Burner Magazine: The MUSIC Issue by Burner Magazine

BURNER

the MUSIC issue

BURNER the MUSIC issue

Burner’s Mixtape Series: with RUSS CHIMES KATE CARRAWAY JIAN GHOMESHI BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE CHROMEO SEEFEEL

Burner interviews:

Burner features:

yoko ono

Bryen Dunn’s ‘Musicians Green Their Own Beat’

PENDULUM Saul Williams

Nadja Sayej’s ‘Peaches At The Opera’ (Berlin)

Poetry by... JanĂŠe J. Baugher, Jeffrey Berg, Haley Cullingham, Taylor Eagan, Kurt Cole Eidsvig, Gail Ghai, Jesse Goolsby, Mary Kane, Erren Geraud Kelly, Alan King, Naomi Krupitsky, Gerardo Mena, Jay Mouton, Nancy Scott, Michael Schram, John Stocks, Dane Swan, Alexis White, Martin Willitis Jr., Joe Zucchiatti Visual art by... Lisa G. Bauer, Ione Citrin, Jason Deary, Andrew Fish, Ileana Johnson, Colleen McKeown, Daniel Mendoza, Kathleen Reichelt, Wesley Rickert, Dean Russo, Jordan Sedge, Christian Simpson Prose by... Ben E. Campbell, Jamey Gallagher, Christopher Green, Jeremy Hanson-Finger, Sara Harowitz, Pete Michael Smith, Curtis VanDonkelaar Photography by... Alex Browne, Andrew Hammerand, Connie Hunt, Mai Ismail, david K., Lindsey Lee, Tricia Louvar, Lynnette Miranda cover & TOC photos by Lindsey Lee

dear burner babes,

photo by Rebecca Baran Back in January 2011, I stumbled upon a study conducted by McGill University which caught the Associated Pressâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; attention, aptly entitled Music Rewards Brain Like Sex or Drugs. Articles like this are, of course, the holy grail of my internet timewasting-under-the-guise-of-being-learned sessions. I was intrigued. Reading on, I learned that researchers discovered that the act of listening to music, be it Beethoven or The Beatles, produces euphoria via dopamine release in the human brain in the same way that, say, a line of cocaine or a particularly intense orgasm would. While this study was (and is), without question, of huge importance to the scientific community, it

Before language was born, a woman pounded grains between two heavy rocks. The early morning sun shone through the leaves, dappling her child who played propped against a lichencovered log. She could almost see the dew evaporate in wisps around her. She found her groove, pounding the rocks in the perfect rhythm to evenly grind the grains. Rocking and rolling, working in a rhythm in synch with the worlds around her. A smile arose as she saw a speck on the horizon. Her man was returning from the dawn hunt with bounty. Happiness welled to the beat and, with an instinctual yelp of joy, she sang. The voice from this fabled Eve of music made the baby giggle. It travelled on the wind through the trees across the meadow away to her loveâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ears,

left me feeling...well, in the amaranthine words of Clueless’ Cher Harowtiz: “like, du-uhhh.” Burner babes have known this all along. I’ve consciously known it since I was nine years old, when the opening strains of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake made my fingers tingle and I quite suddenly felt something for which the English language lacks a word, but that the Spanish call duende (roughly translating into ‘the mysterious power of a work of art to deeply move a person’). Maybe everyone else in the room felt it too. Maybe they didn’t. Regardless, I can’t think of a single human being I’ve encountered who hasn’t experienced this kind of magic in the presence of music. Call me crazy if you will, but I’m of the mind that most writers are frustrated musicians (and vice versa). Music is the most intangible of forces. Words have a permanence, a weight and sometimes even a heaviness. Music is as inexplicable and as transient and as diaphanous as a breeze. Words explain. Music doesn’t have to. The grass is always greener, as they say. Trying to place music within the confines of words is, as Haley Cullingham’s elegantly writes in A Love Letter to Lester (page 6), an exercise in “complication and confusion and the cruelty of irony”; in the same way that I can attempt to wrap adjectives around the heady pleasure of a first cigarette, the syllables will, in fact, never “be beautiful enough to do justice to the thing[s] they describe.” None of the words that follow in this issue of Burner capture what it is I feel when I listen to Tchaikovsky. Instead, what they do is equally valuable, and most certainly more immutable. They tell of experiences and interactions with the thing that cannot be named. The duende that comes with them. So adios for now, Burner babes. Enjoy the issue, and don’t forget to say thank you to Science (with a capital S) for proving what you and I knew all along.

Sarah Miniaci Editor in Chief

and past him. What is evolution but ecstasy and honesty? It is outside “the box”, whatever that means. Who made this box anyway? And why insist I be in it? Some powerful, dull ideologue, I imagine. I ignore boxes, am very wary. They’re boring, bland and induce involuntary fits of anxiety. For all that is good about human beings – truth, beauty, art – is made by love, and music is our most basic beautiful instinct. (Even if it’s purposefully ugly.) Before language, we made music. We sang. Song gave birth to language; the story is (un) certain. Meanwhile, musical genres are like dialects, flavours in musical meals. A great chef channels influences, in time with the rhythm of the moment, creates art aligned with the zeitgeist. That usually makes it very popular, or very unpopular. Sometimes both. Sometimes at the same time. Genres are for journalists. I mean, did the Beatles emulate skiffle? Were they afraid to mix rock with classical with backwards, chopped up tape? Why did Jimi Hendrix have effects pedals built out of Russian tanks and Tesla tubes? Why did he stack amplifiers on top of each other into walls of sound, strapping LSD around his brain? Beautiful, burning boys and girls make, play, dance, dream. Whether its two step fidget techno electro trance dub stop is irrelevant. Whether its country thrash punk blues garage soul twee matters not. Drum and bass punk. Folktronica. Does it move us? That’s the question. Answer that. Understand genres, but obliterate boxes. Weave all your influences together in different ways, until your soul jumps. With Love,

xxx.

Leah Stephenson Executive Editor

a love letter to lester by Haley Cullingham

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Jim Morrisonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, Christian Simpson

This is a love letter to Lester, who lived the dream of the American cowboy president: Who "confounds the designs of evil men." Who created soaring hymns to the mecca of culture. Who described the prisons and passions of something so transcendent it seemed impossible to pin down. Who was brave enough to scale the walls of a cathedral built "for a woman in hell." Who always knew what was truly sacred. This is a love letter to Lester, whose words could fly faster than methadrine through veins, than firing synapses: Whose words took flight before his own eyes. This is a love letter to Lester, whose relationship to music was so throw-down-and-fuck-me painful that he couldn't bear to see it fail him. This is a letter to Lester, who hated something, then fell in love with it irrevocably, and never looked back. This is a love letter to Lester for his poetic, masochistic spontaneity. This is a love letter to Lester, who could write about culture in a way that creates myth and captures legends. This is a love letter to the interplay of art, drugs, desperation and sheer beauty that built New York City. This is a love letter to Lester, whose wisdom washes up at our ankles. This is a love letter to complication and confusion, and the cruelty of irony. This is a love letter to the beauty in the dark. This is a love letter to you, Lester Bangs. But what's the point of writing it? Unlike the sheaves of paper that fell from your cloud, it will never be beautiful enough to do justice to the thing it describes.

"You know your hatred is just like anybody else's. The real question is what to live for. And I can't answer it. Except another one of your records. And another chance for me to write. Art for art's sake, corny as that. And I bet Andy believes it too. Otherwise he woulda killed himself a long time ago." -Lester Bangs, Untitled Notes on Lou Reed, 1980

illustration by JF

yoko ono

Living legend Yoko Ono talks to Burner about the art of remixing, lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s eternal questions...and martians.

BM: What advice would you give your 13 year old self? YO:!Listen to your inner self, not to what people say. Where do you find the energy to remain so prolific and the inspiration to remain so relevant? I'm just doing what I am inspired to do. I feel strongly that the energy comes with the inspiration, letting me know what is good to do.! How does it feel to be #1 on the charts again?

I used to have songs I didn't want them remixed. But I know better, now. It's a crime to not let others try out their creativity. What is the power of collecting wishes? Collective wishes are very, very strong. It could move a mountain.... What were your ideas behind the lyrics of Wouldnit (I'm a Star)? We are all unknown heros. YES?WHY?

It's great. It is giving me an education of what dance track is, and can be. I am totally impressed by the "high art" of dance remix.! ! Why did you decide to open your musical vault to remixers?

Eternal questions which make life interesting. ! As an originator of electronic music, what do you think about current electronic music culture?! And remix culture specifically?

Why keep it in the vault. For what?!

I don't comment what kids are doing. I only encourage them.

How did you select the remixers for Wouldnit (I'm a Star)? I didn't. This remix was dropped on my lap. "I'm A Star!" !I'm impressed. ! How did the!collaborative process work? The remixer has creative freedom. I am there to give the encouragement they need. ! Why did you decide to provide the sample packs for 'The Sun is Down!' to the world?! Do you think everyone is an artist? I want to encourage people to find their creativity. Everyone is not an artist, but can be. Is there a song of yours, or several, that you would never allow to be remixed? If so, why?

Which of the Wouldnit (I'm a Star) remixes is your favourite? !Why? They are all fantastic. The reason I hope, partly exist in the strength of the original song...but the remixers are particularly creative in this song. How do you feel about being a dance floor queen at this stage in your career?! What led you to the dance floor? I was a dance floor queen from way back....there is a 8mm film of me dancing when I was two and half years old. What do you think is the future of music (near, mid and/or long-term)? Music will always be with us. If not with us, might it be with martians?

