October 2002

BLACK DICE
Beaches and Canyons (DFA)
Black Dice wish they were in the Boredoms. I cannot deride them for this, as I too often wish I was in the Boredoms, and will likely eventually resign myself to getting an octopus-sun tattooed on my shoulder. Black Dice wish they were in the Boredoms so much, though, that they've gradually stopped with the psycho shtick and are now similarly onto some full-on psych styles of the EQ-wash-and-slowburn-tribal-freakout variety. This is not in itself a bad thing, as it ends up that Black Dice seem to be the only North Americans other than Monstre and his band Goa Gajah to really get the message. One can only hope that this means that the Gang of Four/PiL corpsefucking is finally over with, and that all the hipsters will now grow dreadlocks, wear expensive high-tech sneakers, scatologically deface hardcore iconography and become obsessed with recording underwater and/or while running. CFD
File next to: Vice magazine as modern-day Mephistopheles, people with studded belts and impeccably messy hair asking for their money back.

BLUE SKIED AN' CLEAR
CD comp (Morr Music)
Cover albums are often a dodgy mixed bag at best. Why is this album any different then? Diversity matched with a rare respect and understanding of what the tribute subject was all about. If you're not a fan of Slowdive then this will have you seeking out Souvlaki from places other than the Greek restaurant around the corner. Thomas Morr has married his love for Slowdive with some great and not so great covers by Morr stable artists. This is followed up with a second disc that showcases some up-and-coming releases by these same artists (some of them, like the magnificent Guitar, yet unheard from). Kudos go to Morr for making disc two a true measure of what's right with German electronic music at the moment and creating a collection of music that seems more "inspired" by the ghost of Slowdive than trying to mimic it. This is for those who miss the dreamier part of Neil Halstead's oeuvre and have a hankering for beautifully constructed electronic music. SV
File next to: Slowdive, Lali Puna, Tarwater, shoegazetronica.

PETER BROTZMANN TENTET PLUS TWO
Broken English/Short Visit To Nowhere (Okkadisk)
A music that relies so heavily on "the moment" has to be forgiving enough to allow one to unhealthily fixate on one particularly epiphanic instant. That instant in this case arrives 5 minutes and 55 seconds (as befits such manmade bliss) into the Tentet's studio rendition of "Stonewater" on Broken English (previously recorded live in Victoriaville on an eponymous Okkadisk album, for those doing the trainspotting), when Hamid Drake's deceptively lulling frame drumming and Arabic chanting make way for the heavy artillery of the Brotzmann ensemble's machine gun. I haven't made it any further in, truth be told, nor do I really see any reason to do so, this being the first time in recent memory that I've ever pulled the home-listening equivalent of leaving a show mid-set not because the band was bad, but rather the opposite, because I knew that all else would pale in comparison. And that's a good thing. I think. CFD
File Next To: Fat Man, Little Boy, The Big Bang.

CHRISTIANA
Fatigue Kills (High School Champion)
The opening half-minute of skitterish guitar noise is a good indicator of the prevailing mood of this disc. In a career spanning nine years, a name change (nŽe "Neck"), and a couple of line-up changes, this release finds the band taking the most chances ever, while sounding the most "traditional" in an indie-rock sense. This is the first "proper" full-length -- in that it is almost 45 minutes and has 12 tracks -- and is the first time the band has been a quartet as opposed to a trio. Three different songwriters and vocalists ensure that this is a varied affair with many different sides. Verging on the brink of melody, discord, noise and song without ever teetering permanently over to one at the expense of the others, this should be a testament to the virtues of doing-it-yourself and prevailing through the years. PO'D
File next to: Sonic Youth, Mission Of Burma.

DOLLS
(directed by Takeshi Kitano, seen at TIFF)
Takeshi Kitano or "Beat" Takeshi, best known for his roles as a yakuza gangster/seasoned cop or as the award-winning director of Hana-Bi (Fireworks), has finally embraced the more "artier/poetic" side of his creative personality with Dolls. Inspired by the classic Japanese tradition of Bunraku marionette theatre, Kitano creates here a dramatic poem with film, his real-life actors being the marionettes. Based around three stories of loves fraught with tragic consequences, this is really something special. We see two young lovers bound to each other with a red rope, a yakuza boss's girlfriend who returns to meet him for a date he never made and a pop singer who gets to meet her most devoted fan. While slow-moving and showing an undecidedly non-Western attitude to filmmaking and pace, this quiet film is quite affecting. There's a thoughfulness and grace to the film that affected me the same way Kore-eda, Kieslowski or Kurosawa have before. SV

