While cellist Rebecca Foon leads Montreal-based collective Saltland , her instrument rarely is the centre of attention on the band’s initial offering, I Thought It Was Us But It Was All of Us . As a matter of fact, there’s no singular focal point to this immense, dense record; with each listen you will find yourself fixated by another element to the recording you didn’t notice the previous times. It might be the sexy, synthetic percussion, the modern beats that breath life into opener “Golden Alley” that catches your attention the first [...]
If you're going to name your band after an 80s WWF wrestling star, I suppose choosing Macho Man Randy Savage's femme fatale manager Miss Elizabeth is as good a choice as any, seeing as how the music of this electro-pop duo will seduce you rather than submit you to a suplex. Tom Avis and Odie Ouderkirk are names not unfamiliar to QBiM although you may be more familiar with the names of their other projects: Ouderkirk was a member of Powers and The Ghost is Dancing, and Avis is essentially Farragoes. Together, [...]
Billed as the "world's first happy divorce record", Oldfolks Home 's Black & Blue is far from being an album borne out of a tiny blip in one man's person struggles. Ricardo Lopez-Aguliar, the lone folk behind Oldfolks Home, went through a tumultuous four year period where he got married, got divorced, and got his private world shattered. His public world as Oldfolks Home suffered, having had to cancel a planned tour in 2010, but like his heart, a time of healing was needed to make sense of the new normal. [...]
Toronto's Program (formerly known as Volcano Playground) have been diligently working away on their LP for three years now, after having trashed an EP that they say they "were never happy with". Before the new LP sees the light of day, though, Program have re-recorded one song from the EP, "Waiting", with production help from Dave Newfeld (of Broken Social Scene repute) as a one-off single for Newfeld's new label Stars and Suns. Watch for news of the new LP in the coming months, and get a taste of "Waiting", the Canadian contribution to [...]
My favourite sonic vertigo-inducing lo-fi space rockers, Ketamines return with a new 73 single series that team the Lethbridge, Alberta band with Montreal artist Felix Morel. Morel has designed each of the series' four covers so that when they are placed side-by-side together, they combine to create one big collage. You'll have to wait some time in order to complete the series though, as each single will be released in two month intervals, and appear on four separate Canadian labels: Pleasence, Leaning Trees, Hosehead and Mammoth Cave. The first single [...]
There's a song on Jim Guthrie 's new album called "Difference a Day Makes", and whenever I hear it now, I think about the difference a decade can make, as it's been exactly 10 years between his last record and Take Times , his latest. I know Guthrie from his work with Islands and Human Highway, and have absolutely zero familiarity with his aforementioned solo record, 20032s Now, More Than Ever . Nor do I want to go back to see what difference that much time passing makes, for in this [...]
Some bands like to make a statement with their album and song titles, some like to make a statement with their music. Some like to do both. Some, like Valleys , the Montreal-based duo of Matilda Perks and Marc St. Louis, can leave you temporarily bereft of making any coherent statements at all, much as they rendered me when hearing "Micromoving" for the first time. That song, the opener of their new LP, Are You Going to Stand There And Talk Weird All Night? , is a masterclass in the slow build. A [...]
I'm in the music business, albeit casually and without compensation, but I've waded into the discussion/debates/disagreemen ts about what it means to be a musician in Canada, a fan of Canadian music, and a consumer just by the very act being here. While there's been lots of fodder for talk about the weakness or strength of the support systems Canada has in place for the arts and culture in the past month or so, there's been a celebration of arts and culture taking place that worth noting: Arts & Crafts is celebrating its tenth anniversary [...]
In the imaginary heaven that all my favourite bands go to when they break up, I envision a bright, spacious airport style lounge, with a bank of windows facing the eastern sky (or what I imagine would be the eastern sky if this were on our real earth and not in my fake paradise), with lavish contemporary furnishings. Picture oblong tables made of glass and NASA-grade, polished alloys , abutted by chairs built as strong as Andrew Christian underwear models, and equally well endowed. You could order anything your heart desires, and it will be served to you on gilded [...]
