Saturday 16 March 2019

Puberty - First Slime (2009)




We kind of forgot how great Calgary was in 2009. Between the Palomino, Broken City, the Marquee Room and the Warehouse/Underground, there were a pile of great places to see shows. We remember seeing Puberty, but don't remember that they put out a tape. And, wow! what an amazing, lo-fi, muddy, glorious thing it is. You probably don't need us to tell you that two thirds of this trio went on to form the Courtneys, while the other third stayed in Calgary (for a bit, anyways) to become part of Friendo. But, hey, we'll remind you anyways.

Relive Puberty here.

Friday 15 March 2019

Seizure Salad/IndienSoci - The New The Good The Bad and The Ugly Sound Track (2009)





Here's more from Seizure Salad, along with Braids' frontperson Raphaelle Standell-Preston's solo project, IndienSoci. Weird Canada has some good things to say about this tape (as they always do - did?), and we're hard-pressed (ie too lazy) to add anything to what they said. Plus, they left us a little taste of the IndienSoci side:



Get this split tape here.

Thursday 14 March 2019

Seizure Salad - Ice Cream Ala Mode Tape 2 "Blank To The Bank"



One of the great things about the big stack of tapes we borrowed from Kevin Stebner is that there's a wealth of stuff that we overlooked (like the idiots we are) from recent history. Like this sprawling epic from Seizure Salad, which effortlessly slides from ambient audio collages to lo-fi pop to... well, weirdness. It's a fun 90-minute trip.

Seize the day!

Friday 8 March 2019

Sandy Cassels - Sandy Cassels



Huge thanks to Bart Records guru Kevin Stebner for opening up his cassette archive to us. We've got a big stack of tapes that we're sorting through, and are going to kick off with this tape from one of our unsung favourites. Sandy Cassels was the vehicle for Sandy Barron, and on this tape it's just Barron and his guitar and some excellent, literate songwriting. "Otto Bauer" has long been a favourite (if you can track down a copy of the 7" with this, don't pass it up - the A side, "Championship Banners," is excellent), and well worth checking out.

Get it here.

Thursday 7 March 2019

Melted Mirror - Past Life (2019)



After suffering a much-delayed vinyl release for their sophmore release, we're very pleased that Melted Mirror have done the right thing and gone for a cassette release for album #3. Mostly because it gives us an excuse to gush about this thing. Oh, what a thing it is.

The four plus years that Melted Mirror have been honing their sound has paid off, and working with Shout Out Out Out Out Out Out Out Out's Nik Kozub as producer is like a cherry on top. There's an incredible balance to this, with guitarist Jeebs Nabil's guitar complementing but never competing with the synth work of Cian Haley and Chris Zajko. This feels confident and comfortable, in a genre that tends to poseurs and, uh, cheese. And let's not overlook that cover art and packaging!



This is going to be on repeat for a while in the CCPS offices. Grab the download from the Melted Mirror bandcamp; you should be able to get copies of the tape around town.