The late night John Peel

The late night John Peel Show by John Stocks

We are here the boys from Sheff and Donny From Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool, Our futures as still and unblemished As the veiled surface of a mill pond. And together we will weave a long rope To lead us from the grime and the grimness, From the misery of our dead end towns From the slag heaps and the stagnant canals. We are the gifted ones, too soft for graft Who will drift from the plains of the North To deeper landscapes filled with poetry And obscure Parisian psychology. We belong in loft apartments, lecture halls, Drinking Sauvignon Blanc in smoky cafes, Catching late night trams from here to nowhere With a guitar and a bottle of JD. And soon we will make a craft of leaving; Cruelly the families that smother us With their hopes and well intentioned love And the warm blanket of their kindness. You can stare at us, But our dreams are invisible, Tonight, Under the covers, we practise our goodbyes With The Clash, Costello and the Jam; As we listen To the late night John Peel radio show.

!Silk Road", Mai Ismail

Rafters Manchester by John Stocks

Friday night, jazzed up on scratchy 45’s, striking some visceral, self conscious pose for the dark haired girl with the pale blue eyes. Femme fatales everywhere bubbling with eroticism, as our sweat poured down lubricious walls still vibrating from, ‘Slaughter and the dogs.’ the sign that read, ! ‘SCOUSERS BEWARE! THIS IS MANCHESTER!’ Strangely the best days of our lives, this time of carnal adolescent codes, predatory failures, routine lies beautiful or ugly?, god only knows, the sex and suicides passed me by we lived in imaginary worlds with all the hopeless longing that implies. !Acid-Toner", Mai Ismail

‘Radical Dunlops from Down Under’, Lisa Bauer

The Zoo

by Pete Michael Smith ! Inside the gate, the night is immediately darker, wilder. I’ve been to the zoo before, but never after hours. Never at night. I place my glass down gently on the wooden ledge of the ticket window and open up a map from a stack beside me. The path to our right leads us into Africa and I suggest we take it. Abbot downs his wine in one glass-emptying gulp and tosses it into a nearby trash can, the shattering sound twinkling in the night. It really is a fine driving wine, but it won’t do for the zoo at all. Hand in hand we walk into the darkness ahead, between the heavy fronds of exotic plants kept alive artificially in the city. " We stop in front of the first enclosure we come to, and I disentangle myself from Abbot. The rail beneath my hand has been worn smooth by hundreds of hands before mine. Thousands. I lean as far forward as I can and read the plaque on the fence: The Lion. But he is

nowhere to be seen in the dark night. ! Abbot tells me that even the king of the jungle has got to sleep, that we can’t expect him to cater to our whims and perform for us when we happen by his home. Abbot moves his hand to my neck and the tips of his fingers trace the course of my jugular. This is where he’d strike, Pammy. I shudder a little and wonder if he can feel it under the graze of his fingers. He says that he wouldn’t let a lion strike me, though. His breath is greenhousehot and wet in the air between our faces. We’re safe he says, and then kisses me. Off to our side, I can hear the gentle purring of a big cat, and I wonder if Abbot can, too, or if he attributes it to me, my satisfaction. " The flamingoes stand in their pond behind a low chain and post fence. Their silhouettes look like rare and tropical flowers sprouting from the glassy surface of the water. Standing on one leg, I draw my knee up to my chest and fold my arms in to wings, trying hard for the balance that comes so naturally to them. ! I ask Abbot if he thinks their legs ever get tired and he just laughs a little, bends down low and unties his shoes. I turn my upper-body, still standing on my one leg and watch him roll up the cuffs of his pants and step up over the chain fence. He’s in the water up to his knees before I slip off the leather thongs of my sandals and step in beside him. " The water is warm on my feet, my legs, and the gentle rippling of my movement causes three or four pink heads to raise, turn, and inspect us closely before slipping back under wings and into sleep once again. ! It’s something they eat, he whispers out of courtesy to the sleeping birds. That’s why they’re pink.

! I raise my knee to my chest again and think of the wine we drank on the ride over, how I could feel it clinging to my teeth, my gums. Imagine, I say, if we were always turning colors with each passing meal? God, what a mess it would be. The high note of my laughter cracks the night and I tell him that I would have to give up asparagus, then. Beets, too. I tell him I’ll eat nothing but dark chocolate and deep read wines. ! Abbot turns and exits the pond, stepping again over the low-strung chain. I wander between the sleeping birds a while more, and run my hands across the air above their backs. From far away, I think, the motion of my hands must look like that of a conductor’s, in front of a symphony. If only these birds moved in time with me. ! Slowly, I pick my way back across the pond and step quietly out. With a cigarette lit, he’s easy to spot. He stands a dark shape against a darker background, a tiny pinprick of red light glowing at the end of his hand. The night hangs all around us, and I can hear the quiet calls of some of the night animals, and also, Abbot’s voice carrying across the pathway to me. Pammy, he says, you’ve got to see this. I can see two silvery jets of smoke plume from his nostrils before he turns and walks away. ! Peering through the night at the spot where he was, I’m ready to leave the flamingoes and join Abbot wherever he has gone. Slowly, I move myself along the path to where he stood, and I see him again, standing with his hands pressed to the thick walls of a glass tank glowing blue in the dark night. " Joining him, I can see the rocky outcroppings of the underwater habitat; hollowed out niches and the occasional floating bit of debris sweep by us. I tell him

that there’s nothing in there worth seeing. Whatever this tank belongs to is probably asleep, like the flamingoes. But he keeps staring into the water, even as I make to leave down the path, further into the zoo. " Abbot pinches out his cigarette and drops it on the path between his bare feet. Look, Pamela. ! The great white head of polar bear enters my field of vision and immediately I’m back at Abbot’s side, my hands beside his on the glass. All at once we can see the whole thing. It seems too big, bulky, to swim with such ease. Animals of their size should believe in gravity. " From the opposite side another white bear clouds into the water, sinking slowly while hundreds of tiny air bubbles rise to the surface from his toothy wet grin. ! They’re dancing, Abbot! I’m excited to see the polar bears in action. The legs of the smaller move lightly against the blue patterned floor of the tank, treading water, while his forearms keep in constant circular motion like a juggler. ! In my peripheral vision I can see Abbot moving away from the tank and my side. He looks around the polar bear pavilion quickly before he spots what he’s been looking for. Abbot reaches up and grabs a white courtesy phone from where it hangs under an awning on one of the out buildings. I return my gaze to the bears and then back again to Abbot. He’s dialing a number, looking back over at me. Uh huh. By the bears—the polar bears. Just another hour, I promise. His right hand holds the telephone to his ear while the left rakes through his dark hair over and over again. Ok, thanks. Thanks Charlie. Confused now, I stare at him. " My friend. The security guard he says, answering my question before I can ask it. And then, all around us a soft crackle of white noise fizzles up. I look into the trees surrounding us, trying to locate the source of the sound. Abbot smiles, and crosses the pavilion from where he stood on the phone. His bare feet thud softly on the stone. Pamela, he says, raising his right hand toward me, may I have this dance? And then the speakers on poles all around the park boom into life and a long slow waltz fills the dark and empty night around us. " I shut my eyes and I can feel my throat vibrating with laughter, low and slow at first and then high and wild as he begins to move me in time with the music. Chopin, he shouts as he pulls me closely toward his hips. He shouts it like a secret. Through the thin material of his shirt, my hand on his shoulder, I can feel the heat between us passing back and forth. " The music rises and rises in shimmering waves all around us and we reach a dizzying speed. We caterwaul around the empty viewing pavilion and he spins me. I wish I were wearing a skirt a little less tight. I want great swaths of fabric to move just a step behind

me, swinging as my feet fall on the hard cold stones. Instead, my bare legs jut out smooth and athletic from beneath thin fabric stretched taut across my thighs. " His laughter joins mine, and they complement each other in a subtle two-part harmony. His hand is on the small of my back and he leads me and directs me quickly from corner to corner as we spin about. His hand is a rudder and my hair sails open in the wind while the lights of the night sky help us to navigate. ! Our laughter in combination with the music being pumped through the zoo public address rouses the sleeping animals and stirs to action those that are already awake, their red eyes glowing in the night. Thunderous flapping of wings fills the air as flocks of birds lift from their perches in the nearby aviary. They swarm about for a moment crossing paths, testing limits, assuring themselves that there is no escape from the rising sound all around them, the netted ceiling above them. " From the cages by the entrance the big cats purr deep and sonorously, beautifully in time with the waltz. Two peacocks enter the pavilion, their blue and green plumage following just behind them. They move quickly and let out disgusting screams, their voices a contrast to their bodies. I think of the flamingoes in their pond, standing stock still on knobby legs. How they must envy us. " The waltz wears on and on, rising in speed and volume as the choir of animals joins the orchestra. The primal voices of the jungle, the plains, the calls of the skies and the cries of the forests fill the night and I am thankful that the zoo is far from the city, that no neighborhoods abut the high stone walls. " The trumpet of an elephant answers the call of a wolf. " Squirrels chirrup aloud, holding their paws to their mouths. " Hooves stomp. " A roar. " The music rises until it cannot anymore, until the end is in sight. Abbot spins me around the pavilion until everything around us is a blur. The centripetal force of our movement creates its own gravity and our arms fling out and my hair in the wind and his in his eyes until it ends. " Until the speakers return to a crackling white noise, and then nothing but the calls of the peacocks, the heavy deep purring of the cats, and the barking of the dingoes. " Behind us, the polar bears dance on, unfazed by the cessation of the music and our heavy panting as Abbot and I fall to the ground, struggling to catch our breath in the aftermath.

