Misc. Music Writing
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Jerusalem in my Heart
Article originally published May 15, 2014 at Cult MTL For their 30th edition, the organizers of the FIMAV festival in Victoriaville reached back throughout their archives to assemble an all-star program, but rather than just bring in big name performers who have been on the world stage since the ’60s, they made sure to balance the…
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This is still our punk rock, thee fritzy drum machines
Montreal’s most dedicated protest rock group Thee Silver Mt Zion Memorial Orchestra will be playing a very special record release show at the Rialto on [Thursday Feb 6th]. They’ll be hitting the road hard in the next few months all over Europe and the States to celebrate their latest record, Fuck Off Get Free…
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John Butcher keeps jazz dangerous
John Butcher The last several years have seen a renewed interest in the saxophone, with a resurgence of sax ensembles, a reissue of Dickie Landry’s excellent 1977 LP Fifteen Saxophones and the great success of Montreal’s Colin Stetson. The popularity of Stetson’s approach to solo performance and composition has shone some much deserved light…
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Nicola Ratti ~ Ossario (Volumes I and II)
The way I work lately is focused on a live improvisation approach. Streengs is my first solo work where I practiced that way of playing. It is a work made by a single concept and the same set of instruments done in the same period. This is very important to me. It’s like keeping focused…
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Meet the lo-fi, high-end sounds of Africa
A shorter version of this interview was originally published by Cult MTL on Jun 7, 2013 in Nightlife | Cassette tapes may be disdained by many for their low fidelity and inability to shuffle, but a new generation of tape lovers has embraced the medium for those very reasons. Brian Shimkovitz isn’t one of…
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noWHere: Manifesto for Sound Artists
In December of 2012, the Italian sound artist Enrico Coniglio published noWHere – ideale manifesto per sound artists, an old-fashioned manifesto articulating a set of core values about how we as artists should approach “live electronics.” Below you’ll find my translation of this manifesto into English. The Manifesto will be presented at this page free…
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UN PAESE VUOL DIRE Mix by (Gianmarco del Re)
Originally posted at A CLOSER LISTEN Un Paese Vuol Dire Mix by Lostchildrennetlabel on Mixcloud I’ve been really pleased with the mixes that have been produced for this series, as they often break the mold by doing something more creative than just throwing together a bunch of tracks. “Un Paese Vuol Dire…” is this special…
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On the Return of Godspeed You! Black Emperor
A short piece I wrote regarding the return of Godspeed, originally published by SSG Music in February of 2011. The Events of the Student Strike, and the sudden release of a new LP by the group in the fall of last year make this interesting for me to look at again, in retrospect. Godspeed You!…
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Cult Mtl
Over the last few months I’ve published a number of pieces for Cult Mtl, a website and print paper that replace Montreal’s beloved free alt weekly the Mirror after it was rather unceremoniously shut down by parent company Quebecor (Quebec’s very own disgusting media giant). You can read Quebec’s Other Other Monumental Music Fest and…
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eContact! 14.3 — Turntablism
The Canadian Electroacoustic Community’s journal eContact! published my review of Martin Tétreault’s Turntable Quartet performance at Akousma 9 last fall. It’s a reworked and much improved section of my AKOUSMA review that ran at ACL, but this one was peer-reviewed and edited after I reworked it. Read it here, and check out the entire issue as…
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Quebec’s Other Other Monumental Music Fest
Thurston Moore and his new band, Chelsea Light Moving. Photo by Carlos van Hijfte Founded in 1983, the Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville (or “Victo” to those in the know) has long been regarded as one of the greatest experimental music festivals in the world. Eclectic programming has always been one of its…
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con fuoco d’occhi un nostalgico lupo
The following essay accompanies a 2-volume compilation of experimental Italian music I curated for The Silent Ballet, a webzine I co-founded in 2006, and Lost Children, a net-label I’ve been co-running since 2010. A link to a free download is included below. The compilation was release one year ago, and received some very nice press.…
Sound Propositions 