Constellation Records
Track/Video : Saxophonist, composer and jazz chronicler Matana Roberts announces new album ‘In The Garden’, Chapter Five in the visionary Coin Coin series.
Many new releases are anticipated but few have the added importance of Matana Roberts fifth instalment in their Coin Coin series ‘In The Garden’, due via Constellation on 29th September. The jazz composer, saxophonist and multi-disciplinary artist’s significant song cycle began in 2011 with ‘Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de couleur libres’. This staggeringly visceral …
Album Reviews: Joni Void – Everyday Is The Song: Extraordinary sound collages from ordinary circumstances.
Lille born, now Montreal resident, music collagist and producer Jean Cousin (aka Joni Void) is an illusive, transitory artist who over the years has blurred the sense of persona in any music that bears his pseudonym. Feeding voraciously into the Soundcloud/Bandcamp eco-system since 2011 as johnny ripper, he has revealed a plethora of digital releases …
Album Review: Black Ox Orkestar – Everything Returns : Formidable and forthright – the seminal avant folk ensemble reunite
It’s been over fifteen years since Black Ox Orkestar released their touchstone albums Ver Tantz (2004) and Nisht Azoy (2006), two works that navigated the dark folk/ post rock intersection with a genuine sense of purpose and distinct sonic foundation. Emerging from the Montreal indie scene the four members, Thierry Amar (upright bass), Scott Gilmore …
Album Review: Jessica Moss – Galaxy Heart: art-rock atmospheres with an enduring soul.
What will we think of lock down records when we listen back to them in years to come? Introspective music from a time of looking inwards because the outside world just stood still? Or maybe there was more space to dream, to take more risks, to break free from constraints because everything ahead was unknown. …
Album Review: Steve Bates – All The Things That Happen: Elemental sounds for a wild world.
Some ‘ambient music’ can often come across as ambivalent, leaving the listener floating but uncommitted, relaxed but possibly underwhelmed. ‘All The Things That Happen’, the debut solo album from Canadian musician and sound artist Steve Bates (available from Constellation 23rd September), could superficially pick up the broad ambient tag except this fine record gouges out …
New Track/Video: Art Rock violinist Jessica Moss previews new album ‘Galaxy Heart’ with the dramatic ‘Uncanny Being’
Montreal based violinist and composer Jessica Moss is a musician of significance, fundamental to so much and a touchstone for creative dedication. A member of the seminal post punk ensemble Thee Silver Mt. Zion for fifteen years and contributor to recordings by the likes of Vic Chesnutt, Big/Brave and Sarah Davachi, she shifted focus to …
Track/Video: Electronic explorer Steve Bates previews his avalanche of sound with ‘Destroy the palace’ from soon-come album ‘All The Things That Happen’
Steve Bates, Canadian musician and sound/video artist, has the biography of someone restlessly in pursuit of possibilities. His background as a key figure in the Winnipeg anarcho-punk community through the 80s to explorer of more avant/experimental territories over the past decade has been expressed through an evolving catalogue of music, curation and art works. Probably …
Album Review: T. Gowdy – ‘Miracles’: electronic music for mind and movement.
Canadian producer and audio-visual artist T. Gowdy is not one to tweak or tinker. His way is to probe forensically, to submerge deeper into the possibilities of synthesis and synthesised, to think it through. Such intense application infused his lauded ‘Therapy with Colour’ debut for Constellation with a hypnotic resonance which uncurled as you listened. …
Track/Video: T. Gowdy previews ‘Vidisions’ from new album ‘Miracles’ –peak kinetic motivation.
Sometimes electronic music can get short circuited by its own intellectualism, where high concepts and technical processes become the focus. Canadian music producer and audio-visual artist Timothy Gowdy’s work may take the profound as a springboard and it certainly involves a fair share of technological high jinks but these aren’t the defining features. What makes …
Album Review: JOYFULTALK – Familiar Science: a dazzling alt-jazz beat connection.
Multi-disciplinary artist, composer and musician Jay Crocker (JOYFULTALK lead-protagonist) works with combinations and reactions, fusing elements with care and microscopic attention to create the surprising but coherent. The last impressive JOYFULTALK release for Constellation, ‘A Separation Of Being’, took the chiming gamelan complexity, ringing peals of electronica and turbulent strings, then scaled things up to …