‘The Police’s Zenyatta Feeds on Guinness for Lunch’, Lisa Bauer

Jesus Owns An Electric Guitar by Gerardo Mena

Jesus plays an electric guitar. He screams into a microphone about the devil never sleeping and sweeps back and forth on stage in front of his backing band. Jesus loves the I, IV, V blues progression. He mumbles something about temptation and forty nights. He rears back and rips a solo in the key of E like his life depends on it. Jesus has a killer light show. The kind that causes seizures and blindness. He sets his guitar on fire but he has many others just like it. Jesus needs more stage.

‘Plant & Page’, Christian Simpson

the

mixtape series featuring

RUSS_CHIMES KATE_CARRAWAY jian_ghomeshi charles_spearin(bss) P-THUGG(CHROMEO) sarah_peacock(seefeel)

!Re-Code", Mai Ismail

russ chimes

RC: A clear head, some inspiration, lots of coffee. SM: Best place in the world to listen to music?

words by Sarah Miniaci

Oh, Russ Chimes. In a maelstrom of bore-me-todeath tech house and yawn-worthy rock n’ roll, Chimes’ original tracks and remixes are just...well, awesome. And cool. And sexy. And really, everything good, fun, out-of-your-mind dance music should be. With remixes under his belt of big name acts like Ellie Goulding and Mark Ronson whipping dance floors around the world into frenzies, Chimes’ first official offering of original material, the Midnight Club EP speaks of his penchant for beautiful sports cars and glittering, spacey synthesizers. Read on to find out what turns this London, UK native on, off and who he’d choose to be if given the option of time travel. SM: 3 things you can't produce music without?

RC: In your car at dusk or on a train watching the world go by. SM: What feeling or mood were you accessing when making the!Midnight Club EP, and did you think that the Keshavarz-directed series of videos accurately captured it? RC: The loose concept of the EP was originally just to make some good driving music, get the adrenaline pumping and use the melodies to take you away for a short time. I think Saman captured the essence really well, and obviously added a whole lot more! He managed to create huge drama, tension and displayed super complex storytelling using those three little tracks!

SM: If you got the chance to time travel and be incarnated as one famous figure in music history, who would you choose to be?

SM: Biggest turn-on?

RC: Prince, maybe MJ. One of the big show-offs. May as well go big.

SM: Biggest turn-off?

RC: Pretty girls with mad skills.

RC: Wannabe WAGS with orange faces. Eugh.

SM: Samples or synthesizers? RC: Always synthesizers first, but samples are always welcome to come party too. SM: Your music tends to make me feel all galactic disco princess outer-spacey. I have to ask ... do you believe aliens exist? RC: I’d say it’s a certainty considering how big the universe is and how small we are.

SM: Best thing about DJing? RC: Lasers, strobes, smiley faces, hands in the air. SM: Worst thing about DJing? RC: Shitty requests, airports, tinnitus. SM: What does perfect happiness look like to you?

SM: You’re obviously into sportscars (ahem, your songs Tertre Rouge and Targa) - what’s the most beautiful car in the world?

RC: A Police Academy boxset. Simple pleasures...

RC: A red Ferrari 250GT Lusso.

RC: Currently working on a follow up EP and working towards an album for the end of 2011. Hopefully with lots of shows in between.

SM: Cigarettes or alcohol? RC: These days just alcohol.

SM: What’s next for Russ Chimes?

Russ Chimes’ Midnight Club EP is out now on iTunes and Beatport. For tour dates & more info, check out www.russchimes.com

Kate Carraway is a freelance lifestyle and culture writer based in Toronto, Canada. The epitome of a Burner babe, she’s worked for publications that range from Vice to the Globe & Mail to Jezebel.com, and her weekly column as Senior Writer for Eye Weekly, Thirtyish, is side-splittingly funny and insightful to the point of being frightening. An old soul in the body of a savvy, saucy, smart-ass, take-noprisoners downtown kind of fairy princess, Kate is basically the thinking man’s dream girl and the thinking girl’s dream bestie. Here we ask her some questions about writing, dating, friendship, feminism and fun. Trust us: hers is advice you’re going to want to take.

throughout high school, and the song came on while she was whipping around a corner. I associate the song with the lighter blue of the car’s interior, and with speed, and with my cool, pretty sister, whose CD (tape?) it was. Soon after I bought myself a cheap stereo and joined Columbia House and ordered every Hip CD (and some other, equally now-embarrassing records). Hearing “Courage” was without question the first time I felt like a humanperson independent of my parents and of childhood.

SM: Most visceral memory you have to a song?

KC: Black Flag. My writing really depends on an interaction between a formal, sometimes-nearly-academic style and a very guttural, slangy, teenage sensibility. I was really prissy and serious before I turned 13 and found out about punk, and the influence that Flag (and SoCal punk more generally) has had in transforming my life and desires has been enormous.

KC: The most visceral memory I have of music generally is of hearing “Courage” by the Tragically Hip in 1992, when I was 11. Their album Fully Completely had just come out and my sister was driving me somewhere, in the same navy-blue Toyota Corolla with flip-up headlights that ended up being my car

KATE

SM: Band/musician who you feel has been integral to your development as a person and/or writer?

SM: Best kind of music (genre-wise) to write to, if any? KC: Nothing. Silence.

cARRAWAY words by Sarah Miniaci

SM: Warning signs via a glance at a dude's record collection that's he's: a) emotionally retarded / b) psychotically possessive / c) a disaster / d) a dreamboat KC: a) Nickleback / b) Nickleback / c) Nickleback / d) Any record by a girl or a gay. ! SM: Should you judge a potential friend's worth by their taste (or lack thereof) in music, good or bad? Why or why not? KC: No. Because that would be retarded, narcissistic, self-defeating, boring and incorrect. ...and now, the 'hypothetical' advice portion: SM: I'm a crybaby 20-something who needs to grow the fuck up and take ownership of my life. What songs should I listen to help me in my quest to start kicking ass? KC: “Pursuit of Happiness” by Kid Cudi “Straight A’s” by Sleigh Bells “Work” by Ciara “Tell Me Why” by MIA “Stillness Is the Move” by the Dirty Projectors really motivates me, for some reason.

SM: I've recently hit the 30-something wall and feel really bored, confused, uncool. How do I steer this gross, old age-dom process back into F-U-N? (P.S. MTV scares me)

KC: Get your hands on one of those “best of” year-end lists (from this year, I mean) and listen to every song or album. You will be surprised. Fun is nothing more than effort. SM: Let's say I'm a dude who, like, really wants to be into feminism but can't quite click with it. Give me an album to listen to that's gonna turn my patriarchal ass around. KC: Liz Phair, Exile in Guyville. Really, this record is all you need the rest of your life.

misogynistic, violence-condoning rap music. Do I have a future psycho killer on my hands or should I let him be about it? KC: Calm yourself. SM: If you could choose any song in the world to be your personal theme song that would follow you around sitcom-style, what would it be and why? KC: “Sour Cherry” by the Kills. Because it’s relaxed and aggressive at the same time, and kind of challenging and rude but also dumb and funny.

SM: My fourteen year old son refuses to listen to anything other than anarchist punk, death metal and

CHICKS

A_mixtape_by Kate_Carraway

SIDE_A 1.“rebel_girl” bikini_kill 2.“rude_boy” rihanna 3.“sunshowers” m.i.a. 4.“little_booty_girl” thunderheist 5.“we_got_the_beat” the_go-gos 6.”wannabe” spice_girls 7.”kool_thing” sonic_youth 8.”i_like_to_work” republic_of_safety 9.”did_it_on_’em” nicki_minaj 10.”fantasy” mariah_carey

SIDE_B 1.”choose_drugs” juliana_hatfield 2.“crystalised” the_xx 3.“you_really got_a_hold_on_me” she_and_him 4.“four_women” nina_simone 5.“dancehall_queen” robyn 6.”we_three” patti_smith 7.”generosity” mirah 8.”fade_into_you” mazzy_star 9.”lost_my_sight” indian_jewelry 10.”what_it_feelS like_for_a_girl” madonna

Frank, charming, impassioned and intelligent, Jian Ghomeshi is a Canadian cultural icon, currently host and co-creator of CBC’s national daily talk show, Q. From award-winning broadcaster (interviewing Paul McCartney, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen in a TV world-exclusive) to musician, including for multi-platinum band, Moxy Früvous, to writer to speaker to manager, Jian is a calm force of nature whose wit and wisdom make for a mean mixtape. LS: Describe a significant turning point in your life where music played a major role. JG: When I was 15 or 16, I was in a band called Tall New Buildings, and we had a song called Fashion In Your Eye. I was the singer. A requisite and significant amount of eyeliner may have been worn, my sort of Robert Smith, Cure phase. And Fashion In Your Eye got played tons on

jian ghomeshi words by Leah Stephenson

CFNY, which was the Edge at the time. To have that validation from the cool station was a confidence builder in thinking I could pursue a career, a passion for creativity. LS: What is your most unforgettable memory with Moxy Früvous? JG: We did a little tour right before our first album came out, opening for Bob Dylan and we did two nights at Massey Hall. We had a song called The Gulf War Song, lamenting the Gulf War, the state of violence in the world, imperialism, hoping for a world where people would talk to each other and work things out beyond arms. It was an a cappella song, and at the end of our set, we put down our instruments and stood at the edge of the stage of Massey Hall, which is arguably Canada’s most storied hall and has amazing natural acoustics. And we sang this song, opening for Bob Dylan, and the crowd went crazy. LS: As a musician what gets your creativity flowing? JG: For me, my muse comes out of difficult times. Most of the songs I’m proud of have come out of tough times. I think Sarah McLachlan once said, Yeah then I got happy

