Mind Your Own Business

I especially love reading people's reactions/descriptions of Aunty Panty.

POP Montreal - "A kick in the nuts from the prairies, Saskatoon's riot grrrl duo Aunty Panty tear their way through jangly minimal trash punk. Don’t miss this beautifully brutish collision of throat-wrenching shrieks, panties and steamed wieners."

Ominocity - "Midway through watching Aunty Panty’s new video for the song “Panty Stain”, I realized I was strangely – albeit delightfully – freaked out. The song itself is a ratchety clatter of weirdo punk noise – sort of like trying to carry a wayward feral cat into your house and getting a claw in the kisser for your efforts."

Weird Canada - "Scanner-destroying sans-wave from the antagonizing wastelands of Saskatoon. Aunty Panty’s digital halo debut is a dualic descent into derelict guitar destruction and vocal annihilation. Hammered strikes against their metallic strings clangor amongst the concrete waves of red-lined vocals and four-four drummery. A severe peak into the marginalized sounds running rampant in our wheat-filled prairies."

Derelict Daughters

Check out Weird Canada's little blurb about Aunty Panty.

We even managed to woo them with our packaging!

Meat Curtains

I'm thrilled to have recently discovered Meat Curtains. Based in Halifax, N.S., this flesh-obsessed band is more riot grill than riot grrrl.

Meat Curtains - Dead Dog (mp3)
Meat Curtains - Pepperoni Ghost (mp3)
Meat Curtains - Get Rebel (mp3)

by Talaya Schmid

Grimes

“I wanted to make an escapist dream world,” says Claire Boucher, a.k.a. Montreal electronic artist Grimes, on the eve of her first cross-Canada tour. “During recording, I was taking a lot of science classes, and became obsessed with the book’s aesthetic.” That book, as it turns out, is Frank Herbert’s 1965 sci-fi novel Dune, referenced in the title of her debut cassette, Geidi Primes. She’s re-arranged the name of one of Dune’s fictional planets, but it’s also a fitting analogy for the extraterrestrial never-never land she’s created.

Geidi Primes has a strange air of being created unconsciously while the artist herself was asleep. It is a vastly intriguing set of pop tunes highlighted by its amazing fifth and sixth songs: "avi" and "Feyd Rautha Dark Heart", which are each frighteningly reminiscent of an unaccountable psychic experience I may have never had. As an album it touches on many different tones without exploiting any. It manages to be playful without being precious, clean without being sterile, cryptic without being obscure, and operates in a deceptively complex melodic structure without calling attention to the artistry therein.
It reminds one of being a small child, listening to adult contemporary radio in the back seat of your mother's minivan when a special kind of song comes on. You are still maddeningly susceptible to the sympathetic rise and fall of a maternal voice, yet this is a different sort of mother, one more primeval and distant. Icily it falls over your entire body, begging for an escape you know you cannot give it. You are strangely moved. It seems like an album made for very tall people about what it's like to be very small. It calls to mind the glowering of a child king amidst the many vestments and decorations of his coronation. Listening to Geidi Primes is what its like to suddenly realize you are being watched while taking a cold shower...on the moon.

Emily Kai Bock's 'Human Heart' is a documentary short on GRIMES.

Halfaxa - If Grimes’ tour CDR (to be officially released via Arbutus on September 30th at Pop Montreal) is any indication, the cosmic-pop deity is transcending into a vocal-cruising eidolon of celestial proportions.

Feral Children

I may not live in Toronto, Montreal, or Vancouver, but Saskatoon has it's fair share of gems. I'm really excited about the release by my good friend Ryan Davidson, aka Feral Children. 'Currents', his latest album, is labeled by many as a collection of psychedelic, drum machine pop. Amen to that!

For some free mp3s, check him out on Weird Canada.