The Swedish duo’s debut is a bold escapade into the deepest corridors of the synth-pop genre. Making use of the pop spirit of Prince, strands of 1980s-drenched Giorgio Moroder, and Robyn’s electro precision, the songwriting is all done with a sense of self-awareness and unabashed love for pop expression. Add in the many surprising embellishments (i.e. the South Asian inserts on Last Night and synthetic flute blares on Mother Protect), all of the animal motifs, effervescent keys courtesy of Gustaf Karlöf and the effect is magical. Malin Dahlström’s voice is chameleon-like, able to sound like Stevie Nicks one minute and a glossy lioness the next. Borrowing from an amalgam of influences and repackaging all of it for current consumption isn’t anything new, but Niki and The Dove do it with so much style, 

(Source: uptownmag.com)

Having already worked with Amelia Curran on 2010 EP, It’s in the And, it was a no-brainer to get her to produce Dance Movie’s first full-length, Interlopers. But when the JUNO Award-winning singer-songwriter proved too busy to produce the entire album, Tara Thorne, the journalist-cum-playwright-cum-musician and brainchild behind Dance Movie, looked to some of her other East Coast pals to do the rest. Enter Matt Charlton, who Thorne formally played with via the Sonic Youth-nodding band Bloodsport, and Halifax darling Jenn Grant. Inspired by Regina Spektor’s multi-produced, Far, the album interpolates the distinct sounds of each producer: Charlton’s grunge-invoking Blood Ablaze, the poignant folk of Curran on Things Change, My Dear and Jenn Grant’s punchy pop on the rockin’ glockenspiel-tinged jam Yeah You Are (the best track on the album, BTW). Guided by Thorne’s super sweet voice, which is always on point, the record shows Thorne coming into her own as a songwriter. In a CBC Radio feature, Thorne mocks her lack of musical theory, describing herself as “usually the least talented person in the room.” I’m not so sure how long that notion will hold up. There is a promising musician in Thorne and Interlopers proves that.

(Source: uptownmag.com)

Beach House has a near spotless record when it comes to sublime output. And with the help of producer Chris Coady (Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Grizzly Bear), the Baltimore duo illuminated some of its most adroit dream-pop to date on 2010 titan Teen Dream. It came of little surprise, then, to see Coady take up the role again for Bloom, which recreates that wonderfully heavy-eyed atmosphere that fans have come to worship. Opener Myth brings us back to familiar echoes: bell-like guitars and buzzing synths, sheltered by Victoria Legrand’s ethereal voice. One track seamlessly pours into the next with effortless fluidity — but such is the case with Beach House’s entire catalogue. Each step in the band’s evolution stays so true to a particular sonic outline that creative changes never sacrifice mood. There may come a time that the band is criticized for its worked-over framework, but it’s simply too lovely to fret over just yet.

(Source: uptownmag.com)

Ask the Dust, even in its title implies alienation. Lorn, the Milwaukee-based electronic producer known for making bleak analogia, crafts a barren, industrial-riddled domain on his first full-length for the Ninja Tune label. Dark, menacing sonics and chilling synths unfold like a tug-of-war of between human and machine with each song mutating from crushing automations to airy atmosphere. With the rare appearance of vocals on the haunting finale Ghosst(s), a surge of emotion ruptures through, offering an imagined glimpse of the world if the machines turned it to dust and a lone civilization lived to walk it again.

(Source: uptownmag.com)

Last year, Odd Future, that posse of delinquent skate kids who proudly wear rebellion like a badge of honour, pissed off more than a few people: Tegan and Sara, Steve Albini, Christians, feminists. Not that we’ve never seen  misogyny, homophobia, wrist-slitting nihilism and fuck-the-world defiance before in hip hop, but much of the crew’s output has been so ridiculously over-the-top that it’s difficult not to laugh out loud in shock. The follow-up to OF’s 2008 debut mixtape, The Odd Future Tape, features every member at their most polished lyrically — including Earl Sweatshirt back from that Samoan boarding school he was held up in while his OF bandmates rose to fame, and he provides one of the best verses of the entire LP on Oldies, spitting a year’s worth of thoughts in one breathlessly protracted spew. While the shock and awe that made OF — or Tyler, for that matter — notorious is still there (see: Real Bitch), the crew has noticeably mellowed, taking a less deliberate, punch-to-the-gut type of approach to attention seeking. Here it just comes in smaller doses.

