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viewing 1 To 25 of 31 items
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12"
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CST 101EP
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"The final set of remixes from Perri's critically acclaimed Impossible Spaces album, following previous EPs on DFA and Phonica. Featuring remixes by Larry Gus (DFA, Lefse), Le Révélateur (Root Strata), and Imugem Orihasam (FRAGIL). While Sandro Perri's acclaimed and meticulously constructed album Impossible Spaces was a decidedly avant-rock affair conjured from guitar, bass, drums, synth and voice (with flourishes of woodwinds and brass), longtime fans of Perri will also be familiar with his deep roots in electronic music, chiefly via his Polmo Polpo project from the early 2000s."
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CD
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CST 093CD
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"Jerusalem in My Heart (JIMH) has been a live audio-visual happening since 2005, with Montréal-based producer and musician Radwan Ghazi Moumneh at its core. Moumneh is a Lebanese national who has spent a large part of his adult life in Canada and has been a fixture of the Montréal independent music community from his early days as guitarist in various notable '90s hardcore bands to his tireless activity as a sound engineer and producer over the last decade. With performances occurring one to three times per year, no two JIMH events have ever been the same, with Moumneh's vocals and purposefully blown-out sonic sensibility as the single constant. JIMH has always been an immersive sonic and visual live experience; on the musical side, an evolving effort to forge a modern experimental Arabic music that weds melismatic singing in classical Arabic modes to electronic compositions with a punk-rock production sensibility. Mo7it Al-Mo7it, a unique and profoundly emotive album of contemporary Arabic music, captures and conveys all of this."
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3LP BOX
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CSTMF 002LP
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"A limited edition series of 3xLP box sets with extensive screenprinted art/packaging for the slipcover box, the individual LP jackets, and three different posters (one for each album). Volume 02 features 'lost' and/or recuperated recordings by Hangedup + Tony Conrad (previously unreleased 24-track and 2-track sessions captured in Montréal several years ago), Kanada 70 (aka Craig Dunsmuir, compiled from his many obscure CD-R bedroom recordings released in Toronto since the mid-2000s) and Pacha (aka Pierre-Guy Blanchard, from a CD-R released in Montréal in 2009). A trio of stunning instrumental albums, all remastered for vinyl and pressed on 180gLP in a hand-numbered box set edition of 500."
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CD
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CST 070CD
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"Les Momies De Palerme is the Montreal-based duo of Marie Davidson (violin, synths, vocals) and Xarah Dion (synths, vocals). Brulez ce coeur is the first official full-length from the group, who create an uncategorisable sound built up from a core of keyboards, processed violin and voices: slow-paced without being ponderous; synthetic without being retro; methodically restrained and strangely devotional without being easily tagged as ethereal or gothic. Brulez ce coeur is often like an ersatz sacred music: canticles on acid, full of strange quirks and avant sounds while remaining soothing, meditative and incantatory."
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CD
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CST 085CD
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"Ronen Givony is a New York City music curator and writer and the following is excerpted from a text he wrote to accompany the release of Impossible Spaces. After four years of writing, recording, and self-production, Impossible Spaces has delivered on the promise so abundantly present in Sandro Perri's earlier work; and with it, a synthesis of the experimental, electronic and singer-songwriter modes that have marked his evolution as an artist. On first listen, Impossible Spaces seems to position itself self-consciously as a collection of music about other music. In this sense, we can think of the album as one listener's personal map of music history, with various voices, phrases, and personalities materializing to guide a song for an instant before disappearing again. Upon further listening, however, and true to its title, the album reveals itself as something more conflicted, and seemingly contradictory: a six-part meditation on the binaries of absence and presence, the possible and impossible, with a symmetrical internal structure reflecting this back-and-forth dialogue from one song to the next, and an emotional push-and-pull within the personality of the singer and songwriter himself."
