expérimental / contemporain / Jazz / trad québécois

Le Vent du Nord and L’Oumigmag, Meeting in Left Field: THE film!

by Rédaction PAN M 360

One of PAN M 360’s mandates is to promote creative music through encounters. One of the most successful since the platform went online in 2020 brings together Le Vent du Nord, a flagship of Quebec trad music, and L’Oumigmag, a jazz group led by Sébastien Sauvageau and very open to different influences, including American minimalism and… Quebec trad! That’s why Alain Brunet decided to bring the two groups together for a truly creative encounter. Here’s the film shot at Studio 110, Studios de Rouen, and directed by Sylvain Marotte, completing our Vent du Nord triptych as a hinge between 2024 and 2025. We wish you a happy new year!

Alex Henry Foster – Shadows Of Our Evening Tides (feat Allen Ginsburg)

by Stephan Boissonneault

Quebec’s orchestral post-rock songwriter, Alex Henry Foster, releases a lot of music and can definitely fall under the category of “prolific.” This year alone he has released two full-length albums, Kimiyo (which we interviewed him about here) and A Measure of Shapes and Sounds.

He is now rounding out the year with his third release, the EP, A Whispering Moment, featuring one new song, the title track, and three versions of a live fan favourite “Shadows of Our Evening Tides.”

The track has had many different incarnations but also features the words from the American poet and writer, Allen Ginsburg, before unleashing into full post-rock fury.

Along with the release comes a live rendition video of Alex Henry Foster and his band playing the track at the Brückenfestival in Nürnberg, Germany. The video feels more like a play than a song, with theatrical imagery and Alex Henry Foster commanding his band and the crowd from the stage.

Alternative / hip-hop alternatif / Trip Hop

Boutique Feelings – Sundried Autumn

by Stephan Boissonneault

The minute I heard Montreal’s experimental prog psych group Atsuko Chiba’s standalone single, “Quick Infant Guilt,” I craved more hip-hop—more hip-hop under their darkened kaleidoscopic lens.

Lead singer/guitarist/synth player, Karim Lakhdar must have heard my desire, or perhaps he always new he wanted to spit rhymes because he is now delivering his spin on the genre with his solo project, Boutique Feelings, signaling the first-ever hip-hop artist on Mothland.

Today we are welcomed by his debut single “Sundried Autumn,” a track that feels a bit like A Tribe Called Quest meets Mogwai, if fronted by someone like Rage Against The Machine’s Zack de la Rocha. The song dabbles in psychedelic trip-hop but contains a few classic boom-bap samples. It’s weird, but not too weird for any casual hip-hop listener, and it has enough interesting instrumentation to hold your interest. The thematic impetus focuses on proving oneself to the masses and yourself—a perfect debut saying “I am new, and here to stay.”

Photo by Aabid Youssef

“Sundried Autumn” comes with a trippy music video made up of AI-generated imagery, a 3D kaleidoscope, and analog effects, edited together by Atusko Chiba’s insane drummer and projectionist extraordinaire, Anthony Piazza. As with every release from Mothland, there are extensive plans to release follow-up singles and a debut EP from Boutique Feelings sometime in the new year.

N NAO – Pleine Lune

by Stephan Boissonneault

Naomie de Lorimier, better known as the experimental pop songwriter N NAO, has gone full electro on her latest, freaky autotune-led synthscape single, “Pleine Lune.” Dropping on Nov. 15 is no coincidence since it is in fact a full moon, and this follow-up to the fragmented dance bop “Corps,” feels like it should be reverberating off the walls of SAT during an energy-fuelled 3 am MUTEK night.

Being inspired by an essay on women in film titled The Monstrous-Feminine (because nothing is ever straightforward with N NAO) “Pleine Lune,” has a post-human quality to it, following the story of a cyborg woman’s love for nature. N NAO even adds in a few screams and whispers for an atmospheric effect.

The single comes with a video on analog footage by Charline Dally that sometimes feels like it’s in the world of Phillip K. Dick’s rotoscoped A Scanner Darkly.

Garage Punk / Garage Rock / Psych-Rock

SAMWOY – Poison

by Stephan Boissonneault

SAMWOY has been busy since the release of his debut album Awkward Party last summer, briefly going into remission to work and record the next batch of songs for the upcoming follow-up, Even Sad Boys Like to Have Fun (don’t we all?) SAMWOY has emerged from my solo effort into a full-fledged band—one that has sent their fusion of post-punk, electronica, and hip-hop triptychs through a shockwave and nestled firmly into the Montreal scene.

This latest single “Poison,” builds upon those darkened, self-deprecating songs that make SAMWOY such an enjoyable listen. We all have our own shit, but SAMWOY (Sam Woywitka) isn’t afraid to display it from the rafters. A song like “Poison,” is relatable, really diving into those thoughts and feelings that make us think we hate ourselves. Much like the message of the song, sometimes it’s good to “die a little on the inside,” so we can move on.

