AWmusic

In addition to my six figure contract with AW Music I’m a budding producer/writer/filmmaker (ed note: lots of zeroes but you should really check out his other work). I’m in the midst of a really energetic project and, to cut to the chase, I’m looking for some great music to supplement my latest project.

This is a legitimate offer and a great opportunity for anyone with some ambition and a little ingenuity. Let’s hold hands and make become superstars together.

Listen up..

To all musicians.

So here’s the deal:

We’re producing a pilot for a TV show (http://highwaystofairways.com/what.html) and we want great music to showcase on the soundtrack. No road show is complete without a great soundtrack and that’s what we’re after.

What we’re simply offering is exposure for your band on the show in return for using your music free of charge. Tunes for air time. We end up with a great soundtrack for the show and you get valuable exposure for your band.

We’re trying to create a groundswell here to gather enough music to fill the pilot AND start us on the way once the show sells. The chance for you to be heard grows as we grow.

Your music will be played during the travel video montages of the program and you will be fully-credited in whatever episode you end up in. The best part of this comes when the show is picked up by a network (we already have interest even before the pilot is complete) and the eventual CD soundtrack comes out. If your music becomes a fan favourite guess who’s going to be reaping some nice royalties once the compilation hits the store shelves?

Rest assured this is a legitimate offer. I’m an artist myself and I have no patience for someone trying to screw me out of my life’s work. In this deal, you help us and we help you and we’ll meet for champagne at the launch party. Promise.

Please visit the Highways To Fairways website and submit a link to your music (no attachments please). If we fall in love with your stuff we’ll be in contact with you.

charlie@highwaystofairways.com

Important links:
Facebook group page.

Things on the west coast are either behind of ahead of the times. In fact it’s both. That trivial time zone thing notwithstanding, life and culture out west seems to be a humble bow to the past combined with a hopeful nod to the future.

Perhaps it’s the laid back lifestyle or the more agreeable climate but things just seem to happen at a different pace out there. The music – that aural reflection of society – just seems different the closer you get to the Pacific Ocean. So much of it seems timeless, not so much in its elegance but in the simple fact you have one helluva time telling some of today’s stuff from something unlocked from the musical vaults of the past. Date-stamping by sound alone is virtually impossible.

Immaculate Machine certainly fits that description. The Vancouver Island-based band at times reminds one of a band born in the frazzled and freeloving of the sixties with harmonies and almost juvenile riffs reminiscent of something from Hair or Jesus Christ Superstar. Then, at other times, they sound new and very contemporary.

The band’s been with us since late in 2002 and have produced two independent albums the View and Transporter which garnered the band some good vibes through heavy play on college radio, Immaculate Machine is essentially long-time friends Brooke Gallupe (vocals/guitar), Kathryn Calder (vocals/ keyboards), and Luke Kozlowski (vocals/drums) who – as I mentioned – sound like something out of a different time and place with their unique three part harmonies and simple analog instrumentations.

High on Jackson Hill is, at its bare minimum, a mild homage to the threadbare sixties but, at its pinnacle, a new sound seemingly built on a very old sound. Too many bands badly try to replicate what they weren’t around for, figuring its more about the acoustics and lyrics than it is about the very essence and the vibe. Immaculate machine ramps up the What and How and pretty much disregards the much more strivial When. With this offering High On Jackson Hill manages to capture that elusive timeless quality where ability triumphs over style – as it always should.

Immaculate Machine – Sound The Alarms
Immaculate Machine – Blurry Days

“Hi, we’re Foreign Born and we’re from California,” lead singer Matt Popieluch yells to the crowd gathered at Toronto’s world famous Horseshoe Tavern – which is both the band’s introduction to Toronto this night and to this reviewer completely.

I’m there early – The Veils are headlining – and you never know what, or who, you might see. This is the kind of place and the kind of night one can make potentially-amazing musical discoveries and, what makes it especially intriguing is the chance to see them live before I even review this album. Most of my music is charted out in reverse.

To clarify Popieluch’s proclamation, the group is technically from California even though Matt himself spent his formative years with his banker father in Hong Kong. It’s not hard to see the international influence in the music.

Foreign Born reminds me of a lot of bands. They’re a mix of Afripop – at times (Early Warnings) you’d think you’re listening to Vampire Weekend – and they have rhythms and vocalizing (Vacationing People) that reminds me of another recent discovery, Harlem Shakes, although the latter are a little more dance-oriented (I also prefer them).

Word has it that Foreign Born is still very much a work in progress (Popieluch apparently still needs to block out chunks of time off from his LA-based groundskeeping job to allow for the continent-wise touring). Knowing that you can’t help but (a) wonder at how little money the band actually makes and (b) cheer for Matt and the band to get over that damn annoying financial hump almost all of us are stuck behind.

