Monday 16 July 2012

You Are Minez - Having Your Heart Broken Means Once Having Had Somebody To Love (2012)


The new tape onslaught continues! Much has been said about boy genius Jean Sebastien Audet and his many projects, and we've finally managed to get our mitts on a tape of his. This is a really nicely packaged - and nicely executed - affair. Audet has followed the "if it sucks, tape over it" philosophy and recycled old tapes for this (ours has been dubbed onto a copy of Stompin' Tom Connors' "A Proud Canadian," which we would argue was not worthy of this fate) and carefully reconstructed tape art from the early days of the format, when the cover would be a horribly-shrunked version of the LP.

But the standout here is the music. Audet is pretty darn talented, and this tape is full of sludgy, low-fi pop goodness. We hate it when kids are so talented - we realize that we've wasted any potential we may have ever had.

Crap. What have we done with our life? Just go to the You Are Minez bandcamp and leave us alone, okay?

Saturday 14 July 2012

No River - Swamp Days (2012)


We're a bit ashamed to admit that f-word beat us to the punch on this new tape. What can we say? The recent barrage of cassettes in this city is invigorating, but it's also a bit hard to keep up with... we're used to trawling through Recordland and thrift stores for tapes, not Sloth and Hot Wax.

Anyways, this No River tape is a nice little treat with its rambling and shambling country rock... goddam it, Josiah Hughes' mighty penmanship kind of makes whatever we might have said redundant. So we'll make sure we sucker-punch him next time we see him.

Blah blah blah bandcamp blah blah wordcount.

Thursday 12 July 2012

Gold - Gold (2012)


Like the last tape we posted, this one is another study in contrasts. When she's not playing bass in the noisy Shematomas, Rena Kozak is playing more subtle guitar pop with Gold, alongside Kaelen Ohm, Extra Happy Ghost!!! Matt Swann and the ever-present boy genius, Chris Dadge.

There's been a bit of (justified) hype around this band, as it was the project that Women's Chris Reimer was involved with when he passed away earlier this year. This is great summertime music - it reminds us in places of the Smiths and New Zealand's the Bats.



We highly recommend downloading "Losing Your Hair" from the band's bandcamp.

Tuesday 10 July 2012

Shematomas - Shematomas (2012)


It wasn't until the second time that we saw the Shematomas that someone clued us in to the fact that the angsty blonde gal in the band used to be the awkward brown-haired gal in Jane Vain and the Dark Matter. The bands couldn't be more unalike, both in terms of sound and Jamie Fooks' hair colour. This tape is three quick blasts of the noisy, angry energy that the Shematomas deal in.

Oh, look! A video!



You can also hear the songs from this tape on the Shematomas' bandcamp.

Sunday 8 July 2012

Open Channels - Open Channels (2012)


We kind of like it when people slip us tapes at shows, but only kind of because then we feel a bit self-conscious and have one of those moments where we're worried that the person giving us the tape used to play in Brass and is going to kick us in the ol' raisins. Thankfully, that didn't happen this time.

However, we're still a bit cautious about posting this, as we're not clear if this is a legit Calgary release. While their Sled Island bio lists them as a Calgary band, it also calls them "Lethbridge's newest powerhouse" (which is pure hyperbole - we've been watching the Lethbridge scene and there's hasn't been much happening there in recent years. Except for Endangered Ape, the Moby Dicks, the Radians, the Ketamines, Stressed Out, Fist City, Myelin Sheaths, the Square Waves... uh.... wait, what were we saying?). Anyways, Open Channels appear to be primarily based in Calgary, so we'll let this slide. We can say, with some degree of certainty, that the band channels (ha! get it? that was a pun! man, we're on a roll today!) the synth pop sensibilities of Jeff King's Square Waves into a slightly more lo-fi direction.

Most of these tracks are available for download from the Open Channels bandcamp.

Friday 6 July 2012

Buicks - Thanks Coach (1995)


Here's another tape that Chris found at Recordland. Again, we don't know a thing about this band or this recording. Other than the fact that it was, apparently, recorded during a bunch of midnight sessions at Sundae Sound. We could tell you a story about another band that used one of those painful 8-hour sessions to record a song that was a minute and a half, but we won't.

Partly because you likely don't care, but mostly because we're feeling lazy.

Wednesday 4 July 2012

Bug Wicked - Bug Wicked (1997)


During Sled Island, our favourite (somewhat nutty) Edmontonian, Chris Zuk, somehow got lost in Inglewood and ended up in the tape section of Recordland (which, oddly, happens to us as well on an increasingly infrequent basis). He emerged victorious with a handful of tapes and not a trace of hantavirus.

The problem is, the tapes that are left squirreled away on the shelves of Recordland are pretty obscure. Who is this band? What is that bug on the cover doing? Should we care?

We don't know. Does anyone?