As he takes the stage at the Grand Parade, someone needs to crown David Myles king of the road. The long, lean man tours non-stop, or so it seems after a read of his blog and all the tour-dates mentioned therein. He played the nation’s capital for Canada Day and celebrated New Brunswick Day in […]
Sean Flinn
Posted inArts + Music
Ryan Dahle
The singer-guitarist behind Limblifter returns to the accelerated rush that’s often distinguished his sound. Right off the top, “Chop Chop” hits you. “Shutdown” and “Awfulizing” repeat the effect. Dahle’s arrangements have always made room for solid, propulsive rhythm, which he gets from drummer brother Kurt and Megan Bedfield on bass. Ballads “Agoraphobe” or “Eek It’s […]
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Gomorrah
This film follows five lives knotted up in the power-dynamics and displays of power put on by the Camorra, the mafia in contemporary Naples. As with Traffic, The Departed (Martin Scorcese executive produced Gomorrah) and City of God, the individual stories range from the little guy to the big players. The lives of the main […]
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Concert for Samantha Li
Though in different ensembles, violinists Samantha Li and Lee Park often played together, with Park taking first violin and Li second. “She cared very much about her tone, the quality of her sound,” recalls Park of her colleague and friend, who was killed in a car accident last month. The two were also friends, doing […]
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Great Thing echoed in the Fall
In Some Great Thing (2003) and now Fall, Colin McAdam investigates a disappearance. True, in each book, someone actually disappears, but late in the novels’ progress. The more important disappearance for McAdam is how some people conceal themselves from others, receding from the world, despite remaining physically in it. Of course, this behaviour has consequences. […]
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Black Mold
Chad VanGaalen really didn’t need to assume the Black Mold moniker for this album, very much a recording by him and for his listeners, right down to the song titles and cover illustrations. On his previous records he’d already brought beautiful electronic soundscapes to bear on his skill for melody. Here, the melodies are truncated, […]
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Discovery
Discovery’s take on The Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” reinvents the song as one slowed-down jam, which aptly describes the overall sound of LP. An electronic R&B pair from New York City, Discovery relies too much on the downtempo, the slow boil, percolating synths and vocal effects; a little too much deck-shoed pseudo-awkwardness and […]
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Mos Def
Kanye, Common, Outkast and on and on, they all did it: fucked up, went way out with an album and didn’t recover (at least not fully). Mos Def came close with his last release, The New Danger, experimenting with rock (Common) and making things needlessly busy (West). But unlike Common and Kanye, Mos Def has […]
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Stuart Ross’ synaptic fireworks
To be inside Stuart Ross’s head: that would be some display of synaptic fireworks. Of course, all the oohing-and-aahing grows a little tired as, paradoxically, the unexpected and absurd becomes the expected and the accepted norm. What’s he gonna try now, one asks a few times over the course of these 23 mostly truncated stories. […]
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Targeting Shotgun Jimmie
If the man, also known as Jim Kilpatrick, says he paddled part of the way in a canoe to play a festival in River Valley (between North Bay and Sudbury in northeastern Ontario), one would believe him. He’s that kind of guy: equally committed, comical, resourceful, sincere. “It was this outdoor stage, like a log […]
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Kevin Hearn and Thin Buckle
Kevin Hearn returns with his Thin Buckle band (with guests Lou Reed, Mary Margaret O’Hara and others) for another private showing of the skewed imagery he retains and collects from the world around him. There are “helicopters in the sand,” or “HITS.” Hearn repeats this line in his gentle, small voice as the album closes. […]
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Steve Martin
Along with the white suit and the arrow through the head, the banjo, though ably played, was just another comedic prop for Steve Martin back in the ’70s. But Martin has played the instrument for 45 years, he explains in the lengthy liner notes for The Crow. He gives background on the origins of each […]
