SOME WICKED: Dashiell Brown's Blog

The New Spin’s goal is to expose the great underground musicians of today. But given that 35% of everything The New Spin plays must be Canadian, I have discovered many great Canadian bands from among the piles of crap that’s out there. So here is a list in the order that I discovered them (kind of), the cream-of-the-crop Canadian bands making waves on The New Spin for 2009, some of which I have already written reviews for (they have links included.)

Of course, to listen to any of these artists, you can always tune in to the show every Thursday night on 93.5 CHMR-FM, online here, 9-11 Newftime, 7:30-9:30 EST, 4:30 Pacific. You should be able to find most of them on CBC Radio 3. I have added a few keywords to describe each artist in case you only like certain genres. SL means “sounds like.”

Tonight I will do a special show playing these artists, so tune in and hear the best of the best in Canadian music.

Hear a playlist of most of these artists here.

Timber Timbre (truly unusual folksongs, like Patrick Watson, this guy’s in a class all his own.)

Bruce Peninsula (dark choir/chamber folk, oh yes.)

Geoff Berner (Klezmer punk, what more needs to be said)

The Hylozoists (all instrumental like post-rock, but wow.)

Headache24 (SL Pixies)

Japandroids (SL Fugazi)

Olenka and the Autumn Lovers (if you like Dead Can Dance, etc.)

Weather Station (folk on the laptop loveliness)

Rae Spoon (how many transgendered folksingers do you know who sound like women but are actually men and who trade in their guitars for computers? not many, I’m sure.)

Patrick Watson (one of the best of the year, avant-garde/progressive indie folk)

The Torrent (dark 80’s inspired electro)

Pat Lepoidevin (amazing folk guitarist with an oh-so-sweet Scottish touch)

Eleazer Vs John (like Junior Boys?)

Tiga (play this at any club and watch them feet move)

Rural Alberta Advantage (dark, folky, I like them better than Elliot Brood)

Lovely Feathers (indie rock)

Hidden Cameras (80’s, New Order-ish, I love their new album)

Dan Mangan (folk, songwriter)

Wooden Sky (dark folk, reminds me of 16 Horsepower a bit)

Kids on TV Remixed V.1 from Blocks Recording Club (beats!)

Cousins (I can’t get play “Growling” enough)

Spiral Beach (kick-ass garage rock/punk)

Acres and Acres (lo-fi folksongs with St. John’s guest Amelia Curran)

Brock Geiger (banjo heavy folk songs)

Reverie Sound Revue (SL Stereolab)

Dark Mean (a little EP, but let’s see what they do in the future)

The Got to Get Got (fun fun in the sun indie rock)

Ambisonic (avant-garde-ish)

Jordan Klassen (love this guy from Calgary, oh my. SL Sufjan Stevens, David Pajo)

Gypsophilia (my interview with them is on my site here)

The Diableros (they have a new album, but haven’t heard it yet!)

The Danks (you love da danks if you love da strokes)

Flotilla (harp-based folk stuff from Montreal. SL Sunday All Over the World if you know who the hell that is)

Extra Happy Ghost (I only like one of the songs on this EP, but it’s so incredible I have to mention it. That would be “mash up: neither being nor nothingness”)

Vincat (Vincat!)

Rival Boys (alt-country, but their EP has grown on me)

Jesse Matheson (this guy’s songs are hilarious and oh so fun)

Octoberman (SL Calexico)

hellothisisalex (unusual chill-out chipcore or chipcore chill-out, whichever sounds better)

The Sales Department (electronic)

The Mountains and The Trees (from St. John’s, they’re making waves!)

Errand Boy (he moved away from St. John’s, too too bad, but keep an eye out for this dude)

Islands (not really underground, but whatever)

Language Arts (whoah, spoken word/hip-hop folk, cool…)

Fritz Helder (not really my favorite, but he has a very original electronic style that’s hard not to notice and that you may love, who knows)

Gregory Pepper and His Problems (problems? on his eclectic album With Trumpets Flaring I don’t see any problems, this guy’s uber-talented)

Makita Hack (straight up bluegrass, but awesome bluegrass at that)

Miss Quincy and The Ramblers (less exciting than Makita, but if you’re a bluegrass fan, why not?)

Woody Johnson (this guy’s a whiz on the acoustic blues front. so is Trevor Caswell, for that matter.)

