Ashley Au Is Stretching Out Most music fans in Winnipeg have seen plenty of Ashley Au playing bass in recent years in a wide range of idioms—Americana, hip-hop, jazz, and sludge metal. Pausing to tally current projects, Au counts in blinks before saying, “I’m in an open relationship with maybe seven[...] Read more

Profile Daniel Emberg Issue 139

Video Game Music: New Directions in Play       The first time I played PaRappa the Rapper was a struggle. I was with my parents at a novelty deli where each table was outfitted with a television and a PlayStation video-game console. I didn’t have one at home, but a paper-thin, hip-hop cartoon[...] Read more

Featured Article Zack Kotzer Issue 120

The Musical Worldview of Nick Dourado IT'S A DREARY WINTER NIGHT IN TORONTO. It’s already super late—the last of four bands has already played, and the makeshift bar within the makeshift venue has been closed for a good half hour. Although things are winding down, a healthy crowd is hanging out, chatting, and[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 126

Paul Walde Subverts Nature as Culture The column of light is beamed directly into the sky. As if intended to summon some celestial visitor, the beam of photons is emitted from a circle of glowing discs, placed in the most unassuming place imaginable—a farmer’s field (don’t ET’s always land there?). This,[...] Read more

Featured Article Jonathan Bunce Issue 109

Label Profile: Redshift Records We won’t go into the details—because, frankly, we don’t understand them—but in astronomy a redshift is a way to measure an object’s placement in space, and its movement vis-à-vis the earth.   “It’s like the Doppler effect, but[...] Read more

Sound Notes Alexander Varty Issue 130

Jairus Sharif and the Expression of Truth Jairus Sharif believes in the transformative power of music. On his debut album, Water & Tools, the thirty-three-year-old multi-instrumentalist constructs dense, impassioned improvisations that fuse the murky beatscapes of underground hip-hop with the scorching intensity of free jazz.[...] Read more

Sound Bite Jesse Locke Issue 144

Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi is just scratching the surface “My relationship to sound is [an] obsession with texture and how sounds affect each other, and also [with] playing with the human psyche.” Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi then bursts out laughing, saying, “That’s a lot in one sentence.”     [...] Read more

Sound Bite Andrea Warner Issue 135

loK8Tr FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     They weren’t going to speak with me. Maybe it was just a he or a she, rather than a they. I didn’t know. An e-mail exchange was possible, but I wanted to meet face to face. I tried cajoling the members of the online[...] Read more

Featured Article Matthew Pioro Issue 106

Elastic Planets Stepping into this black cube is like entering an intergalactic observation deck. Enveloped by mechanical whirs, buzzes and clicks, a parade of heavenly bodies is presented for inspection. This particular set is kaleidoscopic in colour, malleable in shape, kinetic in nature, frenetic in texture[...] Read more

Visions of sound Jason van Eyk Issue 117

Plumes Deconstructs Grimes Many Visions: Plumes Deconstructs the Music of Grimes is a genre-spanning music collaboration that seeks to explore and ultimately blur the lines between classical and pop. Thirteen contemporary classical composers have been asked to reimagine and rework the thirteen tracks on Grimes’[...] Read more

In the Works Mary Dickie Issue 126