By Taylor Benjamin Burgess

For the past year, Vampires have been racking up bigger and bigger live shows, including the past two Element Sircuses and the always-packed Cabaret! at the Standard. When this guitar-and-drum duo plays, they navigate some sweat-drenched territory between southern rock and Interpol, whipping the crowd into head-swinging and dancing. And if that isn’t enough, Josh Butcher and David Dobbs stop in the middle of their set, trade instruments, and keep on going. After building a local following, they’ve gotten around to recording, with the help of Jeff Patteson of Home Street Recording and some new rented gear. Stylus eventually wrangled a 15-minute phone call out of David Dobbs.

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I know these guys have said that they like Fugazi and a number of other bands on Dischord Records, but I still hear hints of Pavement in some songs—especially in the upbeat intro and the grandiose guitar duel of title track “The Sun Hot.” However, Pavement didn’t take themselves seriously. Singers Jesse Hill and Cole Woods trade off vocal duties quite smoothly, having two distinct voices, and they sing a wash of nice wide chords when the two blend them together. Their lyrics are mostly concerned with nostalgia, (which I find really ironic since not all of the band members have graduated from high school yet) but they yearn for a memory-filled past well. As a group, Right Through are never out of step with one another and their musical chops really shine through on The Sun Hot, which is best at its really moody moments. It’s awesome that these guys have taken their angst and channelled it into something like a disc like this. (Independent, www.myspace.com/rightthrough) Taylor Benjamin Burgess

Local weirdo-rocker Steve Basham’s follow-up to his previous solo disc Thick comes at you with the same lo-fi hilariousness that his music collective Mortfell Oktorium are known for. The first cut, “Bored Like a Dinosaur Robot with His Magical Pet Dog,” is an hilarious tale of honesty and intrigue in which Basham laments about writing songs because he’s bored until he starts another year of art school. That sets the stage for a series of rockin’ playful songs about underwater spiders and dead whales. With help from his Mortfell bandmates J.R. Hill and Toby Gillies, Basham’s songs are a lot catchier and thoughtful than his previous efforts without losing their charming silly spirit. (Mortfell Oktorium, www.myspace.com/stevestbasham) Kent Davies

By Jenny Henkelman

The West End Cultural Centre is putting all of its new space to good use. The new building has plenty of space for, say, visual art as well as the beautiful tunes we’re accustomed to hearing at Winnipeg’s best listening room. This spring, the Melodies on Mercredi series is bringing the two together and providing a showcase for emerging artists all at the same time. And also pudding cups.
Maybe you saw the first edition in February, with Kipp Kocay and a display of work by the photography collective f/action. April 7 will bring a new version with music by Del Barber and Carly Dow. For the visual component, art students at Daniel MacIntyre Collegiate are creating works inspired by the singer-songwriters’ music. “It is very exciting and honoring to be part of the Melodies on Mercredi series,” says Carly Dow. “The WECC is one of my favourite venues in the city. I love the idea of combining visual art with music, and I am glad to see so much support for upcoming artists!”

The fact that high school-age artists will be creating visual art to go with her folky songs is pretty appropriate for Dow, given that she herself picked up the guitar in grade ten. “I was extremely inspired after hearing a cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ at a Remembrance Day service.  A lot of my close friends were also very involved in music at the time, and they had a huge influence on my songwriting and performing.”

High school wasn’t the only place Dow found a supportive community for making music; like a growing roster of Winnipeg folkies (from Cara Luft to the Fo!ps), she participated in the Winnipeg Folk Festival’s Young Performers program. “I learned a lot and made many personal connections through those experiences,” she says. “Each of my mentors have been amazing (Luke Doucet, Carolyn Mark, Cara Luft, Amelia Curran), and I would definitely recommend the program to any young artists who are interested in getting exposure. Winnipeg has a fantastic folk music community, and I’ve seen a passion and love for music here like nowhere else.”

