When Esmerine surfaced with La Lechuza in 2011, the album signaled many things: the band's first new recordings in six years, an expanded line-up, and a song cycle inspired by and dedicated to the life and untimely death of a dear friend and fellow musician. What wasn't immediately clear was whether this acclaimed record would mark the opening of a new chapter for the band, or stand alone as a singular work of eulogy and homage driven by emotion and circumstance.
Esmerine's new album Dalmak emphatically confirms that the group has indeed continued writing, exploring and collaborating - definitively extending its horizons in this new iteration of the band's trajectory. Bruce Cawdron (marimba) resigned from his seat as drummer for Godspeed You! Black Emperor in 2012, allowing him to focus more fully on Esmerine alongside co-founder and cellist Rebecca Foon (Silver Mt. Zion, Set Fire To Flames); the two principals also recruited percussionist Jamie Thompson (Unicorns, Islands) and multi-instrumentalist Brian Sanderson as full-time members to solidify the group as a writing and performing quartet.
European tours in 2011-2012 brought Esmerine to Istanbul, where the group's enthusiastic reception led to an invitation for an artist residency in the city. Dalmak is the fruit of that visit: the majority of the album was recorded in Istanbul, where the band's four Canadian musicians were joined by an equal number of Turkish guest players: Hakan Vreskala, Baran Aşık, Ali Kazim Akdağ, James Hakan Dedeoğlu on various instruments.
Dalmak is a Turkish verb with many connotations: to contemplate, to be absorbed in, to dive into, to bathe in, to rush into, to plummet. As a title for Esmerine's new album, "dalmak" refers in a literal sense to immersion in the culture and music of Istanbul but also appropriately evokes the range of music that emerged from this immersion: a collection of songs that shift between meditative pulsing and enveloping restraint to headlong flights into rhythm and groove. With Dalmak, Esmerine presents some of its most richly minimal and intimate music alongside what is surely its most explosive, energized and ornate. The album is a tour-de-force of cross-cultural music-making, emotive but unsentimental, deeply textured and detailed but never precious, superbly guided throughout by a balance of DIY rock, new folk and modern classical/contemporary sensibilities.
With initial recording by Barkin Engin and Metin Bozkurt in Istanbul, Esmerine laid down the live bed tracks for the up-tempo rhythmic songs at the album's core: "Lost River Blues", "Barn Board Fire" and "Translator's Clos". Marimba, cello, drums, tenor banjo, bass and trumpet are joined by bendir, darbuka, erbane, meh, barama, saz and electric guitar from the local players for these centerpiece tracks, where extended melodic themes are passed around and woven through staccato grooves and polyrhythmic vamps in deeply satisfying fashion. The sessions continued back in Montréal at Breakglass Studio, where Cawdron and Foon tracked the more studied cello and marimba songs "Learning To Crawl" and "White Pine", and where the album's gorgeously saturated warmth, depth and pulsing grit was achieved courtesy of Breakglass head engineer Jace Lasek (Wolf Parade, The Besnard Lakes, Suuns) and Ian Ilavsky, who mixed the album alongside Beckie and Bruce.

"Kind of disturbing but utterly genius." Electroqueer
"Skiddling into the realms of being full-blown electro-pop smashes, while retaining a classy club credibility." NME
Torontonian quartet, Azari & III have announced their debut self-titled album for release on 8th August on Turbo Recordings / Loose Lips Records / Modular. It follows the release of the single 'Hungry For The Power,' which erupted a storm of awe on the underground music scene, and a collaborative track 'Stay Here' with Friendly Fires in 2010. The record is set to become the sound of a dystopian summer with their innately brooding beat and sordid-pop edge.
Azari & III's unique blend of moody electronica, dark yet hooky vocal choruses and analog-thick rhythms has earned them a hardcore following and sees this album as one of the most-anticipated in the calendar. The four-piece, consisting of producer/musicians Dinamo Azari and Alixander III with vocalists Fritz Helder and Starving Yet Full, have crafted a defining sound that relishes in its references while maintaining a future perspective.
From the velvety refrains of 'Reckless With Your Love' through to the creeping melancholy of 'Manhooker' and the unhinged technopera of 'Undecided', their album possesses an individual classic-future feel, with trademark lush synthesizations, biting soulful chorus's and ominous overtones.

