FALL 2024: OONGA, SUPERMODEL TAXIDERMY, SEA OF LETTUCE, DERELICT, GARY Kulesha & Gabriel Dharmoo
Oonga - Cracher le feu
(Mtl Sauce Piquante co.)
Release Date: June 14th, 2024
Oonga unleashes a summer dance house party on fire in the form of a 10 track album. Cracher le feu, meaning "Spitting Fire", encompasses so many different styles (ska, funk, calypso, samba punk, etc.), that while the tracks are very danceable, there is absolutely nothing formulaic about them. A number of artists are featured on these tracks and in multiple languages like English, Spanish, French, and Brazilian Portuguese making the task difficult to pick just one or two to highlight. Start with 'Roda' featuring Bianca Rocha & Sauce Piquante, sung in Portuguese, to get a feel for their solid beatmaking, throwing in a trumpet for good measure. Next stop, play 'Dame Espacio' featuring Chellz, Ultra K, & Sauce Piquante. Sung in Spanish and French, the track feels like a spicy slice of Montreal's multicultural music scene. For a track exclusively in English featuring Mighty Sampson & Sauce Piquante, pick 'Temperature'. And then there's 'Dolor' with Elo Sono which is a top-notch dance track which is rhythmically intricate and infectious. Highly recommend 'Dolor', and the tracks from this album just for the chance to extend summer and transport us to multicultural Montreal.
- Filomena
Supermodel Taxidermy - At What Cost
(Punishment18 Records)
Release Date: April 26th, 2024
Heavy duty noise of the hardcore punk induced metal musical persuasion. A must listen for fans of Suicidal Tendencies, Dayglo Abortions, and DRI. This thrash sound has got some beefy and aggressive bass lines, blasts of drum fills and rips, and absolutely inconsolable guitar riffs.
- Mackenzie
Sea of Lettuce- Any Day Now
(Self-Released)
Release Date: June 7th, 2024
Local boys bring us their fourth album entitled Any Day Now. These hype Calgarians deliver a beachy, cottage vibe to alternative rock. Spun around with a pleasant hypnotic daze, Sea of Lettuce draws you into a bliss like state. All the tracks remind us as if Tame Impala and Mac DeMarco were there in the basement with them. Beautifully crafted lo-fi, echo chamber styling tunes to amp your mood and make your day.
- Martin
Derelict- Versus Entropy
(Self-Released)
Release Date: June 21st, 2024
Technical death metal at one of its finest, with instruments all over the place (in a good way) punctuated by jazz-inspired breaks and a relentless wave of the heavy stuff . An impeccable instrumental bisects the record (‘Attunement’), rounded up by a familiar classic metal sound with riffs galore driven by the bass drums. Listen for the metal, stay in awe of the musical complexity, enjoyable from start to finish.
- David
Gary Kulesha & Gabriel Dharmoo- Vestiges d'une fable
(Centrediscs)
Release Date: June 21st, 2024
This new album highlights multiple performances of Gabriel Dharmoo's chamber music pieces by the National Arts Centre Orchestra, conducted by Gary Kulesha. Blending inspirations from Indian classical music and his interests in folklore into his pieces, foreboding compositions strike an excellent balance between whimsical and avant-garde. The opening piece, "Sur Bà Nôi"", sets the tone for the album, starting the album with a beautiful piano-driven piece that slowly starts to reveal the darker and more dissonant side of the album near the end. After that is the piece ""the fog in our poise"" which starts with one of my favourite parts of the album, where the menacing drone conflicts with the fun and upbeat instrumentation, creating imagery of someone having fun knowing the end is soon. From there, the piece becomes more sparse and mellow, with the strings and handclaps providing a comforting but still foreboding conclusion to the piece as it finishes with one last thud. The third piece is the most avant-garde in the album, with Dharmoo contributing the soprano vocals for his own piece. The orchestra removes themselves from the spotlight, helping to accompany Dharmoo's vocal experimentation. As a result, the piece becomes closer to improvisation than a fully realized piece. This isn't a criticism at all, as it highlights how great the orchestra's synergy is and how fine the conductor's sense of balance is. The interplay between the two creates a beautifully haunting and dissonant atmosphere that highlights Dharmoo's incredibly varied and abstract performance that never loses focus of the atmosphere and energy that the piece creates. The fourth piece, ""Moondraal Moondru"", expands on the ideas created in the previous pieces, balancing between playful and dissonant while also incorporating elements of Carnatic music. Expanding the instrumentation in the percussion section, the piece takes you through a chaotic crescendo that ranges from incredibly sparse to dense and abrasive, ending with an abstract performance from the brass and percussion sections that close out the highlight of the album. Finally, the album ends with ""sur les rives de"", which acts as the inverse of the first piece. The dissonance is brought out, and the piano is removed, ending the album with strings and solo percussion. Overall, this is an excellent album, showing off the more sinister elements of neo-classical very well through experimentation with dissonance and songwriting. While this is a classical album, I would recommend any experimental or alternative show give this record a spin.
- Milan