1.“Fantastic_Voyage” David_Bowie 2.“nightswimming” rem 3.“let_down” radiohead 4.“your_ex-lover is_dead” stars

s g n o s 5 at th ire insp

jian

5.“smile” nat_king_cole and stopped writing for awhile. I totally relate to that. It’s usually a way of exercising emotions that are shitty. You know, my job hosting Q, doing interviews, writing articles, doing speaking gigs, they’re all creative, but it’s not the same. You don’t break up with someone and do your radio show to work it out! LS: What musical artist was most moving to interview? JG: Sonny Rollins, the jazz saxophonist. I love interviewing people in their 70s or 80s, because there’s no more bullshit. They’ve had so much happen in their lives they’re ready to say it like it is or tell great stories. Sonny was a bit of a Yoda. He’s very spiritual, very, very thoughtful, very aware of the creative process. Leonard Cohen. These guys are like sages. With Leonard Cohen or Sonny Rollins, I felt I could ask anything. I’m asking questions like, are you freaked out about death?! They’re not just questions I’m asking as an interviewer. I’ve got this chance with this guy who is just so powerful and thoughtful and sage and inspiring. LS: Do you feel creatively influenced by your Persian roots? JG: I’d say yes. As a first generation Canadian, I can’t escape or detach or be foolish enough to think I’m not deeply involved in my Eastern roots. I’m a Western guy, but my family values, some of the social conventions, my personal habits are Eastern, are Iranian. It’s a very, very creative culture, some of the most romantic poetry, influential from dance to literature to ceramics, and a real appreciation for the role of expression, the subtlety of expression, the power and beauty of words. Whether I am or I’m not influenced by my Persian roots, I’d like to think I

am because I have such great passion for that Iranian legacy of art and creativity. LS: Who is your dream musician to interview? JG: I love Bowie. He’s always been ahead of his time. He’s never been satisfied, he’s never rested on his Bowie laurels, even if it’s led him to some weird places, it’s been this constant evolution, pushing, pushing. He’s been remarkably influential and he’s a super smart and interesting man…We haven’t tried booking him on Q. It’s probably because if I interviewed Bowie, where would I go from there? My joke is it’s going to be on my deathbed. It’s like sleeping with your dream date. Where do you go from there? Everything’s going to be crap after that. Or it’s crap sex. What if I interview Bowie and he’s horrible and he’s nasty or something? Then what? Then I’m crushed. It’s not worth it, I tell you it’s not worth it! LS: What's next for you as Jian Ghomeshi, human being at large? JG: I’ve been working on a book. But it’s really hard. I’ve got my daily show, my production company managing Lights and others, speaking gigs. I really want to take Q to the next level. I fastidiously prep for everything I do, so I pull these long hours. I’m not sure exactly where I’m supposed to finish the book in there, but that would be something I’d like to do in the next year or two. I’ve actually got several books in my head. One deals with popular culture and social change. Another is called Your Neighbour Is A Terrorist. It’s about how brown people, like Iranians, can assimilate so Westerners start to believe that we’re actually not terrorists. So we can fool them. It’s kind of a How To guide.

Charles Spearin is, in every sense of the word, an artist. An industry veteran in both producing and playing music, Spearin is one of the original members of Canadian indie-rock darlings Broken Social Scene, a founding member of the rock group Do Make Say Think, and a Juno Award-winning soloist for his experimental album, The Happiness Project. We chatted about the joy of making people cry, the rising music middle class, and how I remind him of a saxophone. SH: With The Happiness Project, you took snippets of conversations with your friends and put melodies and instruments to their voices. Hearing my voice, what instrument would you use for me? CS: [laughs] Maybe the Alto saxophone. You do have a melodic voice. I didn’t notice it until you brought it up. SH: What’s your favourite part about being a musician? CS: Everything has its merit. I really enjoy being in the studio and watching songs get put together, and the

whole dance of creating when you suddenly hear an idea or somebody adds something to it ... But also I like touring and I like working with different people. I think it’s a really healthy thing. Music and touring and that whole aspect can be exhausting and can be unhealthy if you don’t watch yourself, but I think just being forced to work with people or be stuck together in a touring situation is really kind of nice. Everybody in the tour bus or the van becomes a mirror so you get to know yourself a little bit better. So I enjoy that as well. I enjoy playing in front of audiences. You get a little bit of a rush. It’s kind of the same thing as when you’re a kid and your mom tells you that the scribble drawing that you did is really great, and you get this little endorphin rush ... Being on stage in front of people that like your music, you get the same endorphin rush.

charlesofSPEARIN broken social scene words by Sara Harowitz / photos by Alex Browne by Sara Harowitz

1.“Fantastic_Voyage” s g David_Bowie 5 son keep 2.“Holland_1945” thahtarles Neutral_Milk_Hotel C ired insp 3.“Cicada_Sing_The_Galaxy” Natsumen

4.“Bottom_Feeder” Here_We_Go_Magic 5.“Freight_Train” Elizabeth_Cotten SH: What’s the emotion you most enjoy invoking in others through your music? CS: I think mostly this kind of, in a way, sadness; if you can bring people to tears, that’s a lot more satisfying than making people smile sometimes. And I mean bringing people to tears in a way as almost they discovered something about themselves. The most enjoyment I get out of music is when I really feel actually emotionally moved by it and almost to tears. Like for example, Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No. 3 [Symphony of Sorrowful Songs]. It’s a sombre, extraordinary piece. It came on the radio a while ago and I was just eating lunch and all of a sudden I’ve got tears coming out into my soup. And it’s a really powerful thing.

SH: Where do you see the music industry going? CS: I’m optimistic about it. Now that music is in the hands of the people a bit more than it used to be, it’s almost like there’s a middle class in music that’s growing that wasn’t here before. There used to be a ton of beginner bands and a few huge superstar bands. And gradually I think now that recording and releasing music has become a lot more easy and accessible, it’s almost like genres don’t matter anymore ... I’m really enjoying watching some of the boundaries disintegrate in terms of musical styles and success. I think it’s going to be really healthy. In terms of the money aspect, I don’t really give a damn about that ... Music is its own reward.

When Patrick Gemayel answered his cell phone, I almost expected to hear a talk box greet me with a funky hello on the other end. Known more commonly as P-Thugg, one half of the infectious funk dance duo Chromeo, Gemayel has become famous for being the dude who sings with a tube in his mouth. The result, as thousands of people know and love, is a robotic “Chromeo-oh-oh-oh-oh” twang that finishes the lyrics of lead singer Dave Macklovich. Together as Chromeo, Gemayel and Macklovich have become one of Montreal’s most popular exports. Gemayel, whose voice is deep and soft sans talk box, is thoughtful, funny, and modest – the ultimate Burner Bro. SH: There’s no doubt that your music makes people want to dance and go wild. What are some of the funniest things you’ve seen your audiences do? PG: There are a lot of funny dance moves, it’s quite a nice repertoire that our fans have. Of course there’s a little bit of alcohol involved which makes things a bit funnier. People dressing up are always funny. I remember these two girls dressed up as me at a show.

I don’t even think it was for Halloween, they just wanted to dress up as Pee. It was hilarious. SH: You and Dave have been friends since school. What advice do you have for all the best friend duos out there to keep the friendship healthy? PG: It’s like a couple – you have to trust the other person, always remember the history and your friendship and rely on that to make decisions. And never, never, never have egos between each other. An ego is this thing that breaks up bands, breaks up friendships ... That’s how we work with music, too. As opposed to some bands that sometimes break up because of these problems, when we’re in the studio, we’re honest with each other. If one of us comes up with an idea and the other one doesn’t like it then it’s scrapped instantly. There’s no arguing, especially on creative decisions.

P-thugg OF CHROMEO

words by Sara Harowitz / photos by Alex Browne

SH: The music industry is rapidly changing. Where do you see it headed? PG: There have been so many changes that it’s hard to say, but it’s definitely not going back to strong record sales in the near future. There’s certain advantages to that, it’s probably all going to become a lot of streaming, a lot of downloading which is going to get higher and higher. Hopefully the actual physical record will not disappear, because it’s great to have MP3’s and all, but I always like to have the artwork in my hand.

SH: What are your thoughts on downloading? PG: I think it’s great. To us it doesn’t really make a difference. We never really see any money off record sales so it’s all about getting the name out there and making music available to kids in Cambodia that might have never even heard about you. SH: What do you love about music? PG: It’s not science where you can dissect the frog and go, ‘This is how it works.’ It’s not a math formula where it’s just like, ‘One plus one equals two.’ There’s always going to be a bit of mystery in music.

