Banner design by Nigel Sutcliffe.
Volume 23, Issue 2
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FEATURES

Breaking fingers, destroying guitars and taking names :: Boats, on upcoming album


Words & photo by Leif Larsen

Fans of Winnipeg indie band Boats will be pleased to know that the band has been holed away producing their third studio album, To a Fairway Full of Miners. While three records in five years may seem impressive to some, frontman, Mat Klachefsky, doesn’t think they’ve done enough. Continue Reading »

Rob Crooks :: Breaking boundaries with Hearts


By Kent Davies

Rob Crooks has been a music making machine since the fourth grade. He’s been rapping, battling, making beats and sampling before he even hit high school. He’s been an integral part of Winnipeg’s burgeoning hip-hop scene, having a hand in everything from collaborating with Pip Skid on his
Skid Row album, to ripping up the stage with rap-act The Fucking Retards, to writing the bulk of Magnum K.I.’s acclaimed debut album. Whether he’s rapping in viral videos about Jets games or posting the next fresh piece of local music as a contributor on the witchpolice blog, there’s a chance you’ve been exposed to the infectious creative prowess of Rob Crooks. However, unlike his previous projects, his solo debut EP Hearts doesn’t fit in the realm of conventional hip hop. Armed with drum machines, samplers, keys and a commanding growl, he’s managed to redefine himself with a solo sound that can’t be pinned down. Combining groove-laden soundscapes and ferocious lo-fi post punk, Crooks has managed to create an EP that appeals to an audience beyond the hip-hop community. Recently Stylus interviewed Crooks before his EP launch at the Lo Pub on March 15. Continue Reading »

Frank Turner – No Rest For the Wicked


by Sheldon Birnie

Frank Turner is a hard-traveling, hard-rocking English folk singer. His latest release, England Keep My Bones (Epitaph) is full of tunes about love, politics, and rock-n-roll. With another stop in Winnipeg on the horizon (Turner played to a packed crowd at the West End in October), Stylus caught up with the busy troubadour over the phone on a tour stop in Boston. Continue Reading »

Your Ears Gotta Eat Too :: Food for Thought with Viridians


by Victoria King

Local act Viridians release their debut full-length album at the Lo Pub on April 12th. We sat down with Neil Exell and Joseph Péloquin-Hopfner of Viridians at Carlos & Murphy’s and ended up with a hankering for their sweet new music. And nachos. Continue Reading »

RatTail :: Self-Proclaimed Weirdos

By Janet Adamana

After only a few short years of writing, touring and performing, the slightly bizarre but incredibly creative Toronto trio RatTail continue their path of injecting contagious, raw, experimental pop into the Canadian indie music industry. Continue Reading »

The Visions of Grimes


By Adrienne Yeung

Electropop pixie Grimes (a.k.a. Claire Boucher)’s angelic voice has captivated millions of pairs of ears in the past two years with her dark and sugary witch house beats. Less than a year after her latest release, the split LP Darkbloom (with d’Eon), the Montreal songstress is back with her most complex and lush sounding album yet, Visions. Stylus got in touch with her via e-mail, and this is what she had to say. Continue Reading »

Citing Sources :: John K. Samson’s “Provincial”

By Victoria King

After a disturbingly friendly-weathered day, John K. Samson welcomes the subzero chill that we Winnipeggers are so familiar with. “I’m kind of relieved it’s getting a little colder. It was freaking me out yesterday. It was kind of unsettling… We need the real winter,” he explains over the phone.   Continue Reading »

.RU :: Underground tweenoise masters in the post-USSR


By Kristel Jax

In mid 2010, I started billing myself as a DJ who played Solntsetsvety. Solntsetsvety – or Солнцецветы, a Russian word that translates to Sun Flowers (abbreviated СЦ in Cyrillic) – is an artist network which has been spawning lo-fi tracks and albums ranging from harsh noise and pure experimental to transcendental kraut jams and lo-fi reggaes since the late ’90s. Solntsetsvety is based – sort of – in cities Minsk, Belarus and Moscow, Russia, and sort of on their website, lesom.ru. The groups belonging to Solntsetsvety were hard to penetrate, even armed with digital translation and English articles on David MacFadyen’s Far From Moscow blog. Solntsetsvety was magic – and a mystery too intense to shrug off. Continue Reading »

Memoryhouse – The Slideshow Effect

by Adrienne Yeung

Forget the map. A pair of headphones and Memoryhouse’s debut LP,
The Slideshow Effect, are all you need to find a little oasis of sepia-toned zen anytime, anyplace. (It also helps if you have the muscle tone to not drop your backpack on a stranger’s foot like I did when I was chilling/dozing to this during my commute.) The duo behind this ambient, invigorating pop consist of Guelph natives Evan Abeele and Denise Nouvion, who took the time to play Q&A with Stylus. Continue Reading »

The Hidden Words explore the Bahá’í faith in song


By Sheldon Birnie

The Hidden Words is a Montréal-based acoustic folk-pop project celebrating the scriptural tradition of the Bahá’í faith. Initiated by Alden Penner (ex-Unicorns, Clues), the project has grown to include Penner’s old friend and collaborator Jamie Thompson (ex-Unicorns, ex-Islands), as well as Marie-Claire Saindon, Neah Bahji Kelly, James Farr, and Ben Howden. Continue Reading »

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