These songs have been covered by numerous adult contemporary artists. However, comparing adult contemporary versions to the original is like holding up a mall-rat’s cheaply made sports jersey knock off to your parent’s old little league jersey. Please do not peg me as one that peddles the superiority of all things “vintage”. The fact of the matter is that Getz and Gilberto sound BETTER than most, maybe all the new jazz I have come across. It is delightfully smooth (though not superficial or unremarkable). Getz and Gilberto being the founding fathers of bossa nova jazz, blend rhythm guitar, saxophone, simple hi-hat/cymbal/snare rim beats and a slow and essential bass line. Along with the vocals (English or Portuguese) these elements create a dreamlike state of relaxation and appreciation. This is an album perfect for listening to as you are walking home on a sunny morning after a night of partying or lying on a beach or playing with your cat or cooking, the list goes on. The bottom line is that this music makes me incredibly happy and that’s not just because it reminds me of Peter Sellers from the 1968 film “The Party”. (Verve Records www.vervemusicgroup.com)

So, you think that you have it tough, loading up your drum kit, your Marshall stacks, and oh-so delicate guitars, and driving them off to some venue?  Well, you’ve never heard about sonic cuisine.

“Sonic cuisine one of the things that gave us confidence to do Cluster Festival,” says one of the festival’s co-founders, Luke Nickel. While he and Heidi Ugrin were attending the University of Manitoba for their music degrees, they were also members of XIE, the eXperimental Improv Ensemble, and wanted to organize a fundraiser for Amnesty International. “We cooked a meal for something like 60 people. And we cooked it for them, in front of them, live on microphones, while making music,” says Nickel. “Which is kinda crazy. Three of us cooked a meal for 65 and had a convincing performance of music at the same time.”

“Yeah, just think of all the onions you need to cut for 60 people,” says Ugrin. “We made a three or four course meal.”

“And the fact that the place we were in didn’t have a kitchen. We had to bring the entire kitchen,” says Nickel.

Needless to say, after that performance, and working together in XIE for some time, Ugrin and Nickel felt pretty prepared to organize anything they wanted to.

Cluster Festival’s second year will host a trio of events at the tail end of this week, on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday.

The bar is set pretty high—last year’s festival included performances in Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall and 290 McDermot, including challenging (yet rewarding) contemporary dance, projections, art installations, and musical performances.
Within the experimental scene in Winnipeg (of which there’s quite a sizable one—what with the WSO’s New Music Festival, send + receive, and Groundswell), they recognized the need for more integrated arts, rather than multiple-disciplinary.

The difference between integrated arts and multiple-disciplinary arts is a semantic one, as Nickel notes, but still an important one. “You’re actually forming relations and collaborations within [the different art forms], and ‘multi-disciplinary’ doesn’t address that.”

Ugrin says that it means the artists are “not trying to slap on multiple disciplines for the sake of it, but only if works organically ask for different degrees of arts. It’s not just music and visual arts,” and she slaps her hands in different places to emphasize her point.

“Freyja Olfason, who is an intermedia artist,” Ugrin continues, “she is presenting her large, wonderful work Avatar, which incorporates dance, live video projection, webcam, Chat Roulette, music—that is basically our posterchild for integrated arts right there. That’s in the middle of our festival on Friday night.”

This Thursday, taking place at Crescent Fort Rouge United Church in Osborne Village, organist Alexandra Fol will be playing a number of pieces, half of which were written for the festival. And for the second half of the evening, Trio ’86 will be playing a set original works by Cluster’s creators.  “We’re going to be projecting images all over the pipe organ, essentially the front wall, as our way to transform the space.” Giorgio Magnanensi will also be doing electronic improvisations to start off both halves of the night.

And on this Saturday, the Cluster organizers are promising one hell of a warehouse party, with BLITZ. It’s going to be three open floors of beatnik poetry, DJs, Wallballs, and way more.

So the three nights of Cluster Festival should be interesting, to say the least. And what the festival creators have to share are nothing but thanks, and encouragement.

“I’m 22, and we’ve done this thing,” says Nickel. “People should think to themselves, ‘What does Winnipeg need?’ And then do it. Whoever feels that something is lacking, should go and create that venue for themselves.”

Emma Cloney’s debut Something to Say has the sound of an old favourite. Like something pulled out of a box of long forgotten albums. Maybe it’s that Gordon Lightfoot influence she nods to. Or her adherence to a classic folk sound tempered by her feminine rumbling voice. A voice that takes you back to the female artists boom of an early Lilith Fair variety (think Jewel, McLachlin, Harris). And by familiar we don’t mean tired but comforting. Perhaps, even a breath of fresh air. Assuming, of course, you appreciate a roots sound that gets at times a little Country. Representing Manitoba in the Canadian music scene, Cloney stays true to her love of a more traditional folk sound embracing the classic instruments of her genre like the fiddle, mandolin, upright bass and banjo. No electric guitar, no skinny jeans, just a girl and her guitar singing about rivers, home and her family. Song not to miss on this one: a hootenanny of a track entitled, “Daddy’s Guild Guitar.” But for a more contemporary listener “Love the Way You Love Me” will suit you fine. (STUDIO 11, www.studio11audio.com, www.emmacloney.com) Cindy Doyle

Hey everyone out there in blog land, mark this as another step on our slow transition from the print world to online. I’m going to start blogging about my musical/artistic endeavors, identifying what the fuck I like about music, what I dislike about music journalism, what writers are getting me hot, etc. etc.

So, first up: why did I hate M.I.A. last year? I didn’t buy /\/\/\Y/\, unlike her last two albums, which I ate up. I loved the video for “Born Free,” and I even pitted it against Gaga’s epic “Telephone” in all of their ridiculously epic proportions. I generally hate location sound (or any extra sound) being used for music videos, but still “Born Free” is the shit, a raucous quasi-political shocker. That and a sample of “Ghost Rider” by Suicide go a long way. Checking out other songs on the album off Youtube has been either an earful of gross or great.

And before that, there was the NY Times piece that Maya took offence to, and tweeted writer Lynn Hirschberg’s phone number. The piece had some wonderful background on M.I.A., who was the newest sensation after “Paper Planes” exploded, and her all-too-brief preggerz performance on the Grammys. In the profile piece was a couple of quotes, mostly out-of-context and off-the-cuff, that made M.I.A.’s political stance seem closer to totalitarian. Laaaaaaaaaaaame. In defence of his piece on Billy Joel, Chuck Klosterman said that profile writing is a pretty rudimentary process–you take the most interesting things that people say, and write around them. Still, creative liberties, framing, and a simple sentence can mislead any reader who just accepts an implicit opinion as fact, like hinting that M.I.A. is a self-conscious terrorist. (I can’t wait until someone uses that quote against me.)

Maybe it was some of the bad reviews of the album that kept me away, or maybe some of the negative press. But I think part of it had to do with witch house. Srsly. Maybe the blogs were reposting pictures of ’80s goths, but whenever I would listen to White Ring’s “IxC999″;

That flow? The distorted drum machine tom-toms? The gunshots? This has M.I.A. written all over it.  And when M.I.A. zigged and went the way of experimental, I suppose I zagged, and wanted something catchier.

But that’s neither here nor there. I’m going to finally check out /\/\/\Y/\ and counterpart B-side mixtape Vicki Leekx for myself, like any truly discerning person.