1.“DEAR_GOD” THE_ROOTS_FT. MONSTERS_OF_FOLK 2.“WHAT_A_FOOL_BELIEVES” THE_DOOBIE_BROTHERS 3.“STRANGER” STEPHEN_STILLS 4.“THIS_IS_IT” KENNY_ROGERS 5.“ANY_WHICH_WAY” SCISSOR_SISTERS

5 song that s P-Th keep inspiruegg d Chromeo’s new album, Business Casual, is out now and available for purchase at major retailers everywhere. For tour dates & more info, visit www.chromeo.net

Sarah Peacock of In the heady days of the early 90s, a wave of intrepid bands made unexpected connections between postpunk, the electronic reverberations from the early days of acid house and the sonic sculptures crafted by classic producers like Phil Spector, which coalesced into the genre known as “shoegaze”. Conceived by Mark Clifford and Sarah Peacock, Seefeel emerged as the black sheep of this movement. Seefeel’s self-titled album released February 1, 2011 on the legendary Warp Records demonstrates that they have held true to their commitment to not record a new Seefeel album until they could present something truly new. Seefeel’s co-founder, Sarah Peacock, shares more about this seminal band and its influences. LS: Describe the genesis of Seefeel. SP: In 1991 Mark found Justin through an advert he'd left on the notice board at Goldsmith's College (people wanted to make beautiful music with), and me through an ad I placed in the NME (people wanted to join or form band, MBV, SY etc).! He rang up and asked me if I

words by Leah Stephenson

SEEfeel

liked the Cocteau Twins as well. I said yes, so he sent me!a demo they'd made with Mark Van Hoen.! We met up and started rehearsing.! We found Daren through Goldsmiths as well, and arrived at our sound after much experimentation.! Mark!met E-da when he moved to Brighton, and asked him, and later Shige,!to join when we reunited in 2008. LS: What music ignites your creativity? SP: I'm a pop fan at heart, but I also love more 'difficult' music from Berg and Messiaen through Beefheart!to Autechre. LS: Who are you favourite 'mainstream' musicians?! Why? SP: Mark and I have a massive admiration for a lot of R&B artists and producers - Beyonce, MIA, Timbaland, Neptunes etc - who are imaginative and experimental

as well as being massively popular. I’ve got a big thing for 60s girl groups, 80s electro-pop, Roxy Music, Serge Gainsbourg, Scott Walker, Kraftwerk, to name but a few.! I'm a fan of good memorable tunes, beauty!and strangeness.

on the ceiling; we played as!well as we ever did;!and Liz Fraser [of Cocteau Twins] was!standing smiling!at the side of the stage!

LS: What inspired the new self-titled album?

SP: We're touring the UK, Ireland and mainland Europe, doing Sonar Japan, Primavera Barcelona and hopefully more festivals in the summer.! We're hoping!to play all over the world (especially America), and get the next album done as soon as we can!

SP: Our new band dynamic, new!sound!manipulation tools,!and crowded tube trains. LS: What was your most memorable live show?! Why? SP: We played Glasgow Barrowlands in 1994 supporting the Cocteau Twins. The atmosphere was amazing (as it usually is in Glasgow)! There were stars

LS: What's next for Seefeel?

Seefeel’s new self-titled album is out now on Warp Records and is available in vinyl, CD and download formats. For tour dates & more info, visit Seefeel on Warp Records

Sarah ’s Seefeel Soundworld Selection 6.”

te” l u c o_ bourg g r a 1.“c _gains e serg ow” ntine l s “ 2. le a v _ ody o l b I” my_ I _ n too OUTH a l p 3.“ ONE_Y cICC LL” O N K L_ L E B _ INS E W U T L _ 4.“B OCTEAU C E” D I S VER E L I S 5.“ UTECHR A

LOVE_FOREVE R” NEW_AGE_STE PPERS 7.“MAN_IS_NO T_A_BIRD” BROADCAST 8.“LES_TEMPS DES_SOUVENI _ FRANCOISE_H RS” ARDY 9.“SOUVENIR” omd 10.”capsule_ in_space” john_barry

‘the chorus sings’, Kathleen Reichelt

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;exit stage right, Kathleen Reichelt

‘beatbeauty’, Wesley Rickert

thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a strong math to describe it, but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s impossible to by Taylor Eagan conceptualize I'd hate to say I told you so, but there's an appetite for what would do: the laundry, dishes, the windshield wiper fluid, walking home from the bridge, barnacles on the pilings, shadows of the buoys, the knots and rings in the curio cabinet wood, the china, reflection of the china, cave of ribs, elephants tusks, the marrow, a rope ladder out the second story window, a draft in pencil, or cold through the blinds, the piracy, a hard shape in the peripheral, a shape of a crushed beer can, the floor of a car in park or the benches next to it, splintered and warped at the bolts. ! ! ! ! ! The solar system ingested whole ! ! ! ! scrapes its way down the esophagus, ! ! ! ! reheated. I told you it was better that way, didn't I? Then there are the negative spaces, Godspeeds, calloused hands, Eros, apartheid -all this loud music, added up to be things we haven't started to miss.

In My Hands

by Nancy Scott

I never sing the suicide song. I don't even listen to the lyrics now. But my hands know it and often reach for its comfort when I play. I play to know that it's there, in my hands.

PENDULUM

Australia-bred, UK-based electronic rock sensation Pendulum don't believe in genres. Immersion, their third studio album, is not, as frontman Rob Swire so humorously put it during our interview prior to their sold-out show at The Guvernment in Toronto on February 2, 2011, a "country western" effort. Immersion is, however, the crowning achievement of Pendulum’s career thus far; with it, the band tosses the sweat-driven energy of drum and bass into a melting pot that includes the very best elements of rock n’ roll, electronica and soul, making for an intensely thoughtful, provocative and unusual LP, much like Pendulum’s founding members Swire and Gareth McGrillen themselves. Having hit #1 on the UK charts within the first week of Immersion’s release, and continuing upon a steady upwards trajectory internationally, Pendulum have cemented their status in the stratosphere as new rock superstars. Read on to learn more about the genesis of Pendulum, what they’ve gained from Nintendo and why they’ll never, ever half-ass anything they release.

Hans Edquist: In the past you've mentioned influences from rock to metal to drum and bass, but your sound encompasses such a wide variety of instrumentation that it becomes difficult classify. So, what genre is Pendulum? Rob Swire: Country western and jazz...but no, I don't think it really fits in a genre as such. It seems weird to a lot of people over here, the whole mixing of electronic music and rock and roll. I mean, in the UK it's quite common, rock bands do both all the time. But in the States we get asked the question by magazines all the time - "Are you electronic or rock?" Well...both. HE: Do your fans affect the growth and style of your music at all? Gareth McGrillen: It wouldn't be conscious if it did. In fact, I think we quite consciously try to not let the scope and size of our fan base affect it. Ultimately all the bigger fan base does is make us more free to do what we want. HE: I recall an interview in which you said â&#x20AC;&#x153;everything is subject to change" as far as writing style, reformatting songs for live remixing and performance goes. Does that statement still hold true? RS: Yeah, definitely. Sometimes so much so that I forget the lyrics. [Laughs]. HE: I feel that Pendulum's music is very much laced with theatrics - every song is, musically and lyrically, very moving, depicting a lot of human desperation, tension and release. Do you guys ever use audio or visual media while writing songs? GM: That's a very eloquent question. RS: And true. With In Silico [Pendulum's sophomore studio album] we actually made little videos to go along with what we thought each track looked like. GM: Sometimes when we're working on stuff and you listen and it sounds like it's about to be

in a scene where Keanu Reeves is about to cut an Eskimo's head off. RS: If it doesn't fit with the visual we try to modify it. So we have a visual going along with the track...and if it doesn't fit, if it doesn't look right, then we change the track. GM: And I guess that's how we achieve that cinematic kind of vibe. HE: Speaking of In Silico: Rob, you drafted the demos for that using Commodore 64 Nintendo emulators. In a nutshell, how the hell is that possible? RS: The main thing I used that for was the programming. GM: That tune style though, it was very Nintendo-ish. RS: Honestly, we actually went through twelve to fifteen versions of that before we actually got to the final. HE: How important are lyrics versus melody in the writing and recording process? Do they feed off of each other? And are the lyrics personal, abstract or a combination of the two? RS: They feed off each other now, but in the past we always did the song first and tried to get the vibe right for that and then the lyrics would come in at the end. But I think now we're trying to mix the two from the ground up from the beginning. HE: Granite is one of the most epic tracks I've ever heard. In consideration of the lyrics/video, what are your beliefs regarding extra terrestrials? RS: That track is really more about a sense of invasion than UFOs specifically, but the guys who did the video for it really took the rein on that. But originally it was more about a sense of invasion ... it was written around the time that a lot of shit was changing - you know, with our personal privacy and stuff like that.

HE: As a group, Pendulum's performances are extremely precise. There are seemingly zero loopholes. What is the secret to this indestructible creature? GM: It's just how it's done. We don't do anything half-assed. When we set out to do the live thing, we weren't going to do it unless it was able to be done live and sound right. RS: You hear about bands streamed live on TV from festivals and you just think ‘how? how is that, how did they, how did a manager look at that and go 'yeah that's alright', go on?’ Because it's career destroying, that performance. HE: Rob, you have a very distinct and dynamic voice. The first time I heard the vocal take on Deadmau5's Ghosts N Stuff I had to do double take - those harmonies...they're seriously high harmonies. Are you vocally trained? RS: No, but I probably should be. Because that fucked my voice for about a week. [Laughs].

