There’s something funny about Viridians

The cover of [sp]arrows, the second EP from Viridians released April 20.

The secret to Viridians lies in the really heavy, poppy, and catchy parts in the band’s music.

“I don’t think people really catch on to a lot of the humor that we put into it because we’re not adding it for the purpose of people knowing,” says guitarist Shane Patience.

Shane explains what the four twenty-something-year-olds find so tongue-and-cheek in their music.

“The best way that I can describe it is if you’re listening to a song and it just totally takes a turn to a really obnoxious part out of nowhere that’s awesome but you just know listening to it that part didn’t need to be in that song but I’m so glad it was.”

Singer and guitarist Zach Allard adds that the funny parts in their music are over-the-top.

“There’s parts in our songs that are purposefully super pop or super catchy or heavy for the sake of being stupidly heavy.”

The guys have the inflated poppy, heavy, and catchy parts in their music because it reflects their personalities and their outlook on music, says Shane, who today made up the term “post-math punk” to describe their music.

“I think it kind of stems from, when we listen to stuff, we always make fun of it, especially if we like it. The more we like something, the more we laugh about it. We all listen to hardcore. We all love hardcore and then we just make fun of it all the time,” adds Zach, who just finished rendering the three songs from [sp]arrows, their second EP.

With lyrics like “our love’s divine” in Streaming, the third song on [sp]arrows, it might be hard for some listeners to think of Viridians as tongue-and-cheek. Shane worries that Viridians gives off the impression that they’re serious and says the band has even met to talk about how they need to lighten up.

“We’re just a bunch of stupid goofy guys and sometimes our music sounds pretty serious,” says Shane.

For listeners who can’t hear the tongue-and-cheek in their music, Zach recommends listening to it when you’re ready to have a good time.

“I feel like if you go into listening to it really open-minded and ready to laugh and have a good time then it really caters to that—that’s what we try to access and you can see it also in people in the crowd. You can see when people get it and are on the same wavelength,” he says.

“I think humor is an emotion that’s not often found in music”

- Zach Allard, singer and guitarist for Viridians.

So if you’re in the right state of mind, you might find the clean tele breakdown at the end of The Architect, from their first EP, funny.

“That part just doesn’t need to be there, but we decided to add it in because we thought it was funny,” says Shane.

And if you’re ready to have a good time, you might also find the poppy part (around 2:50) of The Wake, from their new EP, funny.

The tongue-and-cheek parts in the band’s music draw similarities between their first and second EPs, but Zach and Shane say the two EPs are starkly different.

Viridians recorded [sp]arrows, released April 20, over four days at Zach’s cabin live-off-the-floor except for the vocals.

“We all wanted more of a raw, live-off-the-floor kind of sound to this EP and we were all on the same page that we didn’t want to record it like we recorded the last one,” says Shane. The instruments and vocals were recorded separately on Against Dangerous Visions, their first EP.

“It didn’t have the intensity in some parts that it should have that comes naturally when you’re in a room playing with the band. If you’re playing to a track by yourself it’s not the same,” says Shane about their first EP.

“We wanted it be more representative of what we do live so this album also doesn’t have any overdubs,” adds Zach, who considers Viridians emo.

From left to right: Shane, Joe, Neil, and Zach / photo from Viridians’s Facebook.

[sp]arrows also represents the true sound of Viridians, says Shane.

“For me it sounds more refined, like our sound. The first album to me always sounded like we were trying to figure out what we wanted to sound like and then I think once we had done that, [sp]arrows became a little bit more natural.”

[sp]arrows also sounds a lot different because of how it was written: Zach says the songs from their new album were composed with vocals in mind; the songs on Against Dangerous Visions were composed instrumentally then vocals were layered on top, and this time Shane was part of the writing process.

“When I started playing with those guys, a lot of the songs off the first album were already written or mostly written,” says Shane.

Shane joined Viridians two years ago, after singer and drummer Joe Peloquin-Hopfner, bassist Neil Exell, and Zach quit playing instrumental music under the moniker Amuse.

