The Graveyard in Matrix Sent To Graveyard

My tenure with Matrix Magazine has ended after three or more years. I was orginally brought on board to manage their album reviews section, and then about a year and a half ago, I was offered a column, which we called The Graveyard.

The Graveyard ran at about 1,000 words a pop, and I usually tried to avoid carrying them on Urban Camouflage, simply because most people don't want to read 1,000 words on their computer screen. I blame computers.

However, a couple of people recently asked about a couple of the columns, so I thought I'd carry a post that linked to all of them. So here are the collected Graveyard columns, for you to enjoy:

Graveyard - May 2006: This is the first column, and talks about the Exclaim Cup hockey tournament, indie rock and (at the time) new releases by Destroyer and Raising the Fawn.

Graveyard - September 2006: This column featured reviews of 5ive independent, Canadian albums, as my own version of the Polaris Prize (note: I did not give away $20,000).

Graveyard - January 2007: This edition of The Graveyard looked at Eno's idea of ambient music, and I related it to two glitch-hop inspired artists, EdIT and Murcof.

Graveyard - May 2007: When I wrote this column, I had spent a looooong time watching music documentaries, so I decided to write a top 5ive of ones I had recently seen. Obviously not an exhaustive list, but a fair assessment of some of the better music docs out there.

Graveyard - August 2007: Another "film" related column, this last edition of The Graveyard looked at three independent Canadian albums that took a 'cinematic' approach to songwriting.

To anyone out there who has read The Graveyard columns, or told me that they had enjoyed reading one - I just wanted to say thank you. I enjoyed writing The Graveyard, and I hope this small collection of columns, above, offers you something to read and enjoy.

I will not see you next time in the Graveyard. But I do appreciate you stopping by.

The Graveyard & New Matrix Magazine Website

Matrix Magazine - Issue 76 is on newstands now, featuring a clean new design throughout, and carrying several pieces in memoriam of Rob Allen.

My column for this issue was written while riding subways and walking across snowy fields in the dead of Montreal's winter, listening to the iPod. I recommend that you pick up a newsstand copy of Matrix, of course, but if you visit Matrix's solid, newly designed website you can read my column, The Graveyard, there.

I'm working on the new column now, and it's 17 degrees and sunny.

Robert Allen - 1946 - 2006

Many Montreal writers have been reflecting on the recent passing of Rob Allen. I just wanted to take brief moment to recognize this loss, and give some space to the tributes that are being written for him.

Rob was the Publisher of Matrix Magazine, and will be fondly remembered by the many people who he touched, toasted and taught. My own experience with Rob was limited -- a few conversations at Matrix meetings or book launches -- but it seems that everyone I know has a story about Rob. I think, in the end, that's the most fitting tribute there is.

The Graveyard - Matrix Magazine issue 75

This is The Graveyard column from Matrix Magazine, issue 75. The columnists tend to not be carried on the Matrix website, so I'm posting it here in its entirety because it features reviews of 5 noteworthy independent Canadian artists. Enjoy.

The Graveyard
by Scott W. Gray

Announcements about the Echo and Polaris prizes came to me around the time I was writing this issue’s piece, and I must say I’m pleased that independent artists are finally being recognized on their merits. Both of these prizes are juried by media flacks and awarded for songwriting, rather than unit sales, genre, or sculpted, muscular booties.

As these prizes recognize, there is an abundance of great bands in this country. There always has been, of course, but history shows that groups die out due to a lack of exposure and subsequent financial problems. Recording and distributing an album (not to mention touring a country of this size) is expensive. The Canadian industry has grown up a lot, market economics have changed a bit in the digital world, and there’s now a real possibility for independent bands to be reasonably successful here.

Exposure, however, still means everything to this process, and I can support anything (like the Polaris and Echo prizes, odd blogs, etc.) that shines the spotlight on the great talent here. With this in mind, here are songs by five artists that were in regular rotation on the Graveyard stereo over the last few months. I urge you check them out.

Christine Fellows: When I first heard Mary Margaret O’Hara’s “Body’s In Trouble” I stopped dead in my tracks, my thin teenage shoulders pulled up like I expected a crash behind me. Utterly arresting, disquieting, and inimitable. Christine Fellow’s song “Vertebrae”, from her Paper Anniversary album (Six Shooter), has much the same quality. It’s an exercise in restraint and tense understatement. Excellent musicianship (particularly from the strings and percussion) accompanies a voice that’s clear in the upper register and slightly frayed in the middle tones. Warm electric piano sounds and cello sweeps trail out over not-as-goofy-as-you’d-expect glockenspiels. If you think she’s prodigiously talented when she says, “I am deadfall. Deadfall,” then wait for the chorus. One of the most startling albums I’ve heard recently.