HE: And do you ever warm up before shows? GM: We're starting to get vocal training lessons. Mostly so we can annoy the bands in the neighboring dressing rooms because they've done that to us for years and we haven't. HE: What was it like co-writing Rude Boy for Rihanna? RS: Um, it was very hands off. [Laughs]. That can be taken any sort of way. GM: I think we got to meet her for about eight seconds? RS: It was really just a matter of putting a vocal loop there and then making a beat. And then I gave it to my manager and said “Here, take that”. Six months later, it was a Billboard #1 and Rihanna was on it. GM: She gave us a high five, and that was that. HE: What's the best thing about being a rock star?

GM: What’s a rock star? Um. [Laughs]. Interviews. Snow. Hip-hip crowds. We're too busy to be rock stars.

RS: Oh fuck that. It's so depressing watching old bands get together - "We're 45 man! We still rock!" It's all wrong.

RS: I don't think there are any rock stars anymore.

HE: Alright, last question: any books that particularly inspire you creatively?

GS: I don't think there ever were. I think it was all an urban myth. RS: See, Axl Rose is a rock star...but everyone thinks he's a cunt now. HE: Where do you guys see yourselves in 10 years? GM: Funny, we were kind of discussing that last night over a bottle of wine. HE: What kind of wine was it?

GM: The one with the caterpillar, and by the end it turns into a butterfly. I tried to read Naked Lunch, but it was too homoerotic. RS: Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell is good. It's not fiction, but it's fucking interesting. HE: So you’re a non-fiction guy? RS: I used to be a fiction guy. But then I got bored of reading people's creative...um, filth.

RS: It was good, it was red.

GM: I'm going to try to read Tolstoy this year. Something to do.

GM: I think it was Californian.

RS: Doesn't count if it's an attempt.

RS: Hopefully something different. GM: You know, Pendulum will be the kind of thing where we have a reunion tour.

Pendulum’s new album, Immersion (Deluxe Version), is available now on Warner Music UK Limited.

For more information on Pendulum and to find tour dates near you, visit www.pendulum.com

interview conducted by Hans Edquist words by Sarah Miniaci photos courtesy of Warner Music

‘Pomegranate 1’, Colleen McKeown

REVERBERATING BODIES by Jamey Gallagher

! Held still, we listened to the sounds of everything. The very slightest sound reverberated long. Sound is touch. It’s the body that hears. We lived in the country because of sound. The scratching of the dog’s nails against its flank, crickets, children in other homes shouting, frogs we never see. Children still occasionally live in their natural habitat. Your womb was damaged. I didn’t mind. Sometimes, though, you did. ! She did drugs, I didn’t. It’s an old story. Maybe it’s not. I’ve never heard the story told. I watched the needle slip between her toes. I watched her eyes rattle backwards. Still, we listened to sound. We heard flakes of snow land, a softly crystallizing clump, so tiny, minute, something you could hold in your hand, between two fingers, something you could smear across your fingertips. She stared for hours. I wanted to slap her. I did slap her once or twice but she just looked at me. ! Why did we live in the country? There’s nothing out here for us. We were starved for culture. We listened to the poetry of our own body, our blood. We could hear our skin drying. But, listen, at least half of our lives was unlimited joy. We were people who could just sit and think. We were the axes of the universe. We took too many animals into our home. They gave us a sense of embodied existence. A cat doesn’t need to do anything but be cat. Their paws padded on the wooden stairs. We lay listening to them. They seemed like parts of ourselves, out foraging, hunting. " Our bodies were tuning forks, reverberating bowls. After you died I played your rib cage, your skull, chopsticks digging sound out from beneath the surface. I pictured you rippling across the surface of a lake, all those intertwining circles, going out and out.

Adagio by Gail Ghai A slow and leisurely (manner): often used as a musical direction.

That’s the way he first danced with me, adagio, slow and leisurely, never releasing the fans of my hands, or palms of his palms, and when our hip bones found each other, they were hooks locking as we one-two stepped together in a circle tight as titanium. There was no bone talk of calcium and cartilage, marrow or matrix, no grind, no scrape, no tension, only soft oozing of breaths, fingers, tongues trying to tie themselves together like a bundle of hay, a cluster of stars, a bunch of matchsticks, flame red on the tips, waiting for the lick, split, strike of fire.

Sunday Repose by Alan King Say the wind leans against a tree, laughing at an eager sun peaking at us through Venetian clouds. Both of us slow dancing to Al Green in the background. The dance of lavender and jasmine around the room. Some men might call me a fool for loving one woman. Some even called my youth a field of wild flowers. Said I could’ve been a bee pulled by the promise of something sweeter. Then I recall the fable. A dog tricked by its reflection in the water. The splash of something lost forever. I’ve still got your head on my chest, fingers lost in belt loops. Your smile, open like dew-soaked morning glories. Al singing, All I need.

‘Lights’, Lindsey Lee

What Happens When You Play a Rap Song Backwards by Erren Kelly

Radio Song by Alexis White

Gold teeth disappear bitches become women pants rise up from the ground f's become a's guns become books cemeteries become gardens niggas become gods prisons become libraries 40 ounce bottles of beer become torches gangs become allies bandannas become flags

Someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s playing the radio In the apartment next door The belligerent wail of mariachi music And the wall so thin I can hear the sizzle of hamburger Almost smell its thick, greasy aroma wafting through. Do I hear or imagine the subtle smack of homemade tortillas against able palms? The smiling sigh of a tired madre as she glances down at her son Sculpting a landscape of dough across the laminate, His hair aged by flour? Today this borrowed music feels like a welcome gift Drowning out the silence of my Sunday. Today I love the city almost too much to bear: The thought of all these lives stacked on top of each other Like a honeycomb, so sweet So many Sundays in one city block So many different radio songs A cacophony of lives. Sometimes the walls between us are so thin That I myself feel permeable Sometimes I feel my life itself is just a borrowed song Heard thinly through cheap apartment walls, That it never was mine at all.

‘Volume, Balance, Tone’, Andrew Fish

A Dank Seattle Sunday, Winter by Janée J. Baugher

The roommates are gone. The girlfriend’s been here since Friday. Lulled by sullen chords of a five-string electric, she can’t see how the slide on his left hand covers the ring finger. While he plays toward the fire (away from her, just working the riffs), she writes. The page and guitar in private contrapositions. Alone, the artists ask their handheld things to sing. Amid red walls with white trim, and beside the fire (done with its kindling and on to its logs), the snare drum, moved by guitar’s tremble, gently rattles. When the guitar quits, the drum quiets. Still, the girl’s hand, in a serpentine fashion, is silently inking the page.

‘She was good enough for her own music’, Tricia Louvar

Let It Be

by Naomi Krupitsky

we are curled close to warm wooden songs daddy sings strumming soft as we drift outside there must have still been a world

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Wings on her Notesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, Tricia Louvar

Reality Comes From Magic: in conversation with

Saul Williams by Leah Stephenson Saul Williams, electro punk poet, meta-fictionist actor and ineffable Renaissance man, is about to release his fourth album, has published four books, and acted in seven movies, including the 1998 film Slam, for which he won the Sundance Festival Grand Jury Prize and the Cannes Camera D'Or. His last album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust! was a collaboration with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. With a new album and a film to shoot, Saul is not easy to reach, so I’m thrilled to be able to share some of a fascinating forty-five minute conversation with this insightful, evolving and engaged artist.

What’s keeping you so busy Saul? The thing I’ve been busiest with is finishing my album. I just finished it. That’s Volcanic Sunlight? Exactly, yeah. Tell me about the birth of Volcanic Sunlight. I started writing the album almost immediately after finishing Niggy Tardust, when I was on the road. It’s my first album where there are no songs written out of anger. Was that conscious? I was aware of it while it was happening, but it wasn’t a decision like, I’m going to do that. It just happened that way. I think, in the past, I’ve used music to constructively channel anger and, although in my life anybody who knows me wouldn’t describe me as an angry person or… …no, no, but we all have our frustrations. Yeah, so I’ve aired a lot of frustrations through the music and this time I wanted to air something

different. I wanted something that corresponded with a more holistic picture of who I am; where I am in life; how I see, feel. Subsequently, I made the first album that I really enjoy listening to, the type of thing I listen to in my home. Usually, I’m not a big listener to my own stuff. What range of emotions did you find yourself channelling? I imagine the whole spectrum minus the thing that makes me stand up on something and scream I want my money back. There was an exclusive release for the video of Explain My Heart. What inspired that track? Explain My Heart stemmed from the idea of being heartbroken, personally or through societal means, repeatedly, yet always feeling the energy to come back for more, like, yeah, but it didn’t kill me, I’m open. Explain My Heart is about, how is it that I feel such passion, such great capacity for love, even when I’ve been let down? Why is it this thing keeps on going? Volcanic Sunlight is a dance album, that’s the craziest thing. Explain My Heart is probably the most serious song on the album. It’s not the first single off the album. It’s the leak, to share it.

