Big Rock Finish… reviews of independent music

September 24, 2008

At some point, I had the pleasure of kicking back and enjoying the cool electronic stylings of Great Lenin’s Ghost! It was a balmy Wednesday evening above a Toronto taco stand, wafting it’s delights to the second floor bar. The idea of Pay What You Can was my indulgence, as was the fact my camera was dragged there for the earlier set of Senor Kasio.

I digress (as I so often do). Great Lenin’s Ghost! hits the stage, and I’m much too tired to continue standing. Thankfully there were people there to take my place in front of the stage, and I sat back and amused myself with my tired musicians while listening to music that greatly resembled the very old Nintendo 8 bit games that were oh so popular when I was 10.

A part of me couldn’t believe my ears, that such music would be popular, since it’s quite simple sounding. But judging by the crowd it couldn’t be denied. And the more I listened the more I started to get into the groove of things as well. You couldn’t really argue that Great Lenin’s Ghost! can’t entertain a crowd, because the crowd was definitely entertained.

Since this band was completely new to me, my favourite was definitely when they covered Rihanna’s “My Umbrella” because it was a song I recognized. And seeing everyone, the band, the crowd, and even the group I was sitting with, who wasn’t a part of the crowd, get into this new remix of such an over-played radio hit… was quite fantastic.

In short, geeky guys can be musicians too. And Great Lenin’s Ghost! are hopefully not offended by that comment

July 25, 2008.

To most people it’s a day to have fun and frolic in the sunshine. To my friend Jana (www.jananas.com) it’s her birthday and she’s going to celebrate it Christmas-in-July-ified! Problem being, this was also the same night that Cousin Alex and Tynur were to celebrate their collective birthdates by throwing a big party at Smiling Buddha Bar including, if anything else, the chance to get up on stage and make fools of themselves in front of all their friends, family and well-wishers.

So what’s a girl to do? I go to both! The fun and exciting part is the fact that it will be a really relaxed environment and the bands are great. Wee Alex is in both which makes for some interesting wardrobe changes, if anything just so the photographers can properly tag which band is on stage at what time.

But seeing as how S.N.A.K. was the first to perform (of which I only caught a portion of their set, being late(!) to the venue) they played to some pretty hip and happening crowds that… for the most part avoided the dance floor like the plague. I avoid it too so I guess I can’t really say anything bad about them. But we get the dancing songs up, and everyone will come up and hang out violating the dreaded Toronto semi-circle.

As Wee Alex changes from a black t-shirt to a white t-shirt, Señor Kasio hits the stage with lots of fun songs about… lots of subjects. We have tattoos, bloody noses, stolen cars and Iraq or Afghanistan or something to do with fake turkeys. Midway through THAT set, of course you have Cousin Alex of S.N.A.K. and Steve of Señor Kasio doing the just-married intertwined-arm shooters, some bump and grind dancing between the both overly-sweaty gentlemen, before more members of S.N.A.K. start hitting the stage in funny sunglasses and overall crowding the very small centre of attention.

I have to admit, I had my doubts that the stage at Smiling Buddha Bar would be able to hold the collective members of both bands, and I was right! Tynur was off the stage the entire time, and Dave! and Steve both were running into the crowd to dance like the fools they pretend to be.

And I think my favourite of the night was the encore of “I Wanna Fuck” if all else, because it was requested by women in the crowd shouting “We wanna fuck again!”

Alright. It’s a holiday Monday, I’m sitting at home, dehydrated, not at all on a normal sleep schedule, sunburnt to the tits (actually, to be perfectly honest my tits are the one part of my body NOT sunburnt) and wondering “what the hell happened 72 hours ago?” I was at the Cutting Edge Music Festival.

I went there with no more than the intentions to take photos of Awaking State while they were on stage, off stage, and everything in between. Mission accomplished. I also saw a few other bands that I enjoyed, some I recognized, some I didn’t. Since Awaking State was the first band of the event to perform, it meant that after that it was just party time until it was time to go home.