Shane wrote most of the song ideas and all his guitar parts for [sp]arrows, a lot of them when he was in Ottawa last summer.

“Shane only writes music if he’s broken up with his girlfriend or if they just get back together,” they laugh. Zach adds, “any time it’s going well it’s just kind of a dry spell.”

[sp]arrows hasn’t taken a year to create because of Shane’s functional relationship but because the band has been mixing and mastering the EP themselves in between work and school without strict deadlines.

Although Zach and Shane agree that being able to have full control over [sp]arrows has given them sonic freedom, the year that it has taken Viridians to record, mix, and master the EP has been dragging on and they’re happy to have finally finished it.

“That’s a flip side to being able to mix and master your own album. It can tend to linger because there’s no pressure to have it done,” says Shane.

Viridians plans to release a full album in the future but for now, Zach and Shane say they’re happy with releasing EPs to give fans an update on the band’s sound while the band quickly evolves.

Check out Viridians here.

Need more ladies in your life?

Photo from discokitty’s SoundCloud.

Need some Friday night pregame music but sick of the top 10 songs on the radio? Make these awesome DJs your Friday night playlist.

Audrey Napoleon – My Sunrise
Ellen Allien & Apparat – Do Not Break
Maya Jane Coles – What They Say
Miss Kittin & The Hacker – Ray Ban
Rebecca & Fiona – Bullets
Ellen Allien & Apparat – Way Out
Miss Kittin & The Hacker – Suspicious MindsSuz – Process Part 09
NERVO – You’re Gonna Love Again
Discokitty- Deep Kitty Mixhard Radio May25 — from Winnipeg!
Plain Jane – The Purge — from Calgary!
Audrey Napoleon – Wasted Sundown
Maya Jane Coles – Contradiction

Also, if you need a good laugh, check out this funny and entertaining interview with audio producer and engineer Trina Shoemaker explaining how she works with such different artists like Sheryl Crow and Queens of the Stone Age.

Happy Friday!

A night of crunchy tone and pterodactyl vocals

Black Mastiff rocking out at The Pyramid Cabaret. Photo by Danelle Cloutier.

Edmonton’s hard rock trio Black Mastiff ripped the silence of The Pyramid Cabaret at 10:40pm with a melodic guitar crunch, snappy drums, and a smooth bass. The stage was decorated like what I’d imagine an Illuminati lair to look like—in front of the bar’s pyramid design in the bricks was a display of translucent white fabric triangles illuminated with green lights.

The band rocked an approximate 40 minute set with a sound in between Indian Handcrafts and Jack White because of the guitarist’s simple but melodic guitar riffs. The band was tight and the backup vocals from the drummer and bassist, who was born in Winnipeg, matched the lead singer’s voice and added extra umph to their hard rock sound. During one song, the bassist’s strap unhooked from his instrument and he dropped his bass but, he quickly picked it up and kept playing while him and the drummer laughed.

Despite the 100 tickets that were given away for free, the bands drew a small crowd. Even so, Black Mastiff played to the approximately 25 people like they were playing to a crowd of 1,000 people. Canadian duo Indian Handcrafts drew in a bigger crowd at around 11:45 when the singer/guitarist unleashed his pterodactyl-like vocals and defined tele rock sound and the drummer pounded on his drums like he was having a temper tantrum. Soon after they started, a man dressed in his scarf and jacket-who told us before the show started that he didn’t know who was playing tonight- asked me, “Is this what you were expecting?” I nodded, he gave me a thumbs up, and he left the bar.

Among songs from their album Civil Disobedience for Losers like my favourite song, Red Action, the band fired off a Fu Manchu cover and an eerily accurate cover of Nirvana’s Negative Creep. The drummer said his floor tom legs weren’t the right size so he had to sit really low. “It’s messing with my game,” he said. But the drummer’s floor tom legs and the small crowd didn’t stop the band from firing off a 40 minute set of hectic, energetic rock.

Indian Handcrafts at The Pyramid Cabaret. Photo by Danelle Cloutier.

