Slow Spirit/The Dirty Sample/Cartoon Lizard
Slow Spirit
Nowhere No One Knows Where to Find You // Independent
Fluid, cool, dynamic, beautiful, purpose-driven and self assured. This is music that makes you want to spin around in a field with your arms out, head cocked to one side, the aerial shot slowly rising. This is flowing but not vampy music with heavy duty arrangement, orchestration, and calculated attention to tonal detail. We got the perfect folk festival happy hippy vibes going on here people, and it is by design.
Very few bands or albums can straddle the bridge of mathy technicality vs natural delivery this successfully. Immediately you can tell these are serious musicians. They can play you under the table for sure. But you can also hear that they can feel the music inside, and are present in the moment, willing to open themselves up to receive and channel the music from its rawest essence into captured magic. Usually you get a lean one way or the other, either they feel it or they shred it. Slow Spirit does both equally well.
But are they wizards or workaholics? Is there a difference? Music and art is clearly what Slow Spirit is all about. The focus toward achieving the finest quality of every facet of the product is so pure in intention it is clear that Natalie Bohrn and Eric Roberts philosophize a lot about the very nature of music and art and, realizing its importance in the world, have dedicated their lives to it like monks.
The songwriting is unguarded and the vocals are a clean power. As the melodies circle around your head, you feel the warmth in the music, like sunshine on your face. What is that one exact right word for the feeling in this music? What is it? It’s a heart expanding feeling. It sounds like healing. It sounds like glittering magic potions and deep breaths and real joy.
Congratulations are in order here, Natalie and Eric. This is a veritable masterpiece.
- Joel Klaverkamp
The Dirty Sample
No! // Hand’Solo Records
It’s a turbulent time with the spotlight focused directly on race and equality. The power that’s coming out of the protests, the voices that are being heard...it’s a revolution that IS being televised. The increase in awareness of Black history is showcasing the incredible influence Black culture has had on art and music. Thanks to DJ Kool Herc & Cindy Campbell, Grandmaster Flash, Kurtis Blow, Afrika Baambaataa and countless hip-hop, rap, breakbeat and scratch artists; we have deep thumping beats that our bodies naturally move and groove to. The Dirty Sample (aka Apeface) brings his own sampling magic to hip-hop with his new album No!, released with Hand’Solo Records on May 8, 2020.
The Dirty Sample’s first beat tape since 2016’s Pay Up, he calls No! - “fresh instrumentals for rap heads,” and I’m digging it. The Calgary artist is a mystery as I can’t figure out who he is. His Facebook page indicates his rap game is Hank Chinaski, who just so happens to also be the literary alter ego of Charles Bukowski. He also references his rap game as Paul Bellini on his Instagram page @thedirtysample. I gently smiled and nodded my head on the 2s and 4s, in equal parts to his sense of humour as to his drumbeats and loops. Whatever this guys game is, he knows what he’s doing. His beats are f.u.n.k.y. If you’re a fan of the Ninja Tune sound, Amon Tobin, Cut Chemist or Handsome Boy Modeling School, the Dirty Sample has the beats for your meats. Quick 1 to 2 min soulful samples on sexy lo-fi drum thumps gives us 30 mins of head bobbing with some gritty, vintage sample sounds. Paul Bellini/Hank Chinaski/The Dirty Sample/Apeface, I’d enter a contest to poke any one of you with a stick.
- Mo Lawrance
Cartoon Lizard
Bless You, Thank You // Independent
This is and was a trip. For me, Cartoon Lizard's Bless You, Thank You is a homecoming of sorts. It is a reminder of places and friendships, heartache and beauty.
It was the spring of 2008, life threw a few curveballs at me. And, as it often did in my younger days, I seemingly launched myself on a brand new adventure. This time, it took the form of a work sabbatical. And without a way to provide for my young family, I found a way to work away from work. I had the opportunity to fish commercially with some relatives on the Stikine River in northwest B.C., just inland from the Alaskan panhandle.
If you ever had an inkling to experience true wilderness, do it there. It is simply unadulterated beautiful raw unforgiving wilderness.
Back to the review. It was there that I met a wild-eyed, kind, enthusiastic deckhand by the name of Shilo Preshyon. We worked side by side, often for hours on end, through the fat part of the salmon run. In those situations of long hours exacerbated by strenuous and tedious work, where concentration and reaction time keeps everyone safe, you really get to know a person. And that person Shilo is my friend. We've kept in touch over the years. And, full disclosure, Shilo plays bass in Cartoon Lizard. Fast forward to today.
Bless You, Thank You is a record inspired by intervention from wildlife, weather patterns, and the various regions along the Pacific coastline. Samples are both placed directly and by chance on many of the recordings. Timewise, the recordings on Bless You, Thank You span from 2014, (prior to Cartoon Lizard’s formation) to a week before the records completion. Modern mobile recording facilitated recordings in Victoria, Cedar, and Port Hardy, BC.
“Bimmers and Tibbs” is one of the oldest recordings, predating the band. Cartoon Lizard placed it at the end of the record as a credits roll and for it’s natural intervention, the thunder that is embedded on the track.
It was named “Bimmers and Tibbs” portraying the two characters of the guitars played by Ritchie and Trevor.
“The Owl” was recorded in one night after coming across an owl in the woods who watched Trevor and Alex for almost an hour.
Shilo was kind enough to include a subject matter map of Bless You, Thank You:
Breakwater - James Bay/Wycleese Lagoon
cntrl - Mount Doug, Victoria
Joni - Tsulquate Reserve, Port Hardy
Bus Stop World - North Vancouver
I Tell Myself - North Vancouver
Love You Like A Lot - Dallas Road, Victoria
Scott Free - Kitsalano, Vancouver
The Owl - Cedar, BC
Stikine River- Stikine River/Campbell River
Bimm Tibb - Tsulquate Reserve, Port Hardy
What I truely appreciate from this package of art is the way in which Cartoon Lizard refuse to separate the sounds from the environment. They celebrate the way the music is inspired by place. They defend the notion that geography informs emotion. They got it right. It is a remarkable collection of place and emotion. They execute each track with delicious intent.
The second to last track, Stikine River, is my favorite. For some obvious personal reasons and some not, it really resonated. It is a beautifully arranged tribute track to place, longing, and questioning where home is. For me, it feels like being on the Stikine River, smiling with my favorite deckhand Shilo, racing back to the top of the set, trying to harvest a full net of silver bullets.
- Drew Cox
