Music Festivals

Lumar Leblanc, one of the founding members of The Soul Rebels, is just as pleasant on the phone as you’d expect from his band’s upbeat performances. He’s relaxed and in no rush, despite the fact that he’s calling from a van in the middle of a packed tour, and entirely unfazed when our connection gets […]

“How would you define soul, James?” That’s the question journalist David Frost put to James Brown in 1970, as quoted in R.J. Smith’s new biography of the Godfather of Soul, The One. “The truth,” Brown answered. “The down-to-earth truth…it explains the hard knocks, it explains everyday life, telling it like it is. The truth.” Charles […]

When Canadian DJ Kid Koala (real name Eric San) was asked by record producer Dan The Automator (Daniel Nakamura) and legendary Bay Area MC Del the Funky Homosapien to join their sci-fi hip-hop project in early 1999, he had no idea the impact Deltron 3030 would have on the music community more than a decade […]

If the OBEY Convention is all about showcasing “damaged music and art” from around North America, then no better example is Eric Copeland, a 16-year veteran of the American experimental landscape. Originally from Brunswick, Maine, he currently makes his home in New York City—along with his band, seminal noise-punk art rockers Black Dice. Copeland is […]

With a custom-made Richtone amp, one-man-rockabilly-band Bloodshot Bill is a pastiche of smoky dance halls, grain-mash bourbon and monochrome broadcasts. Touring the world for about 15 years, the prolific Montrealer keeps taking us back to the era of American music that mixed southern railway songs with the pomade pompadours of post-war sexual and social rebellion. […]

Life is all about timing, and chance. Cliched sure, but it’s true. It’s how Hey Mother Death—the experimental art-goth project of Halifax expat Denma Peisinger and Parisian actress Laurence Strelka—came to be. A serendipitous encounter on a subway platform outside of Paris led to the two meeting, who eventually began dating and later, recording music […]

Gary War is bringing some high potency truth to his first Halifax show. The experimental psychedelic rock outfit from Brooklyn, New York takes no influence outside of personal interpretation and experience. Cassette tapes and various forms of releases over the last decade have culminated in the kaleidoscope sound wave that is Jared’s Lot, his third […]

Heather Rappard’s video pieces are like looking through psychedelic goggles, they swirl and glide, take dark turns and make you want to adjust your visual tracking. This love of video carries over to her OBEY Convention offering—under the name Chromatic Visions, Rappard curated a visual mixtape, full of analog warmth, sleek digital, local artists and […]

Along with the bevy of psychy avant-garde experimental performers slowly trickling into town this week, Toronto trashrock villains The Soupcans are on their way, toting a garbage bag full of their own particular brand of frenetic energy. Picture G.G. (RIP) covering Arab on Radar without the matching outfits and you’ll get a loose idea of […]

At the age of 10, Arkansas blues musician CeDell Davis began suffering from polio. The disease struck him so severely it rendered his hands all but useless. He loved making music so in order to keep playing he flipped his guitar, restrung it and began fingering notes on the neck with a butter knife. The […]

Enter the dreamy soundscape of You’ll Never Get To Heaven and you’ll experience an ambience that you’ll want to believe in. Studying in London, Ontario for the last few years, the electric pop project of Halifax’s Chuck Blazevik (Dreamsploitation) and Alice Hansen is a high voltage of creative harmonies. You’ll Never Get to Heaven plays […]

If Tonka War Cloud sounds a little chilly, “it’s because a good part of it was recorded at The Old Confidence Lodge in the dead of winter with no heat,” says Jon Mckiel. “Maybe it’s just my own recollection of how cold it was then, but I think you can feel it through the album.” […]