A Thousand Farewells

From amazon.ca

A Thousand Farewells is Nahlah Ayed’s personal story of her family leaving Winnipeg for a Palestinian refugee camp and her experience as a foreign correspondent for CBC in the Middle East.

This book is easy to read because it’s well written. Ayed describes her surroundings in enough detail that it’s easy to picture what she’s describing but not in so much detail that it’s boring to read. The book is also easy to read because it’s organized well. Ayed organized the chapters by location, which makes it easier to follow where she is since she visits many locations, some multiple times. However, I wish she included a map of where she visited because it’s hard to imagine where every city is in relation to the other.

I also wish Ayed had included more of her personal life in the book. In the beginning chapters she talks about her childhood but even that feels disconnected from her personal life because she doesn’t include many quotes from her family, even though she must have had to interview many of her relatives to include all the details about a time that she was probably too young to fully remember. It’s strange that the book is about her experience in Winnipeg and the Middle East, but by the end of the book, I know little about her personality.

She lost her friend to violence, was beaten in Baghdad, watched bombs erupt and violence explode in front of her, and couldn’t keep relationships with her friends or family, but she doesn’t talk about how that affected her. Instead, she reveals other people’s experiences and scars, like Sadeq and Ali. The pair worked with the Shia Muslims who retaliated against Saddam Hussein and escaped Saddam’s men before they “unleashed a bloodbath” (128). The two escaped to France, where Sadeq worked “insane hours at work, and that helped keep the pain of separation at bay” (128) and Ali suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder in the form of paranoia. Ali thought the French authorities were spying on him, and he even thought Ayed was a spy. Ali’s paranoia shows the trauma of the upheavals in the Middle East and adds human emotion to a gap that she creates by not describing how she was affected. However, without her personal life, the book becomes about other people; it tells the story of everyone around her. I’m assuming she wanted the book to be focused on other people since the quote on the back of the book reads, “people are not quotes or clips, used to illustrate stories about war and conflict. People are the story, always.”

Two stories stuck with me the most: the story of her dad nearly dying working at the Mac’s Convenience store in Winnipeg’s Osborne Village and her being beaten up in Baghdad after the Khathem was bombed. The first story stuck with me because I’ve been to that Mac’s and I’ve seen the drunks and aimless teenagers who hang out there late at night. I went to that Mac’s about a week after reading that chapter in the book and I was exceptionally nice to the employee because I was thinking about Ayed’s dad who almost died at the hand of a drunk. The second story resonated with me because it shows the dangers of working as a journalist, especially a foreign correspondent. It also puts into perspective North America’s priorities. After being beaten, she writes, “despite tremendous pressure from Toronto, I refused to talk on air about what had happened to us that night” (148). Sometimes as a journalist, your health is more important than a story, and I think that’s an important message journalists should take from this book. Ayed was being reasonable for not wanting to talk on air after being beaten and I was astounded that she encountered “tremendous pressure” from CBC.

Another important lesson for journalists is that being a foreign correspondent is all-consuming. Ayed missed out on friendships, which she admits she regrets. “My one but significant regret concerns the precious friends I lost in the process of gaining knowledge,” she said. War doesn’t stop for three weeks in summer or two weeks in December, so foreign correspondents can expect a life consumed by work.

A Thousand Farewells reminds me of The Waiting Room, a documentary film about uninsured patients at a hospital in the U.S. Both of the stories in these non-fiction pieces are told through those affected by it. This story-telling method is effective because it makes the reader or viewer feel something. My mouth dropped when Ayed was beaten. I turned to a friend sitting on the same couch and said, “I can’t believe she was beaten!” Similarly, in The Waiting Room, I felt sad when the dad of a daughter in the hospital was crying and talking about how he had already lost one of his daughters. Telling a story through the people affected by something also offers the reader or viewer something that s/he can’t get anywhere else. The opposite of this would be if Ayed interviewed U.S. government officials and wrote a book detailing what they think the war in the Middle East is about—information that’s already available online. Interviewing government officials wouldn’t have been as spontaneous or emotional as entering the Middle East and interviewing civilians or entering a hospital and interviewing patients.