THE FORMULA
Getting There (Beastridge Productions)
Mike Hopkins likes to call his band lounge funk with a turtle-neck sweater. This is pretty appropriate, though you'd also have to throw in soul, jazz, pop, and Latin if you wanted to come close to understanding this disc's diverse elements. Though he is a classically trained guitarist, Mike reveals that he leans more towards Earth Wind And Fire than The Four Seasons. Even though the songs are replete with such Ô70s influences as the smooth sound of a Rhodes, or tight, punchy horn lines, the merging of styles places it definitively in the present. Rounded out by a cast of talented players, a Cram, a couple of Bairds, a little Fear, and many others who cross-pollinate in many different bands to represent some of the heavy-duty music happening today in Toronto's jazz/funk scene. A decent first release that works to showcase Mike's strengths as a songwriter and a really hot guitar player -- though not for avant tastes. NC
File next to: Earth Wind And Fire, The Mommyheads.

GENTLEMAN REG
Make Me Pretty (Three Gut)
Pretty, pretty, pretty. That's how I would describe Gentleman Reg's second CD. The songs are extremely well crafted, and are enhanced by his soft voice. It's one of the best CDs I've heard in a while. Lyrically, Reg focuses on stories of love. While there is a touch of wistfulness about many of the songs, there is a lot of fun and bravado too. Lots of handclaps and the like. Musically, I guess the touchstones may be bands like Belle and Sebastian and their followers, but I enjoyed Reg's CD much more than I do my B&S albums, and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because I've always felt that their music was a tad precious. Gentleman Reg's album is that much more forceful, and less afraid of sounding a bit happy. AM
File next to: Nick Drake, The Hidden Cameras.

KEN PARK
(directed by Larry Clark and Ed Lachman, screenplay by Harmony Korine, seen at TIFF)
High on neglecting to eat for nearly 24 hours and unwashed and hurried due to lack of alarm use, I nevertheless vowed to myself that I couldn't miss this movie. Like the last Film Festival premiere I saw, Harmony Korine's Julien Donkey-Boy, Ken Park again takes a slightly more domestic slant on Korine's wide-eyed world of dysfunctional staged-veritŽ sex, violence, and, of course, skater culture. Transplanting Donkey-Boy's cramped NYC incestuousness to the Californian suburban wastelands, its expansiveness extends to a wider net of familial and neighbourly cross-relations being cast. Filtered through the clinical gazes of Clark and Lachman, Ken Park risks coming off as Solondz-ily excessive when, oh, say, for instance, the camera lingers on cum dripping from a teen's fist, but for the most part it captures that whole hypocrisy-of-the-Normals/wonder-of-absurdity combo bang-on. Just to remind you that this is, after all, a Larry Clark movie, though, the whole thing briefly codas out into some sort of hardcore rec-room Blue Lagoon, and you just might find yourself contemplating the merits of polyamory and the dissolution of the carnality/innocence divide while exiting the theatre to the flawed perfection of (of course) The Shaggs' "Who Are Parents?" -- that is, if Ken Park doesn't meet the same unrated/straight-to-video fate as Donkey-Boy. Hey, Film Board censors: gimme an "R"! I'm going to go take a shower now. CFD
File next to: Item number next in the shock-artifice vs. transgressive purity debate; movies that reward you by making you feel like life can be tragically magic and that you're actually not a robot, however temporarily.

MEAN RED SPIDERS
Still Life Fast Moving
(teenage USA/Claire Records)
There may be a thousand "perfect" pop albums, but there is always room for another. This release delivers on every count where Starsandsons fell short. Instead of fighting to pull in a hundred different directions, everything congeals to a most definite but no less disparate point. When the elements at play here are layered on top of each other, the music soars rather than folding under its own weight. This is an ornate work, carefully crafted with surprises and intoxicating details in every corner. The songs are infectious, the singing is beautiful, the production is clear, and the arrangements are exhilarating. On a more personal note, it is an excellent introduction to Rob Boak, and also excellent to see that David H. is thanked. PO'D
File next to: Bacharach, Stereolab, Prolapse, late nights and blurry driving

