If the OBEY Convention is all about showcasing “damaged music and art” from around North America, then no better example is Eric Copeland, a 16-year veteran of the American experimental landscape. Originally from Brunswick, Maine, he currently makes his home in New York City—along with his band, seminal noise-punk art rockers Black Dice. Copeland is […]
Jon Dempsey
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Hey Mother Death live
Life is all about timing, and chance. Cliched sure, but it’s true. It’s how Hey Mother Death—the experimental art-goth project of Halifax expat Denma Peisinger and Parisian actress Laurence Strelka—came to be. A serendipitous encounter on a subway platform outside of Paris led to the two meeting, who eventually began dating and later, recording music […]
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HPX spotlight: Handsome Furs
Much in the way that Dan Boeckner’s singing voice often sounds strained yet kinetic on record, does his voice over the phone. Boeckner and wife Alexei Perry, who play together as Handsome Furs, took time out from a band practice/recording session in Montreal to chat. Perry’s voice, unlike her husband’s, is hardly road-worn; she’s rather […]
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Halifax Pop Explosion on parade
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21 Tasseomancy The Company House, 10pm, $10 Sisters Sari and Romy Lightman play the Pop Explosion in mid-transformation. They’ve already changed their band name from Ghost Bees to Tasseomancy, the title of their excellent 2008 release. The changes are going deeper, explains Sari Lightman by email: “We’re focused on developing our skills as […]
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HPX preview: The Superfantastics
While nursing post- Thanksgiving turkey hangovers, celebrated Halifax indie-pop duo The Superfantastics chat over the phone from their respective abodes. But shortly after the call gets underway, things get awkward. It’s the “third member” question that did it: the one that explorative couples often broach, surely with the same bashfulness. Lead singer and guitarist Matthew MacDonald […]
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Shining Light Brights
“It was a planned break, but not a break, just a pause,” jokes Chad Harrington awkwardly over some tea at a downtown cafe. The bass player described his band’s recent hiatus with deadpan delivery, rousing laughs from bandmates Bethany Fulde (vocals) and Andrew Dahms (drums). Turns out financial obligations landed Fulde in Prince Edward Island […]
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Welcome back, friend
Your friend sends you a text message asking you to come to a show”—a BA Johnston show in particular. You are not acquainted (Christian Johnston, hailing from Hamilton, ON, unashamedly residing in his mother’s basement), so you Google him. Pictures of Johnston’s beer gut spilling out over beer-soaked denim, and YouTube clips of him shooting […]
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Eating Animals
After penning two acclaimed novels, author Jonathan Safran Foer writes his first non-fiction account, Eating Animals on, well, not eating animals. After learning of his wife’s pregnancy, Foer, faced with health and moral implications of feeding his then-unborn son, began more than a year’s worth of research into factory farming and vegetarianism. You don’t have […]
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Reading Foxes in Fiction
Warren Hildebrand, a 20-year-old Torontonian bedroom-pop jock, will have no problems getting into the Paragon when he plays here next week. After recently playing five shows in New York City, he now laughs about the US drinking age. “I had to get, like, a fake ID and everything, even to get into the places I […]