Tanya Tagaq Grabs The World By The Throat Watching Tanya Tagaq perform is more than just an auditory and visual experience: it’s physical. As the Nunavut-born, Manitoba-based throat singer moves around a stage, she unleashes something fierce and powerful that comes from deep within her body, yet seems positively unearthly. She[...] Read more

Featured Article Mary Dickie Issue 118

Cerro Bellavista Rooftop, Valparaíso When rain falls, it falls into the open-air stairwell unopposed, rattling metal banisters and pattering on tile. Human sounds congeal below you like wet papier-mâché: gentle voices ricocheting around the stucco walls; kids’ laughter bubbling out of an open window; loose[...] Read more

Sonic Geography Rick Maddocks

Ohama’s Alternative Dimensions Tona Walt Ohama has lived many lives. Born on a potato farm in Southern Alberta, he has spent the past forty years making passionate, deeply personal music while forging friendly connections with anyone who enters his orbit. Since his debut album, the 1982 cassette release Midnite News,[...] Read more

Profile Jesse Locke Issue 143

Charlemagne Palestine Pulls Out the Stops Interpretation takes the sensory experience of the work of art for granted, and proceeds from there. What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more. —Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation”  [...] Read more

Featured Article Julian Cowley Issue 117

Arkora’s Cloud Chamber Arkora, a Toronto-based electric, vocal, chamber consort, includes an eight-voice choir and an accompanying ensemble, with irresistible composer bait—the Lumiphone. A giant, three-octave, thirty-one-tone, equal-tempered (31-TET) glass marimba, the Lumiphone was designed and constructed[...] Read more

Visions of sound Tova Kardonne Issue 137

Divorce Records “It depends on what you call the beginning, I guess,” says Darcy Spidle when probed about the origins of his experimental music label, Divorce Records. “The first thing I did with the label— about fifteen years ago—was to make big posters that said ‘Music[...] Read more

Sound Notes Andrew Patterson Issue 120

Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective: in memoriam . . . Project THE EIGHTH PROJECT initiated by the Edmonton-based Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective, in memoriam . . . , was nominally about a performance, but soon morphed into a unique achievement of seemingly infinite layers. Its complex genesis, motivations, resonances, and residual impact[...] Read more

Featured Article Ian Crutchley Issue 132

Senyawa plays the music of the universe On a chilly, rainy Thursday May night, a crowd of sixty or so people, spread unevenly around the pews of Halifax’s Fort Massey United Church, is waiting. OBEY Convention creative director Andrew Patterson has just introduced Indonesian “doom folk” duo Senyawa, but after the[...] Read more

Sound Bite Daniel Glassman Issue 128

Fresh Moves in Music Therapy One hundred and twenty kids, seated on benches and gym mats, are beaming as they beat out a pulsating rhythm on small percussion instruments. Their ecstatic expressions match that of drummer and occupational therapist Leaf Miller [ABOVE PHOTO, LEFT, working with student at Abilities First[...] Read more

Featured Article Lawrence Joseph Issue 123