New Chance - A Rock Unsteady
The sonic, lyrical, and formal congruence of A Rock Unsteady make it an unique listen for those who are invested in high art concept and sound design experimentation.
Eric’s Trip - Live in Halifax & Live at Pop Montreal
Their songs hit me differently than before. They weren’t just good songs from a good band. They were complicated and emotional, real and raw. Eric’s Trip were artful and tuneful. Every song they wrote mattered, from the very beginning. It’s all wheat and no chaff.
Epic & Deadly Stare - A library called Calder
Epic isn’t an outsider artist. Neither is Deadly Stare. They are insider artists. Hip-Hop historians. Rap superfans. A library called Calder is a love letter to hip-hop, a love letter to Canada, and a great example of artists creating art based on their love of art.
Bells Larsen - Blurring Time
Back in May 2024, I had the pleasure to attend the Land of Talk tour show at The Aviary, where I happened to stumble into Bells Larsen as an accompanying tour act. Soft spoken and with candid demeanour, Bells took the stage with what I’ve come to know now as some of the tracks featuring in his latest album Blurring Time.
Steven Lambke and Jimmie Kilpatrick - Friendship Traces
This album feels human and vulnerable. It is bleepy and bloopy. It sounds like a record made by two people who really like each other. Two people who are setting the other up for success.
Quinton Barnes - Black Noise
Now we are given a bit of a different take on Quinton Barnes’ creativity with the release of Black Noise only a few months after CODE NOIR was released. Both conceptually and in execution, this new album is a thoughtful interrogation into noise, improv, and experimental sound composition which started out of a casual 2022 tweet that he tossed into the aether: “‘I want to work with noise/improv musicians in some capacity … not sure how yet but the idea is there’.”