ON THE COVER
QUINTON BARNES
Compulsively creative, fiercely political, and boldly queer, Montreal emcee and electronic producer Quinton Barnes is making music that meets the moment. Following the release of several self-produced solo albums—including Code Noir, which made the 2025 Polaris Music Prize Long List—Barnes enlisted a seven-member improvisational orchestra to conjure the fever dream of free jazz, drone, and experimental R&B that is Black Noise. In Montreal’s Mile X neighbourhood, Barnes talks to writer Graham Latham about the production of the album and the ideas behind it, the tensions between individual expression and collective labour, and the political economy of art-making in dark times. Cover photo by Stacy Lee.
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CORIE ROSE SOUMAH
Experimental composer Corie Rose Soumah likes to imagine how a creative process can become complete. She obsesses over the concept of the perfect ending, although she knows no such thing is possible. Soumah is completing the final project of her PhD in composition at Columbia University in New York, where she has built an extensive body of work, including pieces for the International Contemporary Ensemble, Bozzini Quartet, Ensemble Itinéraire, and many others. A pianist by training, Soumah blends electronics with acoustic instruments in works that explore ecology, race, and philosophy. She talks to Montreal writer Rosie Long Decter about the apocalyptic fears and small wonders that inform her singular music.Homepage slideshow photo of Corie Rose Soumah in thePrentis Computer Music Center in Manhattan in December 2025 taken by Edward B. Gaona-Lopata.
DEFORREST BROWN, JR.
Techno is more than club music. In his book Assembling a Black Counter Culture (2022), DeForrest Brown, Jr. offers a meticulous account of the genre. Unpacking its genesis in post-industrial Detroit, Brown delves into the material conditions that produced techno, tracing how the Great Migration saw Black people escape racism and oppression in the American South, then later encounter alienation caused by deindustrialization and financial collapse in northern states. Detroit artists aligned their sounds with Black music traditions and created mythologies that countered the realities of extraction and misattribution. Now an "ex-American" living in Vancouver, Brown tells writer Tom Beedham about his book's metanarrative, his experiences with techno, and his personal history with migration, and how they inform the experimental sounds he makes as Speaker Music.
ALSO INSIDE
Tempête Solaire makes post-punk, free jazz-inflected instrumental trio music for interstellar rocking out.
Tara Kannangara heats up a fresh batch of words and worldly vibes on her own timeline.
Gong Gong Gong bassist Joshua Frank builds a low-end laboratory for solo tinkering.
Michael Scott Dawson is a multi-instrumentalist who is outstanding in his field recordings.
PLUS
We review new music from:Bellbird, Cris Derksen, Robert Humber, Alice Ping Yee Ho, Jason Noble and Steve Cowan, Anna Pidgorna, Tristan Perich and James McVinnie, Praed Orchestra!, Aretha Tillotson, Don Scott and Jean Martin.
We review X Avant XX: Precious at the Music Gallery (Toronto); Send + Receive: A Festival of Sound, 27th edition (Winnipeg); and the documentaryI Am the Art: Nobuo Kubotaby Annette Mangaard.
Winter 2025 / Spring 2026
Musicworks #153 CD
Corie Rose Soumah
1> States of Intermeshing: smoke 8:01
Tempête Solaire
2> HD 240430 3:12
3> Kronos 6:02
4> Rock Dove Manoeuvre 4:35
Tara Kannangara
5> Apex 3:27
Michael Scott Dawson
6> Summerette 6:12
7> Two Solitudes 3:22
Joshua Frank
8> Barong (solo) 6:49
9> Ride Your Horse 騎你的馬 3:41
(Gong Gong Gong)
Quinton Barnes
10> (Get Up On That) Damn Floor 4:42
11> Art of Survival 2:57
DeForrest Brown, Jr.
12> Sense-Datum Volumetrics 6:06
LABEL PHOTO BY SY CRAVEN
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