Lollapalooza emailed the complete festival schedule to its mailing list subscribers today, and although Perry has once again put together what looks like it will be a great festival, I want to bring your attention to another festival happening the same weekend, August 7th-9th. Now in it’s eleventh year the Wolfe Island Music Festival will once again feature festival favourites and big names like Holy Fuck, and the usual smattering of the local Kingston scene with acts like P.S. I Love You, The Rural Alberta Advantage who we’ve talked about before and a personal favourite of mine Ohbijou.

So if you’re low on funds, don’t want to drive the twelve hours from Toronto, or like me currently don’t have a passport, why not come down and camp on a beutiful rural island where lake Ontario meets the St. Lawrence seaway. It’s only a twenty minute free ferry-ride from downtown Kingston. This is the music festival equivalent of giving up the fast pace of the city for some relaxation in the country; you won’t have to rush between the stages (there’s only one), so you won’t miss a beat. Plus I plan to bring lots of wine to share.

Here’s a sampling of the festival’s performers to listen to while you plan your trip to the nation’s first capital:

Ohbijou – Black Ice from the recently released Beacons LP

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Woodhands – I Wasn’t Made for Fighting

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PS I Love You – 2012

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Full lineup after the jump…

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At the tender ages of 18 and 15, sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg (First Aid Kit) are an uber-talent to be reckoned with. Having released their debut EP “Druken Trees” last April (a cause celebre in itself), these Swedish young-uns are planning a full album for this September. Although relatively fresh artists, they already seem to have come into their own with music that really sticks to your gut. A lot of that I believe has to do with the vocals. The Soderberg sisters have a deliciously complex “pinot noir” sound – summer berries, barnyard aromas and a long finish. The lyrics and melodies also have a maturity beyond their years. You’re Not Coming Home Tonight is a ballad in the truest sense with tegan-and-sarah-esque harmonies done better. And their cover of Tiger Mountain Pleasant Song is strikingly honest. In contrast to conjuring images of puffy sleeved musicians playing Greensleeves (sorry Fleet Foxes…it’s just that song), First Aid Kit’s version has an interesting almost mysterious quality with stringier guitar, a multitude of crescendos and live-time layered vocals that give a richer quality than would be expected of two voices. This song makes me want to go camping, and I hate camping.

Enjoy!

First Aid Kit – You’re Not Coming Home Tonight

First Aid Kit – Cover of Tiger Mountain Pleasant Song (YouTube)

I’m on the road till this thing drops. The truth is, no one raps about slinging coke like Clipse, and this has to be one of the most hotly and highly anticipated Hip Hop albums of the year. In a time when you can never be too sure what genre your favourite rapper’s new album is going to be (see: Wayne does Axl-meets-Alien or Kanye does Andre 3k meets Thom Yorke meets WTF), you can always count on the Clipse to continue rapping about cocaine, and street stuffs …

The new record will feature production by Kanye West, Swizz Beatz, The Hitmen, J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League, Dame Grease, DJ Khalil, long time collaborators The Neptunes, and the legen (wait for it) dary, Rick Rubin.

This morning, the first cut from the album, called “Kinda Like a Big Deal” was released on their blog. It’s a very big deal. Featuring Kanye West, getting his College Dropout on (and by that I mean rapping very well), the beat is harder, and more filled-out than anything you would’ve heard the twins rap on in recent history – and while it’s not a gritty throwback to “Trill” or “Keys Open Doors”, it’s a banger which will definitely resonate in the places it’s meant to – bbq cookouts in Philly and basement parties at your baby mamazeses.

Clipse – Kinda Like a Big Deal (feat. Kanye West)

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San Cristobal De Las Casas, Mexico

I’ve been mind-numbingly bored with the mundane nature of working life recently. I’ve also come to the conclusion that countless others reach within months of getting their first ‘big kid job’: the only thing that helps the days pass is planning a vacation…. And so I planned, ferociously, day in and day out, with my two best friends. The plan was to go to Mexico City in search of our friend Luis Carlos Armando Manzanilla Priego Ramos (yes that’s one person). With Luis as a our spiritual (read: Mexican) guide, we would seek escape from our subfusc concrete realities back home.

Thank you Luis, you gave us tacos, jungles, lagoons, villages, ruins and lomas like we could have never dreamed of. Best 10 days of my post-post-academic-life.

As any good trip should have, this one has a soundtrack. So in this spirit, I bring you a mixtape full of happys and sads, mind-fucks and beauty, new and (really)old World Music and North-American trash: a pastiche of my life on April 4th to April 14th, 2k9.

Hope you enjoy. El gusto es mio.

