Gonzales, "Overnight", Solo Piano Jose Gonzales, "Cycling Trivialities", In our Nature Keren Ann, "Not going anywhere", Not going anywhere Beth Orton, "Sisters of Mercy", I'm your man King of Convenience, "Free Fallin'" Low, "In Silence", Daytrotter sessions Meryn Cadell, "Barbie", Angel food for thought Stars, "Your ex-lover is dead (Final Fantasy Remix)", Do you trust your friends Final Fantasy, "This is the dream of Win & Regine", Has A Good Home Xiu Xiu, "I do want what I want", Women as Lovers Wolf Parade, "I'll believe in anything", Apologies to the queen mary Gnarls Barkley, "Going On", Odd Couple Heloise & Savoir Faire, "Downtown", Trash, Rats & Microphones The Long Blondes, "I Like Boys", Couples Handsome Furs, "Dead & Rural", Plague Park Crystal Castles, "Vanished", S/T Hot Chip, "Shake a fist", Made IN The Dark Hercules & Love Affair, "You Belong", S/T MSTRKRFT, "Bounce (Feat. N.O.R.E.)", Bounce EP Poni Hoax, "Budapest (Joakim Italo Dub)"
Jose Gonzales is playing in Halifax, June 26th at St. Matthew's United Church (the same space where Final Fantasy performed when he was here). The show is being promoted by Jeemy.Net and tickets go one sale Friday May 16th, through Ticketpro both online and through their various retailers here in Halifax.
I am delirious.
As I said on a certain messageboard, I am going to cry more than a mascara'd emo teenage girl with clairol-dyed hair.
In honour of this, I am posting a video from La Blogotheque of Gonzales performing in the back of a pickup truck in the middle of nowhere in the U.S.
Gonzales, "Overnight", Solo Piano She & Him, "You really got a hold on me", Volume 1 Great Lake Swimmers, "Moving Pictures, Silent Films", S/T Radiohead, "Videotape", In Rainbows Old Man Luedecke, "Proof Of Love", Proof Of Love Forest City Lovers, "Country Road", Haunting Moon Sinking Belle & Seabatian, "If you're feeling sinister", If you're feeling sinster Beautiful South, "We are each other", 0898 The Magnetic Fields, "Three-Way", Distortion Nouvelle Vague, "Ever fallen in love (with someone you shouldn't), Bande a part Fantastic Plastic Machine, "You must learn all night long" !!!,"Heart of Hearts", Myth Takes Battles, "Race: In", Mirrored Meryn Cadell, "Spelling Bee", Angel food for thought Gnarls Barkley, "Neighbours", The Odd Couple M.I.A., "Paper Planes ( DFA Remix)" 12" Buck 65, "Sleight of hand", Cretin Hip Hop Vol 1 Hot Chip, "One Pure Thought", Made in the dark Crystal Castles, "Crimewave (Crystal Castles vs Health)", S/T Duchess Says, "Black Flag", Anthologie des 3 Perchoirs Dee-Lite, "What Is Love", World Clique MSTRKRFT, "Vuuvuu", Bounce EP
Broken Social Scene, "Capture The Flag", You forgot it in people Old Man Luedecke, "Sad as a forest", Proof of love Forest City Lovers, "Monsters", Haunting Mon Sinking Final Fantasy, "This lamb sells condos", Has a good home Superfantastics, "Van Gogh", Choose your destination Yeah yeah yeahs, "Fancy", Show your bones Wolf Parade, "Call It A Ritual" Buck 65, "Dang", Situation Santogold, "My Superman" Portishead, "Machine Gun (Live on Jools Holland)", Third M83, "Couleurs" Gnarls Barkley,"Charity Case", Odd Couple Hercules & Love Affair, "Theme" Goldfrapp, "A&E (Hercules and love affair remix)" Hot Chip, "Hold On", Made In the Dark Crystal Castles, "Courtship Dating, S/T Jahcoozi, "BLN" Thunderhiest, "Jerk it" MSTRKRFT, "Bounce (feat. N.O.R.E.)" Duchess Says, "Tenen Non Neu", Anthologie des 3 Perchoirs Holy Fuck, "The Pulse", LP
Portishead, "Machine Gun", Performed on Jools Holland
I'm in the mood for this #12 New releases #4 Disco is not a dirty word #5
Although they're not really disco per se, two bands who are highly influenced by leftfield disco are Canada's own MSTRKRFT and Duchess Says. Jesse Keelor and Al P's respective solo projects owe a lot to dirty disco and dancey post punk as much as the fair duchess. In honour of this connection, I played a few choice tracks in honour of both of these acts putting out new releases for the spring.