The Besnard Lakes: From Besnard Lakes’ yet-to-be-released album Dark Horse Transmissions, I spent a good deal of time listening to “Ride the Rails”. This new Besnards album (to be released on Jagjaguwar this fall) is considerably more orchestrated than Volume I, their previous release, with strings, choir-like vocals, and field recordings that jackknife into the arrangements against the Besnards’ signature guitars (high-volume, dive-bombing). “Ride the Rails” displays their development: essentially two songs in one that pivot on a single guitar riff nearly two minutes in, “Ride the Rails” features members of Bell Orchestre complimenting a very-70s mood piece that shifts into a solemn but hooky chorus drenched in reverbed vocals. As well, the vocals on the new album are stronger than in the past, offering more confident deliveries and tighter harmonies. If Volume I was the Besnard Lakes’ Loveless, then Dark Horse Transmissions is their Pet Sounds.

Islands: Formed from the brittle little bones of the Unicorns, Islands emerged in 2006 with Return to the Sea (Equator Records). Full of some of the smartest dumb pop you’ve ever heard, this is the sort of album that ends up in endless repeat because you hum it to yourself for hours after hearing it. The track that stuck with me most was “Rough Gem” (though “Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby” was a very close second), with its ‘Come On Eileen’ melody, tiny pizzicato string breaks, and tight but not flashy drums, this song left me scratching my head and pumping my fist. As an added touch, I like hearing Nick Diamonds singing about diamonds.

World Provider: What most music writers will tell you (over beers that you will have to pay for) is that a great deal of material arrives for review that sounds just like everything else, even among the non-mainstream albums out there. But nothing really sounds like World Provider’s Lost Illusions (out on Ta-Da). You can draw associations among the art-rock bands that he could be referencing (Devo, for example) but it takes a very strange sensibility to put them together as World Provider does. Strange tastes, oddly unsettling. The most successful songs on Lost Illusions follow a synth driven melodic lead, with interesting vocal harmonic lines – sometimes manipulated digitally – and very simple snare-kick, hat-handclap percussion. “Valentine” made onto my mix discs and took me through most of this summer. Featuring a guest appearance by Leslie Feist, “Valentine” merges a loping, neo-country vocal twang over fuzzy electro in a surprisingly effective way. Sneaks up on you, then bam! you have a weird moustache and you’re dancing in unfamiliar clothes.

Bell Orchestre: Bell Orchestre’s stunning instrumental debut album Recording a Tape in the Colour of the Light (released on Rough Trade in late 2005) is a roiling weird of french-horns, violins and trumpets that I listened to all spring. I was impressed by the subtlety and interplay between the instruments on quieter tracks, but I was unprepared for the way “The Upward March” rocked out. Built over a very simple digital click, the band adds textures and colours to create a piece that by its end is locked in a solid groove, while still tearing against itself. A sort of hyphen band (i.e.: post-rock, or math-rock, or classically-inspired, all of which apply), Bell Orchestre create pieces rather than songs, but there’s a vitality to them all that keep them fresh and unpretentious. Long, murmuring drones open out to raucous crashes and stabbing horns; the music is a stormy affair. “The Upward March” is probably the most luminous and anthemic on the album, so it’s an obvious repeater on the ipod, but the album as a whole creates a mood worth pursuing.

With independent Canadian talent increasingly being recognized by labels and media (and ugh…”tastemakers”) outside the country, listeners here deserve to know what that faint buzz is about. If you haven’t heard the five albums above, or any of the finalists in the prizes I’ve mentioned, I recommend tracking them all down. Each artist is unique but they share some strange commonalities - quirkiness, a sort of optimistic sadness, rich, idiosyncratic songwriting, and ultimately, independence.

(from Matrix issue 75)

A First View of "The Graveyard"

So, Matrix Magazine, who have been publishing my album reviews for some time now (under my real name and a few pseudonyms), and where I'd been the Music Review editor for awhile, have decided to give me my own column.

The Graveyard debuted in Matrix issue 74, and discussed the Exclaim Cup Hockey Tournament, and new albums by Destroyer and Raising the Fawn. Here it is in its entirety. I hope you enjoy it and pick up the next issue of Matrix.

I've just returned from 5 days in Toronto, having played in the Exclaim Cup Hockey Tournament--a tourney loosely (but gamely) organized around Exclaim Magazine and its community of ruffians. This was my seventh year in the tourney, playing with The Humiliation, a team of mostly West Coast ex-pats I started when I lived in Toronto. This year, we got sporty new track jackets, and our thumbs-down logo is emblazoned over my orange heart as I write this. We look awesome, in a Humiliating way.