Friday night all four vehicles of Awaking State arrived, picked a camp ground and proceeded to drink until it started pouring crazy rain that disallowed any more tent setup. As I slept quite uncomfortably in the van, I wondered how everyone was doing in tent city since they were not allowed to have their cars at the campsite (artists were allowed).

Saturday was Awaking State’s set, which was awesome, and a lot of my wandering around the festival afterwards checking out the vendors, taking photos of other bands, using my media pass to it’s fullest advantages. Just hung out really. Found out we weren’t even in the right camp ground (which explains why no one else was there. Although I find it surprising that the entire Awaking State group was directed to one area, while everyone else was pointed in the complete opposite direction) and we had to move campsites.

Saturday night I was dead tired and generally feeling a little burnt, drank some and wanted to sleep early. Completely repacked the travelling van so I had room to lay down in the back, and promptly fell asleep while the headlining act was playing about 500 feet to my right.

Sunday we had a mix of security issues, no hot water, and my giving up on a shower and just toweling myself off in a still generally clean washroom. Waited 3 hours for something to eat for breakfast since the boys were driving off into town, this being after about an hour and a half of trying to jumpstart a car with a dead battery. Finally after eating, we drank some more so I was able to finish off my alcohol, and more sitting and chilling, and finally packing of the van so we could leave. The rest of the group stayed until today from my understanding (Monday afternoon) but I had to leave early, so we did!

I liked it. I wouldn’t mind doing it again. I’m just going to make sure I bring less clothes (I totally overpacked in the clothing department) and more food & booze to not have to pay outrageous prices at the event.

Give me a few more days when typing no longer hurts my sunburnt shoulders, and I’ll tell you more about the bands.

I’m working my way backwards from the beach party show that happened last month. First things first, Señor Kasio was last to go on. It’s never fun for me to go to a show on a school night, but for these guys I just had to. I wanted to see what the big fuss was about.

So Steve had been running around for weeks online promoting his beach party show, and something about some very large balls. As they were the closing band, it took a while to see this dream turn into a reality. Sadly, four metric tonnes of sand was not brought into the venue.

The boys took to the stage like fish being dropped back into their fish bowl. Always with the high energy, and hilariously in t-shirts, shorts, sandals and lei’s. I think the funniest was the lei’s. Or perhaps it was the sandals. Thankfully no one was wearing socks with them! I kind of hoped for Hawaiian shirts, because as Homer once said “Hawaiian shirts are for gay guys and big fat party animals… (and Bart doesn’t look like a big fat party animal to me.)”

I know all the songs by now, can attempt to sing and dance along with every one of them, and there was some sort of crowd even though it was a late night and everyone had work and/or school in the morning. The high energy in the singing and dancing on stage was always just enough to feed the audience the energy to keep going, and I do hope that we, as the audience, provide enough back to make being on stage worth it!

The large balls that Steve was boasting about was a 3 ft beach ball purchased online, and unfortunately there is a skill in beach ball mathematics that he did not learn until after his purchase. And while the crowd warmed up to the idea of tossing this thing around during the show, very few casualities were had.

The venue was somewhat empty, until the last song where it seemed everyone appeared out of the woodwork. Seeing as how Señor Kasio and S.N.A.K. share a guitarist, and generally are quite friendly, they seemed mainly to attack the stage, and add a more fuller feeling to the band… if not just simply sexually harassing them. They’re in a band, they should be used to it.

So in closing, the crowd could have been bigger, and it could have been held on a night that wasn’t a school night. I missed my unicycle club meeting for this show. But, as with all Señor Kasio shows, I’ll definitely be coming back again!

This was the long lost fabled debut show for Awaking State. Knowing the members of the band is always a plus when it comes to getting into a show for free. For this I was hired as their photographer, which works for me in that I didn’t have to pay to get in (although it was a really decent cover). For some reason Awaking State has a tendency to piss off Mother Nature, as their last show was cancelled due to an upcoming snowstorm, and this show was also scheduled for a snow-storm. Alas, the show must go on, and snow storm or no snow storm, Awaking State was going to hit the stage.