News of Braids ' return was very welcomed 'round QBiM HQ when it appeared on Sunday afternoon. A new 123 single, In Kind // Amends will be out on June 11th via Flemish Eye Records in Canada, featuring two singles from their forthcoming sophomore album (scheduled for release in Fall 2013). Much has changed since 2011 and their drop-dead gorgeous debut album Native Speaker , primarily the departure of band member Katie Lee and a move away from writing in a live, organic setting. This time out, Braids are exploring [...]
I was at a workshop for my day job last week, presented by an expat American who kept referring to his asides and real-life examples as his "schtick". That same morning, on my drive into this day-long presentation, I had been listening to New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light, the new album from another expat American, Colin Stetson , and all this talk of "schtick" got me thinking about Stetson, his record, and the schtick in all our lives we have to deal with. The Yiddish meaning of [...]
The mark-up code for this post looks really, really ugly on the blog back-end, but I think you'll agree the embedded videos look really, really great up front. In fact, the new video for Young Galaxy's "Pretty Boy" had me spellbound. It's so early to start talking about the next Prism Prize for music video of the year, but this one is definitely a contender in my books. CBC Music: Young Galaxy [...]
Earlier this week, I had a birthday. It was a big one, if you're one of those people that measure age in terms of "big ones" and "not so big ones", involving a 0 in the ones column and an even number in the tens. I'm not one to dwell on age or to mourn the passing of youth, especially because I don't think of myself as being defined by my age. Now, Luke Lalonde and the boys in Born Ruffians may not be as old as I am now, but I [...]
Hey, I'm back! Did you miss me? Ah, heck, you probably didn't even know I was gone. But I was, and I'm back now. The Rest is also back, although they haven't really be gone, just playing shows and supporting Seesaw , one of QBiM's favourite albums of last year. On Monday, The Rest unveiled a new video for "Who Knows", which is the fourth they've made in their effort to make a visual representation of each track off Seesaw . According to the band (and the video itself supports these claims) it [...]
I don't need my favourite band to be perfect. All I ask is that they not shy away from a challenge; to avoid taking the easy way out. I want my favourite band to be willing to try new things, explore new ideas, and not be afraid to fail, or fail me as a fan. I want them to constantly be questioning what it is they do and how they do it, and how they can do it differently. I want them to ask themselves how they can change and grow, and keep moving forward. I want them to avoid [...]
I get a lot of recommendations about new music I have to hear (So amazing! Incredible mash-up! Highly acclaimed!) but every so often I get a recommendation from someone who also makes music, and that makes me sit up and take note. Case in point, Mr. Jay Holy , formerly of Toronto's Pow Wows , and now striking out on his own, making hair-raising, funeral pop as heard on his Skeletor EP. Like Expwy, Holy has an innate pop sensibility, but the execution is anything but formulaic. And who [...]
My love for Montreal's Expwy is deep (as QBiM readers no doubt know), and the band's main man Matt LeGroulx is getting deep, too. But only as deep as you're willing to get. Let me explain. Legroulx is trying out a brave new venture called EXP Hit Factory . The idea is simple: You write a poem. About your dog, about your ex-best friend, about existentialist crises, whatever. You send him the poem, and for $10, LeGroulx will write the music it will be set to and record it for you. [...]
I've been reading a lot lately about food engineering and how researchers are manipulating sugar, salt, and fat to determine the "bliss point" of a product: the amount of each of the aforementioned components that need to be added to food to maximize customer satisfaction and elicit the greatest level of craving, while maintaining the least amount of expense possible in creating your product. It's a subtle skill, because the idea isn't to push sweetness or saltiness to the point where most people will recoil with duckfaces; you want to find the point where you please the most people (and [...]
The following review first appeared at BSide Magazine earlier this week. I'm very excited and happy to be working with BSide as a contributing writer, and hope you will add the site as a source of great music news and reviews . The cynic in me is sick of the term "indie folk", whether it's used as a musical descriptor in a press release, as a Bandcamp download tag, or as a one-size-fits-all classification for any band that uses a piano, acoustic guitar, banjo and/or violin [...]
Quick Before It Melts
Fauve ≠ - Blizzard [EP en écoute]
Watch Kanye West’s two new songs, ‘New Slave’ and ‘Black Skinhead’