By Sabrina Carnevale
Winnipeg’s hip-hop community has been a tight-knit one since the 1990s. Even today, local hip-hop acts turn out to play live every other week and usually to a packed house. So when the Lytics, made up of brothers Alex “B-Flat” Sannie, Andrew “A-Nice” Sannie, Anthony “Ashy” Sannie as well as their cousin Mungala “Munga” Londe, came on the scene in 2003, these sweet-faced 20-somethings were the new kids on the block.
“You have so many artists [in Winnipeg] who are able to make music inexpensively and as frequent as they want and, as a result, there are tons of hip hop shows,” says eldest brother B-Flat, 29. “Whether we feel totally a part of it, I don’t know.”

The Lytics make music on their own terms—no one tells them they have to sound a certain way. In that respect, they don’t necessarily feel they fit into just one of Winnipeg’s musical niches.

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By Cindy Doyle

Eve Rice is no stranger to Winnipeg’s music scene. Whether you know her as the electro-charged, sex kitten Vav Jungle or as DJ Beekeeni, if you’ve been to dance parties, various openings or even fundraisers around the city this past year, it is likely that Rice has made you dance at least once. Rice was part of the lineup for Stylus’ 20th birthday bash this past October; this January, Stylus sat down and talked to one of Winnipeg’s most renowned music veterans about her plans for the future and her ideas about making and loving music as we embark on a new decade.

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By Jenny Henkelman

Photo by Andrew Workman

“I’m cooking on the tour,” Matt Magura announces between bites of his “Little Tadpole” breakfast at the Toad in the Hole on a Saturday afternoon. “I’ve got a Magic Bullet and a butane stove. I’m going to make fucking curry wraps. Smoothies every morning!” Bassist Louis Levèsque Coté is agreeable to the notion; he and Ian La Rue start discussing the possibility of getting an inverter so that the Magic Bullet and possibly a rice cooker could be operated while the van is in motion.

This kind of creativity is surely inevitable when you have seasoned musicians looking forward to a tour. These guys have been around. When Ian La Rue and the Condor (drummer Magura, Coté, and guitarist Andrew Workman) list their other current and previous bands, the lists are long and overlapping. La Rue and Coté have both done stints in Boats and the Paperbacks, for instance. Workman has played in everything from the Horribly Awfuls to Cone Five.

But this is the first time this particular combination has come about, and that, Coté says, is all because of La Rue. “The Condor wouldn’t be a band outside of Ian,” he says. For La Rue, though, having the Condor behind him is a dream come true. “I’ve been looking forward to making a full band record for my whole life. This is it—kinda like the pinnacle of my career,” he says of the new record, titled A History in Layers. “It was a big move on a couple levels, because I always recorded my own stuff, played all my own stuff. So this is the first time I’ve let someone else record it.”

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By Taylor Burgess

In his disorderly Wolseley basement named the Mortfell Oktorium Studio, J.R. Hill has been focusing on recording and playing shows here in Winnipeg. “I don’t really wanna go on tour again unless I know that I won’t lose thousands of dollars, because I can’t afford it,” he said.

Guitar pedals, a stuffed monkey, a pink flamingo, cardboard houses and utter amounts of crap looked like they were going to fall off the tin shelves at any minute. “Like in the summer, I lost, like 1,500 bucks. I just finished paying it off last month.” Continue Reading »

By Michael Elves

While reports of the music industry’s demise have been greatly exaggerated, the more recent prognosis is that the full-length album is dead (or at least dying). Quickly disseminated and digested as MP3 singles and the shortened attention span of the Twitterverse have created a (not so) perfect storm where albums are given short shrift.
So, local act the Paperbacks chose to follow up their 2007 full-length, An Illusion Against Death, with a double-album.

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COCKTAIL HOSTAGES
Ransom EP
Although they are just beginning to establish themselves, local act Cocktail Hostages have found a niche in the already-crowded hard rock scene. Their Ransom EP features tracks more reminiscent of the glory days of dark, brooding grunge than the rise of the Nickelback and their doppelgangers. The EP starts with “Crawl,” a catchy, power chord-heavy hard rock number before settling into a couple steady atmospheric tracks. “In the Woods” is more appealing than the lead-off cut, with frontman Roger Moufiler’s deep voice circling around Eastern-sounding guitar riffs. The final track is the EP’s strongest. No one can deny the hypnotic power and ominous charm of “Midnight City,” pulsating towards the disc’s fiery conclusion. (Independent, www.myspace.com/cocktailhostages) Kent Davies