaret have in abundance. And you don't even need to (but should) visit their hometown, where they are based, Chatham, Ontario, to see for yourself how the band and their music has been shaped into a sound that is often described as psych-pop/indie rock/post-pop/space rock. The ultimate DIY band (up until recently when they enlisted the help of a publicist and booking agent, Dorianne Emmerton and Joey Balducci, respectively), make the music they see, feel and hear in their dreams and in the reality that they have created for themselves.

One rainy afternoon, I got the opportunity to probe their fertile brains for the ultimate SROM experience, and while the full extent can only be felt at one of their live shows or a trip to the 'House of Bleen' (more on that later), I did experience a warmth inside their publicist's studio, the ever-sweet Dorianne Emmerton, that would rival a hand-holding 'Kumbaya' by the fireside. However, I was not prepared for a feeling of hanging out with old friends sharing stories about our similar small town upbringing.

When asked how they came up with their name, which started as 'Square Root' until, they got sick of being asked, 'what is it the square root of'' Po and Jason 331/3 answered with a list of possible endings to that question. 'We were picking words randomly out of books...the 'Briscotheque' [the party house owned by Josh' dad where the guys played every night of the week, jamming and playing on their instruments] had an amazingly HUGE library. There was 'Big Daddy Carnivore' and 'The Little Thumb-Saws', 'Hissing Milk Curd', 'Mad Dog Noodle Trout', 'Bloated Police Woman', 'Evil Harassing Chickens', all terrible names really.' They soon settled on the simple name, Margaret, but now everyone, including myself, wants to know who Margaret is. 'No one really. Easy was seeing a girl named Margaret for awhile but that was just a coincidence' Po puts simply. Like the works of Thomas Pynchon, sometimes things just don't mean anything at all.

For all five members of Square Root of Margaret, a love of making music is what brought them together and keeps them together still. The guys met while in high school and then became close years later when a friend of Jason 331/3 mentioned that there were these interesting guys, only a three piece at the time, playing instrumentally-psychedelic gigs at a party house in Chatham, aka. The Briscotheque. They reunited, adding new members, Josh and Jason 331/3, and began collaborating on the many recordings that came before their newest release, Cloud Nine Revisited, released May 5, 2006.

Prior to the new thirteen-track psychedelic pop album that you (should) have in your hands, the fellas released a limited edition SROM 'refresher' album comprised of seven songs, three of which are on the new album. It also lends its rarity to the fact that while only 500 were printed, it was the last album the band recorded at the infamous 'House of Bleen' (a number between 6 and 7, I'm told) where all but Josh have lived or live currently. This particular house is like no other, a one-stop haven where there is something different and unique going on in every room whether it be website updates, painting, recording, or media production. The one thing it doesn't have is a soundproof studio, which SROM are excited about having re-built this summer to include soundproofing.

They lost approximately $20,000 of rare vintage gear, instruments and their rehearsal space, above a bar called Beatnicks where they were the house band, to a fire in 2000. And then they were signed by a now-defunct indie label, Black Mountain, that evaporated before their third full-length album could reach fruition and without any notice to SROM. You'd think these guys would have developed at least a titch of resentment or frustration. On the contrary, they remain as positive and upbeat as their music yet without becoming lazy or complacent. 'Its not that we were ambivalent...just naturally oblivious [laughs] and quite humbled when something comes our way, because we just do what we do, we spend much of our time in our own little SROM world making SROMusics', Jason 331/3 explains.

Along with their upbeat outlook, they have been very productive since forming, whether it is through numerous live shows (already playing more than last year combined), the t-shirts that Po (also a screen printer) makes that have a cheeky/political picture of Bush with a Hitler 'stache and have been selling like hot cakes, or the many projects they have on the go at the moment in addition to their day jobs. Jason also informs me that their song "Disappearing Hands" (the version of Levitation Days) was #28 of 2005 on CBC Radio 3 in addition to being named CBC3's James Booth's Favourite Song of theYear.