The first time I saw Duchess Says was at a show at the Marquee in Halifax duing the Halifax Pop Explosion in 2006. I didn't know anything about them, all I remember was seeing this girl with brown hair up on stage, a keytar in her hands and a huge ass sound coming out of the speakers. Screaming, bleeps, bangs and a tangle of hair crowd surfing into the adoring public.
Then last week I was very excited to find and hear their new album when it came into the offices of CKDU. The album, "Anthologie des 3 Perchoirs" comes out April 17th in record stores across Canada. In the meantime, check the links at the end of this post for an MP3 of the opening track, "Tenen Non Neu"
Ever since The Looks dropped in 2006, MSTRKRFT have been riding a crest of hot press, sweet remixes (of their own work and for others) and capacity crowds. Laurels aside, there is something to be said for a duo who are just as comfortable producing rock records as they are working on remixes for UK Girl bands. In the middle of all that, there is a steady beat, a dirty bass and a sweaty sound. DJs are bored of playing the same records, crowds want something new and with their new single, out on Dim Mak. The single landed on April 1st, with a new album slated for release this fall.
Gonzales, "Overnight", Solo Piano Feist, "Intuition", The Reminder Richard Buckner, "Desire", Bloomed Old Man Luedecke, "Little Bird", Proof of Love Forest City Lovers, "Don't go" Xiu Xiu, "I do want when I want", Women as Lovers Nouvelle Vague, "Just can't get enough", Nouvelle Vague Fred Hughes, "Baby Boy" Etta James, "Seven Day Fool" The Flirtations, "Nothing but a heartache" Mark Ronson feat Amy Winehouse, "Valerie", Version Gnarls Barkley, "Who's gonna save my soul", THe Odd Couple Merryn Cadell, "Job Aplication", Angel Food For thought Buck 65, "Indestructble Sam", Cretin Hip Hop Vol 1 Radiohead, "15 Steps", In Rainbows Hot Chip, "Shake A Fist", Made In The Dark James White & The Blacks, "Contort Yourself", Disco Not Disco Vol 3 Maximum Joy, "Stretch (Disco Rap Mix)" Duchess Says, "Rabies (Baby's got the)', Anthologie des 3 Perchoirs Holy Fuck, "Frenchy's", LP Crystal Castles, "Vanished", S/T Modeselektor, "Silikon (feat Sascha Pererra)", Hello Mom MSTRKRFT, "Bounce (feat. N.O.R.E.)", Bounce EP
It’s always difficult to be open and fair when it comes to writing about your friends. In the world of “serious” journalism, having an intimate connection to your subject is often poo-poohed (as is that word) and usually if something or someone is newsworthy, the story is passed on to someone who is unbiased towards the subject.
In the online world of blogs this kind of journalism is looked upon as more of a venal sin than a mortal one. I’ll take my contrition and tell you up front that I know the subject of this post. I met him years ago, before he was hobnobbing with some of Montreal’s best musicians and recording songs in a home studio. When I met Archivist, he was a basketball-playing-beat-poet reading university student. And I was smitten.
It continued with a correspondence and eventually, an interview.
It doesn’t end with our discussion. It continues with a MySpace, a couple MP3s*, and hopefully, plays on your iPod.
How did the name Archivist come about?
I wanted a name that captured my sort of conscious pilfering of music of all sorts through the ages. Everything: John Jacob Niles to Morissey; Leadbelly to Kate Bush; Cohen to Panda Bear. I am forever cracked-up by this undying discourse of the original, and music seems to be so driven by this cult of the new, but really it's just this tiny self-reflexive and insulated world. I wanted to begin with the idea that music is highly conventional; as one man said, 'business as fucking usual.' It's a tissue of quotation, it appeals to a formulated sensibility in us, you know? And so, my stuff has a number of samples in it, 'field recordings,' accidental sounds; sort of autobiographical archives. Into this lust for moremoremore; the pervasiveness of irony; and this 'difference' that is really just shambling sameness, I wanted to kind of insinuate memory: remembering undifference. The archive is a funny machine. While it is essentially a mnemonic device it also actively writes history. Too, if not for the prosthetic memory of such archives as, say, the internet, perhaps memory as it has been understood prior to this late moment of postmodernity-- something experiential and internal-- would not be so threatened as it seems now to be. I want to be a watcher. I want to absorb ideas and present them sonically. But keeping in mind always that it's just my own little solipsistic stage.
Do you find it difficult to be from Montreal in times like these, when everyone from there has instantly (and perhaps without merit) become blog/critic worthy? Do you find the city to be conducive to being creative, perhaps moreso than the other cities you have lived in?
