What to watch
Director Sylvain Marotte shot a mini studio concert of Montreal band Thus Owls for PAN M 360, dedicated to the new album “Who Would Hold You If The Sky Betrayed Us?”
This mini-concert is also an introduction to possible dialogues between Thus Owls and their audience after their excellent performance at Suoni Per il Popolo festival in Montreal. A short interview with PAN M 360’s founder, Alain Brunet, is at the end of the video.
After hearing old hometown ghost stories and darkened folklore from their Nonna, Canadian-Italian sisters, Emmalia and Sarafina Bortolon-Vettor, have released a track called “Teeth,” a song that recalls the sonic sounds of Siouxsie and the Banshees, My Bloody Valentine, and Lush. The two sisters make up Bonnie Trash, a new drone rock/shoegaze project signed to Toronto’s indie label, Hand Drawn Dracula.
The track begins with reverb-soaked arpeggios as drummer/lyricist Sarafina commands the atmosphere with her prophetic voice. The guitar work from Emmalia is also superb, especially the looped, harmonic solo that twists and mutates, near the track’s conclusion.
“Teeth” is accompanied by a video directed by Sarafina. The video has both sisters playing out the song in the empty Apollo Cinema in Kitchener, ON as various black and white static images corrupt the screen.
“Teeth” bridges generations of being haunted – we see ourselves watching our work without understanding that we too have conjured the curse. A malocchio [evil eye] follows.”
Bonnie Trash is looking at releasing their debut LP sometime this fall. It’s safe to say we’re on our heels in anticipation.
Zoon released a more experimental moccasin-gaze cover of Beck’s “Round The Bend” last May and with the new single “Astum” he is certainly following that vibe. The track sounds like something off of Beck’s Sea Change, with Daniel Monkman’s airy vocals, light piano, and lush acoustic guitar. His lyricism is also transcendental focusing on vague references to nature, tranquility, and freedom. “Astum” is the first track off the upcoming Big Pharma EP.
“‘Astum’ touches on active addiction and the challenges that it brings to an individual,” says Monkman. “While in active addiction, it’s extremely difficult to function in the known society and it leaves you feeling even more lost. I reflect on how it’s really sad and you watch a lot of good people leave because it’s impossible to keep a firm grasp on reality. You’re longing for a great relationship but know it could never happen because you’re constantly trying to numb out past traumas.”
The Big Pharma EP comes out on June 21, National Indigenous Peoples Day.
“Big Pharma is about me trying to bring awareness about the pharmaceutical industry and their lies. I talk about how they destroyed my community of Selkirk Manitoba and many more small towns and cities. A whole generation completely changed in just a matter of five years, families torn apart and loved ones lost to addiction and overdoses.”
Written by: Clint Hoekstra
While they’ve only released a handful of songs mostly in short, meme-like format, jazz duo Domi & JD Beck have been coming up fast over the last few years. Their fans have avidly awaited their full-length album since before the pandemic began, and they’ve now finally graced their audience with a taste of what that will include.
The duo signed to Anderson .Paak’s label APESHIT Records only weeks ago, and have spent the past couple of years touring with the likes of Thundercat, .Paak, and quilted jazz bass virtuoso Mononeon.
This first track, “SMiLE,” dropped with a video directed by .Paak and featuring Thundercat, Mac DeMarco, and a variety of other big names. DeMarco portrays a crotchety old pianist who shares a house with Domi and JD. The duo spends the duration of the video trying to cheer up the old man with games and crafts (their SCRABBLE board reads “RICH BITCH SLAMS PUSSY), eventually hosting a dinner party for his birthday.
The whole video is shot in super warm tones, reminiscent of Paak’s other recent material, Silk Sonic, who has shown a clear aim for the ’70s feel in all of their output.
The song itself starts exactly as a Domi and JD Beck fan would expect: a tight Dilla-style hip hop drumbeat snaps in along with a bubbly, simple synth melody. Beck is renowned for his control over the push and pulls of tempo using kick and hi-hat displacement, and the introductory beat couldn’t act as a more perfect illustration.
Hiding under the drums and synth, barely audible in some parts of the mix, is a poppy, staccato bassline that I can almost guarantee is played by Thundercat. His particular finger-plucked style and addition of sub-bass tones doubling each stroke make him recognizable after only a few notes. About halfway through the song, the leading synth tone gets soft and airy, like a Herbie Hancock riff if he’d done the whole thing with only two fingers. This is followed by a brief break where you can really hear the syrupy thick compression oozing over. White noise floods the mix momentarily, leading into a barrage of Beck’s half-swung breakbeats that have captured so much jazz world’s attention in recent years.
Domi’s keys float over the breakbeats like Chick Corea on whippets, existing somewhere between the drunk straight time of the prior section and the swinging snare fills accompanying her. Ending on a soft, unaccompanied major chord, Domi’s Nord synth tone perfectly crafts what feels like an audible smile.
The epilogue of the video features a sample from another of their new songs, and I can personally say I’m now even more stoked for the full-length album to arrive. I have a soft spot for the lazy, relaxed hip-hop beats Beck has been producing as of late, and from the sound of it, Thundercat’s bass will make more appearances throughout the album.
Domi and JD have yet to announce when exactly this LP will finally hit the streaming services, so we may still have to wait a while. However, now that they’re on Apeshit Records, we can expect a steady flow of singles and music videos to come from these two soon.
