Have a listen to No Filter on CHUO 89.1 FM for September 25, 2023.
The first hour are picks of artist/bands who are performing at Pop Montreal on September 27 to October 1.
Pop Montreal 2023 picks (Go on their site to see times, venues and tickets):
Islands – Headlines from And That’s Why Dolphins Lost Their Legs.
Frankie and the Witch Fingers – Electricide from Data Doom.
Iguana Death Cult – Echo Palace from the album of the same name.
Hot Garbage – She Figured It Out from RIDE
Thanya Iyer – Leave the Room and Face the Waves from Rest EP.
Daniel Isaiah – Oblivion
Loraine Jaimes – Try For Me (feat. Eden Samara) from Gentle Confrontation
Marker Starling – Yet You Go On (feat. Dorothea Pass) from Diamond Violence
Sasha Cay – Blackfly from Spin
Bell Orchestre – VI: All The Time from House Music
Kate NV – asleep from WOW
Russell Louder – Mirror from Fair-weather
NYSSA – Werewolf
Karma Glider – Shortwave Drifter from Future Fiction EP
Burry – Paperdolls from Yours Truly EP
Ratboys – Crossed That Line from The Window
Water From Your Eyes – Open from Everyone’s Crushed
Hand Habits – The Gift of the Human Curse from Sugar the Bruise EP
Isaac Vallentin – Teacher Song from Bardo
Top 5 Songs of the week.
Kevin Drew – All Your Fails from Aging fwhich comes out on November 3rd.
OMBIIGIZI – Eagle Man / Changing Woman
Astral Swans – Shine the Light Inside (feat. Jairus Sharif)
Pony Girl – Highways from Laff It Off which comes out on October 27th.
Emilie Kahn – Parallel from Maybe which comes out on October 20th.
Album – Portrait De L’Artiste from the album of the same name.
CHAI – GAME from CHAI
POSTDATA – Run Wild from the album of the same name.
Kimmortal – Get Better from Shoebox
Have a listen to No Filter on CHUO 89.1 FM for August 7, 2023.
PLAYLIST:
Osheaga Wrap Up
Fred Again.. – Delilah (pull me out of this) from Actual Life 3
Soccer Mommy – Soak Up The Sun
Carly Rae Jepsen – Psychedelic Switch from The Loveliest Time
The Flaming Lips – Are You a Hypnotist? From Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Cults – You Know What I Mean from Cults
Charlotte Cardin – Confetti from 99 Nights which comes out on August 25th.
Billie Eilish – bad guy from WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO?
Holobody – Easy form Cycler
Orchidae – Experience / La Mer / Piscine from Journal d’enfance
Josyara – MAMA from ÀdeusdarÁ
Maybel – Long Road Ahead
Joseph Shabason – I Can By Myself (feat. Thom Gill) from One For The Money EP
Hannah Georgas – Home from I’d Be Lying If I Said I Didn’t Care which comes out on August 25th.
Svitlana Nianio & Tom James Scott – Sinking from Eye of the Sea
Top 5 Songs of the week
1. Carly Rae Jepsen – Shy Boy (1) [5]
2. Jeremy Dutcher – Take My Hand (*) [1]
3. Pony Girl – I Believe In Nothing (2) [4]
4. Mitski – Bug Like An Angel (5) [2]
5. Hua Li 化力 – Closing Time (3) [5]
Album – Salade from Portrait de l’artiste which comes out on September 22nd.
Sea Lemon – Vaporized from Stop at Nothing EP which comes out on August 25th.
Nation of Language – Too Much, Enough from Strange Disciple which comes out on September 15th.
Caroline Polachek – Fly To You (feat. Grimes and Dido) from Desire, I Want To Turn Into You
Dan Mangan – Just Know It (Felix Cartal’s Sunset Remix)
Have a listen to No Filter on CHUO 89.1 FM for June 5, 2023.
First hour are picks of artist and bands who are playing at the summer edition of Pique 2023 happening this Saturday.