(Source: uptownmag.com)

At the dawn of the ‘80s, Winnipeg punks gathered in droves at Wellington’s, the dark, grungy basement bar of the flea bag St. Charles Hotel. The venue supplied misfits and miscreants a place to call their own, away from the mainstay disco and country bars of the time. It would continue to provide a place for the city’s underground to bloom until closing its doors in 1998.

Today both Wellington’s and the St. Charles are just two more abandoned spaces in the Exchange District. But Wellington’s once catered almost exclusively to the city’s underground subcultures at some of their most vital times – punk in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s, and the rave scene in the ‘90s.

“My first time at Wellington’s I saw the Dub Rifles and I remember getting kicked out because I wasn’t drinking,” says John McGowan, legendary Winnipeg punk rocker and ex-Manic Depressor.

“Harry (the owner) had this policy that if you didn’t drink you shouldn’t be there. Despite paying cover charge he still threw me out.”

McGowan says Harry later came to his senses.

“I think he realized that the alternative scene was making him some money and it was in his best interest not to piss people off.”

Frequently remembered as the Wild West of nightclubs, Wellington’s was, McGowan says, “always very anarchic in the sense that you could do whatever the fuck you wanted, as long as you weren’t an asshole.”

According to McGowan, Winnipeg’s punk scene germinated in 1980 and by 1982 it was in full bloom, making Wellington’s the main punk venue in the city. Other than the Spud Club and hall shows, Wellington’s was the only place booking punk acts. The Albert occasionally booked shows, but it had a strict policy against slam dancing, which repelled a lot of the punks. 

Punks were free of restrictions atWellingtons, free to slam dance, free to do what they pleased. The only thing you couldn’t do, McGowan remembers, was wander into the area with the pool tables.

“That was where the bikers and the drug dealers hung out, and they hated punks. A few punks got a bit of a lashing from them. Someone would just go over to use the payphone, wrong place at the wrong time and (they) became a target. There was a lot of violence in the early years,” he says.

Many influential punk and alternative bands, such as Personality Crisis, Dub Rifles, The Unwanted, The Manic Depressors, Missing Children, Beach Mutants, and Stretch Marks trod the tiny stage at Wellington’s.

By 1985, the scene was thriving.

“Everyone was on each other’s side and there was a good unity,” McGowan says. However, by the end of 1986 things started to sour on the local scene because, as McGowan says, “punk was starting to lose its direction.”

In 1985 a “rape rock” band called The Mentors was booked by main punk promoter at the time, Mike Lambert, to play Wellington’s.

The gig resulted in a near riot. (With lyrics such as “Find her, feel her, fuck her, forget her,” and “Heterosexuals have the right to rock so put your homo head on the chopping block,” it’s not hard to imagine why.)

“I thought booking them was a bad idea,” McGowan says.

A band poster plastered around town depicting a man’s boot pushing a woman’s face into a dog bowl prompted a women’s-rights group to picket the show. Inside, redneck fans started fights indiscriminately.

“That was the most violent gig I ever saw. It didn’t develop into a full-scale riot, but it could have,” McGowan says.

“After that, Wellington’s was not too keen on booking punk bands.”

By the end of 1986, beginning of 1987, the local punk/alternative scene began to morph as hardcore lost some of its momentum. Popular bands at the time included Sinners Parade and Raised by Wolves.

“People were going for more of an artier sound by then,” McGowan says.

In the spring of 1987, Wellington’s became a blues club, a move that barely lasted a year until the club closed in 1988, not to be heard from for seven years.

In 1995, Wellington’s re-opened as an alternative dance club, playing the music of bands such as Ministry, The Cure, and Depeche Mode – but it wasn’t until Phil Koch took over the bar in 1996 that the place really started to take off.

Sean Allum, of local mod-pop band Duotang, worked at Wellington’s from ’96-’98 acting as both DJ and assistant manager.

“What was cool about Wellington’s (in the ‘90s) was the people that helped run it,” he says. “That made it what it was.”

Allum says that the friendships he, Koch, and Cam Loeppky (now a well-respected sound engineer and studio owner) had with up-and-coming bands such as Red Fisher and The Weakerthans brought in the who’s-who of Winnipeg’s music scene, and attracted a wealth of business for the venue.