Local psych folkster, Paul Jacobs, might be moving up in the music world—he’s now singed with the Bonsound label—but his vivid DIY approach to music sure hasn’t changed. He’s following up last year’s wonderful Pink Dogs on the Green Grass album with an EP entitled, 185 On The Corner, out July 8, which features more of his neo-folk psychedelia and categorizes a transformational period of his life where we “went through a lot of changes.”
Who knows what those changes are, but the single “The Tree Outside My House,” has a very nostalgic feel to it, with Paul playing every instrument, recording and producing, and making the accompanying visualizer—pulsating zoom camera work over some yellow flowers. It’s safe to say we’re excited about this new page in Paul’s storybook.
Local post-rock/experimental fiends, Yoo Doo Right, are back with another music video, this time with a run time of 6:00 minutes and the animation wizardry of one Jared Karnas. “The Failure of Stiff, Tired Friends,” has a circadian rhythm to it, following the story of an unnamed character as he interacts with strange characters under Montreal skies. The video feels like a graphic novel, touching on the mysterious nature of a morning and late-night stroll. Musically, the track follows a trance-like synth line and puts you into a haze, with calming bass, motorik drum beats, and some guitar arpeggios that could be compared to Ennio Morricone if he fronted a psych-rock troupe.
It’s a song of reprieve and needed to counteract the onslaught of heavy distortion on the band’s upcoming and highly anticipated album A Murmur, Boundless To The East, out in June.
“The mood from this piece by Yoo Doo Right brings out a feeling I’m well accustomed to, which comes when we walk alone in the city, either very late at night, or very early in the morning. This moment of twilight that comes with sadness and loneliness, as we head back home after an evening that drew on. Time stops, we encounter people along the way, we hear the birds sing, yet we are lost in our thoughts, detached from our surroundings. It is this moment afloat that I set out to illustrate in this video.”
– Animator Jared Karnas
“In my secret garden,” are the first words to Meggie Lennon’s sun-drenched psych-pop opus, “Jardin,” from her summer 2021 Mothland album, Sounds From Your Lips, and now it features a fantastic music video.
The video feels like a long-lost Elena Ferrante novel as Meggie and various cast hang out and reminisce under a sunny sky, gargantuan hedges, donning magnificent flower attire. The settings and outfits could be called Dionysian. Seriously, the costumes in this video feel like they’re pulled out of a hippy fashion week runway and Meggie leads the charge as an alabaster glam-pop peacock.
“Jardin” is a hazy pop banger, reminding us all why we love the mysterious nature of summer.
Check the video here before Meggie performs with Paul Jacobs and Fleece on May 6.
I’ve seen Yoo Doo Right live four times, twice back-to-back at the FME festival, and I will never grow tired of their sound. They’re a band that will stop you dead in your tracks, leaving you in a pit of endless head-banging, and then offer brief moments of sonic respite only to launch you back into the pit again. This is what the 16-minute post-rock dirge “Feet Together, Face Up, On The Front Lawn” does. The band creates a pocket universe of guitar trilling, bass-defying, rhythm drums-led suffocation, and then slowly destroys it. It’s been their closing set song for months now, and for good reason.
The accompanying video, created by Mackenzie Reid Rostad, is a visual aid in the chaos. Various repetitive images of fences, highways, power lines and industrial plants take up the scenery in a darkened Sepia tone.
The song previews Yoo Doo Right’s sophomore LP, Murmur, Boundless to the East, out via Mothland on June 10.
The five-song, 45-minute record — the follow-up to their acclaimed debut album Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose—was recorded live-off-the-floor at Hotel2Tango with producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh (Suuns, Fly Pan Am) and features contributions by violinist Jessica Moss (Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra).
Birthed out of a collaboration between some of the finest past and present members of indie/post-punk projects: Chose Sauvages, Laurence-Anne, Punk Explosion, Vanille, Silver Dapple, and Jesuslesfilles—Montreal’s newest experimental art-punks, La Sécurité, have released their first single “Suspens,” via Mothland.
A bit French Yeah Yeah Yeahs, a bit Devo, La Sécurité has a minimalist disco-punk sound perfect for returning to what we once deemed normal. This debut track has just the right amount of energy to usher in a new era of thoughtful art dance.
“With “Suspens“, La Sécurité now paint sonic graffitis of their own, evoking a polymorphic reality, through themes such as restlessness or awesome clothes.”
Check it below:
A new single from his second album Dungeon Master, due April 29 via Secret City Records.
Our favourite New Zealander reveals another single from Warm Chris, her fourth studio album to be released on March 28. Over a downtempo soul ballad and a circus-like atmosphere, Aldous Harding shows off from various angles and in different outfits, tells us that “Neil Young” is worth 19 points in Scrabble, and then takes us to a barn dance where everyone wears a homemade bib with a big letter sewn into it. For a moment, we fear that the whole thing will turn into a Midsommar pagan ritual, but, thank God, it doesn’t.
A fusion of post-punk, No wave, and some noise, Grim Streaker has a music video fever dream. It’s looks and feels like something you’d see after pulling over the curtain in the Black Lodge.
The track comes just in time for the release of the MIND EP, out today via Mothland. Listen below.
Word from the Directors
“‘Mind’ is a uniquely dynamic song. We knew the video had to match the song’s frenetic energy in the visuals and pacing, and we wanted to incorporate a narrative based on the themes presented. The visual textures felt right for the song, as they both breathe and feel organic in ways that complement each other so well. The edit matches the pacing of the song perfectly, reinforcing its turbulent nature.”
– Directors Stephen Mondics & Devan Davies-Wood