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10"/DVD
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CST 069LP
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"10" vinyl package, screen-printed and die-cut on thick board, with a 10"x10" full color insert card, the 5"x7" postcard set, and a larger 10"x20" duotone art print poster. The 10" package includes the DVD in a printed sleeve, inserted in the vinyl jacket. Limited to 500 hand-numbered copies." 30 mins. of audio files: 16-bit wav + mp3 formats, and 86 mins. of video/art -- DVD region 0 NTSC.
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DVD
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CST 069DVD
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"Elfin Saddle began working with Constellation in late 2008 when the label invited the group to record a new album at the Hotel2Tango studio in Montreal. Ringing For The Begin Again appeared in spring 2009. At the same time, the band's co-founders were also completing a year-long art project involving sculpture, stop-motion animation and time-lapse video. Using the backyard of their Montreal apartment as an installation site, Emi and Jordan evolved and devolved an entire miniature world, conjuring an historical arc of civilization from early settlement and relative harmony with nature to gradual industrialization, mechanization and the inevitable discontents of over-production, waste and decline. Emi and Jordan worked on this installation every day for a year, meticulously building, shaping and documenting its trajectory with time-lapse video while also shooting many detailed sequences with stop-motion photography. The resulting work is a wondrous, unpretentious, gently mystical 23-minute video piece entitled Wurld, for which they also composed the soundtrack." Package includes duotone poster, 3 x postcard set, 30 mins. of audio files: 16-bit wav + mp3 formats, and 86 mins. of video/art: DVD region 0 NTSC. Limited edition of 900 hand-numbered copies.
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CD
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CST 067CD
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"Siskiyou is the new group led by former Great Lake Swimmers member Colin Huebert in collaboration with Erik Arnesen (who still plays with the Swimmers) and musician/filmmaker Karolyn Keir. The group is based in Vancouver, Canada where Huebert has recently settled after a stint working on an organic farm following his departure from the Swimmers. This is their eponymous debut album. Colin sent us a first collection of songs in early 2010 just as the bitterest months of Montreal winter were setting in. Working like glowing embers on us all season long, gaining warmth and radiance with every listen, the humble intimacy and composure of these recordings steadily drew us into the deeper tension between economy and epiphany humming at the core of the tunes. Emotionally direct, marked by an underlying darkness and doubt about relationships (to each other, to the environment, to mortality) without overreaching lyrically or musically, and without overriding the quiet exuberance embedded in every melody - the songs compel."
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LP+CD
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CST 067LP
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180 gram LP version, featuring a limited edition silkscreened poster and a CD of the album. "Siskiyou is the new group led by former Great Lake Swimmers member Colin Huebert in collaboration with Erik Arnesen (who still plays with the Swimmers) and musician/filmmaker Karolyn Keir. The group is based in Vancouver, Canada where Huebert has recently settled after a stint working on an organic farm following his departure from the Swimmers. This is their eponymous debut album. Colin sent us a first collection of songs in early 2010 just as the bitterest months of Montreal winter were setting in. Working like glowing embers on us all season long, gaining warmth and radiance with every listen, the humble intimacy and composure of these recordings steadily drew us into the deeper tension between economy and epiphany humming at the core of the tunes. Emotionally direct, marked by an underlying darkness and doubt about relationships (to each other, to the environment, to mortality) without overreaching lyrically or musically, and without overriding the quiet exuberance embedded in every melody - the songs compel."
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2LP+CD
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CST 066LP
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Deluxe 2LP version on 180 gram vinyl. Includes CD version, poster and insert.
