Monthly Archives: June 2009

Unfamiliar Records

Two-man show

By Leanna Orr

For an independent label that is basically a two-man show, Unfamiliar Records has been soaking up a lot of attention lately. With Pitchfork’s recent “Best New Music” tagging of the Japandroids’ album, Post-Nothing, the label has become, well, less unfamiliar to the musical masses. Run by general manager and A&R rep [ed. artists and repertoire representatives are essentially talent scouts] Edo Van Breemen in Vancouver and owner/manager Greg Ipp in Toronto, Unfamiliar boasts a solid roster to back up the buzz generated by the Japandroids. Vancouver bands the Clips, Brasstronaut, and No Gold call Unfamiliar home, as well as the Paper Cranes, the Two Koreas, Snailhouse, Stop Die Resuscitate and Toronto/London’s Flowers of Hell. “The bands are diverse,” said Van Breemen, “we’re not after a certain sound, just something that’s special.” Read More »

Life After Radio

An Interview with Sarah Buchanan

By Robert Fougere

The following is an interview with Sarah Buchanan, host and inventor of the internet podcast Life After Radio and former host of Tiny Machines, a live broadcast radio show aired on CFUV 101.9 Victoria. Sarah’s radio experience has also included a stint at CBC Radio 3, where she was trained as a producer. Buchanan’s current project, Life After Radio, is a monthly podcast focusing on the most interesting and lesser-known aspects of life in and around Vancouver. It is available for free download from www.lifeafterradio.ca. Read More »

The Green Mountain Music Festival

The Little Festival with the Great Big Heart

By Dan Fumano

In 2007, James Wood, the front man for local rock group the Hotel Lobbyists, put together a little summer music festival in his hometown of Nanaimo. He secured a location on his sister Tara’s farm on the outskirts of town, and recruited some of his friends from the Vancouver music community to bring their bands along and play.

Just through word of mouth, they managed to bring out about 250 people to the inaugural Green Mountain Music Festival, all to raise money for a cause very close to Wood’s heart: cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease affecting multiple organs, primarily the lungs and the digestive system. CF is the most common fatal disease affecting young Canadians, including James’ girlfriend at the time, Kim Black. Read More »

Safe Amplification Site Society

We’re in the business of selling alcohol. We’re not a fucking daycare.

By Jordie Yow

Though the seven-year-old Sam may be a bit younger than the average youth trying to see some live music in Vancouver, Rose brings up a good point. Venues in town that are bars may have their own set of problems, but running an all-ages venue in this town is a whole lot tougher—they can’t sell liquor to minors and that cuts a big source of revenue that helps most venues in town pay rent. Read More »

Venews

Discorder and Pro Fun City take city council for a ride

By Jordie Yow

On a sunny evening in June, city councillor Heather Deal from Vision Vancouver, myself and Kalin Harvey from Pro Fun City went on a bike ride. On our ride we stopped by a number of venues that seem to keep coming up in the pages of this paper for the trouble they’ve been having with Vancouver. We met with those who run Little Mountain Studios, the Cobalt, the Peanut Gallery (now defunct) and some of the directors of the Safe Amplification Site Society [ed. We don’t get into the discussion with SASS much here, but check out the profile on them on page ten]. We also met with one other venue that preferred to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisal. For the purpose of this article we will refer to their venue as Location X and the owners as Jack and Jill. These various groups spoke with Deal about the problems they’d faced and what could be done to make it easier to run a venue in Vancouver. Deal put forward some big ideas for change that could help venues run in the city. Read More »

Film Stripped

Ponytail: A movie that is really, truly strange.

By Sarah Buchanan

“I think the term ‘Lynchian’ is lazy,” claimed Barry Doupe, a Vancouver artist whose first feature-length computer-animated film Ponytail has elicited many a comparison to the work of David Lynch. “There’s a lot of work out there that’s creepy and weird and interesting, but there’s an authenticity about some weirdness. There’s something truly strange. Like, you start to think that a person couldn’t have made that, there had to be some kind of macrobiotic fungus that formed it.” Read More »

Textually Active

The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century By Alex Ross

by Andy Hudson

I listened to Alex Ross’ popular history of avant-garde music while driving a rented Dodge Caravan for 11 straight hours, up from our nation’s capital to the mosquito-rich hitch-hiker’s hell of Wawa, Ontario.

The idea, I guess, was to subvert the wilds of northern Ontario. Thundering past a mess of porcupines, “Jesus Saves” billboards and a container truck painted with the American flag-raising at Iwo Jima, we heard Ross explain how, in the cafés and concert halls of 19th century Europe, composers like Strauss, Stravinsky and Bartok opened the door to the kind of obscure, atonal music that sent box-seat sophisticates into fist-fights. Read More »

Jens Lekman

June 7 @ Richard's on Richards

Review By Saelan Twerdy and Curtis Collier

This being Jens Lekman’s first visit to Vancouver (as far as I know, anyway), it was bound to feel like a major event. The Swedish songwriter has built up a devoted fanbase over the last few years, no doubt thanks to his highly boyfriendable personality. Let’s face it: Jens is a heartthrob. He’s handsome in a soft, harmless way. He’s charmingly self-deprecating, and his quirky, intimate songs are loaded with highly personal anecdotes. If you’re a fan, you probably feel like Jens is already your friend. Judging by his performance at Richard’s, he feels the same way, and he’s eager to cultivate the sentiment. Read More »

Chain & the Gang

with The Hive Dwellers & Rose Melberg, May 30 @ Little Mountain Studios

Review By Duncan McHugh and Saelan Twerdy

This was the show that nearly didn’t happen. It had been scheduled for the Sweatshop (shut down), the Peanut Gallery (shut down) and a community center (presumably still open), before ending up at Little Mountain. But then, a few weeks before the show, Little Mountain had their own noise complaint woes and it looked like the show might not happen there, either. The show did go on, but the raucous Chain & the Gang were moved to the middle of the bill, putting the mostly acoustic Hive Dwellers on last. Read More »

Punk Heart

Jesse Taylor on himself, Vancouver, and Twin Crystals

By Quinn Omori

When I met up with Jesse Taylor of Twin Crystals, it was in the building that the band shares with a few other Vancouver bands and artists—fittingly named, the Secret Space. The artists’ enclave exists in one of the few areas of Vancouver that hasn’t yet been touched by the forces of gentrification, just a few doors down the alley from the sadly, now defunct Emergency Room, the former home base of the musical scene that Twin Crystals are at the forefront of. Read More »

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