New Music - Part 23 - Canadian Electronica

It seems to have been a while since I have written much about my ongoing fascination with music from Canada. What jolted me into action is the recent release of Olympia, the second album by Katie Stelmanis and her band Austra. It was with some trepidation too...

Feel It Break (2011) was almost too good to be true, until that is I saw them touring it live, twice, at festivals; End of The Road 2011 and No Direction Home 2012. Things have, quite naturally and rightly so, moved on but from initial impressions I think that Olympia is a worthy successor. I can't wait to see Austra live once again to hear the new music but it doesn't seem that I'll get that opportunity in 2013.
What it did do however, and why I don't know for it only happened this evening, is  serve to remind me about Canadian duo Purity Ring (Corin Roddick and Megan James) and their 2012 début album Shrines. I think it is fair to say that it is rather more oblique and obscure, yet ultimately just as beautiful.

The thing is that it may require some effort to come to appreciate and is disorientating.

I rarely say this but its appeal is not immediate and possibly too much effort or trouble for some. I was tempted by the tag Eclectronica for a while. You can either be bothered or you simply don't get it. I understand that.

No Direction Home 2012 - electric nights

The slightly curiously named, but very likeable, Electric Dustbowl Stage was in late evening/past midnight the home to acts of an electric and/or electronic bent. Friday's two included a band very high on my 'to see-hear list' and another that was one of my highlights of EOTR 2011.
That first act is Veronica Falls and they certainly didn't disappoint:

They also played three new tracks that are not on the début album that was only released on Bella Union last year. That bodes well for their second LP I'd like to think.

The second, and the revelation to me at End of The Road last September, is Austra from Canada.

  

Electric Dustbowl head-liners on early Saturday (well actually just into Sunday morning at the start) were The Pyramids. Sharing two members with Archie Bronson Outfit you might care to label them a more raw, more rock version of the same. To be honest it is a little bit more complex than that.
It is pretty heavy and very much written and performed off the cuff, or at least that is the impression it seeks and for the great part succeeds in creating. For those, at least those with the inability of me, the lighting made photography challenging to say the least. This was the best I could manage.

It did, however, evoke the pyramid theme better than I was able to capture.

    

The following evening, although it started a little earlier it being the final evening, the music was quite possibly even more of a challenge. From California, and with a particular and uncompromising technicolor version of rock-punk, hails Mikal Cronin and his band.

And that's enough to blow any folk/country/acoustic cobwebs away.

EOTR 2011 - O Canada! (Part 1)

I have a soft spot for a great deal of music that comes out of Canada, in case you haven't already noticed, and I posted to this effect recently.
This last weekend I was spoilt rotten. Here are just two of my highlights in no particular order and more will follow on this topic.
I shall start with Timber Timbre. Their world is one of mist and shadows. They shun publicity and certainly would not be found signing CDs in the Rough Trade pop-up shop. This extends to the live show too so luckily, on a glorious sunny Saturday afternoon, they were ensconced in the perpetual twilight of the Big Top Stage.

It was easy for the lighting guys but the unchanging red glow well suited the music too.

I need the album 'Creep On Creeping On'.

Immediately following them on the same stage was a band whose recent album 'Feel It Break' I have been listening to quite often in the last month or two. The prospect of seeing them live therefore excited me but, from experience, such expectation can prove to be a double-edged sword. This time it was not. The band is Austra, its front-woman Katie Stelmanis.
  

Rather electro, rather noir in a slightly Gothic but not-at-all-depressing kind of way and utterly spellbinding. If these had been the only memorable performances by Canadian artists that I saw over the weekend I'd have been just fine about it.
It wasn't quite like that.