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CD
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CST 066CD
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"Sam Shalabi's Land of Kush project returns: his psych-Arabic jazz orchestra has produced a second album of intensely genre-defying, polymorphic, big band madness. Where Shalabi structured last year's mesmerizing Against The Day album around the Thomas Pynchon novel of the same name, this time Shalabi tackles concepts of shame, sexuality and society in a new multi-movement work entitled Monogamy. Rounding up many of the same Montreal-based improv and experimental players featured on Against The Day, Shalabi deploys a cast of two dozen musicians and sound artists to realize this fantastic new compositional hybrid of Middle Eastern tropes and Western vocabularies of jazz, psychedelia and experimental/free music. For the Monogamy album, the group has been given its own sub-moniker as The Egyptian Light Orchestra. The band is a truly hydra-headed beast on this recording; string, brass and woodwinds careen around the drone/backbeat of the major movements, shifting between short melodic punctuations, free excursions, and consolidated unison lines. Dissonant piano, synth and electronics bubble below, above and at the outer limits of the mix. Several transitions also allow for various players to stretch out in some lovely virtuosic solo passages. Shalabi's oud anchors the album's opening and closing pieces, as well as the glorious 'Tunnel Visions' piece at the album's midpoint. The rhythm section -- comprising standard trap kits, upright basses and traditional Eastern percussion -- holds down one hypnotic groove after another. Shalabi has once again structured his orchestral work to feature primarily female vocalists who further challenge the categorization of the music, conjuring everything from Galas- or Ono-style ululation ('The 1st And The Last') to cabaret/jazz ('Scars') to ethereal psych-folk ('Tunnel Visions')."
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CD
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CST 065CD
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"The new album by Tindersticks picks up where the band's wonderful return to form on The Hungry Saw (2008) left off. With founding members Stuart Staples (vocals, guitar), David Boutler (keys, vibes) and Neil Fraser (guitar) joined by longtime collaborator Terry Edwards (horns), recent recruit Dan McKinna (bass) and a cast of additional players, Tindersticks deliver a follow up album that brims with similar texture, swinging from exuberance to melancholy and back, with healthy tinges of 'Northern Soul' and Staples' inimitable deadpan voice anchoring the album throughout."
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CD
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CST 030CD
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"Originally available (on CD only) at shows during The Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band European tour in Winter 2004, this record was officially released on both formats a few months later. The EP contains all new songs, with a total running time of just over 30 minutes. What began as studio sketches evolved, through a few intensive drunken nights, into a beautiful, unfettered set of tunes that confirms Mt. Zion's ongoing re-invention as a vocal-driven outfit and reveals Efrim's growing strength as a lyricist. The results are deeply moving and utterly original in both poetics and sonics -- songs that invoke a tender and hopeful collective consciousness wrought from mythic/mystic themes, motivated by the tiny graces and tragic failures of our contemporary communities and cultures. 'More Action! Less Tears!' opens the record -- a noisy clarion call of chiming instrumental rock driven by a long wraparound riff and recorded live off the floor during the This is Our Punk-Rock (cst027) sessions. This cut finds various Mt. Zion players trading instruments for the rock-out, with cascading tape treatments added by Efrim in the mixdown. Three more songs follow, which Efrim began recording in sporadic late-night sessions at the Hotel2Tango in Montreal during the second half of 2003. All three were built up from Efrim's initial vocals and guitar, with co-founding Mt. Zion member Thierry collaborating closely on instrumental and backing vocal arrangements, and Jessica working up violin and vocal parts as well. A four-voice choir lends additional vocal support."