I am clearly a big fan of the Exclaim Cup, and I marvel at its progression from a 2-team pond hockey game to a truly national, 30-team, 4-day extravaganza, rife with musicians and artists of all stripes. What I don’t understand, though, is why there’s such scant media coverage on the tournament, given our country’s obsession with all things hockey. It’s a tournament of colour and creativity, fair play and flair, and it stands in stark opposition to the tiresome controversies of big league sports. With each team gaining extra points for penalty-free games, supplying food to local food banks and instruments to youth-at-risk, and required to provide a solid 20 minutes of entertainment on stage or risk being tossed from the playoffs (and face condemnation by the rest of the teams), these games highlight what can happen when a bunch of creative people all do their part in a community setting.

Strangely though, most media coverage of this large, sprawling event tends to focus strictly on the involvement of the “superstars” of Lo- and Medium-Fi Canadian entertainment. Sloan’s Chris Murphy (a member of the Halifax-Dartmouth Ferries) appears in interviews and radio programs, the Rheostatics’ (and Morningstar defenseman) Dave Bidini appears on national TV talking about his new book about the tournament, and CBC’s George Strombolopolis (playing for the Chart Attack Hack) was featured in full-gear (minus gloves, oddly) on the cover of Eye Weekly during the Exclaim Cup weekend, despite having only played hockey for two years. Now, I have no issues in the least with these players talking about their involvement in a tournament they clearly love and respect, and each has just as much right to talk about the tourney as I do. What I am more concerned with is the media’s coverage of this expansive sporting weekend, which reduces it down to the participation of a few well-ish known individuals. If this is a tournament that, by its very nature, shuns the addition of ringers, why is the media coverage solely focused on celebrities, rather than the talented, sincere rabble of individuals that constitute each team? Let’s look at this in terms of music.

When we read about the membership of the New Pornographers, we tend to read about the involvement of alt-country crooner Neko Case, or pop craftsman A.C. Newman, rather than the lesser-recognized Dan Bejar, aka Destroyer. Likewise, when we read about Broken Social Scene, the numerous threads to members of Metric, Do Make Say Think or Stars are prominently displayed, while John Crossingham’s Raising the Fawn tends to be overlooked. While both Destroyer and Raising the Fawn could be considered less notable in the context of these sort-of-supergroups, each should be recognized in their own right, as both have recently made albums full of wonder, idiosyncrasies and intelligence.

Raising the Fawn’s newest album is called The Maginot Line (Sonic Unyon, 2006), named after the series of sub-terra fortresses erected by the French in World War II to protect their border from German invasion. However, despite the intense firepower in these French fortresses, the Maginot Line was easily defeated when the Germans simply drove their tanks up and around the fortresses’ cannon turrets, entering France through Belgium. Seems a fitting title for the newest Raising the Fawn album, given that its tremendous power, efficiency and undulating tension are qualities that could easily be ignored by music consumers due to the band’s fairly low profile. Hopefully small pieces like this will help broaden the band’s fan base, because for the last few years Raising the Fawn have been crafting some of the most mature and unpredictable music in the country. The Maginot Line forces the Raising the Fawn sound out somewhat, employing sustained feedback swells, falsetto vocals and the rolling thunder of floor toms to create a stormy work, dark and suggestive, then histrionic and emotive, then snapping back again. This album adds new elements such as Ebow and synthesizers to their traditional three-piece, to create a wintry album of fierce dynamics: howling, severe crashes buttressed against tiny, scraping burbles. If you have not had a chance to hear Raising the Fawn I highly recommend dedicating a week of your life to The Maginot Line; set yourself up in front of the band’s cannons on endless repeat, and let them pummel you into a melancholic submission. That shit will fuck you up.

On the other side of the scale we have Destroyer’s Rubies (Merge, 2006), a loose, rambling record of seemingly off-handed melody and wit. I remember first hearing Destroyer about ten years ago in a musty basement suite just off Commercial Drive in Vancouver. At that time, his work was really stripped down, and my impression was that he was trying too hard to be weird. Now, however, Destroyer has a full group around him, and seems to have hit his stride as a songwriter, ably weaving casual vocals over what are clearly deliberately chosen motifs. There’s an idiosyncratic balance of humour and seriousness here, in the lyrics, vocals and musicianship on this album, and I find it refreshing because of how solidly it sits in the rock tradition. Reminiscent of Dylan’s early electric period, Destroyer’s Rubies features 1960s-esque honky-tonk pianos and simple, driving rhythms around vocals with lyrics often tightly packed into verses—as if the ideas are coming too fast for Dan Bejar to fully realize in the set verse length. This is an album where the lyrics matter, a revitalizing switch from so many records that just build a hook over a phrase and repeat ad nauseam. Destroyer’s Rubies is a record that is deceptive in its intentions, wanting to both grab you buy the lapels and compel you to listen, while forcing you away with some rather heavy subject matter. Many people I speak to are unsure of this album because of Bejar’s (nasal, odd) voice, however, I’ve found that once you are acclimated to his vocal style, this album stands up on so many levels and marks a significant work by a talented artist just hitting his full potential. Perhaps Destroyer’s Rubies could be considered a great summer album, if you hope to have a very strange, somewhat unsettling summer.

