What to watch
Retrouvez-vous dans un monde fantaisiste rappelant un film de Wes Anderson avec “Hail Mary”, le dernier single d’Oracle Sisters, les chouchous de la dream-folk. Si vous aimez ce que vous entendez, ne manquez pas de découvrir leur premier album, Hydranism, sorti au début du mois d’avril.
Le charmant trio parisien s’apprête à entamer une tournée nord-américaine en soutien à Declan McKenna.
Oracle Sisters jouera au Théâtre Corona le 25 mai 2023. BILLETS ICI
URUBU, DJ, producer and co-founder of the multidisciplinary project and Montreal label Vertige is back with a single that combines techno and rap. For the occasion, he teams up with local rapper JOUDI. The BPMs are tied to the decibels and it pulses! The scent of rubber and burnt asphalt, roaring engines, shirts and caps flocked with the name of famous F1 teams… welcome to the world of tuning gatherings! An immersion made possible thanks to the collaboration of director Adrien Taret and VFX specialist Josué Zabeau, who deliver a video clip more realastic than life.
Stay tuned for the release of the Pole Position EP, scheduled for May 26th, and especially, discover “Ego Drift”.
YOCTO is a new supergroup from Montreal made up of members from Jesuslesfilles, IDALG, and Chocolat. The two only released singles “Station 01001” and “Dactylo” (Typist in English) convey the groups art rock, jangle pop, and new wave post punk style. “Station 01001,” also comes with an artistic animated video by Philippe Beauséjour, that reminds the viewer of old cut and paste art advertisement videos from the ’90s. Musically, it’s a laidback new wave reminiscent of someone like The Human League, but more French.
Watch the video here:
“Dactylo” is a much more jumpy, Blondie-esque track that gets the feet moving.
Chiyoda Ku—an experimental post-punk/ math rock band from Bristol, UK—kind of sounds and feels like liquid speed. The drug. Not the ratio of distance. The droning math rock chords over shouting vocals and complex drum fills feels at bit Squids mixed with Black Country, New Road.
The band went on hiatus after years of extensive touring around the UK and Europe, numerous festival appearances, van-theft induced homelessness and a three-boys-1-room living arrangement above a Bristol Dive bar. Living in different ends of the country, they were no longer talking, they had flat lined. Half way through the main world event, a faint pulse could be felt between them.
Now they’re back with “Deal With It,” the first single off the upcoming Selecta Perspective album due April 21. The video features trippy, vintage camera work and lots of nature.
Check it below.
Closing out the upcoming album, L’eau et les rêves (March 24, 2023 via Mothland), Montreal-based dream pop singer-songwriter N NAO (Klô Pelgag, LUMIÈRE, Laurence-Anne) unveils the more experimental folk side of her project by looking at the edge of the precipice of the “End of the World.” With oscillating synthetic effects in the voice, the track depicts the feeling of embracing someone in a dream, a feeling similar to the sublime sweetness of spring beginning to bloom, when winter finally melts its ice. The time for planting is coming. The end of the world is, above all, a sensation that naturally hides in the flesh.
WHY PATTERNS? is a new luminous synthesizer/saxophone soundscape two piece from Paris, France. The debut single “GIVE THE WORD,” has a jazzy and drone repetition to it, following a live abstract video from the French/Bosnian artist, Dabube. We envision more madness from WHY PATTERNS? soon in the form of an EP this spring.
Australia’s Dan Webb could be considered the country’s Bonobo with his maximalist approach to orchestral electronica and psychedelic electro-jazz. His newest track “Drifter” is part Bonobo’s Black Sands or some of the work of Blockhead. The strings push the calming track into the stratosphere, adding to the halcyon feel.
Dan Webb’s music exists in a state of constant evolution. Since emerging with his debut EP in 2009, he has gleefully erased the lines between genres, combining psychedelic atmospheres, electronic experimentation and classic songwriting into a kaleidoscopic sound all his own.
He has just released an accompanying visualizer for the new track “Drifter,” and hopes to announce a new album in the coming months. Rumours speculate that he worked with a few other collaborators for the upcoming fourth album, including the likes of Greg Saunier of Deerhoof.
Check out Drifter below.
We are excited to co-promote the Chose Sauvages and Lash show for this year’s Taverne Tour. It is at 9pm at L’escogriffe.
Full setlist of Taverne Tour below!