Up next for this magically delicious band is a cross-Canada tour beginning in September. For now you can catch them at their many live shows that they have scheduled all summer!

www.myspace.com/squarerootofmargaret

www.srom.net

Jessica Shulist


littleSUNDAY

Alida Kinnie Starr, named after her late aunt on her fathers side, is many things but first and foremost she is an MC, spinning out impressive rhymes that hold a basketful of spunky attitude and inspiration for any listener. She also adds poet, actor, staff writer for Spirit magazine, producer, journalist, musician, songwriter, painter, and friend to her already full hat rack. With so many irons in the fire, I wonder what inspires her to keep going. The answer comes in the form of a personal philosophy termed, BIG LOVE. As Im browsing her MySpace page (www.myspace.com/kinniestarr), I notice that she keeps referring to this term and decide to ask her about it. Thats neat that you picked up on that, she tells me. It is my belief that we have a choice to love or to hate and I choose to love the most and to put as much out there as I can.

This love that she speaks of appears in all that she does, all that she says and all that she creates. Most notably, you can hear BIG LOVE all throughout her new album, Anything, which will be released May 30. And as busy as she is, Kinnie is certainly not without inspiration, finding it just about everywhere, including while she is driving. I write lyrics fast and easily, I have never laboured over them, she says of her song writing. The fluidity with which she produces such gems as Step Back, La Le La La, and Black Brown Eyes, make her appear a natural in this business of art. When asked what got her started on the creation of this album, she merely stated that she had amassed so many songs since her last release, Sun Again (2003), that she felt it necessary to compile the pieces into an album. And like her previous album, friends of Kinnies make random appearances, such as Tegan Quin from the band, Tegan and Sara on La Le La La.

While this album is filled with lyrical evidence of her love for her family and friends, Black Brown Eyes, in particular, speaks volumes of her interest in her Mohawk heritage. It isnt the typical loud and proud cultural anthem; however, she does question her ancestors lack of pride, asking in a disheartened tone, black brown eyes, whered you learn to lie? The song is related to her previous attempt at finding out from her namesake, what it was like to grow up Mohawk in Toronto, where her family is originally from. And as in the song, she is met with the same tired sadness of a past that has taught Natives to turn away from their heritage. Kinnie, however, has moved beyond the reproachment and has worked with genealogists and the like, to get a better idea of what the past held for her and her family.

Up next, Kinnie will be touring the festival circuit, stopping first at the Vancouver Folk Festival on July 14, 15, and 16. On August 3, she will be in Olympia, Washington for the Homo a Go Go Festival, a four day music and film festival that focuses on independent and underground music, art, film and activism of queers. And as of now, she will be at the Salmon Arm Roots and Blues Festival from August 18-20 but for those of you who cant get enough Kinnie Starr, she is working on adding more shows to her tour list, so keep an eye out for any additions that she makes on her MySpace page. Jessica Shulist

Ian North
By Jessica Shulist

 The man, father, singer, song-writer, musician, poet, thinker, and hopeless romantic has been making magic on his guitar since the ripe age of 14 and since picking up the instrument, began writing songs almost immediately. North, who credits such influential Canadian aces, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and Neil Young as musical inspiration, has often layered songs with blues, jazz and country samplings while crooning out soothing observations of a life well lived. That was evinced on the previous album, but never more so than on Norths current release, Theory of Your Life, to be released May 18, 2006.

I must say, as a fan of the great Canadian talent that we have – Cohen, Mitchell, among many others – North not only reaches to the solid, homegrown musical roots that have been planted long ago for inspiration, but he builds upon the sound making it uniquely organic to his own Canadian experience.

I was informed that No Dynamics will take shit from anyone. According to their Drummer Jeremy Finkelstein, this is the new soul punk way. I hoped to sit down with singer Vanessa Fischer, guitarist Daniel Vila, and keyboardist Carl Didur of No Dynamics but instead I was given their self proclaimed Mouth Piece Jeremy Finkelstein (Drummer-cum-DJ-cum-Performance Artist-cum-Shit Disturber). After the initial trepidation, this drummer and I settled into a candid discussion about touring, success, the local music scene, the capacity to love, and their upcoming show on May 11th 2006 at Cinecycle.

