Hot Panda

Well there’s only one more sleep until the madness of Canadian Music Week begins, and it seemed that you could almost feel the excitement crackling and bubbling in the air throughout the city today. My friend and I successfully navigated the underground labyrinth known as PATH, and made our way from Ryerson downtown to the Royal York Hotel (which I’m planning on rushing to on Saturday night after Bloc Party to hopefully catch Crystal Castles’ set) to pick up our wristbands for the week. Yet before Singing Lamb is packed with interviews, concert reviews and photos, here is somewhat regular news for you. Enjoy!

I’ve already told you about Vancouver’s Japandroids, whom I hope to check out this week, but there are two other new bands I’d like to share with you that I haven’t been able to stop listening this week. Beast is the Montreal duo of vocalist and lyricist Betty Bonifassi and composer/producer Jean-Phi Goncalves. I first heard them on George Strombo’s radio show this week, and yesterday I got a package from home, which included a USB drive from my brother featuring their self-titled debut album. It couldn’t have came at a better time either. The band describe their sound as “trip-hop” on their MySpace, but listening to songs like “Mr. Hurricane” and“Satan”, but I would call them a hard electronica band with elements of hip-hop, strong rock drumming and Bonifassi’s powerful gospel pipes that set the duo apart from the current crop of Montreal bands. Hot Pandaon the other hand, are a four-piece from “Stabmonton” (if you don’t know where they’re talking about, you should probably read this), and have drawn comparisons to everyone from Talking Heads to Roxy Music with their highly danceable pop songs such as “Cold Hands, Chapped Lips”. The band is signed to Mint Records(home to The New Pornographers, Immaculate Machine, Nardwuar the Human Serviette and more), was featured in the independent music label’s recent spring ’09 ‘zine Fresh Breath of Mint (that you can pick up at your favourite local music store), and their debut album Volcano…Bloody Volcano is in-stores now. And yes, in case you were wondering, both bands will be in Toronto this week for CMW.

So unaware to most of Canada, the East Coast Music Awards 2009 took place two weekends ago in beautiful Corner Brook, Newfoundland. According to my friend Dave, a good time was had by all, and Corner Brook was treated to amazing performances from Hey Rosetta!, In-Flight Safety, and Jenn Grant. At the awards gala, Hey Rosetta! were the big winners, coming away with three well-deserved awards includingGroup Recording of the Year and Recording of the Year. If you’ve yet to listen to this band or see them perform, they have three upcoming shows in Toronto – two during CMW (including a performance at “The Indies” award show) and on April 24th at Lee’s Palace with Bruce Randall.

The spring and summer show announcements are coming in fast and furious. Here are some of the more recent announcements, check the Shows page for more info and other concerts:
- Spiral Beach will be playing at the Horseshoe on March 24th
- Peanut Butter Wolf, James Pants and Mayer Hawthorne will be at the Revival Bar on May 1st
- Born Ruffians are opening for Franz Ferdinand at the Kool Haus on May 4th
- The Von Bondies are back in town on May 29th for a show at Lee’s Palace

Yesterday morning on a whim, I downloaded a DJ Mick Boogie mixtape entitled Brooklyn Soul. What it does is takes Jay-Z’s last album American Gangster, and mashes it with classic Marvin Gayes soul songs (“Sexual Healing”, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, etc). I was pleasantly surprised – it was more understated and less over-the-top than other Jay-Z mashups that I’ve heard in the past (see: Linkin Park’sColllision Course, Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album). You can download it for free here.

Don’t know how I missed this, but a little while ago Toronto’s Winter Gloves covered LCD Soundsystem’s“Someone Great”, condensing James Murphy’s sad, yet blissful disco gem from six minutes into two. Check it out here or the original here. It was also recently sampled by Kanye’s “protege” Kid Cudi for “Can I Be”, which features Cudi rapping several bars on-top of the track. You can listen to it over at the music blog fork/knife. While you’re at it, check out the rest of the site, because there are some really interesting songs and new artists featured on there.

Well that’s it for me tonight. Hope you enjoy the rest of your week, and for those of you catching any of the CMW festivities, I’ll see you around.

Cheers,
Max