1.5 Dark-over-simplifications out of 4 Had the North Korean Ministry of Culture viewed Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s The Interview before launching an all out P.R. war, I’m sure they would not have attempted to hinder the film’s release. There are very few films – outside the realm of propaganda […]

Juno-nominated songwriter performs Guelph concert  On Friday, Feb. 27, Guelph’s River Run Centre hosted a concert by Halifax-based singer/songwriter Jenn Grant. A mainstay in the Canadian indie music scene since the release of her 2007 album Orchestra for the Moon, Grant has recently found herself the subject of renewed interest […]

Toronto/Guelph label brings Wolfcow, Foam, Dories The Army Navy and Airforce (ANAF) legion hall was treated to an evening of noisy, articulate punk on Thursday, Feb. 26, presenting the bands Wolfcow, Foam, and Dories. Greydyn “Wolfcow” Gatti, a genre-shapeshifting noise-punker from Toronto, performed the first set. Wailing, surreal vocals and […]

Common Deer, The GALACTICATS!, Reynolds Creek, and Shore Thing On Saturday, Feb. 28, GAIN music presented The GALACTICATS!, Shore Thing, Reynolds Creek, and Common Deer came together to put on a show at Van Gogh’s Ear. The night kicked off with The GALACTICATS!, a garage band from Guelph that have […]

Juno-nominated songwriter performs intimate set at Albion Hotel A crowd packed the upper floor of the Albion Hotel to hear the captivating sounds of Craig Cardiff on March 1. The Albion Hotel in Guelph, Ontario is a mixture of rustic, classy design paired with a gently nautical flavour. A single […]

Quebec publishing house to release in 2016 Les Editions du Boreal, a publishing house based in Quebec, recently signed a deal to publish rare, unseen works from Jack Kerouac’s estate, written entirely in his native French. Kerouac, who was born and raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, in a French-American community, spoke […]

Seattle art-rap mavericks release sophomore LP Since its earliest inceptions, hip-hop has always been a forward-looking cultural medium – in style, substance, and delivery – though perhaps not as obviously at all times. Repurposing timbres of the past (recent or distant) into new aesthetic forms, discourses on society and remedying […]

A primer on afro-futurism, liberation and mythology The Feb. 24 release of THEESatisfaction’s latest LP, EarthEE, sparked me to think of the tradition it operates in – perhaps more than the album itself. With spacey, transcendent textures, underscored by complex, polyrhythmic percussives, and socially-charged lyrics, the excellent experimental hip-hop album […]

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck   Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, at only 37, has made quite a splash on the global literary scene. In 2011, The Times Literary Supplement hailed as the “most prominent” of a long list of young authors working to attract “a new generation of […]