Overall, I recommend A Thousand Farewells for journalists and anyone that’s looking to hear the story of turmoil in the Middle East from the people who live there and experience it.

Atlas Genius’s anticipated debut album

Australian’s Atlas Genius has always done things differently. The three brothers and their friend began studying architecture and business and ended up building a studio where they recorded music three years before they played their first live show. The band wanted to write music reminiscent of the indie-rock that came before the electro-pop music that’s now hitting the charts in Australia and the U.S.–it’s like they were trying to avoid success. But the four boys couldn’t avoid success for long. Their song Trojans quickly became iTunes Single of the Week in Australia and New Zealand and reached #4 on Hype Machine.

Now fans are eager to hear the band’s is debut album When It Was Now on Feb. 19 after loving the band’s EP.

Where are all the women in audio engineering at? Call for women audio engineers

Photo from zilchified.blogspot.ca

According to an article by Steve Haruch in the Nashville Scene, “By most estimates, women represent less than 5 percent of producers and engineers industry-wide.”

Susan Rogers, one-time engineer for Prince and now an associate professor at the Berklee College Of Music in Boston, told the BBC that women aren’t into music production because they’re simply not interested. She also said that there’s no social barrier to women becoming audio engineers but there is a biological barrier.

“A man can, technically speaking, reproduce on his coffee break. It doesn’t take all that long, and biologically it doesn’t take much of a toll. For a woman, the opposite is true,” she told the BBC.

She continued, “The typical lifestyle of a record producer is very intensive, very competitive, all-consuming. In order to be able to maintain that level of focus and attention and dedication to your craft, it has to come at the expense of reproduction.”

“The women who do get into it will do really well… until they reach that point in their late 20s where they say, ‘Now its time to have a family’. I tell my female students it’s going to come for them. It came for me, and I opted not to have children, to not get married.”

On the other hand, Dianne Marie Smith argued in her thesis that music audiences and music industry workers construct sound engineering as a masculine activity and men outnumber women in the field because the occupation is segregated by gender. She notes that men occupy positions of authority in audio engineering in her thesis titled, “Deci-belles: Gender and Power in Sound Engineering for Popular Music in New Zealand.”

“The power exercised within music production is not equally accessible to women, and this is one factor among many which upholds gender inequality in the music industry.”

Smith continued, “Women sound engineers face entry level and on-the-job gender discrimination. I argue that the technological tools they use are seen as being at odds with femininity.”

These are just two stories/papers that were written about women in audio engineering out of the total handful that I could find. The first article I mentioned said women make up five percent of audio engineers, but who are those five percent? It’s so hard to find which women are in the industry right now, which is why I want to write a book about the history and present day women in audio engineering. But I have to find out who those women are first.

I’m looking for women to interview and I’m wondering what kind of topics people would like to hear these women speak about. I’m in the early stages of planning this book and right now I’m trying to see what topics people would be interested in reading about and who I can interview.

Let me know if you know any Canadian women in audio engineering and let me know what kind of topics you would want to read about on this subject!

A critical look at The Waiting Room documentary

Photo from http://custodianfilmcritic.com/

I’m taking a break from music this week to post my Journalism assignment about The Waiting Room, a documentary film directed by Peter Nicks.

I faced the grueling wait times the Canadian health care system in October 2012: my girlfriend got hit by a car, broke her leg, and was stranded, immobile, in an inner-city hospital bed in grueling agony for six days before she could get surgery.

Close to every day my girlfriend, Megan, said, “if we were in the States I would have had surgery by now.” But that’s not true for U.S. citizens without insurance.

Based on what I saw in The Waiting Room, a documentary film that spends 24 hours with uninsured patients inside Highland Hospital in Oakland, California, one of the differences between the U.S. and Canadian health care system is that in the U.S., insurance buys you priority.

Réal Cloutier, Chief Operating Officer of the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority (WRHA) and my dad, agreed.