Both The Maginot Line and Destroyer’s Rubies represent somewhat hidden gems found in the larger collectives of musicians known as Broken Social Scene and the New Pornographers. Much as how the Exclaim Cup Tournament is becoming known as a result of media attention paid toward a few of the better-known, hockey playing celebrities on the ice, Raising the Fawn and Destroyer can hopefully begin to enjoy some media coverage due to their own associations with their better-known collaborators. But make no mistake, Destroyer and Raising the Fawn are significant acts in their own right, unique, creative and worthy of their own praise. If you have not heard either group, I recommend you seek them out, and experience another two pieces in what could be called a renaissance in Canadian music.
(from Matrix Magazine Issue 74)

The Graveyard in Matrix - September 2006

The Graveyard - by Scott W. Gray
September 2006

Announcements about the Echo and Polaris prizes came to me around the time I was writing this issue’s piece, and I must say I’m pleased that independent artists are finally being recognized on their merits. Both of these prizes are juried by media flacks and awarded for songwriting, rather than unit sales, genre, or sculpted, muscular booties.

As these prizes recognize, there is an abundance of great bands in this country. There always has been, of course, but history shows that groups die out due to a lack of exposure and subsequent financial problems. Recording and distributing an album (not to mention touring a country of this size) is expensive. The Canadian industry has grown up a lot, market economics have changed a bit in the digital world, and there’s now a real possibility for independent bands to be reasonably successful here.

Exposure, however, still means everything to this process, and I can support anything (like the Polaris and Echo prizes, odd blogs, etc.) that shines the spotlight on the great talent here. With this in mind, here are songs by five artists that were in regular rotation on the Graveyard stereo over the last few months. I urge you check them out.

Christine Fellows: When I first heard Mary Margaret O’Hara’s “Body’s In Trouble” I stopped dead in my tracks, my thin teenage shoulders pulled up like I expected a crash behind me. Utterly arresting, disquieting, and inimitable. Christine Fellow’s song “Vertebrae”, from her Paper Anniversary album (Six Shooter), has much the same quality. It’s an exercise in restraint and tense understatement. Excellent musicianship (particularly from the strings and percussion) accompanies a voice that’s clear in the upper register and slightly frayed in the middle tones. Warm electric piano sounds and cello sweeps trail out over not-as-goofy-as-you’d-expect glockenspiels. If you think she’s prodigiously talented when she says, “I am deadfall. Deadfall,” then wait for the chorus. One of the most startling albums I’ve heard recently.

The Besnard Lakes: From Besnard Lakes’ yet-to-be-released album Dark Horse Transmissions, I spent a good deal of time listening to “Ride the Rails”. This new Besnards album (to be released on Jagjaguwar this fall) is considerably more orchestrated than Volume I, their previous release, with strings, choir-like vocals, and field recordings that jackknife into the arrangements against the Besnards’ signature guitars (high-volume, dive-bombing). “Ride the Rails” displays their development: essentially two songs in one that pivot on a single guitar riff nearly two minutes in, “Ride the Rails” features members of Bell Orchestre complimenting a very-70s mood piece that shifts into a solemn but hooky chorus drenched in reverbed vocals. As well, the vocals on the new album are stronger than in the past, offering more confident deliveries and tighter harmonies. If Volume I was the Besnard Lakes’ Loveless, then Dark Horse Transmissions is their Pet Sounds.

Islands: Formed from the brittle little bones of the Unicorns, Islands emerged in 2006 with Return to the Sea (Equator Records). Full of some of the smartest dumb pop you’ve ever heard, this is the sort of album that ends up in endless repeat because you hum it to yourself for hours after hearing it. The track that stuck with me most was “Rough Gem” (though “Don’t Call Me Whitney, Bobby” was a very close second), with its ‘Come On Eileen’ melody, tiny pizzicato string breaks, and tight but not flashy drums, this song left me scratching my head and pumping my fist. As an added touch, I like hearing Nick Diamonds singing about diamonds.

