本輯耗時四年於四個城市進行錄製，邀Sparklehorse、Broken Social Scene、Stars與Metric等人助陣，是張溢滿瑰麗氛圍的絕美作品。質地新鮮細膩、充滿影像張力，亦毫無偏差地描繪出新世代的都會遊憩感。飄渺的溫潤電氣、似有若無的爵士節拍與鋼琴主奏，Emily的歌聲彷彿如風消逝的耳語。
提起Broken Social Scene三姝，論姿色、才藝與唱功皆有不同。Amy Millan有著率直難掩的風采，一股平實傻勁最適合Stars的爽快曲風；Feist的姣好面容與柔情之聲，即使最堅硬的冰山都得即刻溶解。反觀Emily Haines，勢頭雖稍遜於兩位姊妹，卻是Broken Social Scene家族裡最知性、最勾人心魂也最不染塵世的謎樣女子。
成長於藝術世家，Emily Haines的父親是加拿大有名的爵士詩人Paul Haines。Paul Haines曾於六零年代活躍於紐約的格林威治村，即便不彈奏樂器，卻將詩作譜入自由奔放的爵士樂曲之中，與諸多知名樂手成為搭檔。Emily Haines自幼遺傳了父親的才氣與天資，浸淫在詩與音樂的領域，隨後也至著名的藝術學院就讀。
1998年在紐約組了Indie-Dance樂隊Metric，並在千禧年成為Broken Social Scene的客席成員，Emily Haines早在1996年便自費出版了首張個人專輯Cut in Half and Also Double。新專輯Knives Don't Have Your Back之所以讓樂迷苦等八年才告問世，除了Emily Haines將事業重心鎖定在Metric，她求善求美的個性也是原因所在。花上四年時間於四座不同的城市（紐約、洛城、多倫多與蒙特婁）錄音，邀Sparklehorse、Broken Social Scene、Stars與Metric的圈中好友助陣，Knives Don't Have Your Back是一張溢滿了瑰麗氛圍的絕美作品。
想像著金髮纖細的Emily Haines穿著黑色的絲質晚禮服，斜倚在煙霧繚繞的錄音間躺椅上，輕柔地吐出吹彈可破的迷魅音符。逐句輕疊的白色鋼琴鍵隨著木質監聽喇叭的揚聲而陣陣顫抖。Knives Don't Have Your Back不但質地新鮮細膩、影像張力深入肌理，最誘人的是它毫無偏差地描繪了新世代的都會遊憩感。既夢幻又寫實，既復古又摩登。飄渺的溫潤電氣、似有若無的爵士節拍與Emily Haines輕描淡寫的如風耳語；這是週日午後躺在床上讓腦袋空轉之時，最適宜播放的背景唱片。
下次有人問起加拿大第一女伶是誰，別再回答過時生灰的Celine Dion或眉間發黑的Avril Lavigne；當你聽完這張唱片，聽過第二首歌Doctor Blind，Emily Haines將成為你最先想到的答案。

Canadian duo Megan James and Corin Roddick - aka Purity Ring - will return with a second album entitled 'Another Eternity’ on March 3rd.
Their 2012 breakthrough debut ‘Shrines’ was in many ways a prescient suggestion of indie and popular music to come. The album earned the #1 spot on iTunes electronic chart, Pitchfork “Best New Music” laurels and praise from New York Times, Rolling Stone, NPR and more.
While ‘Shrines' was composed remotely between Halifax and Montreal, 'Another Eternity' marks the first time Megan and Corin were able to create a record in the same room. The pair ventured home to the frozen industrial landscapes of their birthplace Edmonton, Alberta to document much of what was to become the album. Megan and Corin recorded and produced their follow-up themselves, as always.
With 'Another Eternity', Purity Ring trade the claustrophobic atmospheres of ‘Shrines' for wide-open expanses of sound. Between the brooding anthem ‘begin again’, the infectious ‘bodyache’, and the time suspending ‘stillness in woe’, the emotional geography of Another Eternity is wider than ever: gloomy valleys and gleaming peaks in equal measure. Megan’s vocals are in sharper focus as she details her lyrical universe of “sweat and dreams” populated by seacastles, rattling spines and weeping drawers. Corin's gift for evocative melody remains intact but his percussive skills and sense of composition have been refined and honed.

1Sleep Patterns
2Lately
3The waves
4To the lighthouse

Following her departure from Crystal Castles and ensuing war of words with her former bandmate Ethan Kath, Alice Glass has shared her first bit of solo material. It's called "Stillbirth" – that's the artwork above – and will be released tomorrow, without a label. The song was co-written and produced by Jupiter Keyes. All proceeds from the song's digital After Glass left Crystal Castles last year, Ethan Kath kept the band going with a new song called "Frail". The song was accompanied by a statement from Kath that was critical of Glass, saying that she "didn't appear on Crystal Castles' best known songs" and was wrongly credited for writing songs that he had written.
Glass responded, saying that she "wrote almost all of the lyrics in my former band and the vat majority of the vocal melodies" and "shaped the sound and aesthetic from the very beginning".