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CD
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CST 057CD
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"This is the wondrous debut record from Clues. Co-founders Alden Penner and Brendan Reed have been quietly nurturing this project in Montreal since the demise of their respective bands, Unicorns and Les Angles Morts. As a member of the short-lived Unicorns, Penner's songwriting prowess was unveiled in a bright burst of mysterious and kaleidoscopic energy, in the form of a single full-length album (released in 2003) and countless live shows, both of which rallied passionate responses from audiences and critics alike. Penner's voice, guitar and unique lyrical vision now guide Clues, with humble authority, originality and intent. Wedded to Reed's own superlative compositional and arranging acumen (and awesome drumming, among other instrumental skills) and abetted by multi-instrumentalists Ben Borden (Les Automates de Maxime de la Rochefoucauld), Lisa Gamble (Gambletron, Evangelista, Hrsta) and Nick Scribner (Chaotic Insurrection Ensemble), the band delivered sporadic and fantastic local performances through 2008. They then entered the Hotel2Tango studio to lay down eleven songs in a feverish session during a Montréal winter deep freeze. The resulting album radiates a very special warmth and urgency, full of secrets, smiles, snarls and sing-a-longs. This debut record yields one undeniable tune after another. It is one of those albums that coheres effortlessly in spite of the restless energy and distinct identity of each song -- nothing ever really sounds or stays the same, but neither are there any forced spastics or facile schizophrenics. Forged from postpunk, nowave and psych influences, Clues compose a rare breed of complex pop anthems that consistently inscribe their own perfect limits, without overreaching and without pandering. The overriding aesthetic avoids ornate decadence and stringent economy in equal measure. An authentic, unfussy and stirringly epic little sonic world unfolds: idiosyncratic and enigmatic, but exuberantly infectious and approachable."
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CD
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CST 059CD
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"Elfin Saddle is the musical project co-founded by Jordan McKenzie and Emi Honda. Partners in life and in art, Jordan and Emi have been building a wonderful body of visual, installation and video art that combines organic living materials with found and scavenged objects to create enchanted environments of growth, slow transformation and gradual decay. Miniature examples of this work can be seen on the album cover art for this, their second record, and first for Constellation. Elfin Saddle's music is gently mystical, calmly wide-eyed, and consistently guided by crystalline melodies deployed over the group's building blocks of accordion and junkyard percussion. Jordan and Emi trade off on these instruments and on vocal duties, with Jordan singing in English and Emi in Japanese. Supplemented by acoustic guitar, ukulele, banjo, xylophone and bells, the result is a truly unique hybrid folk music, woven from simple, insistent instrumental elements and vocal rounds. The addition of Nathan Gage (Shapes And Sizes) on double bass and tuba creates a new anchor for these magical tunes. Ringing For The Begin Again is a highly organic song cycle; the music sounds as if it had been dug up from dark, rich earth. Out of the opening drone and rustling ambient percussion of 'The Bringer,' Jordan evokes golem-like images in a series of descending vocal melodies, gradually joined by Emi's vocal counterpoint and a slowly evolving brew of instrumental layers, like a clay sculpture taking shape and hardening in dappled sunlight. 'Running Sheep' is one of several fables sung by Emi in Japanese and demonstrates the band's sharper, more staccato melodic sensibility. Third track 'Hammer Song' is a brilliant little ode to deconstruction and dismantling, an anthemic tune about the tension between restraint and resolve. Emi's ukulele and vocal lines on 'Sakura' are perhaps most overtly evocative of her home country of Japan; as the song is overtaken by a clockwork of chiming acoustic guitar figures and chugging chords, and segues into the instrumental 'Muskeg Parade,' we're in the throes of a sort of east-meets-west miniature musicbox marching band."
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CD
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CST 052CD
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"Sloppy Ground is Eric Chenaux's strongest, most accessible and most dynamic work in years. We have long been champions of the man's inimitable talents -- as a songwriter, arranger and mind-bending guitarist -- and this new album should make these talents clear to the nominally attentive listener. This is a collection of beautifully fried love songs, highly original in compositional approach and instrumental texture, utterly compelling in lyrical content and delivery. As Chenaux says, 'the lyrics are more concerned with what love does rather than what it means... the time moving through these tunes is not one of the beginning of love or the end or heartbreak of love (though I love that stuff too) but more often in the middle (the working middle, the in between).' Chenaux has rallied some of Toronto's finest 'out' players for Sloppy Ground, including Nick Fraser on drums, Ryan Driver on amplified melodica and synths, David Prentice on violin, Doug Tielli on 5-string banjo, Martin Arnold on electric tenor banjo, and Aimee Dawn Robinson on electric echo harp. Chenaux's own guitar work has never been more thrillingly deployed in the context of (relatively) conventional songcraft."
