I don’t drink coffee—it makes my heart go nuts—and I usually only drink tea to be polite. Yet the pressure to ingest hot beverages is everywhere: first dates, support group meetings, awkward family visits and so on. What are the coffee-averse to do? I decided to find an answer by sampling hot-beverage alternatives at locations […]
Kevin Hartford
Posted inArts + Music
Crazy Sexxxy Cool
It’d be easy to think phone sex, like encyclopedias and proper spelling, faded rapidly from existence with the advent of the internet. After all, why pay for something you can easily get for free? “I thought the same thing,” says Halifax playwright Lee-Anne Poole, “but it’s surprisingly popular.” Poole would know. Her play Talk Sexxxy: the not so sexy […]
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Kim Harris’ Mighty tones
Of all the things to come out of Pugwash, Nova Scotia—salt, pewter, politicians named Eaton—the most immediately relevant to Haligonian music fans might be the sounds of Kim Harris, who honed her singer-songwriter abilities in Pugwash’s Chatterbox Cafe. Chatterbox’s every-Friday “kitchen party jam thing” was Harris’ first foray into live performance, initially as part of […]
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E.S.T. sweded
As part of JazzEast’s upcoming Out Like a Lion festival, Gottingen Street’s The Nook will play host to the E.S.T. Tribute Band, a three-man effort dedicated to covering and re-interpreting the sounds of the late Swedish group the Esbjörn Svensson Trio. “It’s funny to be doing this tribute concert to E.S.T. because no one knows […]
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New Art – Stephanie Yee
“Art-wise, I’m kind of all over the place,” says Stephanie Yee, who dabbles in performance art, installation pieces, and sculpture. “I’m drawn to stories and characters and a lot of my work comes from thinking about people’s experiences and referring to those in a very physical way.” Yee comes from a theatre background–she was enrolled […]
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New Art – Dylan Fish
At first glance, Dylan Fish’s series Social Fabric looks like a bunch of Facebook photos printed onto cloth, but appearances can be deceiving: “It’s actually woven,” he says, “so what you’re looking at is exclusively black and white thread.” Social Fabric was made using a process called Jacquard weaving. The Jacquard loom, introduced in 1801 […]
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Bass Bias’ amazing bass
The walls of The Argyle’s basement will be shaking on January 24 as part of the latest edition of Bassment Bump, a series of shows put on by local label Bass Bias Records. And if an evening of shaking it to a DJ spinning bass-heavy tracks in Halifax’s literal underground doesn’t sound like your cup […]
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Brush with greatness
Dancing, drumming and…calligraphy? It might seem like throwing a pickle onto a peanut butter and jam sandwich, but local jazz legend Jerry Granelli asserts that it’s a natural fit. “It’s just exploring these means of communication from different forms,” he says. “All art is the same, but the forms are different, and it’s very interesting […]
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Land o’ (Besnard) Lakes
As Montreal band No Joy plays its set at the Marquee on October 26, Jace Lasek, singer-guitarist for headliners The Besnard Lakes, will likely be using that time to get a feel for the room. Or to stuff his face. “I have this weird thing where I don’t really like to stray too far from […]
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Woodpigeon’s too coo for school
Woodpigeon’s Mark Hamilton, a recent transplant to Vancouver from Calgary by way of Vienna, will wind down his current cross-country tour with a set at the Company House. “Intimate venues are great,” he says. “Grand halls are great. I’ll play in a bedroom or a field and be eternally grateful for the opportunity to do […]
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Killer Wavves
This isn’t Stephen Pope’s first HPX: he graced the stage as bassist for the late Jay Reatard’s set at the Marquee Club in 2008. “Halifax is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve been to,” Pope recalls of his previous visit, amongst other memories: “I remember falling off the stage and splitting my pants right […]
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Obits and bites
“Ninth Street, we need a right,” says Sohrab Habibion, guitarist for Brooklyn-based rock outfit Obits, as he and his bandmates scour Philadelphia for a particular Burmese restaurant. “It’s cool to kind of discover things in other cities that we either don’t have in New York or that make us feel at home,” he says. “We’re […]