“All the bands that we knew would go and hang out there,” Allum says. “Even out-of-town bands, if they didn’t play Wellington’s, they would show up there later on in the night.

“It was the scencesters or hipsters of the time that were hanging out down there and actually creating a scene, which could have been taken so much farther if Harry would have had some money to expand,” Allum says.

“Bands would play, and I would DJ in between sets and after, and we’d go all night. Even if we had a crowd of, like, 40 people, there’d still be 20 drunk people dancing at, like, three in the morning. It was like having a party in a friend’s living room.”

In the ‘90s, two distinct groups co-existed at Wellington’s: the post-punk/alternative rock scene and the rave scene.

Allum explains how the two complimented each other. 

“If you know about good music, it doesn’t matter if it’s country or if it’s jazz, you like good music. The people that were running it knew about good music and appreciated other genres. That’s why it worked.”

Although electronic music had been going strong for years in Britain, it was new to Winnipeg. The rave scene blew up and Thursday nights at Wellington’s became hugely successful.

“That was the music of the time, and that’s what kids were really getting into. Fuckin’ droppin’ Ecstasy and dancing to rave music. It was a total musical revolution. Around that time (’96-’97), music in my opinion became watered down, and techno was totally different, it was a little more dangerous,” Allum says.

Allum remembers some of the people who would show up for techno night.

“We had transsexuals going into the women’s bathroom to do whatever they did, it was really cool, it was just a free for all.”

Still, it seemed that Wellington’s could never survive, and the club closed for good in 1998.

Allum says that he and his friends still fondly recall their times at Wellington’s.

”We (Duotang) wrote a song about Wellington’s. The Weakerthans wrote a song called Wellington’s Wednesdays and a few other bands wrote songs, too,” he says.

“Everyone who was hanging out there knew that it was something special.

And that it wasn’t going to last forever.”

Show posters and 10-speeds line the walkways of the Gault Building (Artspace). A large medieval looking door with graffiti tags opens onto Arthur Street. Stairs leading up to the entrance are cracked and crooked. Inside, used books are everywhere: on dusty shelves, piled high upon the creaky hardwood floors –some are even cunningly hidden among the records and VHS tapes of other sections.

Dennis Boyko, owner of Red River Book Store, peers up from behind his glasses, which sit midpoint on his nose, like those of a character from a fantasy tale. He acts shy and speaks softly, with pronounced Ss that make sounds of faint whistles. Boyko possesses so many mythical attributes it’s as if he’s emerged from the pages of the comic books he sells.

For those unfamiliar with Red River Book Shop your first visit may be a bewildering one. The store is organized in a manner that’s hard to make sense of. Pornographic magazines are situated next to a section of Elvis records; above the records and the porn mags is an area for sci-fi figurines.

Parallel to the porn isle is the ‘Women’s Health’ section. Amidst a pile of ‘70s feminist health books, such as Our Bodies, Ourselves is an oddly placed book bordering on anthropology and science fiction called Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature’s Most Dangerous Creatures. There must be a science to the madness that only Boyko can figure out.

The store’s selection of ‘80s titty mags includes everything from 40 Plus, and Chocolate Mounds to fetish titles such as Toes and Hose and Leg Lust. It appears is as if the spring cleanings of Winnipeg’s bath houses and brothels have somehow ended up on these shelves.

When asked of his love for books Boyko says sarcastically, “That’s assuming there is a love.”  His response couldn’t be more amusing, considering the man’s life has revolved around books for close to 40 years. It’s not hard to imagine that his love for the written word in all its forms developed into resentment over time – similar to a marriage gone sour. But if I told you that he won a million dollars in a lottery 23 years ago, and that he owns part of the Gault Building– his store is located in the area called the Gault Annex – you would realize that he really doesn’t have to do what he does. He’s clearly driven by a love and passion for books and the used-books industry.

Red River Books Shop opened its doors in 1973. Boyko had just returned from Toronto (he says he wanted to see if the grass was greener on the other side). Toronto was a training ground for what was to come. Having owned and operated a small store in the metropolis for close to five years, he returned to Winnipeg knowing that he wanted a much bigger store – one free of limitations, in which he could stock everything and not have to experience the frustrations of not being able to expand sections.

The first books to gain Boyko’s attention as a child were Enid Blyton’s adventure stories. This comes as no surprise. His life, in a sense, is an adventure story.