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CD
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CST 047CD
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"This is the first full-length recording by Sandro Perri under his own name, following an EP on Constellation in 2006. Working with some of Toronto's finest avant and improv players, Sandro has fully re-invented himself as a singer, lyricist and guitar player, and Tiny Mirrors is the culmination of this transformation -- a highly personal collection of songs, shaped by an utterly original approach to composition, performance and melodic and vocal phrasing. Tiny Mirrors incorporates elements and sensibilities -- albeit in subtle hues -- as diverse as Vanguard-era Skip James (and his weary falsetto), post-tropicalia Caetano Veloso (the compositional twists), and the '60s-era axis of hybrid songwriters like Tim Buckley, Tim Hardin, Harry Nilsson and Fred Neil (whose 'Everybody's Talkin' is covered here, re-cast as a rumination on the 'epidemic' of second-hand experience). Overall, Perri strikes the perfect balance of sophisticated writing (melodically and as a lyricist) and, with the help of his band, deceptively effortless, relaxed, unconstrained performance. These songs abound in subtle texture and flourish, and the burbling swirl of instrumental work is a through-line to his earlier recordings as Polmo Polpo, where a similarly simmering brew of interweaving melodies yielded such an original and seductive take on 'electronic' music. Perri brings the same originality, warmth, energy and intelligence to his eponymous singer/songwriter work; Tiny Mirrors pulses and froths and lounges and glides with inimitable ingenuity, genuineness, substance and style."
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CD
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CST 046CD
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"We have been massive Vic Chesnutt fans for many years. Prior to starting Constellation together in 1997, among the first records we bonded over was Is The Actor Happy, a slab of vinyl played so often (and so often late at night) that its grooves are well chewed. Our friend, Brooklyn-based filmmaker Jem Cohen (Benjamin Smoke, Instrument, Chain), has known Vic for many years. When Jem proposed that Vic make his next album at the Hotel2Tango studio in Montreal, with various Constellation musicians (along with a couple of American friends) as players for the session, we were thrilled. When we heard the results, we were floored. When offered the opportunity to release the record, we were honored. Vic Chesnutt is one of the finest songsmiths we know. His words knock us out, his voice is like no other, and the two combined can deliver lyrical phrases that echo in your brain for weeks, months, years... that you find yourself adding to your quotidian vocabulary of sardonic asides, devastating metaphors, witty rhymes... words that are never clever for their own sake, but smart and substantive as all hell. The songs on North Star Deserter are some of the most bracing and intense we've ever heard from him: macabre and fearless, playful and funny, at times deeply personal and at others, incongruously hopeful."
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CD
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CST 043CD
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"Dull Lights is an album of long winding melodies and subtle shifts and turns. Fraser's drums play around the beat, or paint beneath it, while Arnold and Chenaux pluck buzzing lines from guitar and banjo. Imagine an intersection of Richard Youngs and Red Red Meat, or a lumberjack Devendra Banhart whose reference point is more The Grifters than glam. Eric Chenaux has composed a delicate, intricate, inspired cycle of pared-down tunes using a highly original palette of guitar-based sounds and strategies. We're thrilled to present Eric's unique voice (and voicings) with this release."
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CD
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CST 042CD
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"Sandro Perri, aka Polmo Polpo, has been performing under his own name, in Toronto and the surrounding region, for the past couple of years. These performances have ranged from solo voice and acoustic guitar, to duo shows with Eric Chenaux, and more recently with 4-6 piece bands. Perri has been recording the results in various locations and with various configurations of players, since 2004. In 2005, he self-released a first batch of songs on CD-R, featuring re-interpretations of material from his Polmo Polpo album Like Hearts Swelling. We fell in love with it, and a fifth track has been added for the Constellation release. A must for Polmo Polpo fans and a sweet collection of songs in its own right, Sandro Perri Plays Polmo Polpo is another window in Toronto's improv and avant songwriter culture, alongside the Eric Chenaux album released concurrently."
