Feature

Quake It’s hard out here for a kid. Sometimes it’s tough being the new kid. And when you’re the new kid in an MC battle, expect to hear about it. Especially when you’re a 16-year-old high school student. “They say stuff like, ‘Go back to playing with Fisher-Price,’” says Matt Arab, AKA MC Quake, about […]

Apt Also known as Dave Plowman, MC Apt left Halifax for greener pastures in Toronto this fall to attend sound engineering school. The intellectual rapper officially released the semi-concept album Canvastripper — inspired by reading Dante’s Inferno as a university student — early in the year. Apt has been back in Halifax for shows in […]

Adam Puddington released Can’t Sleep This One Off in 2002. With well-worn observations and a gruff delivery, the album showed the signs of a truly promising songwriter coming into his own. Unfortunately, the music never managed to find the audience it deserved. Though many obstacles make it hard to succeed in the fickle music industry, […]

From his initial introduction to the world of hip-hop through Public Enemy and The Fresh Prince almost a decade ago, one-time indie jazz drummer Jesse McDonald has always been a big music fan. Now known as rapper Jesse Dangerously, there’s been no looking back, who admits he’s come a long way since his humble beginnings. […]

Dana Robertson has just given away a loaf of bread. During an in-studio radio appearance earlier this week, his band, Moncton punk rockers HOPE, partook in an interview and gave away concert tickets, CDs and a loaf of bread (as a mystery bonus prize) to a lucky caller. Foodstuffs aside, HOPE has another bun that’s […]

Michael Catano’s voice starts to fade on the car radio just before Portuguese Cove. Static overtakes the CKDU-FM station coordinator’s cheery read of more than a dozen names of listeners who support Moxieland, an eclectic cartoon/pop program. Host Stephen Cooke, a Chronicle-Herald reporter who started his CKDU show in the late 1980s, is inching the […]

The members of the Maynards have an enviable relationship. Guitarist Heath Matheson, bassist Kristina Parlee and drummer Chantal Tardiff are the kind of friends who always one-up each other’s jokes, finish each other’s sentences and almost look alike. Perhaps not coincidentally, all three wear black-rimmed glasses. The Halifax indie-rock band has been together for five […]

The members of Victoria-based Immaculate machine are earning a reputation for their remarkable live presence, but few dates are as memorable as those they travel over 6,000 kilometres to reach. Since forming in late 2002, the band’s handful of gigs in our city have included two venue closings—one of which happened unexpectedly in the middle […]

If you ask Matt Wells how much integrity there is in the music industry, he will tell you there is an equal number of those with it as without it. But faced with a choice, the Bucket Truck frontman chooses substance—and, consequently, deep debt—over style. With their latest release, Favour the Bull, the Newfoundland-bred, Halifax-based […]

Mike Feuerstack, singer-songwriter of Snailhouse, can’t wait to play before a Halifax audience—that is, if a heart attack doesn’t slow him down first. The 33-year-old is a busy guy, playing in numerous bands, recording several albums worth of material with those bands and under his Snailhouse moniker, all the while holding down a full-time office […]

“I never intended to be a performer,” says Chad VanGaalen. “I was more interested in keeping an aural journal—it was quite embarrassing to imagine anyone beyond my friends and family hearing it.” The Calgary-based artist is now in a position quite contrary to his original plan. Recently signed to indie-rock beacon label Sub Pop, a […]