On the morning of February 15, 1989, two unknown men knocked on Salman Rushdie’s door. The day before, a mortally ill despot in Tehran had issued an edict condemning all those involved in the production of Rushdie’s most recent novel, The Satanic Verses. The Valentine’s Day fatwa concluded in a morbid command: “I ask all the Muslims to execute them wherever they find them.”

When the author answered his door, the two men explained that they were members of the Metropolitan Police’s A Squad, the division responsible for all personal protection in the UK. A journalist told Rushdie that Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwas were a dead letter. The men, however, explained that his life was now under serious threat—one level below that of the Queen.

Rushdie’s recent memoir, Joseph Anton, chronicling his state-guarded life over the course of 12 years, is unceasingly captivating. Beginning with his upbringing as a scholar and an atheist, through to his attempts to examine Muhammad in a distinctly human light, Rushdie writes of the intellectual curiosity which spurred his penning of The Satanic Verses. To his pain and surprise, less than a fortnight after its publication in Britain the Indian government buckled to pressure from two Muslim MPs, and banned it. In the next six months, India would welcome Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and (in a rare show of unity) Pakistan to its comity of censorship. In most of these cases, it is almost certain that no native language translations were available, and that few officials had made even the most cursory examination of the book.

Western liberal democracy issued an even more timorous response. Barring a small group (writers, friends, and politicians, whose ranks included Susan Sontag, Gunter Grass, and Vaclav Havel), many declared Rushdie’s work to be disrespectful, and therefore, rightfully convicted by the laws of cultural relativity. In a show of admirable religious solidarity, the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and several eminent rabbis all declared Rushdie in the wrong. The Prince of Wales, not to be outdone, stated that the author was a bad writer who cost Britain too much to protect. One couldn’t help but wonder just what exactly it was that Prince Charles had accomplished to merit not only his inordinately costly safekeeping, but his complete financial support.

The author, forced to choose a new name (Joseph Anton is the amalgamation of Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov) and scuttle from one property to another, writes his recollections with brilliant, vivid indignation. In beautifully melodic passages, Rushdie wonders how an Iranian theocrat could sentence a British national to death. Milton once wrote, “He who destroys a good book, kills reason itself.” Had his fellow writers forgotten these prescient lines? Using third person, and thereby largely avoiding the solipsism that a slighted man’s memoir may lapse into, Rushdie describes the nightmare of daily life with admirable honesty.

By and large, the whole affair was handled—be it on the part of writers such as John le Carré or politicians such as Tony Blair—with a craven servility. Another of Rushdie’s books provides an alternate, yet equally apt title for this tale: Shame.

Joseph Anton is available from Random House, $34.95

You live in Upper Rez. You have an 8:30 a.m. class at the bottom of the hill and you’re just rolling out of bed at 8:15. You throw on your shoes, dash outside, and sprint down the steep, slippery, slush-covered University Street. As you slide into your seat in the nick of time, you realize you forgot your homework. Sounds like a pretty standard morning for a first year.

But imagine—in addition to this—that you had spent the preivous night, from midnight to 4 a.m., in the recording studio. Later that day you’d be practicing with both of your music groups and then at night you’d have a gig at a well-known jazz venue in Montreal. Juggling school and a professional music career? Not so standard. But just five years ago, this was the life of drummer, composer, and now McGill alumnus, Efa Etoroma Jr., who is set to appear on the cover of the upcoming issue of Muzik Etc./Drums Etc. magazine.

Raised mainly in Edmonton, Etoroma came from a musical family that first noticed his talent at age three, when he started banging out rhythms on his father’s head. By the end of high school, he had received numerous music awards, traveled throughout Canada and the United States to perform and study, and was on his way to McGill’s prestigious Schulich School of Music.

Etoroma looks back at his years at McGill as a time of great inspiration. Joining fellow jazz students, Dan Reynolds (piano) and Conrad Good (bass), Etoroma started the Efa Etoroma Jr. Jazz Trio, which eventually went on to play at the Montreal Jazz Festival main stage in 2011.

“Within the first few months of being at McGill, we just kind of made a connection,” Etoroma says about the trio.

Focusing on acoustic jazz, the group recorded an album called Before and After, a compilation of traditional, smooth jazz with a hint of modern flair.