PLAYLIST:
Summer Pique 2023 Edition:
Lido Pimienta – EIN SOF, Infinito / No Pude / Quiero Jardines
Siaka Diabaté – Tounga
Frost Children – ANGEL’S THOUGHTS
N’nerjie – Love You Anyway
Backseat Dragon – Sudoku
Bonnie Doon – Ghost Story
Everett Rama – The Mounted Thief
HUG MOSH – The Ghost You Befriend In Exile
Colloboh – Higher Ground
OK Naledi – Bones
Go Long – It’s Practical
Fireball Kid & Ura Star – Kissing Booth
Jairus Sharif – Earth III
Album – New and Annoying
Top 5 Songs of the Week
1. Jeremy Dutcher – Skicinuwihkuk (2) [2]
2. Pantayo – Dreams (3) [2]
3. Marci – KITY (5) [2]
4. Hannah Georgas – Better Somehow (*) [1]
5. Fucked Up & The Halluci Nation – Electroshock (1) [2]
Priors – Fresh Start
Leith Ross – To Learn. Playing this Friday at Bronson Centre.
Protomartyr – Polacrilex Kid from Formal Growth in the Desert
Taylor Swift – Snow on the Beach (feat. Lana Del Rey) [More of Lana Del Rey]
Katie Tupper – Little Love
Half Moon Run – Salt from Salt
It is the time that I reveal the Top 10 Canadian and Non-Canadian albums in radio/podcast form!
Here is the Best of 2020 Edition of No Filter – Home Edition on CHUO 89.1 FM.
Giving props to Hiroki Tanaka and Pantayo to be in the Top 10 since 2020 has seen a lot of Asian acts releasing stellar albums.
Cindy Lee’s What’s Tonight To Eternity caught my ears and it is a mix of haunting and retro pop music.
Decided to pick U.S. Girls as the best Canadian album is because the album resonated with me and I loved hear the reworkings of three old songs.
Very last minute to add The Avalanches in the Top 10 but it was one those concept albums that is long forgotten in recent years.
Decided to pick Sault’s two albums as the best Non-Canadian because it is a powerful album that helped described 2020 with the pandemic and political uprise of Black Lives Matters.
I could have put Fiona Apple as #1 but Sault stood out the most.
Hope you enjoyed the Top 10 list of 2020.
Let’s make 2021 a better year!
See you next year!
Toronto musician Paul Cafcae released his album Miss July on October 23, 2020.
11 tracks of upbeat vibes of folk bluesy rock music.
About the album: “While playing at the Toronto Beaches Jazz Festival during a break between sets I was talking to a guitarist from another band. And he told me a story that began with these words: ‘I once had a girl she was 6 foot 3.’ It immediately fell into the rhythm with me so later that night when I got home I laid a quick and dirty draft track with three verses. The chorus then came naturally as a means to tie in the awkwardness of these seemingly mismatched relationships. It’s the first time that I’ve tried to keep the music very light, maybe even cheesy, while navigating a very sensitive social issue of body shaming. I like to put positive social messages in my songs but they are usually veiled with metaphors and euphemisms. This one is more direct: love is love, and nothing else matters!”
Miss July gets:
/10.
Previously posted awhile back.
Today is the release of Filipina-Canadian singer-songwriter based in Toronto named Jenn Nucum with her debut album called Revival.
9 tracks filled with raw emotional music about navigating life as a diasporic queer woman of colour, with deconstructing complex fabric of identity with dreamy and ambient alternative rock melodies, honest lyrics, and emotive vocals.
This is one of these album where POC can really look up to and feel empowered to make their own music.
Rone is electronic producer Erwan Castex, and his fifth album is titled Room With A View which is out today and marks a major moment in the Frenchman’s career.
The album was produced alongside a live show commissioned by the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and developed together with choreography collective (LA) HORDE and 20 dancers of the Ballet National de Marseille.
This new kind of collaborative approach allowed Rone to produce his most sincere and far-reaching music in some time.
Inspired by discussions of collapsologie and climate change, Room With A View offers food for thought on how to deal with one of the most pressing issues of humanity.
Room With A View sees Rone returning to his musical roots and the set-up of his early albums: purely electronic, solitarily conceived without any musical collaborators. At the same time, he was able to leave his comfort zone through a new kind of artistic liaison.
The production of the corresponding show inspired the album and vice versa, one fed into the other.