“In the U.S, if you have health insurance, you’ll probably get through the system fairly quickly. In some cases, it’s likely faster than in the Canadian health care system. But if you’re uninsured in the U.S., you may never have access to necessary care,” he said. He added that surveys of the Canadian health care system indicate high satisfaction with the system when they have an urgent need and less satisfaction with waits for less urgent needs.

In the 81-minute compilation of the 24 hours filmed at the U.S. hospital, it did seem like uninsured patients would have to wait forever to get treatment.

One patient who had a stroke went to the emergency room to get medication. The film cut to a scene of a doctor or nurse calling a neurology clinic, searching for a doctor who could prescribe him medication right away, or else he would have to wait until next March to see a doctor at that hospital who could prescribe him medication (I don’t know the date when the documentary was filmed but the tone of the doctor or nurse’s voice made it sound like March was months away).

Another emergency room patient who had a tumor in his testicle and was diagnosed with bone spurs found out his surgery was cancelled the day before the surgery was supposed to happen. He went to the emergency room hoping to get surgery, but he didn’t have insurance so he’d have to wait. He told a nurse that he was in excruciating pain but the nurse said that he couldn’t do anything for him.

According to Citizenship and Immigration Canada, “Canada’s health insurance system is set up to respond to people’s need for health care rather than their ability to pay for it.” Each province and territory has an insurance plan that’s funded through taxpayers in those provinces and territories so citizens don’t have to pay directly for most health-care services.

Conversely, the National Bureau of Economic Research website said the U.S. has a multi-layer, heavily private system.

The film, directed by Peter Nicks, didn’t exactly portray the privatization of the U.S. health care system, but it was implied when the man diagnosed with bone spurs met with a woman at the hospital to discuss the medical bill. He said to the woman sitting behind a desk, “This is going to be free, right?” They both laughed and the woman replied, “Hardly anything in life is free.” The woman said she might be able to cut him a deal but she needed his proof of income before he could get a discount on his medical bill. The woman’s comment about “cutting him a deal” gives the impression that the U.S. health care system is in the business of making money (because it is).

Patients—like the ones I’ve already described—and hospital workers drove the documentary. The entire film captured moments in the hospital like conversations between people in the waiting room, nurses and patients, and even a woman asking someone for a ride home over a payphone.

Sometimes the patients or workers narrated the film, like the dad whose daughter was in the hospital. While he was crying, he said he had already lost his two-year-old daughter and felt helpless watching the hospital staff assess his hospitalized daughter while he waited to hear what they have to say about the state of her health. Moments like these in the documentary were powerful because it showed how people were affected by the hospital.

There was never narration from anyone involved in creating the film. However, the filmmakers used subtle video editing to send a message about the American health care system. For example, a couple asked a nurse sitting behind a desk how much longer they will have to wait before they enter the emergency room then the film cut to a scene of a man in a bed. The nurse said the man drank and smoked the night before. One nurse or doctor asked him if he fell and he answered, “it’s hard to tell,” and another nurse or doctor asked if what he felt is just a hangover. The cut from the scene of the couple to the man with a supposed hangover is a stab at the hospital’s mandate that “high-priority” patients are taken care of first. In this case, the man with the supposed hangover took priority over a man who I think had chest pains.

Toward the end of the documentary, one of the filmmakers’ messages became clear: for the patients and their family followed in the documentary, life outside the hospital is a place for thick skin and responsibilities. The second outside shot was of the man who was diagnosed with bone spurs who stepped outside to talk on the phone about how him and his partner are going to pay for his medical bill. For patients and their families, life inside the hospital is moment-to-moment interaction with humans who are stripped down to vulnerability. Inside the hospital, the dad playfully spoon-feeds his daughter even though she’s old enough to feed herself.

For workers, the hospital is routine. The film cut to a scene of the hospital staff discussing where to move patients then it cut to an outside shot of the waiting room, where people were walking around. There was one droning piano note—the first time there was music in the film. Then, the film cut back to a scene inside the hospital of staff trying to figure out whom to discharge and where to move patients.

