...are foverer

i'm sure i've talked to you about islands before. i've seen them twice already in concert. last time however, was a while ago in september 06. this was shortly after their first full-lenght had come out. the press gave it great reviews as far as i remember. anyway, they hadn't toured in a long long time and they were saying a new album was on its way. a few weeks ago they posted a number of shows in europe. but last week, to my great surprise, walking by a venue, there i saw a poster announcing islands on saturday. the show was meant to give its fans a preview of the new record.

the opening act were the two asian members of islands. i think they used to call themselves the super chow brothers but now have no actual band name to speak of. they are not in fact, brothers, but they do share the same name. anyway, i'm sure you would have liked their set. they are both talented violonists and played 3 classical songs from a composer i sadly am unaware of. the crowd was cheerful enough, but clearly this was unexpected for an indie-rock show.

when islands took the stage, we noticed frontman nick diamonds had painted his face white. my boyfriend says he looked like a mime. he is very thin and his face is strong-boned, so he had a weird ghostly vibe going, too.

islands are 6 guys. other than the two asian fellows, nick, and the black bassist, one of them i used to recognize as the saxophone guy. both times i saw islands, he always exhumed so much energy on stage. he takes heavy steps forward when he plays and his teeth seem to be clinching onto his sax as if he was dangling from a cliff.

it seems now that sax guy (to be noted that he's also in local band sister suvi) is playing guitar more than sax. it looks like there won't be as much sax on the new album, because the only times he played it, was for older songs from their first lp. and that's not such a bad thing. nick diamonds and him have a great chemistry when they play together and along with the low bass, it makes for some really great stuff. they have a new song up on myspace if you want to have a listen. (on a new label, btw).

overall, it was yet another different islands experience. i discovered them 3 years ago at a big venue opening for metric. i knew none of their songs. the second time i saw them was during the osheaga music festival. i, one fan who could now sing along, amongst a mass of indie kids. this time, i knew the older songs. they played the new songs with such conviction that it got me convinced that i was witnessing an incredibly talented band. i admire nick for putting on such a great performance.

stat!

Dipping a toe into the Buenos Aires indie scene. And then, tango.

Been having problems with Google-related web-based services (that is gmail and blogger), where you try to log in and then nothing happens. It's off and on, and I would have posted yesterday or the day before but I couldn't get into the web site.

Anyway.

On Friday we finally managed to go to an honest-to-goodness indie inspired music type show thing here in Buenos Aires, a very small one at a cafe. I get the feeling it was just the people who didn't go on holiday figuring out something to do with themselves - it really is like the Paris of South America in that the entire city empties out for summer. There were three acts, the first one who seemed to have a different guest star come up for each track, and it was all OK but seemed a little uninspired - kind of like a translation, if you know what I mean



Next was a guy by the name of Rubin, and he did a lot of covers of English stuff (including a Magnetic Fields song that I'd never heard of) and he was Veronica's favorite. He seemed a bit disillusioned and not having much fun, though. Maybe he was having a bad day?



The third group was a kid by the name of Ale Lago who is now fronting a band by the name of Impermeables, one of whose distinguishing characteristics is a lack of any youtube videos with decent sound. But their references seemed to be a bit more recent - Foo Fighters and Weezer instead of The Beatles, Elvis Costello et al. - and doing what sounded best to him.



Also, last night we went to an open-air amphitheater type thing to see an old-school tango guy perform on the accordion along with a pianist and someone on upright bass. We got cold in the end and left before it was over, but it was pretty good music.



Will hopefully have a report on a jazz bar that looks pretty good as well, sometime next week, if I can log in!

mtl beats

yet another montreal edition, this time a more hip-hop oriented set.

my boyfriend and i were going to go see donzelle perform friday night at this place called zoobizarre, but the show was sold-out. it's rather unfortunate that we couldn't get in despite him knowing her (went to school with her). but it made me think about this whole hip-hop montreal crew that we have here. such "artists" (more like beatmakers) create undeniably voracious beats along with lyrics that are a semi-tease. their performances are riffing on the seriousness of the hip-hop scene, yet they are themselves growing into it. numéro#, as i've heard, also started out as this big joke, but they're very successful at it. i'm not sure how long the joke will last. anyway, here are some of mtl's best beatmakers (starting with those who are serious about it):

socalled - you are never alone

dishwasher - come home

gatineau - pow pow t'es mort

giselle numba one - the swedish and the haitians

donzelle - bébé ok

sexyboy - hotter than my schedule

numéro # feat. omnikrom - chewing-gum fraise

sharp à l'os - fait attention remix

jeune chilly chill - sur le régulier

nul si découvert - gary cooper

atach tatuq - chips

stat!

life as a dj

my friend,
in short the dj gig went well. it's actually fairly easy to do, the soundboard easy to handle. i guess it just takes time and practice to familiarize oneself with it and become a better dj.
the show was scheduled for 10pm and already at 9 i could see young groups of girls outside, checking the place out. my boyfriend and i arrived early for soundchecks and then the soundman explained how the dj booth worked out in about a minute. i was nervous but also very excited. i played around with the sound before people walked in and the evening went super well for me. as for the show, well, the opening band--hollowtip hearts, also an-all-girl indie-rock band--were great and the crowd was generous. but with the ponies it was a little more complicated. it got me worried.
let me recap: when we got there, we noticed that lisa was not. turns out the bassist player had gotten herself a back injury playing ball hockey (oh, us silly canadians!). then, about 30 minutes before the show started, the ladies come back--toujours sans lisa. i can see from my dj booth that there is a serious discussion going on with them and kevin (boyfriend), who organized the show for his birthday. then, i'm told that lisa is not coming at all, she's in pain. long story short: the ladies decided that they still would play a set. they went to practice some songs in a backroom and ended up playing 6 songs. it turned out more acoustic, more mellow, totally intimate. kevin was still pleased because this turned out to be a totally unique pony up show. it's unlikely something like this will ever happen again. the girls joked on stage that they were now starting a new band without lisa called goose down!
i played music for about 75 minutes before hollowtip hearts and about 25 minutes before pony up. after that, as more of my friends had arrived, i played music until 1. i was glad that people stayed afterwards. because the place was packed during pony up's set, there were about 100 people who stayed for another half-hour and then people left gradually from 12:30 on. i could see some guys and girls moving their heads to the music, which made me feel super. when no more than 15 were left in the bar, i treated myself to some spice girls. my reason? they had just played a show here last week, and "stop", after all, is a landmark (granted, horrible) song of my youth. it was hilarious. i remembered the moves to the chorus even if i hadn't done them in years (swear it!), and then the hightlight of my evening: a girl walks onto the stage and actually dances to the song. when she gets off she says in laughter "you're fucking crazy", which i take was directed at me. and the fairytale ends with me becoming facebook friends with sarah from pony up.

stat!