Music
Toronto's Moonwood speed down the outerstellar Autobahn
by Jesse Locke
November 6, 2015
Plus hear new music from Not the Wind, Not the Flag, Chairs, and Oneohtrix Point Never.
No Rest for the Obsessed is a column spotlighting some of the most exciting new music AUX’s Associate Editor Jesse Locke finds each week. It began in 2010 for Calgary’s dearly departed alt-weekly FFWD, and takes its name from a Lightning Bolt song.
Moonwood – Desert Ghosts
Moonwood blast out of their Etobicoke bunker on this overdriven space-rock opus. Desert Ghosts sees the quartet shifting gears through melodic takes on motorik rock, sandblasted psych, and violin-swirling fourth world mysticism. The surf-beat pastiche “Pipeline of Death” gives away their tongue in cheek humour, especially paired with the animated video for “Trans Mojave Express” featuring Egyptian rock gods and an audience of skeletons. The album is out today as a joint release from Pleasence Records and Moonwood’s own Arachnidiscs.
Not the Wind, Not the Flag – Vermillion
The Toronto duo of Brandon Valdivia and Colin Fisher are genre-agnostic instrumental shapeshifters. Their latest album Vermillion flows from tranquil aquatic meditations to ecstatically agitated free-jazz fire. The five-minute excerpt from “Aurora” above squelches and skitters with melancholy echoes of Electric Miles. After eight years together and numerous releases, this is surprisingly Not the Wind’s first turn on vinyl. Available now from the ever-reliable Pleasence.
Chairs – Drawn Into Mazes
Montreal’s Chairs distill the decades of psychedelia into this album of softly shuffling pastoral pop songs. The home-recorded orchestrations of Ian Jarvis cram in acoustic strummers, guitars that buzz like ramshackle Tropicalia, and synths that pulsate like his electronic project Galaxius Mons. Grab the CD from Kinnta and spend some time with their back catalogue that includes top shelf releases from EXPWY, Feel Alright, and The Haiduks, to name just a few.
Oneohtrix Point Never – “Sticky Drama”
Daniel Lopatin (a.k.a. Oneohtrix Point Never) continues to spread chaos and confusion in the most dizzyingly fun way imaginable. The post-everything electronic artist previously teamed with director Jon Rafman on the heartbreaking “Still Life” and these ectoplasmic LARPers are no less nightmarish. 0PN’s latest album Garden of Delete comes complete with its own mazelike mythology involving the ‘hypergrunge’ band Kaoss Edge and an alien named Ezra. The truth is out there, probably.
