Arriving seven years after the band’s self-titled full-length debut, Absolutely Free’s Aftertouch marks a shift in focus and process for the band. Named after the synthesizer function that produces an effect once a performer depresses a key after touching it, the album addresses topics like the alienation of contemporary living through the lens of a fleeting cultural relationship to physical connection and a pronounced digital immersion.

Ahead of the band’s September 24 performance as part of Together Apart, we put together a timeline of LAL’s 25 years and spoke with producer-instrumentalist Nicholas Murray to help us fill in the gaps.

Status/Non-Status (formerly WHOOP-Szo) music has frequently explored Sturgeon’s complicated relationship to his Indigenous identity and the effects of Canada’s ongoing settler-colonial project, often through the experiences of those in his family; adopting the name Status/Non-Status ahead of the release of new EP 1, 2, 3, 4, 500 Years this past May, he now centres the project as a circumstance of his grandfather’s decision to enfranchise in order to support his family by joining the Canadian Armed Forces and become a Canadian citizen, the government’s term for the legal process of surrendering one’s and one’s family’s legal claim to Indigenous status under the Indian Act.

After the pandemic shut down in-person interaction, Toronto creative agency Somewherelse created HUH, a new platform that lets audiences explore art all over the world, filtered by city and mood.

On Poolblood’s latest offering “My Little Room,” Maryam Said spins an unadorned acoustic rumination cataloguing the feelings and behaviours related to the challenges of interacting with a reduced environment. It’s all just a matter of time.

Tea Base has emerged as a defiant space holder for members of Toronto’s Pan-Asian diaspora and an incubator for community activism, all while hawking tea curated by local sommeliers.