SAMWOY Live

This song is both a satirical stab at the memory and one person’s garage rock diary entry with lyrics that feel like they could be from an angsty Chuck Palahniuk novel, but SAMWOY’s delivery emerges as completely genuine. It’s grungy, and bassy, and doesn’t stray from peaking in the red, something missing in lots of garage rock these days. “Poison” also arrives with a little music video derived from studio sessions, live shows shot like a ’90s home movie, and a psychedelic visual landscape. We can’t wait to see what SAMWOY has cooking next.

Gus Englehorn – One Eyed Jack Trilogy

by Stephan Boissonneault

Our favourite musical vagabond, Gus Englehorn is back before the next year release of his album The Hornbook, this time with a tale about a strange entity called One Eyed Jack. Perhaps inspired by Englehorn’s own concocted folklore or Twin Peaks, maybe both, the song trilogy (that’s three) play with time and perception as a strange acoustic anti-folk blues ensues describing the powers and sinister influence of One Eyed Jack.

Apparently, this man, no this essence, can fuse through walls, become intimate objects, and groove to a surreal garage rock. In typical Gus fashion, he and his wife drummer Estée Preda have made a wonderful lo-fi video, but this time with some production value in Gus’ dad’s garage in Maui.

Gus plays every character and Preda makes an appearance as a maniacal woman mining rock with a pick axe. There’s no real explanation as to who or what One Eyed Jack is, and that is the point. He’s a conduit for Gus’ wild imagination. There’s even a small part three that continues the story. A perfect track in an upcoming album called The Hornbook. Gus’ songs always feel like they are being read from a medieval scroll lost to time.

Alt-Pop / Electronic / Experimental Dream Pop

N NAO – Corps

by Stephan Boissonneault

The experimental pop songstress known as N NAO is back with “Corps,” this time running into more of a minimalist synth dance pop realm. With her enchanting music, Naomie de Lorimie loves exploring the beauty and harsh reality of life, as she did in her last two works, L’eau et les rêves and the Miroir EP.

On “Corps” she seems to be enjoying the freedom to dance, symbolized by the genteel and inviting percussion cadences mixed with samples and psychedelic synthesizers, bringing to mind the ambient work of someone like Caterina Barbieri. The song is partly inspired by the real-life dancing epidemic in Strasbourg way back in 1518 when a village of people danced uncontrollably for two months. N NAO wrote the initial idea for the dance beat on a 4-track recorder while staying at a convent in Baie-Saint-Paul.

“Corps” arrives with a fun music video that follows Naomie on a trip to the La Ronde amusement park. As with all of her video work, it was shot DIY (this time with spy glasses for the POV effect) and is quite experimental with its editing. The single is also to announce her third LP, Nouveau Langage which drops in January next year via Mothland.

Experimental / Contemporary / Krautrock / Noise / Post-Rock

Yoo Doo Right – Eager Glacier

by Stephan Boissonneault

Montreal’s post-rock wall of noise giants, Yoo Doo Right have a new single and video entitled “Eager Glacier.” Beginning with warring drums that feel like an unsettling battering ram under a bed of warped and distorted squeals to tape, buzzing strings, gargantuan bass, and haunting, synthetic whirrs, “Eager Glacier,” is a dusky opus steeped in rumination.

Accompanied by the new single is an experimental almost completely black and white short film by Stacy Lee, featuring wispy hooded figures (reminiscent perhaps of Dune‘s Bene Gesserit or Sleep’s iconic album cover, Dopesmoker) ascending a grassy cliffside to meet. The lumbering quality of Yoo Doo Right’s music pairs well with the wraith-like figures presence as well as the film’s cinematography—a slow pullout and eventual zoom that shows the majesty of the figures and land) that soon morphs into a painterly chaotic explosion.

It’s a blur between the fractured line between reality and the surreal, much like the experimental song itself. Partway through, the film is also somewhat of a love letter to the filmmaker’s process, diving through rolls of exposed film and getting lost within the microscopic universe.

Eager Glacier is the second single off of Yoo Doo Right’s upcoming album, From the Heights of Our Pastureland—out November 8 via Mothland.

APACALDA – She’s Not Coming

by Stephan Boissonneault

Sometimes an artist and their director go beyond just making a music video. Sometimes that video becomes its own entity, a piece of visual media that lives within its own short film universe. This is exactly what happened with APACALDA’s darkened and brooding “She’s Not Coming.”

Directed by the award-winning Maïlis—an emerging Montreal-based filmmaker, art director, and production designer known for her visually rich storytelling—the video was shot in Georgia, Eastern Europe, near APACALDA’s motherland of Romania, and follows a religiously pious woman who decides to end it all.