Let’s Go to War (funky, electronic stuff, probably worth mentioning. SL Groove Armada)

We are Wolves (easily one of the best Canadian albums of the year, wow…)

Peace (who is this dude??? dark 80s-like stuff. SL early P.I.L. or Wilderness if you know them)

Minto (don’t know the album too well, but it’s produced by Steve Albini. yes, Steve Albini!)

The Fugitives (find me, find me! oh god, I’m drooling over them banjo licks.)

Digits (this guy emailed me and showed me his music. I cannot stop playing “Endgame”)

Jon and Roy (from BC, “Another Noon” is one of the best songs of the year.)

Vivian Houle (WTF???)

Rep by Pop (one of my favorite Canadian albums of the year, Cell Phone Camera, just wrote the review.)

Devil Eyes (very raucous, loud, but in a good, trashy-garage-rock-kind-of-way)

Sex with Strangers (I just love “We Want the Fire”)

Richard Laviolette and The Oil Spills (good folky stuff)

You Say Party We Say Die (yep, this is a good album, very punchy and lively)

The Racoon Wedding (like if Arcade Fire came from a bluegrass angle with some brass thrown in for good measure)

Okay, that’s it, I hope that’s enough to keep you busy for awhile, assuming you read this. I’ll post another list of the best underground artists from the rest of the world later. If you’re a new spinner, you already know them. If you need more, here is my list of top ten most under-rated records of 2008.

in sound,

Dashiell Brown

www.thenewspin.ca

Tweet This Post 

Exciting new Canadian electronica act, hellothisisalex has released their new album, the accidentals, using a blend of 8-bit video game music (think Commodore 64 or the Atari 2600) and moog patches, or chipcore, as their inspiration, similar to other bands using this sonic footprint such as Crystal Castles, Tobacco, and Black Moth Super Rainbow. I’d count Plone in there as well, recently made famous by none other than that Reese’s Peanut Buttercup commercial that ran all summer, taking us back to the days when patches on a keyboard were literally patched together by cables, not a button you could just push to change the “patch.”

Entirely instrumental, with smatterings of vocal samples and other creative digitalis, the album ranges from downtempo and chill to upbeat and fun to downright avant-garde. One listen isn’t nearly enough to catch all of the varied nuances this thrilling piece of electronica has to offer. Some tracks may stand out more than others, but the accidentals needs to be listened to with all the senses, like appreciating a fine wine or exotic cheese. You can’t get all the flavors in one bite. It goes deeper, and all the songs work together like an elaborately patched quilt (pun intended.)

A word of warning: it’s not a four-on-the-floor party starter, but I can imagine today’s DJs remixing their tunes for the club.

This video, inspired by their visit here in Newfoundland of all places says it all. Lobster Cove Head is in Gros Morne National Park and served as their inspiration for their new song, which also appears on the new album.

To learn more and to get your hands on the album, check out their website. You can also listen to cuts from the accidentals on my new show on electronic music, Other Frequencies, Tuesdays at 10PM on CHMR-FM, 8:30 Eastern.

Tweet This Post 

 

i just discovered this, you gotta check it out. David Lynch, Sparklehorse, and Danger Mouse? Listen to the album here.

Truly some wicked.

Tweet This Post 

Easily one of the most exciting releases of the year, Toronto’s The Torrent are Cameron Groves and ex Hidden Camera’s Mike Barry who left his band because it “felt like more of a job.” A fuse of early post punk and new wave (supposedly this might be considered “No Wave,”) The Torrent are not so much about rehashing old sounds, as blending the old with the new giving birth to a whole new post-millenial baby, what with minimal drum machines, atonal singing, scales and modes outside of conventional Western ones, not to mention the droning and Krautrock styles suggestive of the uberprolific Stereolab, and you have an idea of why this album should be on the top of your playlist. Cameron Groves also adds some intense violin to create the droning effect that I love with so much Scandinavian music, Swedish bands like Garmarna and Hedningarna. Other bands that come to mind are Early Jesus and Mary Chain, Joy Division, Bauhaus, B52’s, Beat Happening, Magnetic Fields, Public Image Ltd., etc. This is crazy good. Crazy good you can dance to, or drug out to, either way, you’d be a fool to overlook it. 

Hear it on The New Spin this Thursday night, 9-11 P.M. on 93.5 CHMR-FM, 7:30 EST.

Tweet This Post 

Winner of the Polaris Prize in 2007 for Close to Paradise, Patrick Watson’s new album on Secret City Records, Wooden Arms, will truly leave you spellbound, especially if you’re a fan of progressive/experimental (and even classical) music that utilises the whole gamut of the musical spectrum for pure sonic ear candy. Any instrument you can think of, it’s probably on here, with just about every style, save perhaps Latin American. Though originally from CA, like me, he lives in Montreal and this album could be easily classified under the new weird America tag that you might’ve seen on last.fm.