There is this late-Victorian novel by a fellow named George Gissing called New Grub Street. It's about the writing climate of the era. It details a London rife with writers, everybody clambering to succeed, crawling over friends and lovers for a place in the begloomed sun. Some of them are hacks, some of them are selling out. All of these ideas are still circulating. Musicians today who gnaw the bitter bone will tell you about the decline of the music scene, its superficiality. These criticisms are not new. There is a document from five-hundred B.C. that talks about how the world will end soon, the barbarians are at the gate, the next generation is monstrous and over-indulged, that people do not believe in anything and that the emperor is corrupted. These ideas aren't new. That being said. I like the climate. I like the creativity. There are so many talented people here, and in Toronto. I wish everyone could get at least one disc out, get heard. There was once a time when labels gave people three records to break before cutting them loose. (Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run was his third strike, for instance.) Things change. Everyone can record, everyone can launch their own album. Critics too work this way. Anyone can launch a blog, say what's on their mind. How many are looking to get pinned by a pitchfork right through their navels? Many, i wager. Is Montreal especially conducive to creativity? I don't know. I was having this conversation with a fellow whose band helped to break the scene here in Montreal, in 2004 or so, while i was living in New York. He said he'd be at concerts at Sala and suddenly the place was crawling with A & R guys. All in a matter of a month or so. I didn't know that Montreal. But then, on any given night you can walk into a bar on Bernard, or be walking down Parc of a sunday morning and see Jace from the Besnard's or Graham from Miracle Fortress or Murray from the Dears, and they're all making music you live to, and in that respect it's very surreal. New York will always have its Art Stars and their LES and Williamsburg folkies and avant garde performance artists, they will always have their geniuses. But Montreal has it's own little pocket of myth whose high water mark is a global measure (at least to certain nations of the leisure class, who have world enough and time to fret after Pop) and one which, I think, can no longer be considered sophomoric.
Do you work alone?
Yes. For the most part. I pen, perform and produce all Archivist music. I have had friends who play violin for me, or mouth organ here or there. Andrew Smith has done a couple of killer drum tracks for me, and of course I have an in-house bassist in Lisa Smith (of Pony Up fame –ed.), whose shown up on a track or so, and will likely be on more in the future. I like the work of development. I don't know what textures and arrangements will appear finally. I mean, this is perhaps an aspect of the name Archivist too. I can't help but privilege the recorded moment: the sharpening of space and time into a crystalized sonic event. But i like the creative work, and I am selfish for it, i want all of it, you know?
With the recording industry in the way it is, do you think it would be easier or harder to carve a career in music?
I'm not sure about this. I've spoken with people who have found it very difficult to make money with their bands, even if they've had relative success getting their name out. I'm quite certain some of it is who you know. But eventually, hopefully, it comes down to someone liking what you make. Will your music get out? Will it be well received? Who can say? Not if you choose the 'indie' route, which becomes ever less so politically charged as it once was, or not the same valence of political charge anyway. I do think there is more space on the margins. The peasants of the music industry will have their days in the sun. That being said, the initiates and the courtesans will be fewer. That's fine anyway. I think. It's always difficult, art as a career still makes my skin crawl, despite my understanding the pair are deeply imbricated.
Who would you like to work with?
I'm not sure. I'm not especially talented, and then there is always this question of what you could offer the other.
Having done already one cover, would you feel averse to recording other people's songs, or do they have to be your own, or at least, have a known connection to them?
I have one song I do called "Universe Questions," which is by a friend of mine from high-school. I just really like it and I get a bang out of performing it, so I will probably record it. But too I like working with other people's words. It's a reminder of sorts. You try and broach that liminal space between what some body else is trying to say and how it washes over your own person, experientially or whatever. Always this appropriation. I like that. So no, I do not feel averse to working with other people's stuff. It reminds one of the relationality of things; how everything is so metaphor sodden.
**
The Archivist lives, writes and loves in Montreal.
Cat's out of the bag, I've tripped and fallen into the well of nostalgia. Halifax is great, but growing up on the periphery of Toronto has spoiled me. The more I fall in love with new bands, the deeper into a depression of what's-now-gone I sink.
Majority of the following acts I am about to list rarely, if ever, play here. But instead of waxing poetic on my adolescences spent sleeping on Yonge Street to catch a glimpse of Melissa Auf Der Maur signing autographs, nervously approaching Allison Wolfe post-Bratmobile's set, hanging out with The Donnas, tearing up the night after I got dumped at a Sleater Kinney show, watching my best friend Ashlee dance on-stage two nights in a row with Courtney Love singing "Mailbu" to her, I'll imagine a city where I can catch The Clicks open for The Cult. A booming metropolis where I can eat my little L Word-loving heart out at an Uh Her Her concert. Heck, even see the Peej (PJ Harvey) herself perform.