World Provider: What most music writers will tell you (over beers that you will have to pay for) is that a great deal of material arrives for review that sounds just like everything else, even among the non-mainstream albums out there. But nothing really sounds like World Provider’s Lost Illusions (out on Ta-Da). You can draw associations among the art-rock bands that he could be referencing (Devo, for example) but it takes a very strange sensibility to put them together as World Provider does. Strange tastes, oddly unsettling. The most successful songs on Lost Illusions follow a synth driven melodic lead, with interesting vocal harmonic lines – sometimes manipulated digitally – and very simple snare-kick, hat-handclap percussion. “Valentine” made onto my mix discs and took me through most of this summer. Featuring a guest appearance by Leslie Feist, “Valentine” merges a loping, neo-country vocal twang over fuzzy electro in a surprisingly effective way. Sneaks up on you, then bam, you have a weird moustache and you’re dancing in unfamiliar clothes.

Bell Orchestre: Bell Orchestre’s stunning instrumental debut album Recording a Tape in the Colour of the Light (released on Rough Trade in late 2005) is a roiling weird of french-horns, violins and trumpets that I listened to all spring. I was impressed by the subtlety and interplay between the instruments on quieter tracks, but I was unprepared for the way “The Upward March” rocked out. Built over a very simple digital click, the band adds textures and colours to create a piece that by its end is locked in a solid groove, while still tearing against itself. A sort of hyphen band (i.e.: post-rock, or math-rock, or classically-inspired, all of which apply), Bell Orchestre create pieces rather than songs, but there’s a vitality to them all that keep them fresh and unpretentious. Long, murmuring drones open out to raucous crashes and stabbing horns; the music is a stormy affair. “The Upward March” is probably the most luminous and anthemic on the album, so it’s an obvious repeater on the ipod, but the album as a whole creates a mood worth pursuing.

With independent Canadian talent increasingly being recognized by labels and media (and ugh…”tastemakers”) outside the country, listeners here deserve to know what that faint buzz is about. If you haven’t heard the five albums above, or any of the finalists in the prizes I’ve mentioned, I recommend tracking them all down. Each artist is unique but they share some strange commonalities - quirkiness, a sort of optimistic sadness, rich, idiosyncratic songwriting, and ultimately, independence.

To read more about artists like these, or random stuffs, check out the blog - Urban Camouflage: http://urbancamouflage.blogspot.com/. See you there, or in the Graveyard next time.

The Graveyard in Matrix - August 2007

The Graveyard - by Scott W. Gray
August 2007

Music and filmmaking have enjoyed a symbiotic relationship for many years. When I think about the scenes I most remember from films, often the music in the scene figures as prominently in my memory. I don’t think Apocalypse Now would be the same film without the inclusion of the Doors “The End” or Wagner’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”. Chas Tenenbaum’s attempted suicide in The Royal Tenenbaums is now absolutely tied to Elliott Smith’s “Needle in the Hay”, and it is very hard to think of Simon & Garfunkle’s “The Sound of Silence” without remembering the final scene in The Graduate (incidentally, I have read that The Graduate was the first film to utilize music to specifically connect scenes).

Obviously there have been official soundtracks to movies released commercially since the 1950s, and in the 1990s we saw many mainstream releases of music “inspired by” a film’s soundtrack (essentially releasing several albums of material for one movie), taking soundtracks to a ridiculous, self-aware and self-serving level.

Cinematic music, however, can be thought of as different from an official soundtrack simply because it is unconnected to a specific film. It merely suggests filmic scenes in the mind of the listener. In a sense, when coupled with headphones and portable players, cinematic music is the soundtrack or score to your life in real time.

The evolution of abstract electronic and post-rock music over the years, as well as the growing appeal of instrumental hip hop (credited in some circles to the popularity DJ Shadow’s 1996 Endtroducing album) has brought the concept of cinematic music to another level. Artists of all stripes have begun forging albums that play with combinations of disparate genres, rely more heavily on tone and texture than melody and harmony, and seek to convey a larger vision in their albums. The evolution of sample-culture has perhaps made the relationship between film and music slightly more parasitic than perfectly symbiotic, as many artists make cinematic tracks that sample directly from cinema; however, even these releases are meant to be non-specific soundtracks, intended to create a new work from existing works.

In celebration of this issue’s theme of filmmaking, I decided to write about some of the more cinematic releases I’ve heard in the last few months. All three are excellent, Canadian releases, and to varying degrees present a cinematic form of songwriting.

