It’s a Canada Thing
A Look at the Long List: 2. Austra – Feel It Break
Austra‘s Feel It Break was was definitely one of the better albums on the Polaris long list with some really good songs on it here and there but as an overall body of work this wasn’t grabbing me. Here’s a couple of the highlights though from my perspective though:
A Look at the Long List: 1. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
Aka my attempt to go through the entire Polaris Music Prize Long List and walk you through, Kitchen-style, my thoughts as a member of the jury panel on each album as I tried to figure out what i was gonna vote for last week. There’s forty albums on the list so I might be biting off more than I can chew here but I’ll make my best effort to see this self-imposed exercise all the way through. Plus I just can’t stomach trying to keep up with all the aggregator style blog and their d-ck riding clones out there any more (not that i have in a long while anyway). Doing this provides me with an opportunity to try something a little different and off the usual, beaten path here at The Kitchen but that’s still tied into how I view music. As an added bonus, I won’t divulge which albums I voted for in the posts and I’ll go through them in alphabetical order so at the end, maybe we’ll run a little contest to see if people can figure it out based on what I say. We’ll try and do a ticket or some kind of other swag giveaway that I’ll try and organize maybe tied into the Polaris as a prize for whomever gets closest (details still to be figured out). So anyway, here goes….
Not much to say on this one. You know the group. Even you deep hip-hop heads who don’t pay attention to naan else probably ended up hearing about this group when they took the Album of the Year Grammy in a surprise win earlier this year. Now I ain’t gonna lie and say I’ve f-cked with these dudes from the get but I did start to pay attention to them once it was evident their star was in ascendancy last year. I will say that the album had grown on me after repeated listens by time I came back to it in consideration for the Polaris. While they’ve already been well-feted and celebrated this past year, there’s no doubt this is the album to beat as far as the Polaris goes. Here’s a couple tracks for those of you who’ve still managed to not hear anything from The Suburbs:
[audio: http://dl.soundowl.com/14j9.mp3]
MP3: Arcade Fire – The Suburbs [stream only, no download]
[audio: http://dl.soundowl.com/14j4.mp3]
MP3: Arcade Fire – Rococo [stream only, no download]
[MP3] Arcade Fire – Suburbs (Alejandro Chal Remix) feat. Drake
From the homies at GFC-NY an interesting mash-up (?) of two of the biggest music industry success stories out of Canada in the past couple years:
“Here’s another remix courtesy of Alejandro Chal, which you may formally know as Precize. The song involves a blend of Arcade Fire‘s Suburbs and some verses from Drizzy. Not quite as breezy as the original version, but certainly a more lively version. Check it out and let us know what you think. FACELIFT VOL. 1 Coming Soon.”
MP3 Download: Suburbs (Alejandro Chal Remix) by Alejandro Chal
I digs a lot. What about y’all??
[Video] Watch AUX-TV’s The Ultimate MC Battle TV Show
This was sent to me by the homie, Click:
“The Toronto semi-finals of Ultimate MC continue with battles between Kaliente vs Charron and PoRich vs Diaz. In episode two, Ultimate MC explores the relationship between freestyle and written rhymes. Performance by Shady Records own Royce Da 5’9. Part 1 of 6..”
CLICK HERE to watch follow-up episodes or hit the jump for more details. Shout to AUX-TV for bringing the spirit of old school music video channels back to the game.
[Event] TONIGHT in Toronto: Sound Battle Royale Kicks Off It’s Second Year!
Round One of Year Two of my homegirl, Tonika’s excellent beat battle series is here. Check it out tonight.
What is Sound Battle Royale?
“Sound Battle Royale is Toronto’s livest beat battle. We bring 32 producers together to compete in 4 rounds of live beat supremacy. Each round includes 3 challenges, flip and sample, remix and rock the house. The winner from each round go head to head in the finals at the end of the year. Check out last year’s recap here.”
DATE: Friday May 27, 2011
WHERE: Bread and Circus (299 Augusta Avenue, across from Supermarket)
TIME: Doors open at 10pm, Show starts at 11
PERFORMANCES BY: Adam Bomb (Freedom Writers) and Crossword MC
MUSIC BY: DJ Law (of Beatminerz Radio)
HOSTED BY: Junia T (Smash Brovaz)
JUDGING: Tone Mason, Rich Kidd and special guest Rodrigo Bascuñán (Founder/Editor, POUND Magazine)
CLICK HERE for more details.
Sound Battle Royale online – website | twitter | facebook | youtube