This is our first show in about a month. Lots of things getting in the way of putting together a show, but we are back on Mixcloud Wednesday, October 26 at 4:00 pm.
Here are a few notes on this week’s music.
Week 32
Lenka Lichtenberg – What is this Place?
Kiwi Jr – Unspeakable Things
Alvvays – Very Online Guy
Dry Cleaning – Scratchcard Lanyard
Tanya Tagaq – Teeth Agape
Us Girls – So Typically Now
Peter Kwenders – Kilimanjaro
Jungle -Truth
Rosalía & Tokischa – Linda
Lenka Lichtenberg – What is this Place?
Premiered Jun 26, 2022 The Czech poem ‘Chtěla jsem tě proklít, hořká zemi’ (I wanted to curse you, bitter land), here with English subtitles, was written by Anna Hana Friesová while she was imprisoned in the concentration camp Theresienstadt (1942-1945). The song is a part of the project ‘Thieves of Dreams‘. Truly beautifyl music – this video is not the track we are featuring, any song from this project would work.
ABOUT THE PROJECT ‘THIEVES of DREAMS,’ a “haunting set of musical gems” (The Bangkok Post, June 9, 2022)
This project is about women. Creative, strong, breaking social taboos, and in some ways… invisible. My maternal grandmother Anna Hana Friesova was a stunning, well-educated woman from an entirely assimilated Czech Jewish family: assimilation was fairly common; in her case, it was based on fears of pogroms witnessed by her husband. She was an accomplished artist both with a pen and a brush, and nobody took her seriously – I suspect not even herself: she never mentioned her art to me. Only when my mother recently passed, I discovered two worn notebooks among her possessions: poems Anna Hana wrote between the years 1940 and 1945, just before and during her two-and-a-half-year incarceration (1942-1945) in the Terezin (Theresienstadt) concentration camp during WW2. I was stunned by the intensity of her words, the erudite vocabulary, the raw and often disturbing honesty. I find her words just as poignant today as they were eighty years ago.
Even more shocking were the details of the poems. “These were her dreams and nightmares from inside the concentration camp, the stories she never told me when I was growing up,” Lenka added. “Most of us, if we’re lucky enough, have a brief window with our grandparents. That time isn’t typically spent listening to their traumatic stories.”
Lenka Lichtenberg decided to embark on an ambitious project, to bring her grandmother’s voice back to life in the best way she knew how: as a music project, spanning eight decades and three generations. Anna Hana’s poems rarely mentioned the horrors of the camp explicitly. Perhaps this was self-censorship in case her writing was discovered.
Lenka co-founded, with Isabel Fryszberg, the Yiddish swing all-female group Sisters of Sheynville, with whom she performed across Canada, in the U.S. and Europe. The band won the Canadian Folk Music Award for Vocal Group of the Year in 2008 for its Sheynville Express disc.
Kiwi Junior
Kiwi Jr – Unspeakable Things
Originally from Charlottetown, now based in Toronto these guys have not taken a misstep as demonstrated by this track lifted from their third album Chppoer. Pitchfork Magazine loved it.
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/kiwi-jr-chopper/. The video features goalie masks and several familiar faces!
Rosalía & Tokischa – Linda
Great song. I can’t remember where I first heard this, but the track is full of great Dominican energy. This song introduces me to dembow and trap music – a new genre that is new to me. More below:
As Dominican dembow and trap continues to spread internationally, the rest of the industry would do well to pay attention to the label’s artful and off-the-wall concoctions. To better understand its place in the movement, check out some of the best Paulus Music releases below.(Guardian)
Dembow is a Dominican musical genre[1][2] that can be traced to a riddim that originated in Jamaican dancehall.[3] When Shabba Ranks released “Dem Bow” in 1990, it did not take long for the dembow genre to form. Riddims were built from the song and the sound became a popular part of reggaeton. From there it took off in Dominican Republic creating the sound UNDERWORLD (“Bajo Mundo” in Spanish). It hit the streets of New York and from there it made its way to all of Latin America. The Dominican Dembow sound keeps evolving and has been fusioned with Trap music since 2016 and it’s also fusioned with Bachata and Merengue from the Dominican Republic. Dembow artists are called “Dembowseros
Tanya Tagaq – Teeth Agape
I decided to play a Tanya Tagaq song after hearing here on the Strombo Show. I couldn’t play particular track – 2014, but this is great. Raw, dark energy. Polaris Prize winner in 2014.
