Susan Alcorn, José Lencastre, Hernâni Faustino. Manifesto One of the joys of improvised music is its openness to unusual instruments and novel sounds. The pedal steel guitar, largely restricted to country music, has found new life in the creative vision of Susan Alcorn, whose practice extends to the works of Olivier Messiaen and Astor Piazzolla as[...] Read more

Recordings Stuart Broomer Issue 146

Experimental Music Unit. Land Sea Sky Land Sea Sky is certainly not rock music, but it’s elemental like a weathered stone, and similarly resists any kind of interrogation. This is music as stripped down to its fundamental components as possible. It just simply is. Yet, like a rock, for those who speak the language of[...] Read more

Recordings Jonathan Bunce Issue 147

New Age Doom. There Is No End On the 2021 album Lee “Scratch” Perry’s Guide to the Universe, furious Vancouver avant-metal duo New Age Doom collaborated with the late dub legend, powerhouse jazz players, and members of Canadian indie-rock bands. On There Is No End they continue this approach, welcoming[...] Read more

Recordings Jesse Locke Issue 147

Thin Edge New Music Collective and Linda Catlin Smith. Dark Flower. “The question is not what you look at,” wrote Henry David Thoreau in his journal, “but how you look and whether you see.” That insight might easily be adapted to fit the music of Linda Catlin Smith. Although written over a span of more than twenty years, these six[...] Read more

Recordings Julian Cowley Issue 147

Jeremy Dutcher. Motewolonuwok. On his breathtaking 2018 debut album, Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa, Jeremy Dutcher, an operatic tenor, composer, musicologist, and two-spirit member of the Tobique (Neqotkuk) First Nation in New Brunswick, transcribed century-old wax cylinder recordings of songs in the endangered Wolastoqey[...] Read more

Recordings Mary Dickie Issue 147

Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra. Voices—A Musical Heritage. Assembling twenty-six of the city’s finest jazz-oriented improvisers and composers in various formations, the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra’s twenty-fifth anniversary session collates ten arrangements which reflect the varied heritage of the Prairie city and beyond. The tunes range[...] Read more

Recordings Ken Waxman Issue 145

Christopher Butterfield. Souvenir. “Memory is not an instrument for exploring the past, but its theatre,” suggested Walter Benjamin, recalling his childhood in Berlin. The music of Christopher Butterfield has, in that sense, a theatrical dimension: It enacts perspectives on the past, placing them in dynamic[...] Read more

Recordings Julian Cowley Issue 145

All Hands Make Light. Darling the Dawn. All Hands Make Light, a collaboration between Montreal mainstays Ariel Engle (Broken Social Scene, La Force) and Efrim Menuck (Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Thee Silver Mt. Zion), follow up their self-titled cassette release of 2021 with a cosmic debut LP for Constellation Records. Like their[...] Read more

Recordings Brennan McCracken Issue 145

Carmen Jaci. Happy Child. Netherlands-based French-Canadian Carmen Jaci crafts maximalist collages out of electric shards. Classical symphonies crash into dance beats and video game music-like bleeps, all coloured in neon. Happy Child codifies her style in seven pieces, each capturing a lightheartedness—and[...] Read more

Recordings Vanessa Ague Issue 145

TAK Ensemble. Love, Crystal and Stone The terms vanity label or vanity press can carry a connotation of indulgence, even aggrandizement. Were all indulgences as grand as TAK Ensemble’s packaging of Ashkan Behzadi’s music, Mehrdad Jafari’s paintings, and the poetry of Federico García Lorca, however, we[...] Read more

Recordings Kurt Gottschalk Issue 144

Monica Pearce. Textile Fantasies Fabrics and music have an obviously sensuous connection: Think of weaving, texture, soft and strong qualities. Prince Edward Island-raised composer Monica Pearce, who is now based in the U.S., explores these links in her excellent debut album, Textile Fantasies, which features a cycle of[...] Read more

Recordings Helen Pridmore Issue 144