Etoroma is “always looking for new sounds,” which led to the establishment of his second music group—an experimental hip-hop collaboration called Ruckus. Their album, Round One, is an upbeat blend of hip-hop, jazz, funk, soul, electronica, and Latin music.

“It was a fusion of different styles into this contemporary version of hip-hop,” Etoroma explains.

The members of the group would incorporate different sounds that were inspiring them at the time into their compositions to form an unique amalgamation. One unceasing source of excitement for Etoroma was Montreal itself.

“It was a challenge, you know, to stay focused in a really exciting city,” Etoroma sighs. “But it was inspiring at the same time.”

He recalls fondly some of his favourite places in the city to hear music, including Upstairs Jazz, Jello Martini Lounge, Brutopia, and of course, the many stages of the Montreal Jazz Festival.

The past few years have been a whirlwind of success for Etoroma. Two years ago, he played for the Montreal Drum Fest, a prestigious annual festival that showcases some of the best percussionists in the world. For Etoroma, playing for this specific community consisting solely of drummers was a challenging, but extremely important moment in his career.

“It was a big step for me,” he chuckles, recalling that the members of the drum community “are super-critical … because they know what’s up.”

Due to this exposure, Etoroma just signed an endorsement with Yamaha Drums Canada. In doing so, he has joined an incredible rank of drummers—several of whom are internationally famed. Being a part of this group will, without a doubt, open a number of doors for the young artist.

Today, Etoroma is based in Edmonton, where he leads a new group—the Etoroma Trio. Along with his brother on vocals and guitar and a bassist, Edwin Alvarado, Efa is exploring a more pop-oriented sound than he has before. Keep an ear out—for you’ll undoubtedly hear from from Etoroma in the future.

Landscapes have always been a natural muse for Canadian artists, and interpretations of such an inherently stable subject have always been a welcome challenge for those who want to capture its grandeur in a unique way. The Group of Seven painted vistas abstractly, but still captured the native beauty of Canada. More recently, photographers such as Edward Burtynsky have captured the stunning, but often dark work of “manufactured landscapes”—beauty present in industrial settings, however unintentional.

Three new exhibits at Montreal’s Art Mûr put three different spins on natural landscapes, all exploiting the tension between the enduring beauty of the subject and the creative imprint that is left by any artist attempting to capture it. The result is a series by Quebec and Ontario artists that revisits familiar spaces with unfamiliar methods, often with an uncanny effect.

Featured in the window of Art Mûr is Judith Berry’s oil-on-canvas Doubt, in which striped green scrub-brushes and 3D oval structures surround a sink-hole that presumably gives the work its title. As with the rest of the series, titled Duped / Duplicata, the perspective can be seen as minuscule in scale, suggested by the microbe shapes that dominate the large canvases, or expansive and aerial, like a shot of crop circles in a field. Indeed, all of the paintings seem to suggest paranormal environments and alien worlds, apparent in the objects’ organic fluidity of the objects, as well as in the artist’s choice of perspective.

Berry is at her best when painting wholly recognizable, faintly politicized landscapes, like a Japanese field in Outlook (I Dream of Japan), and adding a dimension of weirdness, playing with shapes in an abstract, topographical way. However, her paintings are underwhelming both aesthetically, with dull colours and lines, and conceptually—the juvenile, “trippy” patterns fail to travel through the mind’s uncanny valley for very long.

Holly King’s Grand Canyon: Unseen is installed on four walls in the adjacent room, and the photos are the clear standout of the three new exhibitions. King has created tiny, 8×12 models from the memory of her spring trip to the Canyon a few years ago, in which a bizarre May snowstorm prevented her from seeing the traditional postcard vista. The result is a happy accident, as the detail and contrast expressed in the large-format, black and white photos of the scale models is mesmerizing. Each photograph contains the deeply textured foreground of a precipice, with a photo of the Grand Canyon printed on a transparency, serving as the background. The visual result is seamless and jarringly real; at first, the prints appear to be photographs of actual terrain. The somewhat clever irony in the fact that a grand landscape is miniaturized as a facsimile, and expanded once again, is obvious. But what gives these prints such magnetism is the alluring mixture of uncanny fantasy, the mysterious nature of the perspective from which we see the cliff’s edge, and the size of the photographs.

