88 Days of Fortune: 3rd Anniversary Party featuring THEESatisfaction TONIGHT / Time Travelers Mixtape

If you read this blog regularly, you already know about Stasia Irons and Catherine Harris-White aka Stas and Cat of THEESatisfaction. If you live in the T.Dot/GTA region and you have at all dug what they do, then you need to be at their performance tonight at the Third Anniversary celebration for the local urban progressive artist collective, 88 Days of Fortune. Don’t sleep, NOW magazine knows what’s up and featured the event in this week’s issue that just hit newsstands this morning. Check it:

88DAYS OF FORTUNE 3 YEAR ANNIVERSARY PARTY & PERFORMANCE
FEATURING:
THEESATISFACTION {SUB POP RECORDS}

WITH PERFORMANCES BY:
LES FEMME FATALES
88 DAYS
PROGRESS {REDPILL MUSIC}

HOSTED BY: DAINTY BOX
DJ SUNSUN , DJ CAT & STAS ALL NIGHT LONG!

DATE: THURSDAY JUNE 28TH
TIME: DOORS @9PM SHOW @10PM
PLACE: CINECYCLE 129 SPADINA
PRICE: $12 IN ADVANCE – ticketzone.com [click link to buy tix]
$18 AT THE DOOR
*LIMITED CAPACITY
19+

CLICK HERE for more info at the Facebook event page.

Still not convinced? Then check the 88 Days’ latest Time Travelers mixtape (Side A and B):

[mixtape via Brendan]

A Look at the Polaris Long List: 38. The Weeknd – Echoes of Silence

This is one of the few nominated albums I was already familiar with before the Polaris long list was announced last week. Not to toot my own horn but I was the person largely responsible for getting The Weeknd short-listed last year. But as you know if you read this blog regularly, neither The Weeknd‘s Thursday or Echoes Of Silence mixtapes made it onto my Long List ballot for this year.

I think Abel is an important artist, not just for ‘urban’ music in Canada but music in general but if I had to keep it one hunid, I’d say House of Balloons is still his best work to date. That being said, compared to a lot of the albums I’ve been listening to on the Long List this past week, Echoes of Silence might actually be competitive for Short List consideration after all. BTW: not sure what’s going on but the amazing cover of Michael Jackson‘s “Dirty Diana” he opened EOS with has been excised from this soundcloud embed for some reason so this is not technically the real, full album posted above.

[via]

A Look at the Polaris Long List: 26. Mares Of Thrace – The Pilgrimage

Look at that picture up top, then hit play on this album. Not to be sexist but yes, those women created this music. Others are raving about this ‘noise-doom’ (read, ‘metal’) duo’s album, The Pilgrimage. Frankly, I found it tough to get through, and even harder to process from a crticial point of view. Did I like it? Was it good??! I wonder if this is how pure rock heads feel when playing hip-hop albums? There’s only been one ‘modern era’ metal album I really was into and I’m not even sure how that happened but that album was The Deftones‘ White Pony. This was not that album in terms of how I reacted to it. Maybe Mares Of Thrace‘s The Pilgrimage will be a surprise short list nominee but if it is, it won’t be with my vote.

A Look at the Polaris Long List: 40. Yukon Blonde – Tiger Talk

This was an interesting one. The songs were very down-the-middle and accessible in sound. Nothing really cool or cutting edge about it. Tiger Talk kicked off with some tracks that reminded me of all those knock-off ‘new wave’ songs that you’d hear in 80s era teen B-movies and then some tracks that reminded me of the post-new wave UK acts who followed that era like Big Country and Tears for Fears that became staples of early alternative radio stations like CFNY and K-ROCK. Speaking of radio stations it me or does the track, “Radio” sound like an unplugged variation on Devo‘s “Whip It”?

I will give Yukon Blonde credit though: the songs were catchy, upbeat & fun sounding, the production pretty immaculate and, as someone who grew up on those sounds, I enjoyed hearing a new group use them in a fresh way that didn’t feel like a total pastiche (no gratuitous and slavish use of 80s style synthesizers, for example). By the end, the feel of the songs had become more contemporary but it still held together as a single body of work and a cohesive-sounding album. That being said though, you’d be hard-pressed to convince me this album is really the pinnacle of musical creativity (or artistic integrity, however I’m supposed to gauge that??) in Canada. Fun listen? Yes. Award winner? Not to my ears.

[soundcloud player via Exclaim!]

A Look at the Polaris Long List: 27. Ariane Moffatt – MA

This Quebecois singer’s synth-y flavored, bi-lingual indie pop wasn’t bad. I would term it pleasant and innocuous even (actually kind of liked the steel pan-powered “Too Late”). But music that sounds like it could soundtrack a late 20-something professional women’s kind of hip dinner or cocktail parties in their CB2/West Elm-furnished downtown condo lofts are generally not albums I think of as being serious contenders for winning the Polaris Prize. Just my point of view, of course. Look for this to be on sale in the CD section next time you’re in a Starbucks or soundtracking the next wave of Gap or iPhone commercials (possibly….)

Hit the jump to hear the full album via RDIO [preview snippets only for non-RDIO subscribers]

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