The gorgeous landscaped cinematography of a stark Georgia brings to mind the work of Terrence Malick, as well as the few intimate moments that set the tone of APACLADA’s moonless psych-pop. The music begins with a haunting acapella and slowly, as the woman walks through her hometown and claims forgiveness from her god, builds into a trance-like, yet restless piece of coldwave with elements of dreamy shoegaze.

“I write these songs as an extension of healing—I want to be a medium. I often feel others’ pain and I want to express it in honour of them,” APACALDA (real name, Cassandra Angheluta) says.

APACALDA is joined by the dynamic FHANG duo of Mishka Stein and Sam Woywitka on co-production, gritty guitar riffs, and hypnotic synths. “She’s Not Coming,” also marks the announcement of APACALDA’s upcoming album There’s a Shadow In My Room and It Isn’t Mine, out sometime in 2025.

Gus Englehorn – Thyme

by Stephan Boissonneault

The dungeon master that is Gus Englehorn is back with the “Thyme” a psychedelic surf ode to the wonders of time and astronomic love. Riffing off the traditional English ballad “Scarborough Fair,”—made famous of course by Simon & Garfunkel, for its hypnotic and lovely verse. Englehorn has taken the two homophones of “time” and “thyme” and ran with them, giving impossible tasks to a random minstrel—like a maniacal Elven king whose only goal is confusion and fool-hearty glee.

The other star of this song is the music video—directed by Englehorn’s drummer and partner, Estée Preda as well as documentarian, Ariane Moisan—that follows the tale of a couple of mad scientists (Quebec City musicians, Kerry Samuel of WORRY and l i l a) who are looking to blast Englehorn into space or maybe, a different world. The video is shot on Super 8 and super DIY, showing how much you can do with a creative vision and a hell of a lotta heart. “Thyme” has excellent cinematography that feels like one of those old ’70s sci-fi movies like Logan’s Run or Dark Star.

It’s a very Gus Englehorn tale, adding to his grimoire, and the announcement of his upcoming album, The Hornbrook—which promises to be as fantastical as his last DnD anti-punk debut that at times felt like a Brothers Grimm fairytale on acid, Dungeon Master.

Experimental / Contemporary / Instrumental / Krautrock

The Fleeting Light of Love and Grief – Terminal 9

by Louise Jaunet

Fusing krautrock with Turkish instruments, The Fleeting Light of Love and Grief is the latest instrumental band to emerge from the Popop label (Anachnid, Melissa Fortin, Patche). This duo is made up of Lydia Wener (synthesizers, bass, saxophone, theremin, stylophone) and Roy Vucino (electric and acoustic guitars, bass, bağlama, duduk, midi trumpet, synthesizers, MPC, processed drum beats, rototoms, floor toms, tambourine, shells, bells, wood block), assisted by Omri Gondor (drums). This new ‘bedroom krautrock’ project presents “Terminal 9,” the first single from their album, due for release in June.

Born out of sorrow but shaped by a romantic encounter, “Terminal 9” is inspired by the band Air and combines electronic sounds, dream pop, krautrock, and bossa nova in a playful, intuitive way. Directed and edited by Lydia using an old camcorder, the clip explores the superimposition of incompatible colours, textures and movements, evoking Janie Geiser’s approach in her experimental short film The Fourth Watch (2000).

The Fleeting Light of Love and Grief represents the umpteenth project of one and the musical debut of the other, but promises to deliver a raw and genuine testimony of the love story of a man and a woman who bravely lift themselves to life. The sun rises.

Photo by Nicolas Morin

Alternative / Alternative Rock / Post-Punk

Bēdu Brāļi – Ikdienas Dzīve

by Stephan Boissonneault

Bēdu Brāļi—pronounced Beh-doo-brah-lee—is a Latvian alt-rock three-piece that draws from post-punk and psychedelic rock and recently dropped their new single “Ikdienas Dzīve,” which is musically, a bit like the Osees meets the Chairs Missing era of Wire. The single is the first from the upcoming album, Lauskas, out on I Love You Records at a to-be-decided date. It’s a great and fuzzy driving song, but what really sticks is the music video, which could be on its way to an award for cinematography and story.

“Ikdienas Dzīve,” which translates to “Daily Life,” features the band attempting to sabotage their daily work life by drinking, eating a ridiculously huge sandwich, flirting with the buxom blonde secretary, and losing it on a photocopy machine. It’s a group of guys sick of the monotonous grind of modernity and daily life and deciding to rebel in the chaos. The colours pop during this video and there is a sort of vintage aesthetic to the whole thing with the taupe walls and archaic technology. While it sometimes feels like a sketch comedy parody of a British show like The IT Crowd paired with The Office, “Ikdienas Dzīve,” has an amazingly entertaining beginning, middle, and end.

Check it here: