For Vancouver’s Debby Friday, there’s something natural about music that sounds distinctly non-human. As both a producer and a fan of noise music, she’s drawn to the genre for the sense of humanity it expresses. “We’re using these electronic devices to make these electronic sounds that wouldn’t exist without machines…and I just feel like it […]
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OBEY XII: Eartheater
As Eartheater, New York multi-instrumentalist Alexandra Drewchin creates lavish experimental songs rich with influences, sounds and references. Her music can be endlessly—rewardingly—analyzed: Songs match beautiful, delicate tones with shrieks, electronic muttering, mysterious bubbling. Being undefinable has defined Eartheater’s glorious output, and IRISIRI, her 2018 album, is a study in the complexities of the human voice, […]
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OBEY XII: Tomoko Sauvage
Flutters, loops, scrapes, ripples, drips and bubbles create worlds of lush, meditative sound with the work of Tomoko Sauvage. Her compositions can agitate or calm, expand and pull focus. Born and raised in Yokohama, Sauvage moved to New York to study jazz piano and then to Paris, where she became interested in Indian music, specifically […]
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OBEY XII: Nick Schofield
Like so many creative rabbit holes, the idea behind Nick Schofield’s first ambient record, Water Sine, presented itself after dark. Schofield says Water Sine emerged out of a series of sleepless nights. Instead of battling his insomnia, Schofield embraced it—he wanted to harness the creative energy of the night and try a “more intuitive approach” […]
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The Remains of Leanne Hoffman
It doesn’t feel right calling the new release from Leanne Hoffman a debut album. Technically What Remains is her first solo recording, but Hoffman is a Halifax music veteran. She was part of the now-defunct duo Magnolia up until five years ago, and has kept busy providing backing vocals and keys with other musicians over […]
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The asymmetry of Scoop
Five-and-a-half years ago, after having one of her breasts removed at the IWK, Julie Vandervoort was sent home not with painkillers, but with a gift card for a lingerie store. “At the time I was told studies show that women do just as well with regular Tylenol,” she says. “So no painkillers, but there was […]
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OBEY XII: Zamani
Zamani w/Strange Froots Friday, May 31, 4pm George Dixon Centre Greenspace 2501 Gottingen Street free (all ages) It’s pouring rain outside, but Zamani Bernard-Millar’s home studio in Clayton Park is filled with the warmth of family and music. The up-and-coming 18-year-old R&B producer, songwriter and singer—who performs under a mononym, her first name—is about to […]
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OBEY XII: Slaylor Moon
Sydney Koke, who has played with infamous Vancouver punks Shearing Pinx and rising rock trio The Courtneys, says she loves all sorts of music—but something keeps pulling her back to the weirder fringes of sound. “Experimental music is my first love,” she says. “My first band was a noise-rock band, and I really love post-punk […]
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Video premiere: Leanne Hoffman, “If I Leave Town”
Leanne Hoffman has been out on the road in support of her solo debut What Remains, which dropped May 10—produced by Erin Costelo, it’s the first release on Costelo’s new label Venue Records. Today we’ve got the premiere of the brand-new Mirror Image Media-produced clip for “If I Leave Town,” a string-laden mournful ballad, that finds her […]
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Film review: The Biggest Little Farm
In The Biggest Little Farm, we meet a host of characters: Todd the rescue dog, Emma the pig and Greasy the rooster as well as cows, snails, gophers, coyotes, bees, ducks, a cat, and on and on. These 200 acres in California—dusty, dead, dry soil when Molly Chester and her husband John, who directed and […]
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First Aid Kit cancels all summer dates, including Halifax
The past weekend was made long in the bad way with an announcement that First Aid Kit, AKA sisters Klara and Johanna Söderberg, have cancelled all their summer dates, included a highly anticipated Halifax Jazz Festival appearance in July. The July 10 replacement act is set to be announced this week.
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Theatre review: Little Thing, Big Thing
There’s a hell of a lot at work in Little Thing, Big Thing. Resurrected by director Jeremy Webb, the Merritt-winning Neptune take on Donal O’Kelly’s play is a venture jam-packed with hints of Hitchcock-esque suspense riddled with madcap antics and a million different feckin’ uses of the f-word. Between moments of beautiful poetic language and […]
