Archive for the canadian tag

Marc Houle: Undercover

Wrylab (one of the funniest people I follow on twitter) posted this on facebook today, and I had to share. I'm a fan of Marc Houle already, but I hadn't seen this video for a track from his forthcoming album. Houle started off playing new wave in Windsor, Canada, before his then-roommate (superstar DJ Magda) convinced him to strip down his tracks for her sets. Many techno records and a move to Berlin later, he's returning to his roots with his label Items & Things (which he runs with Magda), releasing material far different than what he previously did on Richie Hawtin's iconic minimal techno imprint M-nus. He'll also be releasing a synthpop album later this year on Tiga's Turbo Records label, under the name Raid Over Moscow.

Marc Houle official site

Tiga: Love Don’t Dance Here Anymore

Oh to be Tiga. While most of us spent our grade school summers playing tag with our friends and looking for some cool water to swim in, Tiga spent his in India, hanging out at parties with his father, legendary Goa DJ Dr. Bobby.

And when you know that, everything about Tiga makes perfect sense.

Tiga started DJing and throwing parties back home in Montreal while he was still a teenager, followed by opening an electronic music record store and starting his own label. His own music is very very heavily influenced by the '80s synthpop, italo disco, industrial, and neue deutsche welle that his father played. Here, he channels a little Pet Shop Boys (and maybe George Michael) in this song from his second album Ciao!.

official website
Buy Ciao! on Amazon.com

Solvent: My Radio

Solvent is a robot. Now, I know what you're saying: "technically he looks like an android" or "robots do not live in Toronto, Canada" or "that's just some dude named Jason Amm", but I'm telling you, I'm a robot. I know robots. Listen to this music, and you'll hear what it is clearly the work of a robot.

It seemed like everyone at the Ghostly International anniversary party tonight was most excited about hearing his live set, and he did not disappoint. This is synthpop in it's most blippy, bleepy, Kraftwerk-inspired moment; this is what deserved the title "futurepop", because this is what we were told pop music was going to sound like in the 21st century. It's a shame that it never went the way so many of us thought it would in the '80s.

The lyrics say it all:

it doesn't seem so long ago
when i loved you, my radio
you promised me so much, but now you've changed
you always played my favorite songs
those robot-disco marathons
inspired me to buy my first machines

From his 2004 album Apples + Synthesizers, available in The Ghostly Store. [Also check out the extended version on his retrospective Demonstration Tapes.]

Official artist page [see, it even says he's a robot]