The following comprises some of the greatest hits of a rather bizarre (and sometimes tense) 2 hour Question and Answer session that is a revealing portrait of something I have not quite figured out.

Spill Magazine: So you are a drummer. Who Cares?

Jeremy Finkelstein: Who should care? I am dumbfounded by the question.

SM: Touché. A review of a No Dynamics show is not complete without a mention of the drummer. The critics often refer to you as a pounder. Are you a pounder?

JF: Let me tell you something...I am the best….no seriously….let me – forget it. Can we discuss my side projects? I want to release an album called Front Man. To be honest, I just dont give a fuck about No Dynamics. I sit back there. I dont write the songs. I barely write the beats. Someday I am going to wake up and be 30.

SM: So what inspires your playing?

JF: Shooshtime.com. Are you allowed to print shout-outs?

SM: Can that be found on the World Wide Web? How would you describe your band?

JF: Three talentless men saved by a black woman. Is that the kind of magic you are looking for? I dont really think about the band too much. The only reason I stay in the band is because more people seem to like me now. We are like Parliament without the funk, soul or diaper.

SM: How did the band start?

JF: We started out as a favor to Dan –

SM: So the majority of No Dynamics members are nothing but a collection of sycophants?

JF: Something like that. We went to go see Sick Lipstick and there were tons of bitches there – hot girls and I turned to Dan and said This band is pretty cool. They have no dynamics and so began our band – no work involved….

SM: But you have achieved success. Who is the leader? Who makes the phone calls? Someone must make the phone calls?

JF: Like I said - no work. Alright, Dan makes a couple of phone calls. Put it this way, when my ideas are rejected, they are rejected by him. For instance, I wanted to play Limp Bizkits Break Stuff…now that I think of it Dan was into it – but Vanessa - she is not interested in the funny.

SM: What is Vanessa interested in?

JF: In the success. I think she wants the band to get somewhere and she is with 3 guys who can barely lift their own penises to piss. No one cares. Who cares?

SM: But what about the fans? The concert goers who flock to your shows?

JF: You realize when you go on tour – nobody gives a fuck. The real test is when you leave town.

SM: If I may ask, why no bass player?

JF: Basically, we are like The Doors. We are The Doors.

SM: Can you thrill me with entertaining stories about the Toronto music scene? In other words, can you name drop to try to impress me and the readers?

JF: You know Beans? He wants to sign us. I will tell you about Owen Pallet. I think has a crush on me…and it makes me feel special because he was on David Letterman. He is a beautiful man. KOS wants to put us on his compilation – he said he wanted to record us. Ask me more questions. Tell the world how our keyboard player Carl punched our guitar player in the face.

SM: Can I ask why?

JF: Not really.

SM: And how do you think this relates to the Toronto music scene?

JF: I think the Toronto music scene is one big punch in the face. I find there is a lack of singer/songwriters in the city. I find Toronto a big, big talentless pit. Use that for your interview – a big, big talentless pit.

SM: How has minor celebrity changed you? How has being a part of No Dynamics changed your life?

JF: I now realize that I am grasping on to something that has very little meaning. Yet, it is the only thing that really gives me any fulfillment. It scares me.

SM: Some say, without mentioning sources, that your band is nothing but a gang of arrested adolescents continually masturbating in and about different underground Toronto venues. Firstly, is this true? Secondly, do or does No Dynamics know how to love? Thirdly, if you do know how to love, who or whom do you love?

JF: We defiantly dont love each other – that is for damn sure. I learned going on tour is not all fun and games. You spend most of your time hanging out with people you dont like.

SM: So if it is not fun and games then what is it?

JF: It is a business. It is moving units. All this is…just moving units. At first I thought art was about expression – about living beyond yourself, but all it really is... moving fuckin units. And when you realize you cant move the units – the units move you. And you dont want to be moved. You think it is great. I am on the cover of the Eye Magazine – great. A story in Now Magazine– I am getting laid. After that week…no one cares anymore. We hope someone reaches out to save us, but they are not going to save us. That is the reality of life. We are here alone. Maybe…maybe you can group up...group up and hold each others hands. Then slowly they each pull away. There are No Dynamics.