Room With A View works perfectly as a standalone album, still the outcome is a firmly intertwined piece of modern dance and electronic music that comes with a more serious goal than mere musical innovation.
After receiving carte blanche by the Théâtre du Châtelet, Rone chose to work with choreography collective (LA) HORDE because he admired their political and DIY approach as well as their ability to communicate a subject through movement of bodies. In France, the term “collapsologie“ is ubiquitous, meaning a school of thought that predicts the end of the world as we know it. Natural disasters everywhere and courageous kids united through “Fridays For Future“ remind us of the threat of climate change and urge us to act. Room With A View is a reflection on this. “I want to start a conversation without teaching a lesson,“ Erwan Castex describes the thoughts behind it. “We are all part of the problem, so we should all be part of the solution. The show will probably raise more questions than it can answer, but that is okay.“
Room With A View was written and produced in 2019 within nine months. Its foundation was laid during a stay at the former house of writer George Sand in the rural area of Nohant. It has become a habit for Rone to leave his home, family and friends behind for a while when working on new music. This time he happened to choose the place where Frédéric Chopin composed a third of his music. Some of the albums track titles reference trees in the mansion’s garden, others point to environmental themes or nod to the development of the dance piece. Musically, Rone manages to let his trademark sound shine in a new light, pleasing early fans as well as every electronica enthusiast. Typically melodic beats like “Ginkgo Biloba“ nestle against tracks that exhibit classic influences from Boards of Canada (“La Marbrerie“) to SAW-era Aphex Twin (“Raverie“), euphoric dancefloor rhythms sit next to contemplative synth work.
Tracks like “Sophora Japonica“ showcase Rone’s mastership in atmosphere, which sometimes requires no drums at all. Elsewhere, Rone is clearly reviving the club-centric vibe of “Tohu Bohu“ and experimenting with elements of dub. It all makes for and adventurous and rewarding listen.
Most importantly, Rone is redefining the notion of “organic“ in electronic music through use of field and voice recordings. Be it his own child chattering, Aurelien Barrau or Alain Damasio debating, or the dance troupe rehearsing and discussing the show – because the writing process of the album was very machine focused, it seemed appropriate to feed back a human touch into the music and to still have bodies involved. Thus “Esperanza“ uses the steps of the dancers as a rhythm to start a new track, while in “Human“ they serve as a choir. This idea of extended human collaboration becomes apparent also on the album cover.
The title Room With A View is quite open, offering many different readings. It has personal connotations for Rone, but it’s also connected to how we observe phenomena in the modern world. Whether through small screens or social networks, everyone is an observer. Everyone has their own perspective on the world, and thus the power to change it. This is the message Rone is sharing while observing from his own room.
The long awaited TOPS‘ fourth album I Feel Alive has come out today on their own label Musique Tops distributed through House Arrest.
This is probably their strongest album to date with its cool breezy indie pop music.
Has a mix of moody soft pop rock from the 70s and that synth-new wave pop 80s.
They are a cool band without knowing how cool they are.
It is one these albums that we need some uplifting at the moment.
About the album: The image captures the fraught nature of being alive, which the 11 tracks on the album explore.
Penny’s remarkably expressive voice is front and center. On this record more than any other,she sings with passion and energy, without sacrificing the honesty and introspection that gives her voice its depth. The songs cover a range of experiences but at it’s heart
I Feel Alive is a record about resilience, the ways we can grow from for our pain and the strength that comes from learning to stand on your own as an individual.
Best tracks:
Direct Sunlight
(Despite what we are dealing with at the moment. Do support them whatever you can!) Taylor McCluskey is an actor and musician from Sacramento, California.
Dropped his fourth album called Star Gold which is 14 tracks of good rocking music.
Describes it as “the full monty”, with each track featuring adrenaline-infused/turbo-thrusted/magnetic-radar/ echoes of love.
Musically, it’s akin to a sonic film, from the beginning, middle and end of the album.
To describe its sound as a whole, it feels as if Stoner Rock, Pop and Country had a “love child from another planet” and the result was Star God. The album’s themes range from love and loss, Good and evil.
Tracks such as Heartache and The Pain and Medicate really stand out as they deal with themes of alcohol and drug abuse, but more importantly overcoming these issues that can plague oneself.