The video was shot by my friend, Andrew Gura. Andrew wanted to spend some time with me in Paris. We ended up playing around town, no budget, just bringing a camera and, let’s put on a clown nose, let’s go to the Eiffel Tower. So we’re in Père Lachaise cemetery, then we’re on my roof, then we’re in Chatelais, the crazy train station. It’s just us playing around town, putting it together and going, this would be fun to put out. What gear and instruments do you play? I never like to say that I play an instrument. I play with instruments. I’m like a child with instruments. Synthesizer is where I feel the most amount of freedom. I’ll program my drums, anything, off a keyboard. This time around I started like that and then I started working with Renaud Letang, the producer on this album. He and I worked to bring my demos up a notch, then we brought in the musicians. A huge horn section. This album is primarily tribal drums and horns. Renaud was among the main reasons I moved to France. I’m a huge fan of his work. Working with Trent was a really cool experience, yet Trent is an artist. Anyone can tell when you listen to Niggy Tardust that you hear Trent’s signature throughout, because even as a producer he can’t help but bring his sound. When you’re working with a producer that is not trying to express their artistic side and is just trying to help you express your artistic side, it’s a completely different process. I worked with Renaud because there are quite a few albums that I’ve loved over the years that he produced or mixed. I’ve always loved the clarity and simplicity of the sound and I can tell that this is the artist’s vision. Tell me about the interplay between music and lyrics. Do you usually write the lyrics first or does the music come first? Have you noticed a pattern? With this album, when I moved to Paris, I had this entire album in demo form. I had written all the music and some of the lyrics. Yeah, it’s the music first a lot of times. But this album was definitely all music first. I wanted to make an album where the music really had a strong breath of its own, that wasn’t so wordy, that didn’t need to be as wordy, where the music carries itself. With lyrics, I pretty much try to get out of the way, and let the music dictate the words. I wasn’t feeling any particular way when I wrote List of Demands, but after I had the guitar and drums, that sound is what dictated the attitude of the lyricism. It didn’t come from a mood I was in. It was the mood the music dictated. I realize you’re often writing the music, but for example with Niggy Tardust, or the first time I ever

heard you – it was DJ Krust, Coded Language…I love drum and bass but the poem, I was like, whoa, play that again. Righteous. Holy shit. So when you do do collaborations, how do you select collaborators? Is there a lot of interplay between you? How do you find that process works? My best collaborations have come from people that are around me and in my life and we share a moment, or I have an immediate introduction. With DJ Krust, I had just written “Coded Language” and flew to London to do promotion for Slam and I was actually supposed to be recording with Roni Size while I was there. Roni introduced me to Krust and was like, you have to hear this beat. The first time he played me a portion of it, I tried reading the poem over it. The first take. That’s it. I can hear that. They fit together like hand and glove. It really worked. Collaborations most of the time happen in relaxed environments. It’s usually just friends, like Janelle Monáe. I collaborated with her on her last album. She collaborated with me on the song that will be the first single off Volcanic Sunlight. We recorded in her house, in her basement. What would you describe as your most powerful influences? First, I’d have to include my parents. My father was a minister. My mother was a teacher. Although I don’t belong to a religion, I have a great deal of respect for the sincerity with which my Dad approached his life. He was not in the ministry to make money or to drive a fancy car. My father died maybe eight years ago and the more I think about his life, I think, wow, every Monday he made it his business to be in hospitals visiting sick people and every Wednesday…he had a schedule of counselling and helping people. He loved humanity. He cared about people. Yes, he really did. Even though I might be mad at institutionalized religion, I can’t be mad at the fact that my father was sincerely invested in connecting with people and helping them through hard situations. There’s no contradiction in that. I really appreciate that in him. My Mom taught kindergarten for 27 years and maintained a true excitement about turning people on to having fun expressing themselves, culture, legacy. My Mom is a sincerely excited student of life. They turned me on to countless activists and artists. A close friend of my father’s was Pete Seeger. He would sing at my father’s church. I’d be like, why is this boring, corny white man singing in my father’s church, singing this song from school, If I Had a Hammer? (Laughter.) Then time passed, and, he

“I never like to say that I play an instrument. I play with instruments. I’m like a child with instruments.”

wrote that song? Then I’d hear Bruce Springsteen talk about Pete Seeger, oh my god, that’s the guy I know! I grew up with people in my house who connected their art to a movement and to a cause. I learned a lot from and through who and what my parents exposed me to.

I don’t think it’s cliché. I think it’s… It makes a lot of artists that you hear on the radio just, contextualized, sound like shit.

And from there came the people they turned me on to, from Paul Robeson to Michael Jackson, there are so many people that I appreciated as a kid and was encouraged to continue appreciating. What I liked in these people was their talent connected with their love of humanity.

That’s exactly it. They are because it’s about them. There’s nothing more than them. Artists I don’t like it’s because they don’t have that element of a greater…just a kind of servant…

One day, this phrase came into my head, art as social dialogue, but there’s something more…It’s the spiritual side of us…

Let’s play an association game. I’m going to say a track name and you tell me the first thing you think. These are going back through the years. First thing you think when I say Tao of Now.

It’s all these things. There’s something great to be had in having fun and dancing, or provoking an idea or a movement. When all those things connect in music, it’s really an awesome experience. You know those iconic figures like the Marleys, the Kutis, the Nina Simones, the Joni Mitchells, the Beatles, the later work of John Lennon, whoever chose to engage consciously with the power of the art form itself. Those people stand out for me. Even if it sounds or seems pretentious or cliché to love those people for those reasons.

I had just discovered and read the Tao Te Ching by Lao-tzu. It was really influential. I read it around the same time I first started meditating. The Tao means the Way. Working on my first album, I really felt like I was beginning an exploration that was going to lead me to a better understanding of me, music, the times we were living in…And I’ll say this, the demo of that song is cooler than the version that came out.!

Exactly.

“...your relationship with your gut and your intuition is the most important relationship you can develop”

Tell me about Talk To Strangers.

One more: Tr(n)igger.

Serj [Tankian] gave me this beautiful gift early one Saturday morning when he woke me up with, hey man, I was thinking of you last night and I wrote a song for you on the piano. I was already in the studio mixing my second self-titled album and had been thinking I wanted some sort of introduction or prelude. When I heard the music, I immediately started writing to it, very much aware that it would be the first song on my album, so I wanted to write about being open, having an open mind.

(Laughing.) Man, that was SO fun. I had spent two years working with Trent, but Tr(n)igger is something I was working on by myself at home. It was the first time I realized I had really grown from the situation because the way I mapped out the song I was like, wow, it feels like I’ve worked on this with Trent.

I received it and took it into the studio that night and recorded it. It was a beautiful experience. I felt really happy about what I wrote, cuz I felt vulnerable. It was around 2003. I had just finished the book ,Said the Shotgun to the Head so I was in a mind state of vulnerability and openness.

The idea of the chorus was fucking crazy to me. I remember actually being scared, like should I put this on the album? This is a little crazy. I remember playing it for a few friends like, this is what I’m contemplating right now…I don’t know if I’m ready to go there or not…But I would blast it in my house like fucking crazy. I’d be so excited. And I love that little breakdown – what do you teach your children about me – that’s what really excited me that I’d figured out how to have this quiet moment in this crazy ass song.

That line ‘vulnerability is power’…

Is that Public Enemy?

It’s definitely one of the few songs that I return to and listen to. That’s one song I can hear and I feel good about.

Yeah, that’s Welcome to the Terrordome. That’s the other thing. I sampled my favourite part of my favourite song.

I understand. I built an electronic music song just using Public Enemy samples…So what’s on the horizon? I heard rumours of a Miles Davis film. That’s a bit far off in the distance, because we’re writing right now. I’ve had the opportunity to sit with Miles Davis’ French lover, Juliette Gréco. She’s in her eighties. The story we’re telling is through her eyes. My screenwriting partner and I have been working on that. What’s next for me is a film I’m doing called Aujourd’hui. I’ll be shooting that in Senegal this spring. Aujourd’hui as in the French for today?

explore in every individual. I think we acknowledge that through the compliments we give someone when they master a craft, whatever it may be, maybe engineering, but if someone’s really done it well, we go, wow, they’ve made an art of it. So yeah, I think everybody has an artistic side to them, which has a lot to do with the faith you’ve developed in your intuitive process, with your gut. Some people don’t trust their gut. It’s hard to explore that creative side without trusting your gut. It’s not commonly encouraged to trust your gut. We’re more encouraged to cultivate the frontal lobe of our brain.

Today, exactly, yeah. I’m super excited to make this film with a French director named Alain Gomis. I’m studying my ass off cuz the film is in French. It’s in Wolof. The film is actually written in four or five different languages. It’s pretty crazy.

Exactly. I’m one of those who believe that your relationship with your gut and your intuition is the most important relationship you can develop on this planet.

Is everyone an artist?

Magic comes from reality. And what’s great is reality comes from magic.

I think everyone has the capacity to explore that side of themselves. I think there is artistic territory to

Is that where magic comes from?

Saul Williams’ new album, Volcanic Sunlight, will be released in Spring 2011 by Sony France.

For more information on Saul, visit www.SaulWilliams.com or follow him on twitter (@SaulWilliams)

photos courtesy of Sony France

‘Listen to Your Heart’, JordanSedge Sedge ‘Listen to Your Heart’, Jordan

introducing... words by Sarah Miniaci

With a cooly stark, almost 70's-eque So-Cal aesthetic and an official!bio that reads "their music is like Salinger on MDMA", Bikini is the latest buzz band to come out of NYC, and not without merit. Their first single, ACheerlaeder, is the kind of disorienting, ambient pop song that leaves your feet begging to be moved in unison with the layered, ghostly harmonies and dream-inducing combination of analog and electronic instrumentation.!RIPJDS (a vowel-less interpretation of Rest in Peace, J.D. Salinger), their first EP, includes the even better American Mourning, irresistible in its lo-fi, breathless arrangement. Needless to say, we’re totally into them. Here the very talented Nigel Diamond and Olivier Olivier (a.k.a. Bikini) answer Burner’s version of the Proust questionnaire...and oh yeah, they’re hilarious too.

