On her debut long-player, the Atlanta-based artist tells the continuing story of android Cindi Mayweather, who happens to embody the DNA of one Janelle Monáe, in the year 2719. Working with producers Nate Wonder and Chuck Lightning, executive producer Diddy and co-executive producer Big Boi, Monáe supports her lyrical realm with inspired, if sometimes erratic, […]
Sean Flinn
Posted inLifestyle
Visual arts
Choose a month: [ June | July | August & September ] June 19 (opening with artist attending) to August 1 Scott Connarroe, By Rail Across the calendar’s squares, most people deal with life’s demands. But are they living their lives? Photographer Scott Connarroe rode the rails across North America to view local landscapes from […]
Posted inArts + Music
Paris
Director Cédric Klapisch and actor Romain Duris reunite for this film centering on Duris’s character, Pierre, a former dancer. Pierre’s heart is failing and he’s waiting on the transplant list. Meanwhile, life goes on around him, everywhere, especially in a city of the size and scope of Paris. Klapisch captures the city’s density. People cross […]
Posted inArts + Music
How to reclaim the city’s public spaces
Michael Cook’s coming to Halifax and he’s packing big ideas about public spaces. Cook is an advocate of us citizens creatively claiming public spaces in our cities, or what he calls “placemaking”—one of the primary principles and practices of his Portland, Oregon-based group, City Repair. From a bench on the corner to street paintings, a […]
Posted inArts + Music
Ronald Reagan My Father
These stories aren’t always narrative and, when they are, they’re not conventionally so. The reader’s frequently left with the sense that the author believes certain conventions (for example, motivation and fullness of characters) are old, worn, unnecessary. Brian Joseph Davis’s characters usually come across as vessels to contain his social comment, satirical wit or to […]
Posted inArts + Music
The Rolling Stones
Mick might’ve recorded vocals for some of these previously unreleased tracks and outtakes, but the boon of this extra disc, which comes as part of the 40th anniversary edition of Exile on Main Street, is the booming kick drum and bustle of Charlie Watts. The drummer kicked ass from behind his kit. And Bill Wyman’s […]
Posted inArts + Music
Holy Fuck
Holy Fuck is what it is. It does what it does. And what it does is study a beat from all angles, add to the beat, build on top of the beat, to see what it’ll support. A band such as King Cobb Steelie did it, as did the stylists of Krautrock. To a point, […]
Posted inArts + Music
Ready or not
The world of books is in transition. It exists somewhere between the bound and the binary. Literary journals and news magazines have relaunched themselves as online-only editions. Apple’s iPad just hit the market, joining other e-readers such as Amazon’s Kindle and Indigo’s Kobo. There’s plenty to discuss. At the upcoming BookCamp Halifax, a free day […]
Posted inArts + Music
Thom Fitzgerald rounds up
Thom Fitzgerald is going in circles. The filmmaker has adapted George Boyd’s play Gideon’s Blues as The Gospel According to the Blues, premiering Tuesday, 10pm on Vision TV. Twenty years ago, Fitzgerald worked behind the scenes on Upstart Theatre Company’s production of Gideon’s Blues. “It was at the Cunard Street Theatre—there used to be one,” […]
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A Short History of Forgetting
Ottawa-based poet Paul Tyler slows down the process of memory (recognizing, naming, remembering, renaming). He reminds readers that to remember is a shared experience, a part of being, and not just a process, a doing. It feels like a slow poetry, an equivalent of what’s happened in food, for example. On the downside, the reader […]
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Solomon Burke
Solomon Burke ❱ Nothing’s Impossible (E1 Music/The One World) This album could’ve, perhaps should’ve, been attributed to Solomon Burke and Willie Mitchell, the producer behind Al Green, in particular. Mitchell passed away in January (his sons and proteges Boo and Archie completed the project). Green’s voice stood tall with Mitchell’s steady 4/4 drums, clarion horns […]
Posted inArts + Music
House bound
Throughout David Hoffos’ Scenes from the House Dream, solitary individuals appear in life-size and small scale. The visitor encounters the former type sitting at different points along the walkway, throughout this built environment, an evocative funhouse. They appear via video projection on plywood cutouts painted black. “The strange cutout figures in the space,” nods Sarah […]