With a tenor-like/falsetto voice similar to M. Ward, Devendra Banhart, Iron and Wine, Nick Drake, and Bon Iver, Patrick Watson serenades with you sweet nothings and lullabies, but these songs are anything but simple, rather they are meticulously layered and composed with complex arrangements like Animal Collective, Yeasayer, and The Microphones, leaving you with unlimited opportunites to explore this album’s exciting depths like an undiscovered gold mine. Every song on this incredible album will take you far on a journey somewhere that you never knew you could go to or even wanted to. Whether it is the stunning barrage of Kodo drums thundering in your ears on “Beijing” taking you to fog drenched hidden mountains in the farthest depths of Asia, the Cabaret-like Tom Waitsian numbers,  the beautiful classical arrangment of “Hommage”,  the exquisite alt-country/folk harmonies of “Big Bird in a Small Cage” against a backdrop of quiet guitar fingerpicking and banjo, or the utterly exciting track, “Where the Wild Things Are,” this is easily my favorite album of the year, one I will play constantly on The New Spin.

Having also released last year’s Polaris Prize-nominated Plants and Animals to well-deserved critical acclaim, Secret City Records are clearly a label that wants, deserves, your attention, and Patrick Watson’s Wooden Arms is their latest secret weapon, one that will shoot you straight in the heart and leave you begging for more.

–Dashiell Brown, host of The New Spin, “the best music you’ve never heard.”

Tweet This Post 

 I just finished my new folktronica album, Of A Time. Influenced by Eastern European sounds, folk music, blues, indie rock, and electronica.

There’s a little interview from The Scope below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can listen to the album here.

Tweet This Post 

My latest article on Geoff Berner can be read online in Current Magazine. 

album cover of Klezmer Mongrels

 

Geoff Berner has a new album, the third in a trilogy, called Klezmer Mongrels, and he’s coming to The Ship here in St. John’s with his band on Feb. 21! Also check out my podcast of our conversation. We discuss statistically improbable words/phrases such as starving artists, mongrels, accordion revolution, dog breast-feed dog world, and bisexuals and Hitler, to name a few. I’ve been playing this album quite a bit on The New Spin. This podcast has been digitally edited to appeal to those with short attention spans (including myself), but I tried to include the most interesting talking points. Listen to the podcast.

Tweet This Post 

After reading the current issue of Exclaim, these are the things I learned and want to share:

1. First off, I’m listening to Toronto’s Bruce Peninsula on myspace, and I’m blown away. This band fucking rules. The guy’s voice, Mat Cully? and stylings remind me of M. Ward’s stuff like in their cool song, “2nd 4th World War.” What kind of cool title is that? Slick. Their harmonizing style rings of Arcade Fire but then is crossed with a Tom Waits/Fred Eaglesmith/Nick Cave/16 Horsepower-now-Wooden Hand spiritual campfire feel, but as Whibbs says in the article, “don’t go pigeonholing them as having a throwback sound,” and he’s right. They don’t. This is completely new in the same way that Animal Collective is new. If David Cronenberg did a remake of O Brother Where Art Thou, I’d pick these guys to do the soundtrack. In other words, this is dark Americana interpreted by Canadians. Cool stuff, and I plan on playing it on The New Spin. Canada’s gettin’ way too cool for it’s own good, eh? Here’s another link to their CBC3 stuff.

2. Jenn Grant has a new album, and since my interview with her, we still don’t have it at the station. Hopefully, Six Shooter will send it over someday?

3. Timber Timbre’s new album is mos def some wicked. Again, obviously Taylor Kirk is digging his inspiration from the past in the roots genre, but he is taking a new spin on it. The quote that really stuck out for me, though, is when he says, “It’s kind of gross to me that I’d finish a recording and be responsible for every single sound.” Ha, welcome to my world, dude. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing in my cold-ass basement with my latest album, Circuit Tree.  ”I’m a loner, I’m a sorry entertainer.” (Two points if you know who sings that.) Point is, I’m in my 30’s and I’m broke. So I just make music in my cold-ass basement and do everything myself. Costs a lot less. Apparently, this is the way Chad VanGaalen mostly works too, though I don’t know if his basement is cold or not. Most basements are.