I think the funniest for me was that I arrived too early, and rather than go into a venue too early and look like a jackass, I proceeded to attempt to nap in my car for a few minutes. Of course Brandon (the drummer) happen to be outside at the time, watched me pull up, and proceeded to wait outside for me to come in. Finally giving up and coming up to the car to see why the hell I wasn’t going into the venue. I was, however, presented with my media pass to grant me access to the night’s festivities.

The first band, Blind Fire, went up and were pretty awesome. Had a good crowd going on early in the night and obvious they were a local favourite. Then the intermission as some generic rock music pumped through the speakers and I went to grab a beer.

Awaking State hit the stage with lots of effects I don’t expect at a live show. I know they’re very electronic based but it’s rare to see musicians come up with more than just instruments. I also noted there were more instruments than band members on stage and realized that was supposed to make sense. Awaking State started off strong. Going into songs that I have come to think of as favourites since they were released onto the internet. It seemed unfortunate that the sound person was having some difficulty knowing exactly what was required, as requests were made by Kent to change some things regarding sounds of this or the monitor in that. There was also a moment of laptop kerfuffel as Brandon had to jump off the drums to see what was going on.

The extra instruments were mainly a keyboard off to the side. Where I watched Kent, with a guitar strapped around his neck, to then go to the keyboard and play a few bars while singing into an extra microphone. I also found it just a little amusing that while Kent early on broke a guitar string, then went to change guitars, he seemed to have given up on a normal 6 stringed guitar, and went back to playing his first choice of guitar, which included said broken string.

The Toronto Semi-circle that was non-existant during Blind Fire’s set, happened during Awaking State. A perfect half circle of dead space in front of the stage that had a radius of about 5 or 6 feet. I was told later this was likely due to the fact that enough Torontoians were imported to Oshawa, is the reasoning for it. Although I will admit, being right up to the musicians was irritating as the stage lights hung pretty low and I’m sure if I was more careless I would have bonked my head!

I do look forward to seeing more Awaking State shows.

I do not look forward to driving home in 4 ft of snow the next day.

Name: Cancel Winter
Album: LieStillNow
Released: December 2007
Members: (As listed on the album)
Nate Kreiswirth – vocals, guitar, synths, keys, programming
Nick Richard – Drums
Adam King – Synths, keys, programming, drums

Website: http://www.cancelwinter.com
Favourite Song: Stop the Lies (Track

Now that I’m actually listening to the songs on the album on my iTunes, I just realized that their packaging is quite misleading!! I was preparing to listen to 6 songs with pretty long names. But no. The fact that half the song title is coloured in and the other half is an outline means one thing. They’re separate song titles! Design genius!! Means I’m sitting here for quite a lot longer than I first expected, but whatever!

Cancel Winter wrote on their myspace page that they should be classified as Indie, Electro and Rock. Considering they have more than one guy who does “programming” I can’t hardly argue with the Electro tag line. And the guitars and drums makes for a whole lot of rocking out. And if it weren’t for them being an indie band, I wouldn’t be here reviewing them… and the fact that someone was kind enough to mail me a CD.

I will admit here and now that the songs Cancel Winter writes and performs are quite rock-oriented. There’s some slower songs like Change and faster paced songs like The Starting Block. A good mix to keep it interesting and to not make it sound like every song sounds like the last. I’m beginning to dislike main-stream radio songs because they do that now. All the mainstream stuff sounds the same and I can’t tell where one song ends and another begins. Thankfully, Cancel Winter does not do that, since they’re obviously talented to write more than one formula.

Next Tuesday March 25, Cancel Winter will be at Te Horseshoe Taven for Edge 102.1 NU Music Night. I detest that the bands I want to see after being introduced to this site are always playing on week-nights, but that’s what I get for having a 9-5 job that does not include a 90 minute commute to and from work. If I don’t make it there, maybe I could make it to Rancho Relaxo on April 17th. It’s a Thursday, but I’m better going in late to work on a Friday morning, than a Wednesday morning. Hope to see you all there!

