7" Survey: Indoor Voices

7" Survey: Indoor Voices

After Junetile called it quits and stopped making their sonic chicken soup dream pop in 2004, singer-guitarist Jonathan Relph couldn’t stop making music. Bedroom sketches quickly grew into more, and eventually, Relph formed Indoor Voices together with Owen Davies, Ryan Gassi and Kate Rogers. Markedly more propulsive, Indoor Voices steps further into the poppier end of shoegaze territory, their songs all blanketed with swirly guitar washes. Grab a copy of our January seven-inch this Saturday (Jan. 16) for as-of-yet unreleased Indoor Voices track “Indifferentiator” and another from Pantayo, and check out our seven-inch survey with Jonathan Relph below to get caught up to speed.

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CONFRONTING 'TRAD(E)ITIONS'

CONFRONTING 'TRAD(E)ITIONS'

Videofag, Kensington Market’s beloved storefront cinema and performance space is set to close following this year’s series of exhibitions. Before the PWYC venue closes its doors for good, Toronto-based Colombian artist Lido Pimienta will take up residence, unveiling her first solo art show, running this Thursday (Jan. 14) through Jan. 24. The self-professed “powerhouse” hasn’t stopped performing, producing and creating since releasing her debut LP Color in 2010. She’s set to release her newest album La Papessa later this year, but would scoff at the notion of sticking with just one medium. Her new art exhibition TRAD(E)ITIONS, dives deep into the origins of exotic foliage. It will feature ten original paintings and subsequent trading cards describing the genesis of exotic insects, plants and fruits. 

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7" Survey: New Chance

7" Survey: New Chance

As one of the owners leading Toronto’s Healing Power Records, Victoria Cheong has been responsible for releasing some of the most charmed and magnetic sounds the city has yielded since 2008. Creating music as New Chance, Cheong personally contributed to HPR’s orbit of compelling meditative atmospheres with the release of Ear Rationelle in March, and hasn’t stopped since, producing further work in collaboration with Dancemakers and Public Recordings before the year ended. In advance of New Chance’s inclusion on our December split with Nailbiter, we had Cheong fill out our seven-inch survey to help us catch up.

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BUGGING OUT

BUGGING OUT

Since 2006, Amy Lam and Jon McCurley’s performance art partnership Life of a Craphead has been responsible for – among other things – renting out videos they rented from Queen Video, filling the Yonge-Dundas intersection with actors pretending to sell things, and proposing a “stress ramp” that directs anxious Torontonians into Lake Ontario. Their newest work, Bugs, is their feature-length film debut: a satire that reimagines Toronto as a bug garden run by an unaccountable family. It screens at the AGO Dec. 11, and beyond that, Life of a Craphead is looking for experimental art film festivals to submit it to.

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7" Survey: Nailbiter

7" Survey: Nailbiter

Josh Korody’s had a busy year. When he wasn’t producing and recording releases by artists like Dilly Dally and Fresh Snow at Candle Recording, gigging in support of WISH’s 2014 self-titled debut, or subbing in on drums with Vallens and Moon King, he and Jesse Crowe unveiled the sophomore follow-up to their 2013 debut as Beliefs in November, and he still found time to pump out Format, his first electronic record working under the solo moniker Nailbiter on Hand Drawn Dracula. Grab a copy of our December seven-inch this Saturday (Dec. 12) for an as-of-yet unreleased Nailbiter track and another from New Chance, and check out our seven-inch survey with Nailbiter himself to get caught up to speed.

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Five years of Pleasence

Five years of Pleasence

For the past five years, Pleasence Records has been supporting some of the weirdest, loudest and most wonderful bands Toronto has to offer. From New Fries and Slim Twig to CROSSS and Blonde Elvis, Pleasence has been an essential part of the explosive local music scene we are currently emerged in. Now as the label enjoys its fifth anniversary, they are not only celebrating a determination that has kept their fires burning, but also a milestone 50 releases bridging cassette, EP and LP formats. 

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7” Survey: Elsa

7” Survey: Elsa

Even though they’re set to release their Never Come Down 12-inch March 31 via One Big Silence, Elsa didn’t mind reaching into the archives to commit “In Waves” – a song from the same sessions as their 2013 I Do EP – to wax on the March instalment (LW-005) of Long Winter’s split 7-inch series, available free to the first 250 guests through the doors at the Great Hall on March 13. In this questionnaire, singer/guitarist Jonathan Rogers explains the origins of the song and tells us about a near-fatal winter experience.

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