Finally, Eric Lamontagne’s Road Paintings depicts ‘side-of-the-road’ landscapes that are digitally warped to create melting earth, static water, and blank skies. The displaced space is visually interesting, but it is hard to see these as Kerouacian, as suggested by the exhibit brochure’s On The Road tie-in—perhaps an attempt to build on the hype of the upcoming movie advertised on posters a block away. A vinyl road stretched across the floor of the room leads up the wall to a painting, which, in turn, depicts a road leading to a cul-de-sac. Early in the exhibit’s vernissage, the installation was amusingly improved by a toddler, who stood on the highway and looked back at her mother while she made small talk with the artist. When she left, however, the fake asphalt seemed to be all the more exposed as a thematic gimmick. It’s a shame—the pretty roadside paintings don’t need its support.

If you’re a collector with an interest in alternative depictions of landscapes or  a lover of Canadian art, this trio of exhibits is certainly worth a look. King’s work aside, however, the casual observers are likely to be underwhelmed by the majority of the works.

Duped / Duplicata, Grand Canyon: Unseen and Road Paintings are on display from Jan. 12 to March 2 at Art Mûr (5826 St. Hubert).

A city deemed the birthplace of both rock and roll and blues, Memphis, TN is fertile ground for cultivating musical talent. Cue Ex-Cult—a musical project that brought together five local musicians. Drawing influences that transcend several decades, the members have woven psychedelic, garage, punk, and other terms that precede the word “rock” into their distinct sound, all the while engrossing modern audiences.

Ex-Cult (Sex Cult, before the band discovered that a New York techno label had already laid claim to the name) is what the members describe as a “meaningless” name for this up-and-coming punk band. Since their conception, Ex-Cult have been working their way through small local venues, house parties, and Gonerfest 8 and 9—an annual music festival in Memphis.

Ex-Cult also made a notable appearance at SXSW last year in Austin, where things suddenly clicked with fellow musician Ty Segall. The quintet had been good friends with Segall before their SXSW appearances, and it came naturally that Segall later produced their debut LP.

“A lot of people think we saw [Ty Segall] for the first time at SXSW, and he just agreed to do an album with us,” says lead singer Chris Shaw, pointing out that they’d been friends and mutual fans of each other’s music for about a year before Ex-Cult played at the festival.

For the band, making music has become so integral to their lives that the process of doing so no longer requires much planning; it just happens.

“We make music individually and we make music together,” says Shaw. “Then, when we come together in real life, we combine all of it.”

UK artists Television Personalities and Brian Eno, as well as fellow Memphis punk band Useless Eaters are among the artists that have shaped the sound of Ex-Cult’s debut album. Recorded in a small studio in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the self-titled release features 12 tracks, all of which are distinctly aggressive, while remaining masterfully controlled.

Gritty vocals are backed by Ex-Cult’s true driving force: instrumentation. Songs like “Better Life Through Chemistry” and “Don’t Feel Anything” bring a sense of wild exhilaration—the kind that sweeps you off your feet and never lets you back down. With relentless energy, the band plows their way through 30 minutes of hard-hitting music, while listeners try to keep up. The rawness of the album, both musically and lyrically, strikes a parallel with the down-to-earth personalities of the members themselves.

With so much intensity stuffed into a single LP sleeve, one can only imagine the kind of damage this band could do at a live concert. Luckily, Montreal is one of the stops on their tour across the US and Canada this month. They’ll be playing 21 shows in 23 days—an impressive number for a band going on its first extended tour. It’ll also be the band’s first time visiting their northern neighbours, alongside none other than Ty Segall.

When asked which other artists they would like to work with in the future, Ex-Cult says they wouldn’t mind a chance to perform with San Francisco experimental rockers Chrome. Although they currently have new music in the works, the band says they’re not focused on looking for producers right now.

Like everything else about Ex-Cult, there’s nothing really definitive, nothing too clear-cut about whatever it is they’re doing. This is Ex Cult’s strength—there’s always something you can’t quite put a finger on, which makes them worth looking out for.

Ex-Cult is performing with Ty Segall and K-Holes on February 5th, 8 p.m., Cabaret Du Mile End (5240 Avenue du Parc). Tickets are $15 advance, $20 at the door.