4. I was really impressed with Antony’s debut album I am a Bird Now. I love the track “For Today I am a Boy.” I feel like a boy all the time, if you must know. Probably why I get into so much trouble. I’m a fucking punk ass bitch, i tell you. I’m not into his new stuff, though, i don’t know, too slow? I like slow music, but this new stuff he’s doing just isn’t doing it for me. But I was excited to learn that he actually wrote five of the songs on the Hercules and Love Affair album, and that shit is great. I hope he does another one with ol’ Hercules. Anyway, cool stuff to learn about, Butoh.

What is Butoh? Barclay tells us that it was “informed by the writings of Jean Genet, expressionism, and apocalyptic imagery from post-Hiroshima Japan.” Cool. This reminds me of the little feature on The Animatrix where we learn that Japan is the only country in the world that have truly lived the apocalypse (not to mention living to tell about it.) And it comes out in a lot of their art, the end of the world. So, Antony has studied Butoh and he uses it in his art on stage and in his performances. So, I now have to re-assess my opinions about Antony. I mean, Butoh, dudes. How cool is that? Let this be a pleasant reminder that though we get our music as easily as picking up a piece of trash at the park, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t really take the time and study that piece of garbage. In that garbage is an entire world. Don’t be so quick to throw it away…unless of course you’ve been eyeing that other piece of garbage sitting right next to it. Yep, you better pick that one up too. 

Speaking of garbage, I don’t see why people are going ga ga over lady ga ga. Yuck, she doesn’t make me ga, she makes me gag.

That’s enough for now. Thanks Exclaim! for the education.

Tweet This Post 

Here is Part 1 of this segment.

During the first break of the night, I’m talking with Tom Power, host of Deep Roots every Saturday on CBCradio2, great show by the way, and without warning the next act begins when an intense man creeps up and hunches intently over the microphone like he’s ready to eat and attack it and his eyes burn a mark right on you—whoah, he’s intense, the “hunchback” of George St. United Church. I later learn his name is Jody Richardson, lead singer and guitarist of The Pathological Lovers, who often indulge in avant-garde improvisational mayhem at Night Music, a once-a-month showcase of unusual and unique talent, including a spontaneous jam session collective where musicians can get up to the stage with their instruments and jam in between sets. It’s every third Thursday at The Ship down on Duckworth Street—I would go but my radio show unfortunately conflicts with it right now.

And so Jody howls into the microphone in pitches all across the frequency spectrum, ripping his electro-acoustic apart like it was made of thin paper, and his gleaming white teeth shine at you like a beacon breaking through the fog, hunched over that microphone, daring you to move. Intense stuff, and then you have Alex poised on the drums anticipating Jody’s moves, and they start “talking” to each other back and forth with their instruments, they’re on the exact same page, and we’re bolted to the pews here, reading every word. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t look away lest I miss something, I don’t know—seminal. Because that’s what these dudes seem to be about, and that’s what this whole show has been for me: seminal.

Here is my podcast with Jody Richardson.

And now intermission…

Tweet This Post 

Some Assemby Required is a show that comes right after The New Spin on CHMR-FM. It showcases “tape manipulations, digital deconstructions, and turntable creations.” While driving home from the station, I couldn’t help but be entranced by the craziest, most off-the-hook soundtrack I have ever heard: an alternate sound-narrative, a rather disturbed, help! i’m-locked-in-the-basement-type of Wizard of Oz. Well, utterly transfixed, I raced into my house and flicked on the net to see who on earth was responsible for this insanity that was screaming all sorts of fantastical wickedness out of my stereo. And it turns out to be the composer is none other than Natasha Spencer, a visual artist from Chicago who has a BFA in painting! What the hell??? WOW. If you can find the time to listen to this insanity, you will be well on your way to a one-way path of self-discovery. Listening to this sound wizardry is akin to driving by a car-wreck: you just can’t look away and are transfixed on the horrors before you, but god, ain’t it fascinating.

Here is the podcast of the show, but Natasha Spencer’s work is about half-way in on the podcast, so you’ll have to listen to the first half, which is fine, good stuff. You’ll know you’re at Spencer’s stuff as soon as you hear the sound of Dorothy having sex on the rusty springs supporting the dusty mattress. JESUS, you’ll never look at Wizard of Oz the same way again. It’s like going through the Willie Wonka tunnel “there’s no earthly way of knowing, which direction we are going, there’s no knowing where we’re rowing, or which way the river’s flowing, is it raining, is it snowing, is the hurricane a’ blowing, not a speck of light is showing, so the danger must be growing…” you get the idea.  ;-)

Tweet This Post