Next, hospital staff and police rolled a person lying on a bed covered in white cloth into the morgue. The person is dead. Someone shut the door to the morgue and everyone walked away. It was routine. The hospital staff and police returned to their work.

Near the end, a fast-forwarded overhead shot of the waiting room had people sitting and walking around the waiting room. More melodic music than before was overdubbed. The melodic music and bright lighting of the overhead shot of people walking in and out of the waiting room suggested that what was exposed in the film is neither positive nor negative, it’s just the routine of the hospital—it’s just the way it is.

The movie ended shortly after.

Skrillex-Leaving EP

Photo from soundcloud.com

Skrillex put an end to his robots-fighting-sound with his relaxed, melodic three-track EP, Leaving, released earlier this month.

“The Reason” and “Scary Bolly Dub” sound like they are leading up to a crazy drop but the songs end without the cathartic drop that listeners were used to hearing in former From First to Last vocalist Sonny Moore’s ”Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites,” which won Best Dance Recording and Best Dance/Electronica Album at the Grammys in 2012.

“Leaving” is the first song I’ve ever heard from Skrillex that sounds like it has heart, maybe because it’s the most melodic song I’ve heard from him. This song reminds me of music by Ellie Goulding, which is interesting because they broke up last year; maybe Goulding’s music influenced Skrillex?

Overall, the EP is decent. ”The Reason” and “Scary Bolly Dub” are more like dance tunes compared with his older work and ”Leaving” is like a melodic ballad compared with his older work.

Check out this interview with Skrillex about his gear and production techniques on Electronic Musician.

 

AHH! What happened to Tegan and Sara?!

Today Tegan and Sara released two songs off their new album, Heartthrob, set to be released on Jan. 29. And the songs sound nothing like anything Tegan and Sara have done before—they sound like teenybopper songs.

Check out ”I was a Fool” and “Now I’m All Messed Up” on Soundcloud.

I can’t help but think of the melody to Vitamin C’s Graduation song at the beginning of the chorus in “Now I’m All Messed Up.” The production on the song sounds slick but so flat—there are no dynamics in the song. Frankly, it’s boring and it sounds just like another radio hit that will peak the charts then plummet after a couple of weeks.

Producer Greg Kurstin has worked with big pop artists like Kelly Clarkson, P!nk, Kesha, and now Tegan and Sara. I’ve heard stories of producers who use the same “formula” for every artist that they work with, and it sounds like Kurstin stamped Tegan and Sara’s new album with his “formula” for what makes a “good” song and a “good” mix. The problem is that if you use the same forumla for every band you produce, then every band you produce sounds the same. I think that has happened here!

I hope seeing them live at the MTS Centre in February will restore the love for them that I’ve lost from these songs.

Orianthi–A woman who can rock

Photo from Orianthi’s website

Orianthi’s first single from her new album due for release in the spring is a catchy rock tune that draws on country vocals. Her single Heaven in This Hell will be released later this month.

Hearing about her new single reminded me of a time when I was working at a music store and the two guys I was working with were convinced that Orianthi wasn’t actually playing this difficult guitar lick in one of her videos because the camera zoomed in on the fretboard, showing only “someone’s” hand shredding.

So okay, 24-year-old Orianthi was good enough to play with legends Michael Jackson, Steve Vai, and Carlos Santana, but she’s not good enough to play a difficult guitar lick?

That was one of the first times I’ve heard Orianthi and I was relieved to FINALLY see a woman in rock who’s great at guitar. Why are there so few?

I worked at the music store for two and a half years and the only signature guitar model from a female artist I heard of was Paul Reed Smith’s Orianthi signature. The hundred or so other signature models were all male musicians. That’s sad.

Women can play guitar–it’s not like men are predisposed to excel at guitar and women aren’t. It’s comments like the ones from the guys I worked with that’s reaffirming the notion that women can’t play guitar well.

I respect Orianthi and whether or not she writes her music, she can play it. And she plays it well.