Author Archives: Musicworks

On a recent trip to Montreal I encountered one of the most exciting pieces of new music I had heard in a long time. The sound came quietly at first, a distant pointillistic, tinny gesture. Granular synthesis? The mixing was superb, from niente to loud surround-sound and back again. At its peak, the timbre wasContinue reading “Change Is Coming, You Can Hear It In The Streets”

Good taste is totalitarian. The art critics, curators, and editors that create taste’s laws also enact those laws; their opinions influence what gets seen and read by the audience. Experimental music operates under it’s own totalitarian regime. Educators, artistic directors, and programmers who influence what we hear and what is commissioned create the rule ofContinue reading “From Totalitarianism To Democracy: Wonderful Bad Taste Comes To Experimental Music”

Writer’s block. Google it: 14,100,000 results; it’s popular. Not a problem solely for writers, it could aptly be named creator’s block. Anyone trying to render an idea out of nothingness knows writer’s block’s terrifying implications—missed deadlines, lost revenue, diminished professional reputation. But writer’s block implies more than just threatened livelihood. Ask the creators. The stallingContinue reading “Writer’s Block, Coming To An Artist Near You”

“There’s nothing wrong with pretty music.” Jonathan Bunce—author of this issue’s feature on Canada’s new pop adventurists—is talking with me about the twenty-one-year-old singer–songwriter known as Grimes. Her song “Crystal Ball,” and its sequenced, synthesizer-harp intro, drum-machine rhythm track, and reverb vocals, had put me in mind of synth-pop and Bjørk. Bunce goes on toContinue reading “Alt-Experimental, New Music’s Fragmented Future”

We are sitting in a darkened theatre watching a global collective of musicians making new music. But there’s no one on stage. Instead, we are looking at and listening to an audiovisual projection of the performers playing telematically through an online three-dimensional virtual-reality platform. I am gobsmacked that these performers from around the world areContinue reading “Craft, Fearlessness, And Imagination Meet Technology”

Sound is territory. Birds know it, young men in boom cars know it, and the U.S. military’s Psychological Operations Company knows it. So when it was announced that the integrated security unit charged with enforcing the law during the G20 meetings in Toronto last June could chose to use the sonic cannon’s 150 decibels toContinue reading “Creating Truth To Power”

Imagine you are walking down a crowded street, or say, sitting on public transit, or maybe even waiting in a public place for an appointment. Now close your eyes. What do you hear? Chances are, you will hear, bleeding through the ambient background noise in this imagined scenario, a distinctive tell-tale sound—the high frequency, narrowContinue reading “Turn On, Tune In, But Don’t Turn Down”

I received my first radio at the age of ten. Battery-powered and small enough to be handheld, it had an antenna long enough to pick up signals in my southern Ontario bedroom from exotic downtown Detroit. It arrived in my life on Christmas Day as a present from my Uncle Ted. I still remember theContinue reading “Radio Is Dead! Long Live Radio!”