Supergroup Canada 3.2
If you've been taking a tour of Niagra on any of the 'Maids of the Mist' in the past year and suddenly found your boat ride interrupted by a young man called Alex running and screaming his way along the full legnth of the boat in a fireball with flailing arms scrambling to quash the flames on a Maple Syrup covered chequed shirt, then it is quite possible that while watching this mad stuntman dive screaming into the icy waters (to the rapturous applause of the Japanese tourists who all paid an extra hundred dollars each to the stuntman after he told them it was a special 'Universal Movie Studio' boat tour) that you might have found yourself shouting very loudly to yourself "bugger! I'm on the wrong bloody boat!"
That's because all the real action happened on the other tour boat when the real 'Alexisonfire' - Ontario's international rock giants and frequent holders of ship based concerts- hired the boat out to record the 'Young Cardinals' video for the single from their latest album of the same name. But alongside the international fan base of millions that are currently still drooling over the new album (-with a title track sound that could be described as The Pogues, Sex Pistols and Linkin Park being boarded and overun by a hoard of bloodthirsty pirates and throwing a wild party -) there is actualy another parralel and even larger fanbase now drooling over another musical shoot that has recently sprouted from the Alexisonfire furnace.
Just like Glen Hansard of Irish Cult Rockers The Frames, or even Marcus Brown, formerly the lead guitarist of UK cult screamo's Bury Tomorrow , it seems that Dallas Green, the slightly softer and more harmonic vocal shard within Canadian rock screamo's 'AlexIsOnFire's ' vocaly explosive window, also accidently stumbled his way into an original acoustic solo project that not only shocked the music world with its brilliance but has also begun to outshine his original musical powerhouse and spread their reach to entirely new audiences worldwide at the same time too.
In 2005 while Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova were secretely composing the Swell Season and Once tracks in Czechoslovakia , Dallas was in his own studio putting together his own 'swell season' of purely acoustic tracks -all secretely composed since the age of thirteen. His collection of personal songs and ballads were performed with the aid of just a microphone, an acoustic guitar and no 'digital' tampering whatsoever, and while Glen and Mar were secretely touring Europe in low key intimate tours between The Frames rock gigs, Dallas was likewise mirroring those events in Canada by descretely hosting low key intimate acoustic concerts in between the enormous AlexIsOnFire' concerts...and just as was the case with Glen Hansard on those early mirrored tours on other side of the world, they were all blissfully unaware of the enormous success that was about to spring up from these small scale intimate performances.
2006 became an award winning year for both 'Alexisonfire' and 'City and Colour' with Dallas' own Canadian 'MuchMusic' funded video for 'Save Your Scissors' being nominated for three Much Music awards and taking the 'Peoples Choice' award with ease. 2007 likewise reaped continuous award nominations while 2008 saw the Canadian release of Bring Me Your Love, where Dallas stuck to those 'anologue' recording techniques while expanding on the musical sound with steel guitars, harmonicas, mandolins and banjo's with friends and musicians joining him on his recordings and tours.When a special edition of the album was made available for pre-order from Dine Alone records the demand was so great that their entire website crashed repeatedly throught November and December 2008. The album billboarded at number 11 instantly while the first album, 'Sometimes', was made available to the now snowballing Stateside fanbase in 2009 with more Juno awards being won in Canada for the tracks 'Waiting...', 'Sleeping Sickness', and 'The Girl' as Dallas Green was declared as Canada's 'Songwriter Of The Year'...which for a Canadian and many international artists, is a Juno award to rank alongside not just an Oscar, but also places 'AlexIsOnFire' and Dallas Greens 'City and Colour' on an equal par with Irelands steamrolling rock and acoustic monsters 'TheFrames and Swell Season'. They have also been among the first bands in the world to use 'interactive' music videos. City And Colour will be announcing all their new tourdates to the press on October26th 2009 with fans on their mailing lists recieving advance notice any moment now
But while AlexIsOnFire have been boarding the worlds riverboats and national rivers to cast off new audio currents, another band has been ascending up from the watery depths of the region with a hard stony sound described as 'the deep south of the North' . Their own raging under currents are rocking the boats of the music world with not 'Screamo' but with classic, progressively mastered rock n roll. Even though their 'deep south' discription actualy refers to to southern borders of Canada as opposed to 'Dixieland', their actual sound probably better refers to an even deeper south, as despite their own unique edge there is a subtle musical inflection of the deep south of Australia in their midst with strong creative overtones and nicely rendered echoe's of the early, Bonn Scott fronted, AC/DC.
The band has sought out the authenticity of the early seventies prog rock and rock 'n' roll and has also tried to capture some of the innocense, musical and social idealism of the time too. 'Butterfly Road' is the name of their 2008 debut album, which also captures even more of the creativity of the era with eight pages of unique 'Stone River' artwork also included in the cd release of their debut album.The Stone River sound can be discovered refreshing and revitalising rock here....
More classicly rocked up beats and rythums are also joyfully springing out of Georgetown Ontario. The Compound are the nations slightly more upbeat classic rock threesome who's debut album is full of highly polished and professional riffs, leads, breaks, bass, drums and vocals. Instantly accessable and with a radio friendly edge, The Compound have a definate advantage with their catologue of rocking songs that will be instantly appealing to music fans of all styles- but tdon't think the tracks are in any way softened or watered down as they can stil pack a hard rocking riff punch thats strong enough to knock the adrenalin right out of your blood cells and send it racing round the body at just the right moments..We've included their home made video's for 'Take a Stand' and 'Fight To Disagree' along with a link to their MySpace from where you can order their perfectly crafted debut album too.The Compound are definately a young band with a very big future ahead of them so keep a very sharp eye out for future dates and new releases in the very near future. The Compound are...
Kevin Farmer on Drums and Vocals, Shawn Gruszka on bass and vocals with Simon Talevski on vocals, guitars, pianos and synths.
Now if you've read our 'bits for band 4 page' on the trials of the UK's Laura Warwick then you may have already noticed her fairly unique way for getting fans on board as an active part of forming her debut catalogue and in becoming buisness partners and shareholders to specific album projects for as little as the retail cost of an album itself.Another band to recently travel this buisness models path for self financing future albums is yet another Ontario band called Epyllion. The five piece Ottawan band has been treading the boards scince 2004 and already has a twenty song strong debut out (available on iTunes called disc 01/disc02 - with an extra 12 'b-sides' included in the download too) and have chosen the new album release route with a view to putting some of the profits back into the hands of their fans. Where Laura chose the slightly more risky option of set up her own company Epyllion have chosen the already established company Sellaband to raise the neccessary $10,000 dollars to put their next album into production. Shares went on sale at the begining of October and investors can withdraw their money from the project at any time thus making it a genuine 'risk free' project for any fan or investor.
There's a slight taste of Nirvanah to some of their riffs with a lighter and more harmonic 'City and Colour' edge to their vocal deliveries on a catologue interlaced with solid guitar and bass work throughout. Familiar tracks to have already seeped into radio listeners minds will be 'Just Like You' and 'Will I ever See You Again' (video included below) with another recent title called 'Without You' having the air of yet another Epyllion track to hit the mark perfectly.
Epyllion are Eric and Jason St-Cyr, Ryan Cahill, Hitsman and Chris Zimerman and for more sharp Ottawan sounds and more on getting involved with the new Epyllion album on Sellaband, then head over to their following MySpace and blog...
Alot more Canadian masters coming soon...
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copyright 2009 Martin Ryan and Mairtin O'Riain
The Ryan -O'Riain22