Handsome Furs – Plague Park (Sub Pop, 2007): Dan Boeckner is best known as one half of Wolf Parade’s vocal tandem. In Handsome Furs, his work with wife Alexei Perry, we are treated to a more direct expression of his unique songwriting skills. The songs on Plague Park speak of alienation, regret and the darker sides of human personality and are all delivered in Boeckner’s trademark tenor – a voice that makes up for its lack of range by conveying the full-spectrum of emotion. Plague Park is cinematic in how it evolves; consistently hinting at a deeper, non-revealed storyline (apparently Plague Park is a mass grave-cum city park in Finland), and the album remains restrained just-inside a complete emotional collapse. It is tense and tender, bristling and sophisticated, without being heavy-handed or histrionic. Despite the darkness, Plague Park comes highly recommended.

Sixtoo – Jackals and Vipers in the Envy of Man (Ninja Tune, 2007): Sixtoo’s Jackals and Vipers in the Envy of Man is a rugged, cut-up album of instrumental hip hop, released on the venerable Ninja Tune label. Best known for his tough, downtempo beats and crunchy production, Sixtoo (born Vaughn Robert Squire) has crafted an album that evokes a dark, moody aesthetic from the opening notes that continues throughout. Jackals is a film-noir type of release, featuring thirteen unnamed tracks compiled from various live performances, stitched together to present dark shadows and melancholy. At his best, Sixtoo shifts between warmth and frigidity, displaying a head-nodding muscularity and obsession with texture, evoking images in the mind of the listener. Jackals builds on Sixtoo’s reputation as a top-flight producer, and offers the listener an excursion into the dirty urbane – back alleys and fire escapes, rainy streets and neon signs. It is an album very much worth investigating.

A Northern Chorus – The Millions Too Many (Sonic Unyon, 2007): Seemingly one of Canada’s least-recognized aural juggernauts returns with The Millions Too Many. While not a post-rock album specifically, A Northern Chorus have crafted an intricate, multi-layered album of strings and rolling syncopation that certainly pushes at rock’s ragged edge. In this album there are wide landscapes and rugged train yards, lakes and lightening storms. Surprisingly, The Millions Too Many is A Northern Chorus’ most-accessible album to date, yet still relies on severe dynamic change-ups, extended violin and cello passages, reverberating slide guitar, and intimate male-female vocal harmonies. Like instrumental groups such as Explosions in the Sky, and (Toronto’s) Do Make Say Think, A Northern Chorus crafts a cinematic music that is mostly consonant, replete with crashing cymbals over major chord passages; however, it is in the quieter moments that the group build their substance, best display their artistry and provide the soundtrack to any listener’s concealed sense of optimism. This is a uniquely Canadian album reminding me at times of Lenny Breau, the Rheostatics and the Wooden Stars, without sounding derivative of anyone else. The energy that A Northern Chorus conveys in their live performances has finally been captured on The Millions Too Many by Holy Fuck member Graham Walsh, and it is an album you deserve to hear.

For those of you interested in reading more about how music and film interrelate, I suggest you read my Graveyard column in the last issue of Matrix (issue 77), exploring the best in music documentaries.

Or, to read more about music of this sort, you can always visit the Urban Camouflage blog (http://urbancamouflage.blogspot.com/). See you next time in the Graveyard.

The Graveyard in Matrix - May 2007

The Graveyard - By Scott W. Gray
May 2007

Writing about music documentaries is like dancing about a film about architecture. However, over the last few months I have watched close to two dozen music documentaries and several warrant discussion. While none of the films listed below rival my all-time favourites (such as Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, recording the final performance by The Band, or Stop Making Sense, which is essentially a Talking Heads concert film), the five films I’ve listed offer insight into the creative spirit, and empathy for musicians who are often the victims of themselves and conditions they engender. I recommend you see each of the films listed below.

Gimme Shelter (1970), by Albert and David Maysles. The death of the 60s is often accredited to the Rolling Stones’ concert at the Altamont Speedway in San Francisco. This free concert, meant to be a successor to Woodstock, brought tens of thousands of music fans to an inadequately equipped outdoor venue, and became disastrously policed by the Hell’s Angels who were hired as security. The result was a “very uncool” time, resulting in the stabbing death of one attendee, and countless beatings of others at the hands of the Hell’s. Growing up a Record Store Snob (to be kind) I had heard the Altamont story, but seeing the Maysles’ documentary showed me how little I actually knew about the concert at Altamont. The film utilizes a slightly fractured narrative, showing first the events Altamont is most known for, and then showing the long lead-up (including most of the Stones’ tremendous set) to those famous moments. The filmmakers also interject scenes of the Rolling Stones in the film’s editing room, watching the raw footage from the concert for the first time, offering a unique perspective on the whole disaster. Gimme Shelter is probably one of the greatest music documentaries of all time because like all great documentaries, it shows so much more than only what is on film.

