Bret Parenteau widens the loop When Bret Parenteau’s name is attached to a release or performance, those familiar with his music find themselves wondering what kind of intensity the Winnipeg artist is unleashing this time. His work ranges through harsh noise, urban field recordings, and looping synth sounds, but the[...] Read more

Profile Daniel Emberg Issue 127

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

Tom Zé FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY     The romantic Brazil—the one that ensnares tourists—does not include the Brazilian Northeast. Miles from Rio de Janeiro, this place is worlds removed from the urban sophisticates that dwell in the south.[...] Read more

Featured Article Alex Molotkow Issue 105

Nate Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain Jump into an early version of Nate Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain, and you land in dark and turbulent, almost infernal terrain. Sounds are dense and blur into one another: trumpet amplified to distortion levels; prerecorded tape of unidentifiable noises; dense, rapid drumming of[...] Read more

Featured Article Stuart Broomer Issue 118

Malcolm Cecil and the History of TONTO THE FOLLOWING STORY WAS PUBLISHED AS PART OF THE SUMMER / FALL 2017 FEATURE "INSIDE THE NATIONAL MUSIC CENTRE."  Malcolm Cecil’s interest in electronics began at age nine, when he became the youngest member of a ham radio club in England. His mother was an accomplished[...] Read more

Featured Article Jesse Locke Issue 128

Margaret Noble and Caitlin Smith win top marks in Musicworks' 2013 Electronic Music Composition and "Sonic Geography" Writing contests TORONTO, February 4, 2014   Musicworks is thrilled to announce the winners of its 2013 contests. San Diego interdisciplinary artist Margaret Noble’s Safer Is Better has won first place in Musicworks’ 2013 Electronic Music Composition contest, and[...] Read more

Sound Notes

Samuel Andreyev’s Sonic Organisms There’s a strange duality about the music of Strasbourg-based Canadian composer Samuel Andreyev.             His official bio states that his compositional process is “marked by a rigorous perfectionism,”[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 133

Vancouver's Intercultural Music Scene Intercultural music-making in British Columbia is nothing new. Gold seekers brought the violin to the province’s north in the 1890s, and their jigs and reels were quickly adapted by the region’s Tahltan musicians into a true hybrid form. In the mid-1960s, Vancouver performers[...] Read more

Featured Article Alexander Varty Issue 121

Jeff Morton FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   I imagine that what I hear echoing off the walls of the white-cube gallery is the proceedings of a robot congress, a cacophonous, fevered debate on robot rights—and not a single little robot agrees with any other. I detect[...] Read more

In the Works David McCallum Issue 113

Tosca Terán Has a Brand New Spawn Bag The lobby is cavernous and cool compared to the heat under the blazing mid-afternoon sun outside. It’s mid July, and I’m visiting Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) on a decidedly peculiar mission: to listen to music made by fungus. As part of the seventh edition[...] Read more

Featured Article Greg J. Smith Issue 135

The Apperceptive Musical Adventures of Taylor Brook Canadian composer Taylor Brook—whose music can strike an unusual balance between challenge and charm, sometimes with an astonishing delicacy—had been based since 2011 in New York City, where he was first a doctoral student and then a lecturer at Columbia University, all the while[...] Read more

Profile Kurt Gottschalk Issue 140