MORVERN CALLAR
(directed by Lynne Ramsay, seen at TIFF)
On the heels of her excellent yet bleak debut, Ratcatcher, Scotland's Lynne Ramsay has turned in a genuine interpretation of the Alan Warner novel of the same name. Having read any book before going to see its cinematic counterpart is difficult but Ramsay seems to get the dark spirit of Warner's Morvern correct in comparison. Morton is well-cast as the morally-devoid supermarket clerk who, after finding her boyfriend has committed suicide, takes all of his money, his unpublished novel and seemingly not one iota of guilt, to go south to Spain (very staggeringly unlike the dreary region of Oban that we first find her in). Unlike most movies that rely on pop songs to fill a soundtrack, this one is exceptional. Seeing a release this fall on Warp, here's hoping the great songs of Lee Hazelwood, Broadcast, Can and Aphex Twin can all find a home on the same album. SV

PUBLIC ENEMY
Revolverlution (Slam Jamz)
"Cameras, action! Lights, what?" and Revolverlution is kicking your R&B-listening ass back into Fear of a Black Planet mode. I'm not fucking lying. PE fell off a lot of radars with Muse-Sick-N-Hour-Mess-Age and their refusal to become their own tribute act, shockingly opting to become more political and stick hard to their own ideals of self-controlled articstic endeavour. Sound like indie/punk/hardcore/DIY to anyone? Damn, they even release their own albums for free on the internet. And the intensity is still there: "Son of a Bush" is as urgent as "Welcome to the Terrordome," easily. I'm guessing y'all missed "41:19" and "Politics of the Sneaker Pimps", so now's the time to wake the fuck up. Serious. BP
File next to: Public Fucking Enemy, time to stop acting white.

THE RUSSIAN FUTURISTS
Let's Get Ready To Crumble (Upper Class Recordings)
The Russian Futurists in compositional form are the singular talents of Mathew Adam Hart, who wowed critics and fans on both sides of the Atlantic with the 2000 release The Method Of Modern Love. Let's Get Ready... closely follows the formula of its predecessor, with uplifting pop melodies set to keyboards, programmed drums, and the odd instrument for colour. In less able hands this could sound mechanical and coldly new-wave, but the bouyancy of the melodies floats his songs directly into Beach Boy harbour. Channelling classic Brian Wilson (without the barbershop and the symphony), Hart presents his spin on classic, orchestral pop featuring bittersweet poetic lyricsim that aptly reflects the title. Everything is great, but it's going to end. Not being the biggest fan of drum machines, the tinny sound was wearing me down by the end, but there is no disputing that Hart is a talented songwriter and I for one would love to see him with a living symphony for the next disc, as long as he doesn't go as nutty as Brian did. NC
File next to: Cleaners From Venus, Smile-era Beach Boys.

SET APART
CD comp (EMI Christian Music Group)
Who says Christians can't rock and spread the word of the Lord? Get on the floor with this awesome sampler! The best is when TobyMac go, "Give up the mic/ X to me is extremely Christ". All right! Extreme religion isn't satanism, or suicide bombings, or killing abortion doctors, or not making complex personal decisions on your own anymore... Oh wait, that's all religion anyhow. Christians can't rock and spreading the word of the Lord is lame. BP File next to: Desperate mind control experiments.

WIRE + THE CREEPING NOBODIES
Live at Lee's Palace, Sept. 15.
The Nobodies are the only band in the city that wouldn't send me into apoplectic fits of jealousy for snagging the much-coveted opening slot for Wire. Derek Westerholm and bandmates have an avowed love and understanding for the UK post-punk era, and their, um, wiry guitar dynamics and frenetically rolling rhythms rose to the challenge. Presented as a taut four-piece, with an increasingly confident stage presence from Julia Muth, the Kosher Creeps got a potentially cold crowd cheering warmly. Expectations were impossibly high for the venerable headliners, yet Wire somehow exceeded them -- despite starting worrisomely with Colin Newman singing alone off a laminated lyric sheet. But with an atom-bomb downbeat from Robert Gotobed, the fearsome foursome raged into an hour of new material delivered with rock-solid, cyborg-like precision -- not to mention deafening volume. Finally throwing the fans a familiar bone with an encore including Pink Flag's "Reuters," "Lowdown" and title track, Wire must have made the Lee's staff nervous as the overloaded speakers crackled under the strain of some insanely processed guitar noise. Damn. JD
File next: Not mellowing with age -- that's the lowdown.

Reviewed by: Nora Charles (NC), Jonny Dovercourt (JD), Craig Fraid Dunsmuir (CFD), Alex Mlynek (AM), Buddy of the Pines (BP), Anne Sulikowski (AS), Steven Venn (SV).

Send material for review to: Wavelength, 868 Dovercourt Rd. Toronto ON M6H 2X5, attn: Nora Charles.
Please do our planet a favour and keep press clippings, glossy promotional folders, etc., to a minimum.