SM: Do you fight for rock?

JF: I dont have the strength. I had no positive reinforcement in my life which is why I cant do shit.

SM: Do you respect music critiques?

JF: Let me tell you something, I think music critiques are a bunch of bullshit. I think it is for people who want to rock - but they just write about rock. They are afraid of rock – afraid of themselves.

SM: Tell me about your shows – do you call them sets or do you call them shows?

JF: We call them shows. Like what time should I be at the show? Where is the show? Who is going to drive us to the show? What subway stop is closest to the show? That is pretty much the only words spoken between the band members.

SM: Canadian music has really blown up as of late. With the success of Canadian bands such as Chilliwack and Bryan Adams, is No Dynamics feeling the pressure to live up to their rock counterparts?

JF: I barely got out of bed this afternoon. I plan on sleeping till noon tomorrow.

SM: The internet and your local trade papers are buzzing about your up coming gig – it sounds real experimental like. Explain.

JF: It is a show that my guitar player, Dan, has been planning for two years now. It is his dream. We are playing a song originally written by the 13th Floor Elevators covered by Spaceman 3 called Rollercoaster. It will be set to Anthony McCalls film Line Describing a Cone with special guests Matt McDonough of the Creeping Nobodies on bass, Matt Mason from Anagram on a drum and a cymbal and a bunch of other people. It is on May 11th at Cinecycle. Will you be there?

SM: It is really ironic because I was thinking of doing a similar show that same night at Hughs Room. I was going to cover Joe Cockers version of Feelin Alright original written and performed by Traffic.

JF: I am now wondering why I will be stuck at my stupid gig. Why cant I be involved in that?

SM: Do you believe in change?

JF: I used to. I no longer believe in change. The scene does that to you. Leaves you hollow inside.

For all his vulgarity and schoolboy wit, I was finally won over by Jeremy Finkelsteins laborious charm. We finished our conversation but not before I gave him a ride to his North Toronto apartment and lent him 10 bucks which I dont expect to see back - such is the ethereal nature of rock.

www.geocites.com/nononodynamics

Jordan Somers

Project Opus was launched on March 15th of this year, and so far it has been a huge success. Gratton stresses that his site is for the casual person who wants to hear new music, providing easy accessibility. Over 300 artists have already registered with the music-exclusive site. Originally, Gratton was focusing on the west coast, but soon he was receiving interest from bands from as far away as Singapore City and Berlin, and closer to home – North Van.

Still based out of Vancouver, theyre a small shop with big goals. The main idea is that if you have music you want showcased, or youre looking for some fresh sounds this is your best bet. Heres how it works: head to projectopus.com, and sign up for free – as either an Artist or a Fan. Upload if youre the former, download if the latter. You can then choose from 33 different genres or 42 active regions around the world. As an Artist, its a great chance for people to try you on, and if they like what they hear, they can buy it. And here is the key difference between Opus and their main competitor - bands receive 50% of each dollar spent on their music. As a Fan, you can download tunes you are into for free in mono, and then pay for a quality version to support the band. And to make it even more enticing, you can syndicate your Myspace or blog with your newly formed Opus page. Sold? Click, listen and discover the power of Canuck-run Project Opus.

www.projectopus.com

Hilary Stephenson

The bio section of Faces on Films website (www.facesonfilm.com) informs us that Faces on Film would love to tell you more about themselves, but they were eaten by several hungry children on the way back from their last concert. Once they are digested, theyll be happy to chat.

It was equipped with this minimal and, most likely, worthless background information that I started my interview with FOFs singer and guitarist Mike Fiore on April 25th. Apparently having passed successfully through the aforementioned digestive process he was, as the website promised, ready to talk. And given the pittance of information I had collected beforehand, there was much to talk about.

I was surprised when I heard Fiores voice over the phone. In contrast to the absurdity posted online and the spasmodic, s