In Toronto's alt-weekly NOW, reviewer Sarah Liss aptly described The Clicks music as "what might happen if Chrissie Hynde and the Murmurs' Leisha Hailey fell in love, got Bowie to help out with insemination and gave birth to an indie rock love child."
I suppose I can't really complain; upcoming concerts on the horizon do include: Bob Dylan, The Sadies, The Constantines, Leonard Cohen and Sarah Slean. This afternoon I had a lovely chat with those darling fellas from The Coast on the night of their CD release "Expatriate" from a gig in Vancouver. Ian even sweetly asked about the fate of Oh, Beautiful! Majestic! Eagle!
For the record, we remain on hiatus (also known as no longer). In the upcoming weeks I am scheduled to chat with Leisha Hailey and Camillia of Uh Huh Her. Not to mention a highly anticipated record shopping spree in Toronto later this month. Rotate This and Sonic Boom look out, here she comes armed with a recently paid off Visa card in her pockets. I suppose I'm just being a bit brattish. The trouble is I'm a girl who wants everything. I want to bake, decorate and eat the entire cake - icing, cookie crumbs, ice cream and all.
Weeks happen, time moves faster than you want it to and blogging goes by the wayside. Thankfully, I keep a record of certain things. Like last week's episode, as well as this week's. Two for the price of one. Scroll down for more. In the meantime, let's talk about what is one of the best (and most ambitious) singles I've heard in a long time.
My current fixation is the new single by Gnarls Barkley, called "Run". It sounds more like The Go! Team than a Gnarls Barkley, but then again, there is that unmistakable voice. When the duo broke out with "Crazy", everyone and their dog went apeshit over it. Pitchfork loved it, hip-hop fanatics loved it, music video stations loved it, bloggers went ape shit for it and even your mom liked it (hell I hear it on the CBCat least once a week on Sounds Like Canada during their Bleep segment.). The band released a few more singles and although they were good, none of them hit the high peak established by "Crazy".
The album, "The Odd Couple", is available now on iTunes and came out last week in retail stores. Due to a leak of the album, as well as all the buzz on the internet due to this single, the duo decided to release the album a few weeks earlier than it's original April 8th delivery date.
For once, I'm not upset about someone else's premature ejaculation.
Gianfranco Reverberi, "Nel Cimitiero del Ruscon" Broken Social Scene, "I'm still your fag", You forgot it in people Old Man Luedecke, "Hinterland", Hinterland Beirut, "Cherbourg", The Flying Cup Club Antony & The Johnsons, "I fell in love with a dead boy" New Pornographers, "Challengers", Challengers Doug Mason, "Local Culture", Invisible Star Stolen Minks, "Boys on the floor", EP Superfantastics, "Van Gogh", Choose your destination Wolf Parade, "Shine a light", Apologies to the Queen Mary Peter, Bjorn & John, "Object of my affection", Writers's Block Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy", St. Elsewhere Gnarls Barkley, "Run" Skratch Bastid. Pip Skid & John Smith, "I ain't lazy", Taking care of business Ruby Jean & The Thoughtful Bees, "Ameliaa Erahart" Santogold feat Spank Rock, "Shove it (Switch Remix)" Hot Chip, "Bendable, Poseable", Made In The Dark Poni Hoax, "Antibodies (To The Bone Edit)" Crystal Castles, "Untrust Us", S/T Syntonics, "Rock2Nite" Thunderheist, "Suenos Dulces" Modeselektor, "Kill Bill Vol 4", Hello Mom BoysNoize, "& Down (Boysnoize vs Siriusmo Remix)", Oi Oi Oi Remixed
Gonzales, "Overnight", Solo Piano Lou Barlow, "Royalty" Great Lake Swimmers, "Where in the world are you?", Ongiara Old Man Luedecke, "At The Airport", Hinterland Old Man Luedecke, "Just Like a river", Proof Of Love Rufus Wainwright, "Chelsea Hotel No. 2", I'm your man Forest City Lovers, "Watching the streetlights grow", Haunting Moon Sinking Grizzly Bear, "Knife", Yellow House Portishead, "Plastic", Third Wolf Parade, "I'll believe in anything", Apologies to the Queen Mary Battles, "Atlas", Mirrored Merryn Cadell, "Flight attendant", Angel food for thought Tricky, "Tricky Kid", Grassroots Buck 65, "Dirtywork", Cretin Hip Hop Vol 1 Sebastien Grainger, "When i go out" Bjork, "Alarm Call", Homogenic Radiohead, "15 steps", In Rainbows LCD Soundsystem, "Thrills", LCD Sounsdystem Duchess Says, "Tenen Non Neu", Anthologie des 3 Perchoirs Hercules & Love affair, "Blind (Frankie Knuckles Remix)" Spektrum, "Kinda New (Dirty South Remix)"
