This is tense, spooky music with a delightfully playful side. In Saturn Sings, her second album on the Firehouse 12 label, Mary Halvorson adds alto saxophonist Jon Irabagon and trumpeter Jonathan Finlayson to her already formidable trio with drummer Ches Smith and bassist John Hébert. Without Halvorson, that combination[Read More…]
Arts & Entertainment
Keep up to date on local art, new albums, and everything entertainment-related.
Kanye West: My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Before the release of his latest album, few doubted Kanye West’s ability to one-up himself given his talent, money, and endless supply of industry connections. So it should come as no surprise that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy is just as spectacularly excessive as we could have hoped. There[Read More…]
Between a rock and a hard place
digitaltrends.com Two years after the release of director Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire comes 127 Hours, a film based on the terrifying true story of adventure seeker Aron Ralston (James Franco). Ralston inadvertently has his right arm pinned between a boulder and a cavern wall during an afternoon hike in the[Read More…]
Chiddy Bang: The Preview
Chiddy Bang has been on the scene since February 2009, but they didn’t release their first single, “Opposite of Adults”—sampling MGMGMT‘s “Kids”—until a year later. Over that time Chiddy Bang has generated a lot of hype, becoming a widely played university favourite and lauded as everything from “a hipster’s wet[Read More…]
Reviving the undead through song
In this climate of all-things vampire, it is no surprise that Montreal’s Camp Broadway is now performing Dracula: The Musical. Based on Dracula, the Bram Stoker novel, the musical attempts to stay true to the classic Victorian tale—but this time, the story is propelled by dramatic musical numbers. With music[Read More…]
Guns and sorrow
The Hollywood summer marketing machine has shifted its focus from the teenage audience back to an audience that wants quality movies. What a relief; Enter The American. The premise is simple: Jack (George Clooney), a shady veteran spy with a knack for assembling weapons, is asked to build a rifle[Read More…]
Blue deja vu
Business students, put away your books; James Cameron and Fox Studios are about to give you a marketing lesson to remember. Some of you might have had a feeling of déjà vu if you bumped into an Avatar: Soon in Theatres poster. I thought I was suffering from a space-time[Read More…]
Katy Perry : Teenage Dream
For an album that was touted as the cementing of Katy Perry’s abilities as a credible singer/songwriter, Teenage Dream sure missed the mark. It’s bubblegum pop at its most extreme (read: cotton candy-scented liner notes!), and most of the lyrics are about as trite and non-poetic as those on a[Read More…]
Sweet Thing : Sweet Thing
With their self-titled debut, it’s easy to see that Toronto’s Sweet Thing have Top 40 ambitions. Whether or not they’ll get there remains to be seen. The album certainly contains elements that suggest they will: the punchy guitars of “Gun,” the shimmering synths of “Lazy Susan,” and the soaring vocals[Read More…]
Chemical Brothers : Further
Released earlier this year, the Chemical Brothers’ seventh effort, Further, can start to sound like a concert album after a few plays. Unlike many of the Brothers’ earlier releases, the album captures the raw intensity and structureless flow of a live set, filled with unexpected drops, blips, and volume shifts.[Read More…]
