: Featured Artist

7.5 | AUSTRA

On ‘Feel it Break’, Katie Stelmanis, Maya Postepski and Dorian Wolf have crafted a dark, danceable masterpiece suitable for both ritual incantations and clubs; an album hearkening back to the sleazier side of New Wave but still deeply rooted in Stelmanis’s classical and operatic upbringing.

This confluence of classical and electronic has been at the heart of Stelmanis’s career before there even was a career. At the age of 10, Stelmanis joined the Canadian Children’s Opera Chorus, where she sang regularly for the prestigious Canadian Opera Company. Spurred on by her production work for soundtracks for local plays, Stelmanis began immerging herself in electronic music. With new obsessions Bjork, P J Harvey and Nine Inch Nails weaving their influence, Stelmanis’s goal was clear: “I wanted to make classical music with really fucked up, distorted crazy shit on there.”

4.30 | DIRTY PROJECTORS

“Dave Longstreth is making his own fucked-up version of American music.”

“There’s a world of cross-references in Dirty Projector’s music: stuttering modal riffs from Mali, the meandering melodies of opera or modern music theater, pygmy antiphonal vocals, Captain Beefheart, Zimbabwean and Congolese rock, King Crimson, Talking Heads, Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks.”

– New York Times

You can look at the DPz discography and divide it up by recording quality (lo-fi vs. poppin fresh), supposed influence (old 60s shit vs. new “urban” flavor), or instrumentation/cast of characters (lone wolf CT shaman vs. heavyweight “rock ensemble”). It’s easy to look at it like this; stops along the way, “artistic growth”, career arc – Bitte Orca jumps these rails and it’s awesome.  It’s tempting to listen to Bitte Orca as a series of signifiers - re-arranged, deconstructed, POMO’d, whateva - but in the face of such living, breathing music that seems overly morbid. If the guitars can recall classic rock or grunge, it’s not because they’re returning to those styles, but maybe because they represent the next loop on the eternal, golden chain.

9.8 | YEASAYER

Soothsayers, crystal-gazers, and time travelers…YEASAYER have all seen the future. Spilling words of Armageddon, the apocalypse, and the second coming of Christ they speak of man’s impending doom. With countries on the warpath and our decaying world growing inhabitable it is easy to succumb to the voices of these scholars.

YEASAYER also have hypotheses on the future. “2080/Sunrise” documents their visions and ideas on what lies ahead. Discern what you will from the lyrics, but YEASAYER’s songs flow with positive vibes that will make you dance and trumpet. It is optimism. It is joy.

“It’s a new year, I’m glad to be here, it’s a fresh spring, so lets sing. In 2080 I will surely be dead, so don’t look ahead, never look ahead.”

9.8 | JUNIOR BOYS

Before there was Clap Your Tapes And Say Art Brut, there was Junior Boys: the proto-blog success story. Starting with a pair of mysterious twelves of smart, crisp electro-hooks, the releases were shrouded in abstract imagery and classic graphic design which hearkened back to the heydays of Factory, Mute and Some Bizzare. The music that poured forth was inspired by the past, present and future all. Last Exit, the album that followed, answered the promise, distilling the last twenty five years of electronic pop music into one potent potable. What followed was worldwide acclaim and live performances, including a marathon tour of North America with Caribou and The Russian Futurists that prevailed over heat stroke, jellyfish stings, speeding tickets, abandoned vehicles, vigilant customs agents and close encounters with quicksand & fuel pumps to deliver a series of uplifting shows that made the travellers forget their woes.  Today, Junior Boys aren’t so much a myth as a revelation. The Canadian-based duo have emerged with a pop statement that is easily one of best albums of the year. So This Is Goodbye is a work that exhibits a confident mix of focus, clarity and ambition. From the upbeat double A-side single “In The Morning”/”The Equalizer” (the former being a collaboration with tour mate, Andi Toma from Mouse On Mars), to the somber triptych that closes the album which touches such kindred spirits as Sylvian, Ferry and, yes Sinatra (as with their cover of the ol’ blue-eyes classic, “When No One Cares). Junior Boys manage to tease soul and longing out of their machines in a way that few have dared try.

9.8 | JAMIE LIDELL

Jamie is Jim. Let’s clear that up straight away. No easy feat to follow up 2005’s Multiply, which garnered many fans and an astounding collection of superlatives still ringing across the world. That album, Jamie’s second solo, caught most of us off-guard. After a decade of electronic experimentation that had brought him from underground techno to the science-funk of Super_Collider (with Cristian Vogel), and into his blistering live show, few people expected Jamie to make an honest-to-goodness soul and funk record. Jamie had let those classic influences fuse with his own deeply felt songwriting, meticulous production skills, and most of all, that flipping voice. Hard to believe that the bespectacled self-confessed music nerd who’d grown up fetishising samplers and boxes that went squelch, could belt it out like a Berry Gordy discovery circa 1961. And if you’d seen him live there was another glimpse of the old Jekyll-Hyde routine. Slyly self-deprecating gent becomes relentless sonic showman. The audience were there to dance, and now the man wrapped in gold lamé is crooning, spluttering, laughing, transforming words into sounds, noise into signal, a body-rocking beat conjured out of nowhere, and then over that, a rousing harmony. On the edge between control and chaos, Jamie turned music inside out – and it was an exhilarating experience.