Over the past twenty years, Berlin-based Canadian guitarist and composer Aidan Baker has developed a creative rhythm, using his guitar as a gateway to seemingly disparate sounds and marrying noise, krautrock, metal, drone, and free jazz in thrilling and unexpected ways. Through his workmanlike approach, he has amassed a sprawling discography—the selected discography on hisContinue reading “Aidan Baker’s Ambient Autonomy”
Genre Archives
Markus Floats’ Motion Emotion
How do you think and write about sound outside of metaphor? Is music necessarily tethered to other aspects of our sensuous and interior lives? Or can we appreciate its meaning more essentially—as energy and dynamics, waves and reverberation? These questions come up around the work of many contemporary musicians working in and around unconventional composition.Continue reading “Markus Floats’ Motion Emotion”
Eliza Kavtion’s Call and Response
In her spellbinding live show, Montreal-based multi-instrumentalist Eliza Kavtion twists threads from documentary films, punk-rock distortion, and hip-hop innovation together with her wailing, virtuosic guitar playing. She and guitar become one: a fury of fuzzy drones, rhythmic sputters, and menacing loops, out of which emerge soaring melodies and defiant roars. Off the stage, Kavtion considersContinue reading “Eliza Kavtion’s Call and Response”
Neither Here Nor There: Musical Identity in the Global Flow
It is impossible to stand still nowadays in the face of worldwide security concerns. With climate change, wars, oppressive political climates, and alarming epidemics, the ability to move around physically has become a humanitarian necessity for many. The commodification and hyperrealism of the Internet produce spaces that everyone now negotiates with trepidation. The rise ofContinue reading “Neither Here Nor There: Musical Identity in the Global Flow”
Women from Space Festival.
Music always comes from somewhere—some particular where. And the most particular place is identity. The name that Bea Labikova and Kayla Milmine chose for their newly founded festival, Women from Space, simultaneously denotes the first place and the furthest: woman, space—the one where we come from, the other where we go. The festival’s four nightsContinue reading “Women from Space Festival.”
Oiseaux-Tempête. From Somewhere Invisible.
“He sips tea with lemon, while I drink coffee. / That’s the difference between us.” Transporting the words of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish into contemporary us-and-them politics, Dutch vocalist G.W. Sok (cofounder and former frontman of The Ex) returns to Parisian duo Frédéric D. Oberland and Stéphane Pigneul’s wide-angle, post-rock epiphanies with aContinue reading “Oiseaux-Tempête. From Somewhere Invisible.”
Plumes. Oh Orwell.
Veronica Charnley and Geof Holbrook have often walked a tightrope between pop and classical music in their work, incorporating classical elements into their indie pop or vice versa. But sometimes they prefer to keep the two streams separate, which is probably why the couple has sometimes operated as the neoclassical Plumes Ensemble and other timesContinue reading “Plumes. Oh Orwell.”
Strangewaves V: Mother Nature.
On the last day of Strangewaves V, we drove onto the festival’s site at the fairgrounds in Paris, Ontario, a little after 2 p.m, when Myriam Gendron—a singer and guitarist best known for her 2014 release Not So Deep As A Well, which sets Dorothy Parker poems to fragile folk melodies—was scheduled to perform. ImagineContinue reading “Strangewaves V: Mother Nature.”
Flying Hórses. Reverie.
Redolent of icy streams, brittle emotions, and breathtaking, lonely landscapes, Reverie might be the perfect album for a long, cold winter. This is the second full-length release from Montreal pianist Jade Bergeron, and it’s not surprising to hear that she once lived and worked in Iceland; there’s a Nordic bleakness to the beautiful, sparse sounds,Continue reading “Flying Hórses. Reverie.”
The Ever-Evolving Sounds of Thanya Iyer
The music of Thanya Iyer (the name of the musician–composer as well as of her band) is impossible to define—both for her fans and for herself. “I can’t really place the genre of the music that we’re trying to do,” acknowledges Iyer from her home in Montreal. “For us, it’s ever-evolving. We do a lotContinue reading “The Ever-Evolving Sounds of Thanya Iyer”