Be Here to Love Me: A Film About Townes Van Zandt (2005), by Margaret Brown. This film tracks the (so-called) rise and precipitous fall of Townes Van Zandt, one of the few “songwriter’s songwriter” chosen by actual songwriters (including Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson, an extremely manic Kris Kristofferson, and strangely, Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth). We follow Townes Van Zandt’s booze-, drug-, and finally shock-therapy-laden career as he becomes the most respected but least known songwriter outside of Nashville. This is an absolute heartbreaker of a film, but one that vibrates along the slender nerve of an artist’s troubled creativity. It is inspiring to watch a musician put his artistry above everything else in his life, but it is ultimately tragic to watch as his personal demons find him again and again in the process.

loudQUIETloud: A Film About the Pixies (2006), by Steven Cantor (who also made “Of What Remains” about Sally Mann) and Matthew Galkin. This documentary follows the Pixies’ 2004 reunion tour, and reveals some of the internal workings of one of the most important and famously dysfunctional indierock bands ever. It is rumoured the singer broke up the band by faxing the other members – now they’ve had therapy, are in rehab or raising families, and are back on tour after an 11 year disbandment. Of course, in that span of time the band’s maximum impact has been felt, with legions of bands being inspired by (read: blatantly stealing) the band’s sound, and many new Pixies fans reaching puberty and discovering the albums in their older sibling’s wake. It becomes evident early in the film that the band really does not understand how influential they are, and loudQUIETloud presents the Pixies as they grapple with addiction, their reputation, and most critically, each other.

Fearless Freaks (2005), by Bradley Beesley. Fearless Freaks is a documentary about the Flaming Lips, now in the late stages of their prolific, exceptionally weird, career. The film does a good job of giving the Lips’ overview, bringing a series of great albums to new fans, and bringing insight and understanding to long time listeners. Essentially coming from dirty blue collar (sometimes: no collar) backgrounds, the film follows the three remaining members of the group through the highs and (near-constant) lows of band member turnover, financial ruin and most notably, drug dependency. Watching Fearless Freaks, I found myself laughing at the band’s idiosyncrasies, but also feeling empathy for a group that has only endeavoured to be unique unto themselves, often to the detriment of their commercial success. This is a worthwhile documentary because it gives an unblinking view of the rock and roll lifestyle, from the point of view of guys whose circumstances and creativity offered no other choice than to pursue it.

Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (2004), by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky. This documentary tracks Metallica in 2001 through 2003, as they try to record a new album (which becomes St. Anger), find a new bass player (which becomes former Suicidal Tendencies bassist Robert Trujillo), and not be complete dicks (which becomes impossible, clearly). Incongruously, the group solicits the help of a professional therapist, consistently clothed in tan Cosby sweaters, to help them work out their professional and personal differences. The therapist adds a performance-art level of surprise to an already extravagant rock band burnout, and we watch a group that ordinarily tightly controls its empire (witness: Napster lawsuit) have no choice but to yield to talking about their very un-metal feelings in the camera’s omnipresence. Metallica’s aging band members have hundreds of acres of ranch land, literally millions of dollars in the bank, priceless contemporary art, unparalleled support from their fans, and yet ironically it seems its because of these privileges that they are unable to communicate anything (creatively or otherwise) of real substance to each other. This is a phenomenal film whether you are a Metallica fan or not (I am not, particularly), as the unguarded vantage point offers a fascinating, non-sentimental insight into all of rock and roll’s royalty, via the example of this band. Plus, great footage of some seriously heavyweight bass players.

Have a great summer, getting your doggone doc on. See you next time in The Graveyard (or visit online at http://urbancamouflage.blogspot.com/).

The Graveyard in Matrix - January 2007

The Graveyard - by Scott W. Gray
January 2007

I recently began re-reading A Year with Swollen Appendices – Brian Eno’s diary from the year 1995. The end of the book, the appendices, in fact, features a few of Eno’s essays – most notably ‘Ambient Music’, written in 1996 as an explanation of the thought process behind his seminal album Music for Airports. In ‘Ambient Music’, Eno suggests that a viable music for the future would offer a soundtrack, of sorts, for every situation.

His idea was for a music designed to incorporate the sounds of the environment it is played in, blurring the line between accidental, ambient noise and recorded sound design. It was what he said would be an ideal music, one that offered “a place, a feeling, an all-around tint to the sonic environment”. His inspiration came while standing in the Cologne airport, and he envisioned compositions that played throughout the building, but that left room for the tempo and frequency range of the human voice to allow for airport announcements to filter into the immersive music.

