Nicholas Friesen
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The Small Town Fests
Local comedian Matt Falk is a busy guy. Yeah, we’re all busy, but Falk is really busy.
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Soca Reggae Festival
Focusing on the smooth Caribbean sounds and taking place in Old Market Square from July 12-14, the Soca Reggae Festival offers a mixture of well known local artists (Casimiro Nhussi, Voice of Boom) and big names (Toronto’s Jermaine Cowan, Idressa and the Peace Maker’s Band from Sierra Leone) that are well worth the price of admission.
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Canada Day
If Jazz Fest kicks off summer for the hipsters, then Canada Day kicks it off for you, the kids, drunk Uncle Pete, your best friend and her sister who tags along … you know, the whole gang!
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Whose House? Mike’s House
Michael P Falk is a busy man. Between running his label (Head in the Sand), his recording studio (Volcano) and his band (Les Jupes - watch for a new EP this fall) he found the time to record some solo tunes as Oshima last August with Dave Quanbury (Twilight Hotel). The busiest musician in Winnipeg also found time to let us into his home and look through his stuff.
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Oldfolks Home
Winnipeg’s Ricardo Lopez-Aguilar gets a little help from his friends on the long-awaited follow up to 2007’s We Are the Feeding Line, including drummer Shaun Gibson (The Details) on the bulk of the tracks and singer Keri Latimer (Nathan) on the tiny pretty popper Sleeper.
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Haunter
Haunter has been a “young band” for a while, and they still are, even five years into it. With the Rivers & Rust LP the five piece follows up an EP and 7” that showcased the type of tight/sloppy “better than a garage band/nowhere near arena rock” aesthetic the Breeders have been perfecting since 1990.
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The Girth
If it weren’t for all the cusswords and craziness, one might mistake the rowdy LP from The Girth for a children’s album.
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Eagle Lake Owls
The official debut (not counting the solo basement recordings of singer/guitarist/percussionist Andy Cole) of Winnipeg trio Eagle Lake Owls is a five song snippet of better-than-your-average-folkie folk tunes that only hint at the unabashed potential within.
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Rusted roots
On a rainy Victoria Day afternoon, the Uniter sat down at the Toad with Matt Williams and Jory Hasselmann, the two founding members of local indie rock five piece Haunter. The band is about to release its debut LP, the disturbingly good Rivers and Rust, through local label Disintegration Records with national distribution from Outside Music.
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Revamp Portage Avenue
James Hope Howard is a local blogger (Slurpees & Murder, Winnipeg Cat), a panelist on UMFM 101.5’s Internet Pundits and a librarian. He’s immersed himself in politics, pop culture and the bargainization of Winnipeg - so naturally The Uniter felt it should get his opinion on one of our city’s biggest cultural disappointments - the downtown stretch of Portage Avenue.
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Believe it or not
Seated on a sectional couch with a bowling ball between them at their “communal living/jam space,” guitarist Marshall Birch and drummer JP Perron of the Unbelievable Bargains await bassist Steve Basham’s return home from work.
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Calgary’s Go For The Eyes tour in support of new EP, Six Through Twelve
Alberta pop-rock machine Go For The Eyes has been making big sounds for almost three years, but its latest EP, the six-song Six Through Twelve (out at the end of this month), is the first of three recordings the band is truly proud of.
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Raising funds with the Reverend Rambler
Matt Colpitts has been putting himself out there, but you wouldn’t know it from scouring the concert listings checking for the Winnipeg singer-songwriter’s name.
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Who produced it?
Steve Albini. Howard Bilerman. Rick Rubin. Jon Brion. Phil Spector. These are the names of some of the most innovative, beloved and notorious record producers/recording engineers of all time. What’s in a name though and what do they think about capturing that perfect sound? Do they help shape the musician’s vision? And - that question no musician really wants to know the answer to - how much is this gonna cost?
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Under Pressure
Local writer/director Sean Garrity had a busy few years.
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Retrospective celebrates the work of Winnipeg filmmaker Alain Delannoy
Winnipeg filmmaker Alain Delannoy currently teaches a multimedia course at the Universite de Saint-Boniface, but for the last 17 years has been churning out mind-bending, beautifully organic animation. This retrospective of his work includes early student films, one mockumentary and a pair of recent heavy hitters in Monument and Fraction, both films that took years to create involving thousands of drawings.
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Not slow, not fast - just right
With the recent trend in action heroes over 60 years old - Arnold in The Last Stand and Sly in Bullet to the Head - what’s the next logical step? Action heroes over 80.
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“Have you heard my friend’s band?”
Yeah, it’s February, but it took a while to compile this list.
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No man could define him
Winston Washington Moxam was well known and beloved in the Winnipeg film community.
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Mobina Galore
Winnipeg by way of BC duo Jenna Pristner (vocals/guitars) and Marcia Hanson (drums/vocals) unleashes five dirty yet polished tracks on its latest offering.