code pie & people for audio

well, i guess there is really no end to the good music coming out of canada! no sooner had i posted my last post than i bump into a couple of more bands that sound great ... and happen to be from montreal. code pie falls somewhere in between do say make think (or is it do make say think... i can never remember) and the arcade fire without sounding too much like either. and i'm not sure that these comparisons are all that appropriate. but if you like either of those bands chances are you will like this. this habit is, well, a very elegant album. there is something very classic about it - the songs remind me of some british indie band from the late eighties (whose name i can't remember) - sort of timeless in that way. definately worth our attention. more songs here.

people for audio, on the other hand, have little to do with pop. again, another montreal band, godspeed...., is the easiest point of reference. but whereas godspeed sort of like their instruments to melt together, people for audio like you to be able to tell the instruments apart although i suspect they want their music to have a similar effect. this is a risky strategy because it is a more 'traditional' approach but most of the time they pull it of. it is also a little jazzy in places, not dissimilar from karate (who apparently have called it quits). check out the title track from and this will be our homecoming. (15MB)

troubled hubble & the most serene republic & wolf parade

it doesn't seem that long ago that i was making fun of my canadian friends (behind their backs of course) for how bad canadian music was. but now the stream of fresh new bands from canada just doesn't seem to stop. at any rate, my suspicion is that canada always had a bunch of good bands around but that noone was listening. and that is probably true about every other country - i've mentioned norway as another example of this before. but at any rate, i'm ready for the backlash to begin - it can't be a long wait for that to happen. especially since some of the stuff is a little like arcade fire - which is not necessarily a bad thing. the most serene republic might fall into this category. but still damn good if you ask me. try content was always my favorite colour. from their debut underwater photographer. troubled hubble has been around for awhile and making beds in a burning house is their 4th album. it is hard to avoid comparisons with modest mouse - but again not thing to be compared to. the song above, ear nose & throat, also sounds a bit like rem but relax, like rem while they were still worth listening to [correction. troubled hubble is from chicago which is not in canada]. finally, wolf parade is probably the most promising of the bunch. they just released an ep on sub pop. they are perhaps a little bit more difficult to pin down. certain songs lend themselves to obvious comparisons with other bands, including some of the above, but what makes them interesting is that their range seems greater. that, of course, may just mean that we'll have to subtract points for lack of consistency. you are a runner.

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other going ons. caught trs-80 last night. great show. on one level the music is hopelessly geeky but then somehow it works and you can't help groove to it. which i guess makes me a geek. also playing were odiorne, which is jimy chamber's new band. chambers was mercury rev's drummer/sometimes singer(?) - on what probably were the best mercury rev albums. sadly, live they were a disaster - partly thanks to a busted speaker which made the vocals sound like slipknot (or how i imagine they sound) and i guess the bassist and keyboardist must suffer from a minority complex because i could hear them all too well - at the cost of only hearing the guitar when i was in the bathroom. odiorne's heavy wish.

other stuff on the stereo. julien neto - pretty, quiet, pretty. pelican - loud, pretty, loud. swervedriver - good, better, best. oxes (new ep) - loud, fast, dangerous. buck 65 - twang, beats,........

abstrakt keal agram

abstrakt keal agram share a label with m83 and you may have heard their remix on one m83's releases. i started out thinking that abstrakt keal agram was sort of an ambient hip hop after listening to clusterville, which was the second album. their last album, bad thriller, released last year makes things more difficult and now i just can't figure out where to file abstrakt keal agram. m83 might be one reference point but you could also imagine these guys enjoying themselves, the postal service and blonde redhead. bad thriller lacks the menacing tone of clusterville but it makes up for it in terms of diversity. never anything less than interesting to listen to and i doubt there are any more successful efforts mix seemingly incompatible genres together.

abstrakt keal agram's hell mix can be found here

icelandic music

by request - an old one - some icelandic stuff. some good, some bad.

jan mayen - the new kids on the indie block. old fashioned indie rock a la, maybe, pavement. nothing too original but, god damnit, some hot tunes. shut up shut down.

mugison - everyone's darling these days. really a cuddly bear that everyone from, well, me to my grandma loves and adore. even if they have never heard his music. he is the perfect anti-anti-star. so down to earth, hailing from a remote village, occasionally brings his father on stage that he should never be a star. but it is exactly that which makes him the biggest star. undeniably talented. i would love to hate him but i can't. i want you.

trabant - along with gus gus (which were actually not that horrible a long long time ago) this band represents almost everything that is wrong with iceland. pretentious pretty much sums it up. and pretty horrid songs. although their shows can be mildly entertaining (which can not be said for gus gus - god, i hate them). nasty boy

eberg - noone seems to know eberg. he released a little popgem a year and half ago that went almost completly unnoticed. one can almost forgive having been a member of spoon (uh, the icelandic spoon - not the really good one). he is a little difficult to listen to at first because he sounds like he has inhaled helium but after a couple of listens it becomes clear it is surely the most innovative pop album released by an icelander (with the possible exception of mugison). single drop from sea

the funerals - i resisted the funerals for a long time. can you blame me? an icelandic (alt-)country band? their album lordy is, however, a pleasant surprise being more reminiscent of bonnie prince billy - of course, a comparison that noone can live upto - than say, uh, more countrish country. stockholm city

mínus - i'll have to give mínus a credit for being pretty tight live. but that is all they get from me. terrible singer, unoriginal songs but yet, for some reason, are billed as the saviors of icelandic rock'n'roll. here comes the night

úlpa - i was completly blown away by these guys the first time i saw them play. they reside somewhere in between flaming lips and radiohead but throw a healthy dose of rock in the mix. i have high hopes for these lads. dinzl

slowblow - slowblow are just a nice band. they sound nice and use all sorts of instruments. which i sometimes wished they didn't b/c the songs themselves get a little buried under the instrumentation. at any rate i do have to admit that i liked their older stuff better - it was both more melodic and edgier somewho. i still suspect that those elements are still there i just find them damn hard to find but in the meantime i'm quite content with the saws and the sewing machines. very slow bossanova

ampop - electronic pop influenced by radiohead. quiet and quite nice. their new material relies less on electronics which in some ways is an improvement because they sound less like radiohead but unfortunately that means they sound more like coldplay. but on the whole quite pleasant and to be fair sometimes they are more post-shoegaze pastoral pop than the aforementioned. worth a listen. a fresh one.

hjalmar - there is something fundamentally wrong about an icelandic reagge band. which is why i avoided them for the longest time and was very surprised when i found out i actually like them. now, this may just be that may taste in music is bad i can't tell. it just seems impossible that something this wrong can be this good. here is a live one.

kimono - is the best band in iceland because they know who polvo are. japanese policeman is from their last album which was good but didn't quite capture their live shows.

some others:
tenderfoot - country
graveslime - 362 days until christmas
skakkamanage - flames of fire
skatar - halldor asgrimsson