As mentioned in an earlier post, Digits has been working on a new project: a serialized story called In the City of the Dead , being written and recorded as ongoing installments across various blogs and websites. The story revolves around J., a journalist who finds himself locked in a quarantined city where the living dead are taking over. Quick Before It Melts is pleased to be presenting the latest In the City of the Dead chapter/track: [...]
Alex Hackett was a member of Kill The Lights , a band that is, unfortunately, no longer with us, but he's keeping their 90s influenced sound alive with his new project, Pang Attack . His latest EP, Phantom Forest , is haunted by ghosts in the drum machines, and spirits in the keyboards. They make their presence known by playfully floating into and out of the mix, as on the beautiful "Breffknell", bringing an otherworldly sensibility to this musical garden. Pang Attack's previous EP, Dreamer's Drug , is available on [...]
Recalling the day's when a search engine was your wrist negotiating the radio dial hoping to find something decent to listen to, D-Sisive 's Jonestown 3: The Dream Is Over starts with a whirlwind spin through what seems like 100s of channels all with the same thing (or variations thereof) on. It finally settles on a snippet of John Lennon's "God" where the former Beatle declares that, "The dream is over/what can I say?" And what can you say when, as an artist, you've come to the conclusion that one of [...]
It feels like mere days ago that I was telling you about Breeze , the latest project from Elk 's Josh Korody, only to find out that Breeze isn't his latest project: Beliefs is. Back in November 2010, Josh Korody and Jesse Crowe met at a birthday party and discovered their mutual love of The Jesus and Marychain, Slowdive, and My Bloody Valentine. Together they started collaborating together building a small arsenal of shoegazey songs, sound collages, and like-minded musicians to help them out [...]
It's in her nature to take things slowly says Marie Avery , to the point where it almost appears that she's standing still. But if you've got the time (3:48 to be exact) you'll really get an appreciation of Avery's slow-moving songwriting on her new single, "If You've Got Time". She's making it for free in exchange for an email address ahead of the release of her debut EP, The Fire , due out this winter. Avery's been working in the background, lending her vocal and keyboard skills to others from her [...]
Imagine that the Beach Boys and Everly Brothers apprenticed in punk rock bands before the discovered surf rock and parallel thirds, and you'll get a sense of what Teen Violence are up to. Duo Geoff and Mark (no last names offered) from Kitchener, ON have been partners in crime for the last two and a half years, searching for something to get them out of the droning rock doldrums they'd been in as they found themselves in and out of local punk bands over the years. Whether going greaser was an obvious [...]
Mid November is usually the time of year I start getting email and promo copies of album's scheduled for an early January release, but not in a million years did I think the first record of 2013 that I'd be privy to would be from one Daniel Romano . Perhaps you've heard of him ? Though it saddens me to call Romano a "former" member of Attack In Black, it's more and more likely that he and his old bandmates are moving on to bigger and more diverse things. Come Cry [...]
For those of us who fell under The Weeknd 's spell in 2011, the release of Trilogy can't possibly compare to the excitement sparked when we first heard House of Balloons , or when we realized that Thursday and Echoes of Silence had finally dropped. If you were all over The Weeknd in 2011, then you know that the anticipation for the second and third installments of the free mixtape trilogy that would be released within the year was just as exhilerating, if not more so, than the [...]
I certainly hope everyone checked out yesterday's Music Alliance Pact post , celebrating the 50th post in the global-blogging series and featuring 4o exclusive new tracks from around the world. I put out a call to a number of my favourite indie Canadian bands for submissions as my contribution, and received a pair of excellent tracks. Unfortunately, I could only use one as the official release, but I'm thrilled that Edmonton's Twin Library were willing to make their submission available to everyone, too. While the coin toss may have [...]
Though Quick Before It Melts hasn't been a part of the Music Alliance Pact for all its 50 posts, it's certainly a pleasure to help the collaborative music blogging project mark this special occasion. Having been at this blogging thing for a while now, I can say that reaching a milestone like this, when you're trying to coordinate submissions from all over the globe is nothing if not remarkable. Thanks where thanks is due: The good folk's from Scotland's Pop Cop blog have been working at MAP all this time, and they make the process easy and fun [...]
If I've learned anything positive about zombies from watching too much TV, it's that zombies aren't as scary when you see them walking abandoned streets during the day as they are at night. Mind you, they'll still tear open your skull and eat your entrails with their bare hands if they caught you, but in the blinking light of day, and dragging their twisted and useless left leg behind them. There's plenty of time to formulate your escape. Escape might be the last thing you'll be contemplating when listening to In The City of the [...]
