Downtempo Canada » Rock

Ratatat – Ratatat (XLRecordings)

Dewey dB — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 05:59:54 +0000

Ratatat’s founders, Mike “Snake” Stroud and Evan ”E*Vax” Mast, have been making music out of a Crown Heights apartment in Brooklyn since 2001, their unique sound born of a combined love of Jay-Z, The Rolling Stones, Timbaland and Beethoven. Mike is one of New York’s best guitarists and has spent his time touring the world with Ben Kweller and Dashboard Confessional. Evan has been producing music as E*vax for the past few years, releasing most of his output on Audio Dregs Records the label run by him and his brother E*Rock. Now back in their bedroom studio the pair have made a sing-along record, just without words. While dance music is trying to re-invent itself and rock is returning to it’s roots, Ratatat seem to make a happy mess in both fields.

I’m Not a Gun – Our Lives On Wednesday (City Centre Offices)

Dewey dB — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 05:58:23 +0000

“It’s a busy life being John Tejada, a man who has graced some of the world’s most highly regarded independent labels with his signature presence — from the mighty Playhouse to Detroit’s 7th City and onto Ferox, Jazzanova, Plug Research, Scape and even Sub Pop — all the way to his own Palette recordings imprint. But it’s together with Japanese multi-instrumentalist Takeshi Nishimoto, however, that John has produced perhaps his most remarkable work — an acoustic overflow of ideas and post-rock configurations known as I’m Not a Gun — a project that has already delighted with a debut album for CCO entitled Everything at Once. For the last 5 years, almost without fail, John Tejada and Takeshi Nishimoto have swept aside their busy schedules every Wednesday to record material for their I’m Not a Gun project. John plays the drums, the guitar and his trusted laptop, while Takeshi completes the equation with his signature guitar and bass padding. Their music is not only a homage to the post-rock soundscaping that Chicago has become so well known for, it’s an advancement of its sound.

Little Plastic Pilots – Little Plastic Pilots (Kanpai Records)

Dewey dB — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 05:56:59 +0000

Sam Nelson doesn’t use a single truly novel sound or effect on his first album as Little Plastic Pilots. Every sample and tone you hear has been used by one electronic auteur or another, and most have been done half to death. What’s most remarkable about Little Plastic Pilots, then, is the fact that an absolutely unmistakable personality and musical vision arises from the arrangement and interplay of these utterly familiar elements. Nelson doesn’t attempt to redefine or reinvigorate his genre (as have some of his biggest influences, including Aphex Twin, Autechre, and Boards of Canada); rather, he’s the sort of artist who, finding a complete set of tools and genre parameters available to him, exploits one corner of that established framework to the utmost. More often than not, it’s artists of Nelson’s temperament who create most of a given genre’s most memorable statements.