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Recent Reviews
Movieland
Then & Now
Jonathan Simkin, the founder of Vancouver's 604 label, has of late been getting "weirdly sentimental" about the fertile music scene there back in the 90s and 00s. "It's when I first started working in the music business," he writes. "I was just a lawyer then; I didn't even have the label - that wasn’t even something I thought of doing! I just worked with a lot of bands, and a lot of them were really fucking great."
One of those groups was the little-known shoegaze band Movi...more
Milt Hinton - Ralph Sutton - Gus Johnson - Jim Galloway
The Sackville All Star Christmas Record
The Christmas album is a genre fraught with peril. While there are some records that are genuinely loved and have stood the test of time, the field is littered with far too many examples of anodyne versions of songs already too saccharine for their own good. Jazz musicians, however, seem to approach the concept with an open mind, since with jazz you can experiment with the arrangements and maybe breathe some new life into older Christmas numbers.
In March of 1986, Sackville, ...more
You Doo Right
From the Heights of Our Pastureland
The similarities between You Doo Right and their fellow Montreal post-rockers Godspeed You! Black Emperor are almost too obvious to ignore.
For one thing, You Doo Right - unlike the sprawling GY!BE, just a trio of guitarist/singer/synth player Justin Cober along with bassist Charles Masson and drummer John Talbot - occupy much the same sonic space as their musical forebears. Which is to say, plenty of sweeping sheets of sound, crushing guitar chords and deft sonic improvisat...more
Nimrawd
Modern Crimes EP
Nimrawd seems about as obscure as one can get these days. The Montreal-based noodler, who describes himself as "an electronic musician [who writes] lo-fi instrumental music using live bass, old-school hip-hop beats and weird synths" has been issuing records digitally, including a full-length album, 2022's Love Remains, for about five years. Yet his internet presence is all but non-existent - a few hundred Instagram followers, and barely a handful on Facebook.
In an int...more
Les Pommes de Lune
La Revolution des Lutins / Le Plus Fort - 7"
Pere Noel arrived early this year, leaving us this nifty little Christmas gift by Les Pommes de Lune. The Montreal five-piece, whose last missive you may recall was a swell cover of Christine Delaroche's long-forgotten 1967 b-side 'Une fleur', issued this seven-inch as part of Snowflake Records' long-running Christmas Singles Club.
'La Revolution des Lutins' - the group's first original committed to wax - is a catchy collision of fre...more
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