In anticipation of her new album L’eau et les rêves (March 24, 2023 via Mothland), singer-songwriter and performer N NAO (Klô Pelgag, LUMIÈRE, Laurence-Anne) presents her latest track “Tout va bien,” with a new video of her intimate escapades filmed in the fresh water streams of the Gaspé and Charlevoix. Created intuitively with a feminist approach, her images could be described as haptic; the magic of a precious glow falling into the water as it falls and illustrate the desire to surrender to life to surrender to life beyond the screen.
As the clock approaches midnight, the Montreal-based artist manages to create ‘an ode to the giddiness of falling in loveˋ sparkling, delicate and visionary, reminiscent of the natural musical rituals of Jenny Hval or Björk. Recorded at Greenroom Studios in Montreal, the song was produced with the help of Charles Marsolais-Ricard (founding member) for the inspiration of the lyrics, Lysandre Ménard (Lysandre, Helena Deland) on synthesizer, Samuel Gougoux (TDA, Corridor, Keel Avil, VICTIME) and Jean-Bruno Pinard (co-director) on the drums, and Étienne Dupré (Duu, zouz, Klô Pelgag).
Sleaford Mods – UK GRIM
The Sleaford Mods are set to release their new album UK GRIM on March 10th, arguably their most danceable effort and one that sees the duo collaborate with Jane’s Addiction’s Perry Farrell and Dave Navarro, as well as Dry Cleaning’s Florence Shaw, among others. To make the video for UK Grim, the Mods enlisted the talents of British illustrator and satirist Cold War Steve, who signed his first video and animation here, supporting another excellent and vindictive socio-political charge from the Nottingham duo.
I remember the first time I threw on Atsuko Chiba’s 2019 album, Trace. My partner stepped into the room and asked me why I was listening to “vampire music.” Vampire music … perhaps so … if a bunch of prog rock/synth enthusiasts in Transylvania were creating mind-expanding sounds up in a neon-lit high bell tower. The real band, however—who take their name from a character in the dream detective anime, Paprika—are five guys from Montreal who happen to love strange time signatures, Delphic lyrics, drone, and basically anything and everything outside the realm of ‘simple music.’ They even made a crazy prog-rock hip-hop chameleon called “Quick Infant Guilt,” which sounds like MF Doom fronted by King Crimson.
But Atsuko Chiba has a knack for making its maelstrom of prog, drone, and psych sound digestible and easy to latch onto, with their latest offering “Seeds,” being a testament to that statement.
“Seeds,” clocking in at 7 minutes and 45 seconds, is an immersive journey that puts the listener into an out-of-body trance. Trilling guitars, harmony after vocal harmony, sprawling synths, tasty/grooving bass, sprinkles of percussion, and smashing crash cymbals, and a gorgeous string arrangement by Montreal quartet, Quatuor Esca, “Seeds,” nestles deep into its own sonic universe and leaves a burning and enigmatic uncertainty. You’d go mad trying to decipher its meaning, but a lovely music video, directed by Rodrigo Sergio and starring Jade Maya does just that. Maya reacts, dancing and contorting to the music, changing her movement tones from a quaint forest environment to a brutalist city underpass.
Enjoy the “Seeds” video here before Atsuko Chiba’s third full-length, Water, It Feels Like Its Growing drops in January via Mothland.
When he’s not crushing the mic and drumset with FHANG, a newer genre-manipulating electronic duo from Montreal, Sam Woywitka is working as a producer, and now solo artist, under the moniker SAMWOY. His debut single “Sbwriel,” which sounds like a made-up word, is actually Welsh for “rubbish,” and comes with a shiny music video that features Sam parading around the UK like a fiend, donning a bedazzled gem mask. The project is also on Woywitka’s new label, Hidden Ship.
Like FHANG’s sound, SAMWOY’s music feels like you’re on psychedelics—the kind of psychedelics that make you question everything you know and hold dear, but for the better. “Sbwriel” is a song about self-improvement, or rather, giving up on it and accepting who you really are—a gutsy, dirty, vagabond with a flair for a spectacle that no one will ever really understand. And that’s OK.
Musically, this track shifts from a grooving Sisters of Mercy club-era bassline, punctuated by an assortment of sonic experimentation and cryptic lyrics. The payoff is a freaky fuzzed-out guitar solo, which reminds me of Marc Ribot on morphine.
Check out the music video below.