Uncompromisingly distinct while redolent of modal minimalism, 70s, new age, and folk music, it effectively blurs distinctions between traditional composition and more open, overlapping genres that hover in the half-light between acoustic and electronic refinement.
Rather than anything grandiose or explicitly seductive, the effect of Grafts is best compared with the subtle intoxication of micro-dosing on LSD or the clarity afforded by quiet meditation, in a sense dilating the listener’s focus to a heightened awareness of the piece’s intricate peripheral tones as much as its melodic centre ground, with a beautifully understated, surreal resolution. The piece flickers with gentle optimism, never at random, illuminating unseen spaces that quickly gradient into nothingness.
In both concept and execution, Grafts resonates with Kara-Lis Coverdale’s established roots as an improvisational virtuoso and accomplished pianist as much as her academically informed approach to electroacoustic composition that showcases a distinct omnivorous appetite for the digital.
It’s a record that seems to unravel in perpetuity; exposing new layers with every repeated listen. It never fully commits to a resolution either, lingering like a slowly dispersing plume of smoke as you reach its end and head straight back to the beginning - something we've done countless times.
If you're yet to sink into this incredible piece of music - we genuinely envy what's in store for you. If you're familiar with it already, you'll know exactly what we're talking about.

Montréal chamber rock ensemble Esmerine return with the new full-length album Lost Voices, the most dynamic and incendiary record of the group’s career, following its highly-acclaimed and Juno award-winning 2013 release Dalmak. Led by co-founders Bruce Cawdron (Godspeed You! Black Emperor) on various mallet instruments and Rebecca Foon (Thee Silver Mt. Zion, Saltland) on cello, Esmerine also includes drummer/percussionist Jamie Thompson (The Unicorns, Islands, Little Scream) and multi-instrumentalist Brian Sanderson.
Lost Voices is the result of multiple recording sessions led by Vid Cousins (Kid Koala, Amon Tobin, Colin Stetson) and was mixed/produced by Jace Lasek (The Besnard Lakes) at his Breakglass Studio in Montréal. The album features several tracks that are hands down among the band’s most rocking, making newfound use of electric guitars (courtesy a variety of guest players) alongside the group’s nucleus of marimba, strings and percussion. Expanding from Dalmak’s core quartet, Esmerine also welcomes bassist Jeremi Roy (who began touring with the group in 2013) as an official member; his contrabass work adds potent low-end to the heavier and more muscular jams on the new album. Lost Voices is equally notable for the appearance of GY!BE/Silver Mt. Zion violinist Sophie Trudeau as a featured guest; her intense and incomparable string sounds/styles elevate the potency of the record’s most soaring and high-octane pieces, particularly on opener “The Neighborhoods Rise”, “19/14” and the centerpiece track of Side Two, “Funambule”. Thompson’s drumming comes to the fore on these pieces too, and on the rock-steady minimalism of “A River Runs Through This City”, which satisfyingly harkens back to the likes of Tied & Tickled Trio, June Of 44, Shipping News and Lungfish.
Lost Voices can fairly be called Esmerine’s “rock” album, expanding upon the band’s celebrated prowess at deploying structure and dynamic, balancing melodic expression against methodical restraint through a diversity of stylistic touchstones (minimalism, post-rock, math-rock, desert rock) while allowing for explosive crescendos of exuberant density and maximalism that most notably distinguishes this record from previous work. The album nonetheless includes several instances of more spacious, searching and/or tender compositions – not only in some of the opening sections of the rock songs, but in stand-alone marimba-and-string-led pieces like “Pas Trop Pas Tropes” and “My Mamma Pinned A Rose On Me” and in the two piano-and-string minuets that close each side of the record.
Lost Voices is a deeply satisfying and evocative journey and another brilliant iteration of Esmerine’s distinctive instrumental chamber rock; cerebral and visceral, controlled and volatile, and wholly cinematic in scope throughout.
Thanks for listening.

Sarah Davachi (born in 1987 in Calgary) is a Canadian sound artist, composer of electronic and electroacoustic music and pianist. She is a graduate of the University of Calgary and holds a master's degree in electronic music and recording media from Mills College in Oakland, California.

Hug Of Thunder marks the fifth studio album from Canadian alt-rock supergroup Broken Social Scene, their first in seven years. Founded in '99 by Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning, the new album features 17 players and 15 original members including Emily Haines and Jimmy Shaw of Metric, Amy Millan and Evan Cranley of Stars, Charles Spearin and Ohad Benchetrit of Do Make Say Think, and Grammy-nominated Leslie Feist.
Hug Of Thunder is everything BSS fans love from the Canadian collective and then some, an album overflowing with glorious open chords, multi-voice harmonies, spacious psychedelia-tinted breakdowns, and more. It is a panoramic, expansive album that manages to be both epic and intimate; and like all things BSS, in troubled times, it offers a serotonin rush of positivity. Since their inception in the early Aughts, BSS have always pushed sonic boundaries while remaining reverent of a perfect chorus; almost twenty years down the line, Hug Of Thunder sharpens that balance and then some. The record's twelve songs refract the band's varying emotions, methods, and techniques in ways that not only reference their other albums, but surpass them. Hug Of Thunder is righteous but warm, angry but loving, melodic but uncompromising. And if you've ever fallen in love with Broken Social Scene - as many of us have - it is a perfect return that was truly worth the wait.
Hug Of Thunder was produced by Joe Chiccarelli (White Stripes, Spoon, The Strokes) with Nyles Spencer, and mixed by Shawn Everett (Alabama Shakes, Weezer).

