by Miné Salkin | Aug 5, 2009 | live action
Ladies and gentlemen, the 2009 V-Fest was altogether epic — two days of blistering heat, one pelting lightning thunderstorm — couldn’t sway the spirits of 22 bands and their some 15,000 fans.
The morning and early afternoon were spent getting used to the grounds; the fest was held at Deer Lake Park in Burnaby, a beautiful and almost bucolic setting not too far from the city life. From pole dancers to beer tents, the grounds had it all.
At approximately 4:30 in the afternoon, Kevin Brereton a.k.a. K-OS strutted onstage and glamoured the audience with his funk-reggae-rock jams and charismatic showmanship. Gradually, people from around the park come closer to the glorious thumping basslines. At this point, K-OS tells “all the ugly people be quiet” before an immaculate performance of his 2002 hit “Heaven Only Knows.”
Shortly after that, the very talented Jules and I prepared for our interview with the guys from Plants and Animals, which is coming to SPINearth.tv soon! They took the festival stage and played a furiously energetic set, finishing off with a rendition of “Bye Bye Bye” from their Juno-nominated album Parc Avenue. Their performance of “Faerie Dance” was played with an edge that made the show all that more cathartic.
Being a proud devotee to the musicians of Arts & Crafts, I was incredibly excited to see Broken Social Scene take the main stage. Brendan Canning showed off his newly trimmed-appearance, and luckily for the audience Jimmy Shaw from Metric played guitar and horns onstage too. Not too long into their second track, clouds of pot smoke wafted through the grounds, an all-too necessary component of the BSS experience. Things got heavy when the band tore through “KC Accidental,” a classic single from their debut album You Forgot it in People. Kevin Drew killed it in the finale with “Superconnected,” truly reigning in the spirit of the festival with their powerful baroque-rock symphonies.
Then at the most perfect time, Our Lady Peace took the stage and took us all back to that memorable time… mid 90s Canadian popular rock. The quartet, older, more mature than the videos I remembered them from in elementary school, played classic hits such as “Clumsy,” “Naveed” and “Superman’s Dead” and took the crowd down nostalgia lane.
Despite the glory of all these wonderful bands, it couldn’t keep mother nature’s wrath at bay. Huge raindrops fell from the angry sky, causing organizers to cancel the final set being The Roots! Huge disappointment to miss out on the headliners, but all in all it was a fun day…
If you want to see some RAD photos of the Virgin Festival weekend, check out David Thai’s photoreport on SPINearth.tv.
K-OS Myspace
K-OS Official Website
Plants and Animals MySpace
Plants and Animals Official Website
Our Lady Peace MySpace
Our Lady Peace Official Website
Broken Social Scene MySpace
Broken Social Scene Official Website
by Miné Salkin | Jun 5, 2009 | live action
@ the Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver BC June 4
Crystal Castles gave a blistering electronic performance that meshed together their digital eccentricities and powerful rhythms, producing an overwhelmingly cathartic, organic flux of a dancing crowd surrendering to their wall of sound.
The duo’s name originates after a sky fortress from the Mattel toy series called She-Ra, who was the twin sister of He-Man. The ferocity of vocalist Alice Glass’ raw, borderline-animal screams came across as borderline mythical during their rendition of “Courtship Dating,” giving her supernatural qualities.
The show kicked off with an energetic, strobe-light saturated debut, as Glass slinked onstage and adopted an intimidating, huge stage presence wearing a tube skirt and black button-up top, her eyes thick with black makeup, her trademark jet black bob throbbing to the basslines. She pushed everyone to the brink of epilepsy as she picked up the strobe light, flashed it in the faces of the entire front row as she screamed overtop the myriad of Nintendo sound loops.
Multi-instrumentalist Ethan Kath showed off his versatile musicmanship by flaunting his seamless transitions from turntable to synth, with a machine-like exactness, entrenched in the shadows of the stage in his hoodie like some kind of electric Darth Vader.
The most unique thing about Crystal Castles is their talent to create heat, chaos — all the elements of a natural disaster — without burning up in it themselves. Things got a little stagnant when Glass stepped off the stage for about 10 minutes while Kath entreated the crowd to some of the instrumental montages such as “Magic Spells.” When Glass returned, she was smoking a cigarette that she then tossed into the crowd before throwing herself to surf in it.
