The Beastie BoysThe Mix-UpEMISo this instrumental album sounds like a Money Mark (Beasties’ keyboardist) solo record. What matters is that this is an excellent album, more sure of itself than anything the band’s put out since Hello Nasty. The funk, r&b, soul and dub experiments all work. Apparently a vocal version is forthcoming. Unnecessary!Sean Flinncategories: […]
Sean Flinn
Posted inArts + Music
Sondre Lerche
Sondre LercheDan in Real LifeEMIIt’s always a shame when an original soundtrack sinks or floats by virtue of the film it scores. Consider Steve Carell’s Dan in Real Life. Its fanfare came and went quickly, but this new music from Sondre Lerche deserves a closer listen. A less affected but no less charming Danny Michel, […]
Posted inArts + Music
Reconsidering (RED)
Red is a complex colour, rich in meanings, connections and contradictions. Over the past few years (Product)RED has added more to consider. (Product)RED is a family of consumer brands within brands. You can buy (RED) clothes at Gap, shoes from Converse and digital stuff from Apple. According to the (RED) manifesto online: If you buy […]
Posted inArts + Music
Jim Bryson
Last Sunday, the CBC Radio program Vinyl Cafe played Jim Brysons tune Fire Watch from his third album, Where the Bungalows Roam. The shows host, Stuart McLean, also read the Ken Babstock poem (from his book Days into Flatspin) of the same name that spawned the song. Babstock and Bryson are good friends and that […]
Posted inArts + Music
David Celia
Though based in Toronto and frequently touring southern Ontario, David Celia has also taken to the road in the UK and continental Europe over the last several years to mould his musical voice. The melodic-pop singer-songwriter plays with regular rhythm partners across the Atlantic and always comes home with plenty of material and memory to […]
Posted inArts + Music
Mathias Kom
Mathias Kom lives in Peterborough, Ontario, a town he loves for all it offers, from the busy, tight-knit music community to the daily sense of apocalypse conveyed in the citys fortunes. Its not a wealthy town, Kom says on the phone from Guelph, on tour and on his way to Halifax. Besides Trent University, […]
Posted inArts + Music
Torngat
[image-4]Published January 24, 2008.TorngatYou Could Be(Alien8 Recordings)Fans of Belle Orchestre, Hylozoists and Final Fantasy take note. Montreal-based Torngat—Pietro Amato, Mathieu Charbonneau and Julien Poissant—makes orchestral, chamber-pop instrumental music. With three pairs of hands, they form imaginative, instrumental soundscapes. The title track has a beautifully melancholic mood—an emotional underpinning to the whole album. But that doesn’t […]
Posted inLifestyle
Skating away
On a frigid evening with a windchill of roughly -35C, Halifax councillor Dawn Sloane fights to get a key into a frozen lock and turn it. Once opened, the door will grant access to the furnace and storage room of the Pavilion, the city-owned all-ages club on the Common, where the hose and lever for […]
Posted inArts + Music
Marilyn Lerner w/New Upstream Ensemble
Pianist and psychotherapist Marilyn Lerner merges her two professional pursuits in a show with the New Upstream Ensemble, premiering this weekend at the James Dunn Theatre. Lerner’s composition—combining written score and improvisation—is called Ding un Sich, a phrase taken from psychotherapy. Translated from German, the phrase means “the thing itself,” explains Lerner, from home in […]
Posted inArts + Music
Heavy metal
People talk about making the New Year a time for resolutions. Some people actually make good on the talk. You can count Dorothée Rosen among those who follow through. The Halifax jeweller returns after a lengthy hiatus from making and exhibiting work with a show at the Mary E. Black Gallery, called Selective Intuition. (Her […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Doorstep politics
In a municipal election—or in this case, by-election for the vacant District 8 Woodside-Eastern Passage—it all comes down to the doorstep. On a sunny but several-degrees-subzero Tuesday morning before this Saturday’s vote, Beverley Woodfield prepares for another tour to the community’s stoops. “It is tiring,” she says, breaking out into a laugh. “But I see […]
Posted inArts + Music
King Cobb Steelie
King Cobb SteelieDestroy All Codes(Outside)OK, you blew your chance to herald the band’s new, tighter and more economic phase of dub-funk-jazz-rock that started with the woefully ignored 2000 release, Mayday. Here’s your chance to rectify the situation. On Destroy All Codes, KCS’s dual visionaries, bassist Kevin Lynn and guitarist Kevan Byrne electrify with rhythmic adventures. […]