The development of technology and advent of the portable music player (whether cassette, CD or MP3) has brought this immersive soundtrack idea to a really individual level, as we all know. One of the clearest memories I have involved a long taxi ride from the airport through a rainstorm, while listening to Vangelis’ Bladerunner soundtrack. I kept the volume low so I could still hear the engine noise, the traffic in the rain, and random bursts of cabbie-speak from the CB radio, between the synth-swells. It was an exercise that established a noir, futuristic mood for me (strangely also connected to airports) that carried over into apartment. I felt like I should have been slipping into a modular sci-fi bubblehome with sleek plastic surfaces and rounded corners, but instead I was just flopping into a rather grotty three-and-a-half in a neighbourhood full of junkies and meth addicts. I have since moved, but the personal soundtrack idea stays with me.

These days I’ve been making playlists on the iPod to dovetail with my Metro ride to work and around town. Which playlist gets chosen usually depends on the mood I am in or the mood I am trying to create. On these wintry mornings, the most affecting stuff is minimalist, sparse instrumental music that blends the ambient noise of the Metro (such as the train sounds, but also the wind, conversations between commuters, and station announcements) or the city (crowds, kids, traffic, announcements from stores) into the music. Most fitting, I have found lately, is the work of Mexican electronic musician Murcof, and US artist EdIT.

Murcof (Tijuana native, Fernando Corona) creates sparse but engaging glitch-based compositions that often sample from 20th century composers such as Arvo Part and Henryk Gorecki. The result is decidedly downtempo, but has enough texture to remain stimulating. His music offers orchestral samples that pull against silence and microtextural elements – landscapes of near-silences that fall outside the usual musical categories such as melody or rhythm, and yet infuse the music with sounds that become invaluable to the finished piece. I find myself making onomatopoeic gurgles in syncopation with the tracks, picking up on the small details. These are often the elements that blend most seamlessly with the context I am in while listening; I lose track of where the subway or city sounds end and song structures begin. I enjoy the peculiar confusion of not knowing how much of what I am hearing is built into the pieces and how much is environmental. The Murcof material that I have is out on the Leaf Label, and albums like 2005’s Remembranza put some smarts back into the much-maligned ambient electronic art form.

Along the same lines, but certainly busier, is Los Angeles’ EdIT (aka Edward Ma). I sort of stumbled across his 2004 album Crying Over Pros for No Reason one day by searching online and spiralling into the seemingly endless micro-genres of electronic music, where individual artists (and sometimes just tracks), apparently warrant genre names of their own. The sub-category that brought EdIT to my attention is the unfortunately named ‘glitch hop’ (alternately known as ‘blip hop’) which pairs hip hop’s head-bobbing tempos and thick bass with glitch-based electronic music’s polyrhythmic snaps and whirs. It’s an engaging combination, and one that EdIT excels at. Similar in construction to other instrumental hip hop such as Alias or Boom Bip, EdIT puts the rhythm first but employs a cinematic approach, sampling in layers of gritty sediment and aural detritus to complement a kick-snare, kick-SNARE combination. It’s smart without being chin-stroking. Between the thick kicks and grainy snares, there are a lot of stretched notes and quick cuts that are reminiscent of Aphex Twin, without the maliciousness.

Despite the density in texture EdIT is adept at allowing acoustic sounds and warmth to spread, showing that his music is not all bombast and breaks, and implying that below the busyness of our city life, there lurks a spacious green space if we choose to look for it. I find that listening to EdIT at low volumes while walking through wintry parks can add a crunching snow and breaking branch steadiness to the mix, and yet there’s enough bounce to his music to really influence the listener’s outlook. Immersive music is interesting most in its simplicity: music constantly renews itself when blended with and informed by an ever-changing environment. We often don’t hear the sounds we are surrounded by on a daily basis simply because of familiarity, but immersive music changes the context and the impact of these sounds. The idea of turning down the music so the real world seeps in is a profound one, because it seems counter-intuitive. Like most commuters I usually turn the music up to drown out the Metro or city noises, thus making my own little bubble. But by keeping the music (or for an even richer experience, field recordings) at a lower level, it offers the opportunity for a more complete sonic experience.

Creating immersive soundtracks change how you see things, and how you exist in the city, the Metro, and international airports. To read more about artists like these, or random music stuffs, check out the blog - Urban Camouflage: http://urbancamouflage.blogspot.com/. See you in the Graveyard, next time.