More on Tanya Tagaq:
“I will never stop being surprised that people like my music,” Tanya Tagaq tells me seriously before roaring with laughter. “I can feed my children because people are freaks!”
Even down a bad phone line from her home in Canada, the singer is brilliant company; passionate, political and hilariously foul-mouthed – a world away from the earnest associations that spring to mind when she is described as an “Inuit throat-singer”. “When people hear that, they think my concerts are going to be ‘just darling’,” she agrees with another shout of laughter. (Guardian)
Instead, the 40-year-old wrests the indigenous female tradition – with origins in a vocal breathing game played when men were out hunting – into a medium for pure, unleashed emotion. Her ghostly chants, guttural growls, gasps and moans are enough to make Björk, her sometime collaborator, sound as demure as a choirgirl.
Her latest album, Animism (which fought off competition from Drake and Arcade Fire to win the Polaris prize (2014), Canada’s answer to the Mercury), fuses her musical roots with everything from punk to electronica: the result is sometimes haunting, sometimes orgiastic, and always extraordinary.
Us Girls – So Typically Now
U.S. Girls is a Toronto-based American musician Meghan Remy.
Pitchfork can explain the song better than I can. https://pitchfork.com/reviews/tracks/us-girls-so-typically-now/
Pierre Kwenders
Has Won The 2022 Polaris Music Prize For The Album ‘José Louis And The Paradox Of Love’’
This is Pierre Kwenders’ first Polaris Music Prize win. He is on a good deal now thanks to his Polaris win. Great music, hope to keep on hearing him.
More:
“This is crazy, I don’t even know what to think. This is for all the kids from the diaspora, the African diaspora, moving in Canada. Sometimes you feel like you don’t know what you’re running into, or what you’re coming into. But there is hope, there is a place to live and dream and be yourself. This album, especially, is about being yourself and telling your own story. José Louis And The Paradox Of Love is there for you, you know, if you feel you can connect, connect! Let’s talk! Let’s have fun! Let’s be ourselves! Let’s love each other, while we are alive. Bisou!” – Pierre Kwenders
Truth – Jungle
Jungle is a British duo founded in 2013 by producers Josh Lloyd-Watson and Tom McFarland. They have released three albums. In 2014, Jungle was shortlisted for the prestigious 2014 Mercury Prize in the U.K. Their second album was 2018’s For Ever through XL Recordings. The track Truth, is found on their third album, Loving in Stereo, released in 2021.
The song manages to sound contemporary and 80’s synth pop at the same time. https://acidstag.com/2021/07/jungle-truth/
This is the second time we have featured Alvvays. It makes sense, they continue to come up with catchy energetic songs. This track is from their third album.
More on Alvvays:
Alvvays (pronounced “always”) is a Canadian indie pop band formed in 2011, originating from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and currently based in Toronto, Ontario. It consists of Molly Rankin (vocals and guitar), Kerri MacLellan (keyboards), Alec O’Hanley (guitars), Abbey Blackwell (bass), and Sheridan Riley (drums). Their self-titled debut album, released in 2014, topped the US college charts.[3] Their second studio album, Antisocialites, was released on September 8, 2017, and won the Juno Award for Alternative Album of the Year at the Juno Awards of 2018. Both albums were short-listed for the Polaris Music Prize. Their third album, Blue Rev, was released on October 7, 2022.
Dry Cleaning
Dry Cleaning are an English band that formed in 2018. They are unusual as they employ spoken word rather than sung vocals. Their debut album New Long Leg was released in 2021
which contains the song Scratchcard Lanyard. The words are odd, fun and fascinating. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SfOi6rIHeA&t=5s
Can’t decipher the lyrics? Check this out.
Whole-Hearted 