Hard Rubber Orchestra. Crush. Like bears awakening refreshed after an extended hibernation, the members of Vancouver trumpeter John Korsrud’s Hard Rubber Orchestra (HRO) have come forth with a rousing CD after a dozen years of silence. Although mostly devoted to Korsrud’s jazz-influenced compositions for the[...] Read more

Recordings Ken Waxman Issue 123

Allison Cameron and Contact. A Gossamer Bit. On my first few listens to the four pieces included on Allison Cameron and Contact’s A Gossamer Bit, I felt that two of the compositions were quite good—so good, in fact, that I decided a fifty percent average wasn’t at all bad and started questioning how good[...] Read more

Recordings Kurt Gottschalk Issue 123

Alexander MacSween. The Squiggle Game. The Squiggle Game is that rarest of beasts, the free-improv disc you can air-drum along to. Its absorbing rhythmic heft, especially on tracks like the lead-off “That Gum You Like,” is unsurprising when you realize that it’s the brainchild of a drummer. Alexander MacSween[...] Read more

Recordings Jonathan Bunce

Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld. Never Were the Way She Was. Never Were the Way She Was is as robust as you would expect from a collaboration between Colin Stetson and Sarah Neufeld, two members of the ever-fertile Montreal music community whose instrumental prowess seems as much a product of virtuosity as extreme physical endurance. Their solo work[...] Read more

Recordings Jonathan Bunce Issue 122

Anne-F Jacques. Sable ou Sel. Anne-F Jacques is a Montreal sound artist who plays acoustic noise-music on invented instruments. Mechanical loops are created when various objects are attached to spinning motors amplified by contact mikes, assemblies that Jacques categorizes as her “rotating devices.” Unlike[...] Read more

Recordings Lawrence Joseph Issue 122

Kris Davis. Save Your Breath. Consolidating her considerable musical gifts, Canadian-born, New York-based Kris Davis organized a uniquely constituted octet here to premiere or propogate her compositions. Confirming her range, the eight tunes are breezy and animated in spots, while looped around a dense, metal-like core.[...] Read more

Recordings Ken Waxman Issue 122

Susan Alcorn. Soledad. Astor Piazzolla’s eccentricity as a composer is overshadowed by his reputation as one of the foremost exponents of tango music. The ostensible genre designation tends to mask his poignant and peculiar mixture of forlorn sentimentalism, tense dissonances, and covert use of noise. Susan[...] Read more

Recordings Nick Storring Issue 122

Mocky. Key Change. Dominic Salole, better known as Mocky, is a producer and multi-instrumentalist who grew up in Saskatchewan and moved to Toronto, then Amsterdam, and finally Berlin, where he became part of a hypercreative Canadian expat scene that included Peaches, Chilly Gonzales, and Feist (although she[...] Read more

Recordings Mary Dickie

c_RL. Friends. Temporarily putting aside her notated work, multi-instrumentalist Allison Cameron teams up with fellow improvisers trumpeter Nicole Rampersaud and percussionist Germaine Liu for a program of eleven instant compositions that play to each trio member’s strengths, cementing a group[...] Read more

Recordings Ken Waxman

Chenoa Anderson. Krishna’s Flute. Chenoa Anderson's second collection of new Canadian music for solo flute is a fantastic—and often quite fantastical—survey of what's going on, coast to coast, in this admittedly specialized field. Focusing on works that incorporate an electronic element, either through[...] Read more

Recordings Alexander Varty

John Kameel Farah. Between Carthage and Rome. John Kameel Farah’s Between Carthage and Rome is a well-considered pairing of piano and electronics (both at Farah’s hand) that works best if you don’t think too much about it.   Toronto native Farah is a strong pianist and a good conceptualist. He studied[...] Read more

Recordings Kurt Gottschalk