Three Literary Field Recordings I.     White Fang, Chapter I[1] A vast silence reigned over the land on every side was the silence, pressing upon them with a tangible presence a faint far cry arose on the still air. It soared upward with a swift rush, till it reached its topmost[...] Read more

Sound Notes Luke Nickel

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

Jocelyn Morlock FULL-TEXT AVAILABLE IN PRINT EDITION ONLY   Jocelyn Morlock had purple hair for years. “It was indigo, in fact.” She narrows it down further: “Like an eggplant.” Specificity of colour matters to Morlock, not the least in music. “Colour: That’s[...] Read more

Profile Elissa Poole Issue 112

Vicky Chow Is Just Warming Up Against a deep blue, backlit stage, Vicky Chow sat at the baby grand in the Scheuer Auditorium at the Jewish Museum on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in April 2017, flanked by forty speakers hanging from stands. For an uninterrupted hour, she played dizzying sequences of interlocking[...] Read more

Profile Kurt Gottschalk Issue 128

Markus Floats' Motion Emotion How do you think and write about sound outside of metaphor? Is music necessarily tethered to other aspects of our sensuous and interior lives? Or can we appreciate its meaning more essentially—as energy and dynamics, waves and reverberation? These questions come up around the work of[...] Read more

Featured Article Brennan McCracken Issue 137

The Material Soundscapes of Roarke Menzies On a Sunday afternoon this past June I visited Outlet Fine Art, one of many independent galleries and performance spaces that have popped up in and around the Brooklyn neighbourhood of Bushwick in recent years. I was there to attend a performance by sound artist Roarke Menzies, the second in[...] Read more

Sound Notes Dan Joseph Issue 126

Myriam Bleau spins Soft Revolvers In a darkened room, an artist is manipulating four translucent circular objects on a tabletop, moving from one to another. Audience members gather around. The objects emit light. Their spinning motion activates deep tones and beats that crackle and whir, and snippets of voice that drop in[...] Read more

Visions of sound Deanna Radford Issue 120

Scott Thomson Among bike bells, olives, and music maps, Scott Thomson lounges in his Montreal apartment, seeming to enjoy a relaxed summer evening. Later, the sight of his trombone—on a stand nearby—will remind him he has a lot of work to do.   Scott is working on new piece to[...] Read more

In the Works Gloria Lipski Issue 111

Sarah Hennies, Linguist in the Land of Noises Identity is a deeply personal, elusive, and complex thing, and thus, a common source of creative fuel. Yet for the endless variety of discrete identities and individual perspectives on the topic, there is a dominant set of tropes around the way that identity is addressed artistically. The[...] Read more

Featured Article Nick Storring Issue 130

Jessica McMann Brings the Music Home While some creative people have been struggling to fill their time over the course of the pandemic, Cree dancer and musician Jessica McMann, who is a member of Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan—has been busy. But with powwows and in-person contemporary dance performances on pause[...] Read more

Sound Bite Elizabeth Chorney-Booth Issue 141

C. Diab’s Cascadian Guitar Music Vancouver-based bowed guitarist Caton Diab (who composes as C. Diab) makes sonorous music that you feel deeply. Primarily crafted on an acoustic guitar with a pickup, effects pedals, a loop station, and bow, Diab’s textured and mournful tones rattle your bones and settle into your heart,[...] Read more

Sound Bite Laura Stanley Issue 137