World-renowned singer, songwriter and performer City and Colour (aka Dallas Green), returns with his fifth album If I Should Go Before You . Unique to this project, the studio players on the album are made up of Green s trusted touring band: Jack Lawrence (The Raconteurs, Dead Weather) on bass, Dante Schwebel (Spanish Gold, Dan Auerbach) on guitar, Doug MacGregor (Constantines) on drums and Matt Kelly on pedal steel guitar and keys.

asperity (æˈspɛrɪtɪ) noun (plural) -ties
1. roughness or sharpness of temper
2. roughness or harshness of a surface, sound, taste, etc
3. a condition hard to endure; affliction
4. (physics) the elastically compressed region of contact between two surfaces caused by the normal force
“I was thinking about the concept of difficulty. Whether in life or in nature - of conflict, of being troubled. The idea of friction. Also in geology, an asperity is some part of a faultline that doesn’t move which can create an earthquake, which is quite an evocative concept.”
Asperities is the fourth solo album by acclaimed Canadian cellist Julia Kent. As the title suggests, this is a record born of conflict: internal, personal and global. Universal themes. The build of pressure and the threat of violent release. Modern guilt. Modern fears.
Kent draws from a rich well of emotion, the pieces deceptively rendered, each feeling like a miniature dramatic epic in its own right – sculpted and self-contained. Her work on recent film scores is very much in evidence. While cinematic in scope, there is nothing as trite as a Hollywood ending here. There is tension and darkness, the edges cracked and frayed. “A lot of the melodic material is based on semitones,” Julia elaborates. “So in the music there is an inherent sense of dissonance; that things are too close for comfort. More generally, it seems like a particularly dark time in the world right now, and I think that definitely had an influence too.”
The album was recorded, produced and mixed in its entirety by Julia in her New York studio. This method of working lends the record a sense of isolation that carries a powerful resonance in our modern over-connected world. “I really like the autonomy of working alone,” she says. “I feel that I can transmit something emotionally that I might not be able to if there were someone else involved.”
Utilising looped cello, electronics and found sounds, Kent creates a world where the technological and the organic merge in perfect symbiosis, the layers of sound peeling back to reveal a beating, bloody human heart at its centre. “I did quite a lot of processing of the cello sound and used different electronic textures,” she explains of her technique. “I was trying to get away from the acoustic cello sound and find one that was more textural and more expressive of the material.”
Throughout the plaintive strains of opener ‘Hellebore’, the prowling grace of ‘The Leopard’, the elegant restraint of ‘Heavy Eyes’ and the immersive closer ‘Tramontana’, Kent’s cello evokes romance and loss, a yearning for simplicity. This is the soundtrack to the transitory nature of life and the inevitability of death.
Vancouver-born and New York-based, Julia Kent rose to prominence with Rasputina and Antony & The Johnsons. Her extensive résumé includes recent work with Swans, Aidan Baker, Rachel Grimes, Rutger Zuydervelt, Barbara Morgenstern, Library Tapes and Khan of Finland.
Kent has also composed extensively for film, theatre and dance. Her cinematic work includes the documentaries The Boxing Girls of Kabul and Rwanda, L’Impossible Pardon, American feature A Short History of Decay, short films Doppio Urlo, and the award-winning Oasis. Her music also was used in Paolo Sorrentino’s 2011 film This Must Be The Place. As a solo artist she has toured extensively in Europe and North America and performed at festivals including Primavera Sound, Reeperbahn, Unsound, and Meltdown.

"Soft Hate" is exclusively available on limited edition gold cassette tape! Only 250 copies produced. Comes with digital download and 5 original photographic prints from singer and photographer, Denise Nouvion.

Picture You Staring gathers strength through intimacy. Self-written, recorded, produced, and the result of 12 months holed up in Arbutus Records’ Montreal office-space turned studio, this album contains 12 impeccable examples of pop craftsmanship that will reward repeat listeners.
Singer Jane Penny gives a voice to the silent girl at the edge of the circle, disillusioned but honest and unpretentious, a tone complemented by David Carriere’s seamless guitar playing and the measured drumming of Riley Fleck. TOPS’ songs are delivered with a cool restraint that blend with the individuality and self-assured desire of their female lead.
LA-based painter Jessica Dean Harrison created the artwork especially for the release. It is a conceptual interpretation of the record’s title, continued in a large poster depicting a group scene, included with the purchase of a vinyl record. If you’d like to learn more about Riley, pre-order the album on iTunes and you will receive an informational PDF created by his bandmates that depicts his growth and development into a man. Or pre-order the cassette, CD or Vinyl here (record pre-orders come in Coke bottle clear).
Picture You Staring is out September 2th (in North America) and September 8th (in UK/Europe) on vinyl, CD, cassette and digitally.

We’re starting 2011 with the release of our iTunes Originals Session! When we were in LA playing the Jimmy Kimmel show in December, we spent a day at East West Studios recording off the cuff and live off the floor. We captured for the first time on tape (not a camera phone) the extended versions of a few of our live concert classics as well as a couple acoustic numbers accompanied by a string quartet led by Todor Kobakov. The result is an exclusive iTunes live album which includes 8 songs and a serious 30 minute interview with the band.

Like any good flower the album is fragrant, and like any good spring old ways are melted away and brought back in rich fashion. Grimes swirls and sighs glowing pop through a midnight mind; her catchy melodies swoon overtop clear and complex rhythms. D'eon is serious and free, his fancy footwork borrowed from late 90s house music (Chicago, Detroit), and hip-hop MPC style snare rolls.
The music on both sides is certainly dark and bass heavy as the title would suggest, but a beautiful and crisp high end unifies the production. Grimes and D'eon have developed as muscians, wiser and more focused. It is true blooming and a mindful accomplishment for both up-coming acts.
- words from Marilis Cardinal
'Darkbloom' has been mastered at the legendary Dubplates & Mastering in Germany.