There is an image on the cover of the new Crystal Castles album of a woman from Yemen holding her tear-gassed son in her arms after a demonstration. It is haunting and perplexing, as the image itself appears to be cut away from its original background, layered on top of a stark, dark, barren void. An act of love, an act of desperation in a blacked out world. While the album itself bears no official tile other than the roman numeral III to indicate its order among their self-titled cannon, the cover [...]
Have you read Jian Ghomeshi's book 1982 yet? It's a fantastic read for anyone who grew up in suburban Canada in the 80s, struggling to find their place in the the adolescent hierarchy of high school. It's also an engaging account of one young boy's musical awakening, his obsession with girls, and being implicated in a possible assault charge against Joan Jett. Ghomeshi makes reference to a lot of the music that influenced that year in particular for him, many of which tick the same boxes in my own personal history, and it got me thinking [...]
With each passing new release, I become an even bigger fan of D-Sisive 's work. You'd never know it from a search of this blog for references to his name, but you'd get an inkling that he's been on my radar for a while. Still, there's nothing in the sprinkling of references that unequivocally says that I'm a fan of his work. Until now. I am a D-Sisive fan. Love the guy. I could go on at length explaining away my appreciation for his music by mentioning culture, race, and the [...]
Montreal Hindi-Rockers Elephant Stone are prepping their sophomore self-titled LP for an early 2013 release on Hidden Pony Records, and in anticipation have released the first single, "Heavy Moon". It follows the trajectory the band have been on, building a sound that defies categorization. That makes pinning Elephant Stone's essence down to a tweet difficult, but sometimes you can't rely on words to describe a feeling or a sound; you just have to experience it for yourself. Elephant Stone The album is due on February 5, 2013; elephant Stone [...]
Anyone familiar with the art of Steve Keene knows that he makes paintings for the masses: "I want buying my paintings to be like buying a CD: it’s cheap, it's art and it changes your life, but the object has no status. Musicians create something for the moment, something with no boundaries and that kind of expansiveness is what I want to come across in my work." You might even be the proud owner of some of Keene's art (or reproductions of it anyway), as he has graced album covers for the like of Silver Jews, [...]
Imagine a photo album, handsome and leather-bound, well-worn corners smelling of adhesive and nostalgia. The pictures inside, arranged and re-arranged a number of times are all of a trip, a long journey that's taken some time to complete, and maybe hasn't even finished yet. Now imagine if each page sang a song to you as you gazed at it's collage of photos, and you'll get a sense of what listening to Julie Doiron 's So Many Days is like. Her third album to be produced by former Eric's Trip bandmate Rick White, [...]
What Chairs proves to me is that pop music doesn't have to mean music has to be soulless. On The Droning of an Insect Wing , the second full-length album from Montreal-based musician Ian Jarvis, time stands still, or at least slows to an insects' crawl for a couple years as he assembled this seemingly rag-tag bag of tracks in between stints with Ghostkeeper, Expwy, and You, Yourself and I. The record flows from rumbling rock rhythms to delicate pop melodies with ease, as if these nine tracks were all laid down on [...]
Imagine a photo album, handsome and leather-bound, well-worn corners smelling of adhesive and nostalgia. The pictures inside, arranged and re-arranged a number of times are all of a trip, a long journey that's taken some time to complete, and maybe hasn't even finished yet. Now imagine if each page sang a song to you as you gazed at it's collage of photos, and you'll get a sense of what listening to Julie Doiron 's So Many Days is like. Her third album to be produced by former Eric's Trip bandmate Rick White, So Many Days [...]
Persistence: it's the sound my cat makes when he'll settle for nothing less than 30 minutes of ear scratching and belly rubs while parked between me and the computer keyboard as I try to work on a blog post; it's the nagging feeling that there's an artist out there that I haven't yet heard that's going to blow me away; it's the chutzpah that makes the musician hit 'send' on yet another email to another blogger who may or may not listen to the record's been toiled over in bedrooms and basements for the past couple years. In [...]
Quick Before It Melts
Boards of Canada – Reach For The Dead
Spicy Tempeh and Broccoli Rabe Protein Punched by City Light, Magic Man and Smallpools
WONGIE SONG OF THE WEEK: jessie j feat big sean and dizzee rascal - wild
Equatorial Guinea