Their experimental, new-wave style of electronic music was particularly good during their performance of “Xxzxcuzx Me,” with the image of Kath pounding demonically on his synth while Glass jumped around the stage like a raging lunatic you didn’t want to stare directly at. Crystal Castles is uniquely aggressive, confrontational, and stylish to the point of viewer anxiety: and certainly isn’t for the faint at heart.
by Miné Salkin | May 31, 2009 | live action
Commodore Ballroom
May 29, 2009
For Exclaim! Magazine
DJ extraordinaire Ryan Raddon, aka Kaskade, knows how to make people dance. The Chicago-born DJ/ producer for Ultra Records vamped up his newest full-length album The Grand, also playing a full and varied set-list touching on his entire six-album discography. In collaboration with Deadmau5, Kaskade showed an unmatched lust for life with the song “Move for Me,” which hit number one on the Billboard Dance Chart and stayed there for two weeks. Silver tinsel confetti streamed from the stage during “Devil On My Shoulder,” topping up the excitement of the well-sweaty dance floor.
Kaskade tears it up like a strobelite obsession
A godlike moment
Raddon’s style is cultivated, seasoned, and smoother than velvet. Most DJs sound great on vinyl but when push comes to shove, the live set can be difficult to deliver with the same finesse. Kaskade spins out some of the fattest, electrifying mixes, but his masterful technique of the turntables makes it seem easy through his laid-back, unaffected, and coy style. While the Commodore was built in the 1920s and is considered a testament to old-school Vancouver history, it was decked out with huge screens playing choppy-styled stills of human outlines doing mundane things, the lights and bass lines throbbing to his deep house anthems. With Kaskade smiling, spinning between the screens, it made the whole universe seem a little less unmerciful and gave it a little more meaning.
by Miné Salkin | May 27, 2009 | live action
Chris Taylor, lord of thine Rickenbacker
Grizzly Bear
Commodore Ballroom
May 26 2009
Grizzly Bear: "can't you feel the knife?"
Try to imagine the cool hipness of the early Walkmen sound, combined with the ethereal sounds and lyrical verbosity of Broken Social Scene, finishing with the power to hypnotize. The Brooklyn-based quartet consisting of singer Ed Droste, the aptly-named drummer Christopher Bear, guitarist Daniel Rossen and the versatile woodwind/bassist Chris Taylor released their third album, Veckatimest on the night of the show. As you could imagine, their sound has evolved tremendously. Their debut Horn of Plenty, had their trademark layering of sounds, but only showed their atmospheric-building talents at their infancy. Since 2004, their power of transcendence has matured in all the best ways, as one can tell in songs such as “The Knife.”
Veckatimest takes these powers to capture psychedelic bliss, but with a slight acoustic roughness and a touch of heartfelt nostalgia for a warmer generation.
Grizzly Bear MySpace
Grizzly Bear Official Website
by Miné Salkin | May 22, 2009 | news
Canadian consumers will have a minimum 21-day, interest-free grace period on all credit card purchases after the federal government introduced new legislation on Thursday.
This applies when a customer pays the outstanding balance in full.
The new regulations also require credit card companies to let customers know how long it will take to pay off their debt if they only make the minimum monthly payments.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the public’s financial literacy will be increased and admitted the changes were met with some resistance by financial institutions.
“It is a major change. It will cost financial institutions tens of millions of dollars,” Flaherty said.
The regulations also force companies to require express consent for credit limit increases.
Dave Sallay, a 20-year-old warehouse employee, said these rules could have helped him avoid the “huge” credit debt he owes.
“Visa raised my limit from my original $500 to $2,400 without my consent,” he said. “I didn’t want it increased, and if I spent more than my limit they would just let it roll over.”
Sarah Stenabaugh is a graduate student who said she was given a credit card too early.
At 19, she signed up during a promotion that gave her $100 for groceries. After a few months of not watching her spending, Stenabaugh was paying nearly 20 per cent interest on a balance of $5,000 alongside insurance add-ons she claims she didn’t ask for.
“They need to regulate who they give credit cards to,” Stenabaugh said. “They hit up the kids right when they get to university who don’t understand how a credit debt could affect them for years after.”