Name: Awaking State
Album: (not yet named)
Released: (not yet released)
Members:
Kent Martell – Lead Vocals, Guitar, Piano and Programming
Jason Iwanko – Bass and Backing Vocals
Justin Lant – Guitar and Backing Vocals
Brandon E.M. Savage – Drums and Backing Vocals

Website: www.awakingstate.com
Favourite Song: Love, Fuck.
Photo by: Adrianna Rependa

I vowed to never review music that wasn’t in CD or mp3 format for this website, because I was interested in seeing what a band could put together as a package. And these days, if it isn’t already painfully obvious, music alone does not sell records. And generally, if according to pop culture, music is barely even on the register with regards to selling records. And I’ve been met with generally very understanding bands when I say I want to review an album or EP from them, so I can say to the world “Hey! Go listen to these guys and buy their album!” And it’s extremely difficult to do that if they only have mp3′s on myspace or similar networking sites. I digress, in that for Awaking State, I was willing to give up this rule temporarily, and I will state right here and now, that I will never give up this rule again. Online players rarely work, don’t work the way I want them do, and generally are irritating because they depend on so much processing power from my poor little 3 year old computer that they generally are cutting out more often then they are playing. And that’s just plain frustrating. And honestly, you do not want someone frustrated trying to listen to your music… to review it.

Anyways, That was a bit of a digression. I’m doing this for Awaking State because I know just how big of a deal it is that they (well, half the band that I know of anyways, Kent and Brandon) were able to fly to California for somewhere between one and two weeks, depending on who you talked to, to record and mix with a woman named Sylvia Massy. Now that name means not a whole lot to me, not being all “with it” when it comes to the music scene, but this was obviously a big thing for them, and I can tell this was a very big deal, thus, a pre-quel of a review.

I think after a year of doing these reviews, I’m starting to be able to differentiate between different genres of music. I still think it’s basically the band just saying what they are… but I when I first hit play to a song that would play for more than 3 seconds on Awaking State’s Facebook fan page, I could actually tell that “Industrial” should be one of their titles. “Rock” is a given since… well if it’s not rock, what is it? And finally, I didn’t pick this one up right away but their myspace page states “Drum & Bass”. So the final verdict according to Myspace? Rock/Drum & Bass/Industrial. Final verdict according to Facebook? “Electronic Alternative” They all make sense, and I’ll just go by what they say.

Seeing as how at the time I write this review there IS no album, I thought I should at least let everyone know the songs that I was listening to to write this review, and they are as follows:

• Out There
• These Things
• Next in Line
• Ordinary Days
• Love, Fuck

And generally, as with any artist, I start to feel that yes, the songs are all from the same artist. (Hey, sometimes I feel like they’re not! And it weirds me out!) These songs all being from the Sylvia Massy mixing extravaganza, makes them sound much more polished than the previous versions that I had listened to before in passing. That’s a definite. It almost amazes me sometimes, how more of the bands I am writing about, aren’t already in the tops of being rich and famous. They definitely got “it”, as Awaking State obviously does… and yet they aren’t being handed keys to various high ticket cars and recording contracts worth millions to sit on, and scratch, their bums.

As for favourite song from Awaking State? I don’t really have one. Seeing as how I always pressure myself to pick one, I’m pretty certain I only picked “Love, Fuck” because there’s swearing in it, and I can be quite childish with regards to the idea of swearing. Like OMG! A swear word?? Is that allowed?? But yes. I very much like all the songs that I’d been listening to, now that they’re playing properly on my computer. The Drum & Bass and Industrial side (I’m assuming) of the music lets me believe this is a band that can be aggressive and not someone you want to bump into in a dark alley. Something just a little bit dangerous, that I’m sure will get the girls going crazy. And many of the boys.

I’m beginning to think that Awaking State would do well in the extreme sports market. Depending on the director of the video, any one of the songs I listed above could be played while people are wrecking themselves and their vehicles of choice trying death-defying stunts. If only there was someone currently doing a new extreme unicycle DVD! And…okay, I am currently very impatiently waiting for the beginning of March which should be Awaking State’s first show, and possibly their CD release show, where they had to cancel their February show due to a giant snow-storm. I believe the date announced was March 7, 2008. It’s somewhere in Oshawa, Ontario. To be honest, I have not a clue what the venue is. But I’m sure if you keep up on their website, you’ll find it.