Boyko at times responds with strange but logical analogies. When asked if there have ever been any books that he refused to buy for resale, he says: “Even if we don’t have room, we can never turn things away. Like the farmers and their crops. If there’s a harvest, they may have to harvest late into the night. There is no distributor. We have to take advantage of what we get.”

However, “We do get a lot of rejects,” he says. “Rejects” are discarded items brought in by dumpster divers. “Maybe it’s a sign of the times,” he says. “Just before you came in, a man wanted to sell a book that smelled of beer. It was wet. We get our fair share of those.”

Don Bailey, music director of 95.9 CKUW and long-time customer of Red River Books, says “Red River Books has a policy of recycling plastic bags, rather than buying plastic bags with logos on them, and wasting money on that kind of stuff. However, I think once in awhile (Boyko) may forget to check them when he’s using them for merchandise. One time I bought some comic books from him. I was driving and I noticed a new smell in my vehicle, like maple. And so I pull over. It was like, ‘Eureka!’ I get the books out of the bag, and the bottom of the bag came with the books. There may have been soft drink residue or some type of syrup there.”

It’s hard to tell if the store would be able to survive if Boyko did not have the financial security he has. “You can make $40,000 a year (running a used-book store),” he says. “But maybe my head is buried in the sand. I’m still in 8-tracks.”

The Internet seems to be the only thing that threatens him and his store. “The internet is changing life very rapidly,” he says. “People can view things for free, download music or videos.” He mentions that the store’s porn section is one area of business which does far less volume from 10 years ago. “I hear people are even sacrificing their beloved television for the Internet,” he says.

Boyko’s unwillingness to change is obvious, even though he acknowledges a need to adapt to the changing times. “We still have cassette tapes, 8-track tapes and a gramophone. (The store’s merchandise) has to become obsolete before we drop it,” he says.

One thing is for certain: the used-book industry is a fickle beast, with very few shops able to withstand the test of time or new ownership. “The mercantile doesn’t lend itself to being taken over. It’s very fragile. I think you can easily mess it up by alienating customers or not pricing correctly,” Boyko says.

Red River Book Shop is treasured by those who know it. For Boyko, the fondness is mutual.

“We love our customers,” he says. “Sadly we’ve seen a lot of our long-time customers pass away. That’s the disadvantage of being in business for 35 years, seeing friends go. People are mortal, you become aware of that.”

With a similar spirit and sentiment to Alan Lomax’s field-recordings, and love for the sounds of the Deep South, Al Spx or rather, Cold Specks, the former Etobicoke, Ont. native who now calls London, England home, digs deep into the heart of blues and gospel traditions on her debut, which was recently shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize. Heavy-hearted and gloomy, her dirge-like hymnals illuminate that ‘doom soul’ label that Spx likes to draw upon. Standouts include the atmospheric Hector and God-ridden Holland and Blank Maps. Raw instrumentation serves as the backdrop to Spx’s searing, whiskey-treated vocals, but somehow those striped-down measures seem unmatched to the power of Spx’s gut-wrenching emotion.

The Ninja Tune mainstay’s return to his 2010 chill-out triumph, Black Sands, traverses a gorgeous selection of ultra-pillowy downtempo. With close to a dozen producers — including Floating Points, Mark Pritchard, Machinedrum, and Mike Slott — trying their hands at remixes, there’s lots of sonic variation to behold. From Banks’ beat-soaked remix of The Keeper to the bugged-out futurism of ARP 101’s glassy rework of Eyesdown. Some new cuts from Bonobo also make it on to the disc, such as the jazz-fused relaxer Brace Brace and elegant groove Ghost Ship. The result? Over 75-minutes of innocuous euphoria.

(Source: uptownmag.com)

Sounding like the sonic love child of Kim Gordon and J Mascis, Olympia, Wash.’s Broken Water harkens all kinds of 1990s-minded noise-rock on its squalling sophomore, Tempest. The trio’s angsty, I-don’t-give-a-fuck garage skuzz blares like a drawn-out jam-session of sludgy freakouts. With blasts of wiry guitar and droning bass, the album is as sluggish as it is explosive. Drummer Kanako Pooknyw’s soft, barely coherent vocals against shards of pop melody work to offset the sound wall of dissonance on Thread to Connect, while When You Said has enough blistering reverb to shockwave you into the next millennium. Turn it up and tune the rest out.

(Source: uptownmag.com)