Alanis Morissette,是个童星
自幼便学习钢琴和写歌，10岁时，她加入了电视节目“你不能做那个”的演员组。和其他孩子不同的是，她用在那个节目里挣到的钱独立录制发行了自己的一首单曲“Fate Stay with Me”。14岁时，她便全心投入音乐，签约于MCA/Canada。1991年她迁居多伦多，并发行处女专辑《Alanis》。《Alanis》是一张流行化的舞曲及抒情歌曲专辑，在加拿大相当受欢迎，售出了10万张，并获朱诺奖(加拿大最有影响的音乐奖项)“最有前途女艺人奖”。不过在加拿大1992年她发行了《Now Is the Time》，命运依旧，甚至只卖掉了上张专辑的一半多。于是她再次迁居，来到了洛杉矶，并在1994年遇见了著名的歌曲作者和制作人Glen Ballard。Glen Ballard曾为Michael Jackson创作了金曲“Man in the Mirror”，并制作了金曲组合Wilson Phillips大受欢迎的首张专辑，同时他还和金曲专家David Hasselhoff一起工作。但是他(她)们在对Alanis Morissette第三张专辑的问题上却达成了意外的一致：以非主流摇滚为主要风格。《Jagged Little Pill》最终在Madonna的公司Maverick旗下发行。一系列单曲一浪接着一浪的成功不仅令她获得了一摞白金唱片，也为她获得了1996年6项格莱美奖的提名，并最终获得了包括两个重头奖项“年度专辑”和“年度歌曲”在内的数项格莱美大奖。她的成功证明了风格融合在市场上的巨大价值。
Alanis Morissette 是90年代中期一位最不象明星的明星. 曾经是一位儿童演员的她集歌手与词曲作者于一身. 在她的音乐中,既有对流行元素的捕捉,又闪烁着 hip-hop 的灵感，加上她对市场的准确把握,其第三张专辑 Jagged Little Pill 奠定了 Alanis Morissette 巨星的地位。
本专辑在滚石杂志评出的历代五百强专辑中排名第327位。

this, this long-playing record, a thing we made in the midst of communal mess, raising dogs and children. eyes up and filled with dreadful joy – we aimed for wrong notes that explode, a quiet muttering amplified heavenward. we recorded it all in a burning motorboat.
(context as follows:)
1. UNDOING A LUCIFERIAN TOWERS – look at that fucking skyline! big lazy money writ in dull marble obelisks! imagine all those buildings much later on, hollowed out and stripped bare of wires and glass, listen- the wind is whistling through all 3,000 of its burning window-holes!
2. BOSSES HANG – labor, alienated from the wealth it creates, so that holy cow, most of us live precariously! kicking at it, but barely hanging on! also – the proud illuminations of our shortened lives! also – more of us than them! also – what we need now is shovels, wells, and barricades!
3. FAM / FAMINE – how they kill us = absentee landlord, burning high-rise. the loud panics of child-policemen and their exploding trigger-hands. with the dull edge of an arbitrary meritocracy. neglect, cancer maps, drone strike, famine. the forest is burning and... more
releases September 22, 2017
PERSONNEL
Aidan Girt: Drums
David Bryant: Electric guitar, MG-One
Efrim Manuel Menuck: Electric guitar, organ, OP-1
Karl Lemieux: 16mm film projections
Mauro Pezzente: Electric bass
Michael Moya: Electric guitar
Sophie Trudeau: Violins, organ
Thierry Amar: Contrebasse, electric bass
Timothy Herzog: Drums
GUESTS ON TRACK ONE
Bonnie Kane (saxophone, flute, electronics)
Craig Pederson (trumpet)
Recorded by Greg Norman at Hotel 2 Tango and The Pines.
Mixed by Greg Norman and GYBE at Hotel 2 Tango.
Masted by Harris Newman at Greymarket.

Purity Ring is a Canadian electronic pop band from Edmonton, Alberta, formed in 2010. The band consists of vocalist Megan James and multi-instrumentalist/producer Corin Roddick. They released their debut album Shrines in 2012 to critical acclaim, followed by Another Eternity in 2015.

On Antisocialites, Alvvays dive back into the deep-end of reckless romance and altered dates. Ice cream truck jangle collides with prismatic noise pop while Molly Rankin's wit is refracted through crystalline surf counterpoint. Through thoughtful consideration in basement and abroad, the Toronto-based group has renewed its Scot-pop vows with a powerful new collection of manic emotional collage.