As for the album Person to Person itself, it’s good, as in six out of ten good. One of the vibes I got from their live performance was their energy and their music collective mentality. They felt and sounded and looked like a band as opposed to a band backing a phenomenal lead (The Veils are more like that). That appeal comes across on the album.

Foreign Born makes great use of percussion. Seems anything that can be hit and banged during a song (cowbells, cans, who knows) is hit and banged. Most of the music – Winter Games for example – has addictive bouncy rhythms that aren’t dance but rather communal jams, as if we’re all invited to join in, and anytime a band can elicit that kind of response from a listener, you know you’re well on the right track.

Foreign Born – That Old Sun
Foreign Born – Winter Games
Foreign Born – Vacationing People

Musical side projects tend to fall into three distinct categories:

The high-concept album (Neko Case in The New Pornographers)
Genre changes (Dallas Green in City and Colour)
Self-Indulgence (too many to name).

Clues (Band name Clues as well) is the latest side project to hit the streets and, while the album occasionally wanders into something musically-interesting, it qualifies mainly in the latter, self-indulgent category.

Likely the only person you’d even recognize is Brendan Reed of Arcade Fire, although Unicorns Alden Penner may strike you as familiar (points for that). There are some elements of Arcade Fire in here – mainly in the low-tech communal feel – but if you’re expecting any kind of AF undertones you’re about to be disappointed.

I guess that’s the point though. It shouldn’t sound like anything you’re particularly familiar with, and it doesn’t. Track two, Remember Severed Head, starts to sound a little Jane’s Addiction, and because it doesn’t, it sounds odd or even incomplete.

What you really start to notice with Clues is the myriad of ways the band seems to be heading. Elope has this mystic quality reminiscent of Lovedrug; Let’s Get Strong has you thinking Ron Sexsmith. Neither track is enough to convince you.

The majority of the album has numbingly low-tech warehouse feel (actually Hotel2Tango Studios “during a deep Montreal winter freeze”). As a collective sound it’s jangly rhythms and clanging guitars, that fuzzy, indirect sound that screams garage band. That, in itself, doesn’t make this a failure. Some people like that sort of thing. It’s just that there’s not enough here to make you want more of this music and more of Clues.

In other words, keep your day jobs.

Clues – Elope
Clues – Crows
Clues – Ledmonton

She has an impressionist’s spirit but a realist’s demeanour. Seems as if she knows she needs the occasional poppy hit to keep this vehicle moving and on her latest album Ladyluck there are more than a couple potentially radio-friendly tunes. Thing is, the rest of the CD smacks of experimentation; not in the Bjork sense but this lady simply likes stretching traditional aural boundaries.

She loves strings, she loves uncommon rhythms. If I didn’t know better – and I don’t – I would say Ms. Taylor is still in pursuit of her true voice. It’s not that she’s lost; more that she’s testing so many flavours she’s not sure which her favourite is yet. Whereas most contemporary singer/songwriters simply duplicate a comfortable formula with each album, Maria continues to try on musical shoe after musical shoe.

Ladyluck is Taylor’s third full-length album after toiling in a number of groups and as part of the Azure Ray duet. She’s been a regular contributor to soundtracks for shows like Bones and Grey’s Anatomy. She has also in the past, collaborated with such musical luminaries as Moby and Bright Eyes. Even REM’s Michael Stipe guests on the Cartoons and Forever Plans, the final track.

On Ladyluck Taylor goes from mystical to predictable to sublime. There is a certain accessible comfort level to some of her songs, almost bordering on ordinary. Maybe she’s just so adept at doing pop songs that they come across as less-than-genuine efforts. Count Ladyluck and A Chance in this category.

But, for as much as Taylor ventures into the banal (and she doesn’t do it often) she also shows a clear sense of aural wanderlust; her songs breaking the bonds of contentment and venturing into areas yet unknown.

Take Orchids for example; it starts as simple two-part harmony but breaks into soft chord strumming, as if U2 had decided to go acoustic, and My Favorite…Love (interestingly, my favourite), a song softly-layered beneath a lone strumming guitar and a small string quartet. It almost sounds like fable put to song. Call it modern Baroque.

The ten songs are so varied and different musically that ultimately you’ll have a difficult time believing this is not a compilation disc or some sort of tribute album. Taylor’s voice is the lone common thread.

Although Ladyluck isn’t about to challenge the current champions in your record collection I dare say there will be a couple songs on this commendable effort you’ll want to add to you playlist. Exactly which ones they are will illustrate which Maria Taylor flavour you’re most particular to.

Ladyluck by Maria Taylor
Orchids by Maria Taylor
A Chance by Maria Taylor
Cartoons and Forever Plans by Maria Taylor