Featured Articles

Carmen Braden Raises the Volume on the Subarctic “I'M JUST GOING TO TOUCH IT ON THE TOP," SAYS CARMEN BRADEN, LOOKING AT A BLACKENED PORCUPINE-LIKE LUMP OF ICE. "WHAT I THINK WILL HAPPEN: IT'S JUST GOING TO FALL APART. READY?"   It’s May 2014, and she’s talking to a camera. Her now-[...] Read more

Profile Samia Madwar Issue 126

Erdem Helvacioglu FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   When you’re caught up in the thick of it, all those cute, clichéd little epithets about turning life’s lemons into lemonade, spinning grave fuck-ups into rapturous inspiration, and the like, hardly seem to hold any[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 115

Composer Wolf Edwards loads the chamber Wolf Edwards’ various stories are so interesting and so curiously entwined that it’s hard to know where to start. Working in the fish-packing plants of Ucluelet, B.C., the ugly-duckling sibling of Tofino’s trendy swan? Playing guitar on the stage of some black-hole dive[...] Read more

Profile Alexander Varty Issue 120

Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony (2009–10) is an electronic composition in five movements on a single microchip housed in a CD jewel case. 1-Bit Symphony is not a recording in the traditional sense; it is a complete electronic circuit that literally performs its music once it is[...] Read more

Visions of sound Tristan Perich Issue 109

The Quiet Waves of Silla and Rise In early 2016 Ottawa-based DJ, producer, and dancer Eric Vani, aka Rise, was hired to create music to be played at the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Nature Nocturne—a themed-evening series that Vani describes as a “rave in the middle of dinosaur skeletons.”[...] Read more

Sound Bite Chaka V. Grier Issue 134

Jessie Lausé's Movements Jessie Lausé wins second place in the 2021 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest for Movements, a three-movement work for eight-channel mixed media.    “[Movements] explores the melodic and registral capabilities of modified human and spatial[...] Read more

Featured Article

Ningxin Zhang’s Kagemusha: for Pipa and Electronics At age five, Ningxin Zhang started her classical training on the pipa—a lute-like plucked Chinese instrument in use for more than 2,000 years—and followed the traditional route of practising repertoire (classical and folk songs) and performing in competitions. While studying[...] Read more

Sound Bite Jennie Punter Issue 148

Hans-Joachim Roedelius floats against the current On an unseasonably warm night in October, Toronto’s Monarch Tavern was packed to the rafters for a living legend. German electronic and ambient music pioneer Hans-Joachim Roedelius—best known as a cofounder of 1970s experimental groups Cluster and Harmonia, renowned for their[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke Issue 129

Luca Kasper's "Atelier Métal" Swiss sound and visual artist Luca Kasper’s Atelier Métal was awarded third place in the 2023 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest. Hit the PLAY button above to listen.   Currently based in France, in the countryside near Lyon, Kasper found the first[...] Read more

Featured Article STAFF

Jörg Piringer's Sound Poetry App FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   The iPod touch is hissing loudly as two s’s move about the screen leaving a trail of fading s shapes in their wake. I drag the image of an r onto the screen with my finger, wanting to hear what effect that will have on the[...] Read more

Visions of sound Micheline Roi Issue 110

Bug Incision: Calgary’s Cross-Pollination Buzz The world of free improvisation is like a parallel universe, a global underground community of nonidiomatic soundmakers, recording with each other in every imaginable permutation, connected via a proliferation of text- and link-heavy Web 1.0 sites, DIY venues, and CD-R labels, with a[...] Read more

Sound Bite Daniel Glassman Issue 131

All-Set! Editions: Essentially Not Jazz Dapper Toronto imprint All-Set! Editions may be a newcomer to the subterranean ecosystem of experimental music distribution, but it already has a clearer sense of self than other more established labels. It’s spearheaded by a trio of composer-players, multi-instrumentalist Mike Smith,[...] Read more

Sound Notes Nick Storring Issue 127