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CD
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CST 044CD
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"Lullabye Arkestra is a bass and drum duo that have been playing and self-releasing glorious slabs of distorto-soul for several years. Formed in Toronto by Justin (drums) and Katia (bass), the Ark has played shows throughout eastern Canada as a duo and as a large band, adding horns, voices and organ. Their slow, swampy, overdriven cover of 'Summertime' was an early signature tune, along with a clutch of original raveups ranging from one-minute combustions of riffage and hollering to longer, fuzzed-out R&B numbers, often marked by those sincere but sassy boy/girl call-and-response vocals that make everyone's day. Ampgrave is a hell of a good time, full of testifying and tenderness, seesawing between massed instruments and the raw minimalism of the core rhythm section. Justin rounds up fellow Do Make Say Think players Ohad, Brian and Jason on horns and hollering, along with Shelton Deverel on organ and Julie Penner on violin. An additional 10-voice 'Chorus Oblivia' of exuberant caterwaul also rallies to the cause."
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CD
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CST 034CD
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"This is the third full length by the viola and drums duo of Montréal's Hangedup, who've been mesmerising audiences, while pushing the boundaries of what a bow and a pair of drumsticks can conjure, since 1999. Gen's bi−amplified viola rig, linked to a live audio looper, creates an astounding vortex of jigs, reels & air raid drones, pummelled along by some of the heaviest polyrhythmic skinbeating we've ever heard. An unbelievably beautfbeautifult that finds the band utterly on fire, swooping & slamming around with varying degrees of controlled chaos. Both noisier & more melodic than anything they've yet put to tape, Hangedup raise their compositional & improvisational bars on Clatter For Control."
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CD
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CST 033CD
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"'This is our torched estates' = 6 busted 'waltzes' for world wars 4 thru 6, or the sound of our nervous unit collapsing across sing-song eruptions of anxious light and clumsy heat, 'mystery & wonder, messy hearts made of thunder,' tape reordered at thee mighty hotel2tango for all the gentle dreamers to cradle or discard...the politics of it is just love thy neighbour mostly, or heartbroken temper tantrums for grumpy refusers, or saucy anthems for all the stubborn dumbass resistance cadres maybe...(first song's about war and drug addiction, fourth song's about kanada, and the rest of it is all love songs trulytrulytruly...) the indignant critics amongst us should note that as usual there's more questions than answers here, more complaints than solutions, and at times the group singing is a little out of tune; the name of the record is Horses in the Sky, and we thank you all for still listening...". 5th release by multifaceted Montreal ensemble. 3rd release in their large band (Tra La La Band) guise.
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CST 023CD
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"Sparo's debut record, My Red Scare (CST013), was comprised mostly of songs played solo, unadorned; wrought only from guitar, voice and beatbox. The two years since have seen forays into broader instrumentation and collaborations with additional players. This diversity of strategies and materials is held together by more than Sparo's voice. Amidst a minefield of influences, there is a sensibility at work that prevails in every song -- and over the entire record. There's a beguiling mood enveloping a very fine and complex collection of poetic music. We can't think of humbler or higher praise. For fans of language, Sparo's lyrics can certainly be counted on for top-notch reflection and erudition."
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CST 021CD
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"Exhaust is a bass, drum & tape trio that crashed through various small montreal venues in a series of semi-controlled explosions during the mid-90s. All the original elements -- ultra-low-end bass moan, loping breakbeat trapkit, live reel-to-reel tape scratch -- remain at the core of this new studio work. The band is more head-trip than body blow nowadays, and has constructed a brilliant downtempo album of concrete/punk experimentation that gestures towards various currents in contemporary electronic music as well. Features Aidan from Godspeed You Black Emperor."
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