Spring: From Here We Go Subfusc (zSHARE)

Tracklist after the break…

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So the first hints of spring are starting to sneak out from underneath the blanket of winter and with it comes eternal optimism, a sense of accomplishment for surviving another winter and the chance of finding new love…

Actually right now I’m in Australia, which means that it’s fall, the weather is changing from a beautiful 30 degrees and sunny to days that hover around 15 with a sprinkle of rain and a cool wind from Antarctica blowing in off the ocean. The winter is looming like some sort of shadowy figure in the corner of your eye that you know is there but you cannot quite see yet. But even with winter around the corner there is still the chance for new relationships to form in the most unusual or average of situations, as these next two songs will show.

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Torngat is one of many groups, including Belle Orchestre and formerly the Arcade Fire, of which horn-player Pietro Amato is a member. This instrumental trio caught my attention back in 2007 at a show they played at Kingston’s Grad Club, where I had attended based mostly on my love of all things horn related. Despite a very intoxicated young Kingstonian lady dancing distractingly provocatively and yelling such witticisms as “Torngat? Pfft… more like TornGUT”, the show definitely was worth checking out.

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For all you recessionistas out there (people who manage to stay fashionable during the recession), here are some pumpin’ jams to put a smile on your face while you sit on your couch at home at 2:00 on a Thursday afternoon getting CNN’s advice on job-hunting.

Thunderheist will be playing Kingston tomorrow night at the Grad Club for anyone in that neck of the woods.

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It’s takes no great leap in logic to say that the longer an established artist waits to release an album, the more the anticipation from the fan base grows. Pressure is on to achieve a delicate balance between what made you successful while still growing as an artist, remaining relevant to the fickle masses. Do you shed your Oops I did it again image to become a Womanizer, or can you have it both ways, being not a girl and not yet a woman?

The Yeah Yeah Yeahs got it wrong…. on their sophomore album. Show Your Bones was squeaky-clean when we wanted at least some of the fuck-me, balls out raw tracks of Fever to Tell. The range between Rich and Maps showed a depth that was sorely missing on the following album. Granted, there were some perfect pop songs (Cheated Hearts, Gold Lion), but the whole album generally left a feeling of “huh?” lumped at the bottom of your throat.

For this reason, I approached It’s Blitz! with some apprehension, keeping my still tender feelings well guarded after the prior disappointment. That Karen O’s lyrics were going to be nonsensical and disjointed with the occasional mind-blowing line, was a given. Suspicions were confirmed with the opening line of Zero – what exactly is a “latitude sun” and does it shake? Maybe its just Karen being madman on the run again.

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One of the more exciting things to come out of SXSW so far, in contrast to the innundation of Tweets, is a new single from a past favourite of mine, Voxtrot, who will also be playing two shows during the festivities according to their website. “Trepanation Party” is not a drastic departure from material found on the band’s first two EP’s, but it does capture one’s attention more than anything on their full-length effort. The lyrics and vocals remain true to form, but are set against a much more varied backdrop of synth and peppy drums. The result is more cohesive than it sounds, and it makes you wonder why it took two years of inactivity to stumble upon such a formula. Perhaps some of the credit for this renewal is due in part to the contribution of Jim Eno from Spoon to the recording and production of the track. No word if any more material will be forthcoming.

Voxtrot – Trepanation Party

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Via Stereogum.

Exciting news everybody, theoretical physicists from Cambridge have recently discovered the formula for the perfect song and published it in the journal Science. The following is an excerpt from an interview with the papers author, “…it was simple really, we isolated the components and ran them through our supercomputer and it ended up with a beautiful correlation… really quite fascinating”. The equation was one part infectious beat, two parts jangley guitar and one part wailing vocals. Ok, so since this is my first post and I want to start off on a good foot I’m going to level with you, there was no paper from Cambridge, there was no interview, there are no theoretical physicists, I made the whole thing up. The important thing is that if there was a formula for a perfect song it would be that, and one song that would fit this formula perfectly is 1901 by Phoenix off their upcoming album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. I have to admit I am fairly new to Phoenix’s work, however, from what I’ve heard so far I like ‘em and so will you. This French four-piece started out in the mid 90’s on the mean streets of Versailles. The band itself has some very strong ties with other high profile artists having initially worked on a remix of French band Airs song “Kelly Watch the Stars” and Laurent Brancowitz having been in the band Darlin’ before joining Phoenix with Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homen-Christo who later went on to form a little group by the name of Daft Punk. This isn’t Phoenix’s first rodeo either; WAP is their fourth studio album and has the potential to be excellent so keep your eyes peeled for this one, out May 25 if all goes to plan.

Phoenix – 1901

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Updates after the jump.

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