Olivier words or music? Words. rain or snow? Rain. cheerleaders or hipsters? ACheerleader, I only need one.! twitter or facebook? Nigel gave me a FACEBOOK t-shirt when I was in LA.! my favorite place in the world to ________ is _________? Drink ____ @ the club.

Nigel words or music? Debate. rain or snow? They're the same. cheerleaders or hipsters? Never really got along with either of them to honest. I like them both!but not my crew. twitter or facebook? /b/

synthesizers or guitars? Both.

my favorite place in the world to ________ is _________? Next to you.

studio or live performance? Studio.!

synthesizers or guitars? Both.

person you most admire? My girlfriends.

studio or live performance? 5am alone at home.

if you absolutely had to choose: deaf or blind? Probably both. first love? Doug. favorite drug? MDMA. what's the first thing that comes to mind when you think of the color black? Nigel. what is, in your opinion, the most overrated virtue? Virtues. conversely, what do you consider to be the most underrated sin? I don't know any sins. favorite old movie star? Leonardo DiCaprio. any world-betterment cause you particularly give a shit about? NOPE. ! dream collaboration? Gus Van Sant. favorite song you've written to date? "Untitled" (from RIPJDS EP). name three things you can't live without. Neutrogena!Oil-Free Face Wash. Harry Potter DVDs. Prophet-600 synthesizer.

person you most admire? OO, Russell Spingarn if you absolutely had to choose: deaf or blind? Diving bell and the butterfly. first love? Amy McBain. favorite drug? Acid. any world-betterment cause you particularly give a shit about? Manners. dream collaboration? Ma$e. favorite song you've written to date? "I'm Not A Robot But I'm A Shy Guy" (August '06, Montreal) name three things you can't live without. Possibility. Laptop. A filthy nest. A new squeeze.

introducing...

HUMANS words by Leah Stephenson

Meet Peter Ricq and Robbie Slade, otherwise known as Vancouver’s electro-folk outfit, Humans. After their video for Bike Home went viral, they performed alongside the likes of Junior Boys, LA Riots, Broken Social Scene, Crystal Method and K’naan. Avec Mes Mecs (distributed by Blood and Water) is Humans' first official release. In support of it, they’re touring Canada and the U.S., including multiple shows at Canadian Music Festival and SXSW.

photo credit: Justin Tyler Close

Peter

Robbie

Favourite qualities in a song? Makes me move my hips.

Favourite qualities in a song? I really like writing pop songs that turn into a really hard dance beat. Pete is really good at writing the hard parts and that’s what I really love about our shit.

Present state of mind? I want to be a free man.

Present state of mind? Feeling very full. I just ate a big sandwich.#

The guitar pedal you can't live without? Never used one. Sex or rock and roll? Sex is rock n roll.

The guitar pedal you can't live without? I don't use them at all. I guess a tuner would be nice? We have a sweet wah pedal kicking around our studio that’s pretty cool. I’m going to get it going again actually.

Drugs or meditation? Anything illegal is always more fun.

Sex or rock and roll? Sex roll. No rock.

The defining characteristics of Humans? Dirty fun sweaty party.

Drugs or meditation? I meditated this morning. My friend Maureen led me in it and it was super cool. Five minutes went by really fast. She told me that I place wisdom over compassion, based on how I positioned my body. It was cool. I won't say what signalled it though, because if you know ahead of time you'll never know how you naturally would have sat. Email us and I'll tell you. But to answer the question: Drugs.

The place you want to visit more than anywhere else? Space. Recording or performing? Recording is great since it's the time when you come up with brand new material and ideas; I always imagine performing it in front of a crowd and wonder how they'll respond to it so... performing. I record so that I can perform.

The defining characteristics of Humans? Two very different kids, in separate barren rooms, asked to solve the same open-ended problem.

The piece of gear you would sell your first born for? A spaceship with a lots of great music gear and recording equipment inside, a water bed, a clone of Robbie if the real Robbie doesn't want to come along. I'm sure he will. Does that answer count?

The place you want to visit more than anywhere else? August 29th, 1997.#

Your greatest fear? Dying.

The piece of gear you would sell your first born for? An old MOOG.

Your greatest love? What I never had.

Recording or performing? Performing.

Your greatest fear? Old women.

Quantum or Newtonian? I remember drinking five hot chocolates in one day but never went to the bathroom.

Your greatest love? Young women.

The celebrity with whom you most identify. Ed Wood.

Quantum or Newtonian? Hmm if they were horses I'd bet on newtonian. (Pete would bet on quantum.)

Poetry or prose? Prose but I like it when people take it a little out of the box. Make sense?

The celebrity with whom you most identify. Lassie.

Three most significant musical influences? Indie pop, electro, indie rock.

Poetry or prose? Poetry.

Paris or Manhattan? Panharis.

Three most significant musical influences? Nirvana - you don't have to sound good to sound good; Daft Punk - let it breathe; Fran Lamb - "Real singers wear scarves to keep their throat warm Robbie".

The reason I am!___ is ____. The reason I am here is funny. If not yourself, who would you be? Fabrice Poulin. (What my dad wanted to call me and my French family name if my true grandfather would have stuck around.) Peter Ricq sounds better.

Paris or Manhattan? Mumbai. The reason I am!___ is ____. The reason I am#getting letters on "help with debt" from the government is because I didn't pay two no helmet tickets this summer and I owe 58 dollars. If not yourself, who would you be? happydog / saddog

‘City #5’, Jason Deary

Where Do You Go When the Record is Over by Jeffery Berg

In the morning, you go to the street clogged with film equipment wires. Woody Allen, a long way from that Annie Hall year, shooting Whatever Works, feeling a lack of spark. You walk past Laura Mars taking pictures, getting low with her zoom lens, brown leather boot stuck out. Supermodels pose. The drums, the bongos kick in, voices in unison ah ah ey ey / let’s all chant. You caress your crucifix, you stomp down Christopher in maroon platforms, black bellbottoms. Your body / my body / everybody work your body. You rollerskate across the pier,

shaking your Patricie Rushen braids. Patrice of Pizzazz, “Forget Me Nots” before Will Smith jacked it for “Men in Black.” Who wants another line? Who wants to be stuffy old Billy Collins in the George W. Bush era? Annoyed at the strand of “More Than A Woman” in his head all day. You shut off NPR. You’d rather be on the lit-up floor, in all day high, riding the chorus even if they’re starting to say disco is doomed because of the Bee Gees. Where do you go when the record is over.

You go to the skyline on the Private Stock record label: a piece of cloud above the World Trade. You fall in the clip of “Night Fever” the faces of the Gibbs superimposed against a Shell Oil sign. Some stuffy old man may tell you that the visions of Lorca were marred by his own closetness. That your poetry lacks heart. That your visions are inaccurate, illegitimate. He will say, “You are television incarnate. Indifferent to suffering. Insensitive to joy. All of life reduced to the common rubble of banality.” Don’t listen to him. Tell him to go to hell. Diane Keaton tells Elle, “In ’77, Annie Hall got all the accolades. That really did cement me as somebody.” You are somebody too, hey you, out there. With another line at dusk, the feeling of, With this day, did I do enough? Can be ameliorated. After the shoot, by the trash chute, Woody Allen eyes the back of People, Diane in a L’Oreal ad: skin in eerie pearlish glow.

Your night settles in. You walk the streets, past the empty condominiums. Mannequins on the balconies looking out at the dark windows of another empty condominium. Laura Mars disrobes out of her Halston. She shuts off her television. She shuts off the lights. Faye Dunaway, Why did you have to go away? Your crucifix is put away. You can no longer fit in your black bellbottoms. You are a bloated scientologist with a hair transplant. Stay here where you once were in your prime, head against the grafittied subway window, above the city in fear of the Son of Sam, on the edge of a blackout. We can take forever a minute at a time. Your rollerskates under the bed of a fling. In the middle of the night, Billy Collins at a dark window, singing “More Than A Woman,” writing a poem of the song stuck in his head: “a mad fanbelt of a tune” “cloying,” “vapid.” You are Brooke Shields. Calvin’s. A naked back out on Times Square. You’re going nowhere. With no one to love you. No arm across your back, I think of what you might say in this near-morning. I want you to remember.

by Jason Deary

Musicians Green Their Own Beat Many musicians are often portrayed as denizens of excess when touring around the globe. Their heightened nomadic lifestyle parallels their rise with success, with demands often increasing as tours grow and expand. Their rise in popularity is mirrored by the legions of fans that attend their concerts. It’s only now that a few are starting to associate the significant impact such behaviour patterns have on the environment. Music has often been used as a vehicle for performers to express their political views, and bring awareness to world concerns. From Woodstock and the Concert for Bangladesh in the late 1960’s/early 1970’s to Band Aid and Farm Aid in the 1980’s, and into the 1990’s with Lilith Fair, music has been used as a medium for raising awareness and prompting change. Today, more than ever musicians are banding together to weigh in on everything from human rights issues, to environmental disasters, and global warming,

Green Music Group (GMG) is a coalition of musicians, industry leaders and music fans that facilitates large-scale greening of the music community that is committed to global environmental action. Newly formed just over a year ago (January 2010), all aspects of festival operations are reviewed, from touring, venue and label standards, to transportation, riders, and grassroots communication initiatives. One key element to their fastpaced road to success has been through establishing solid partnerships with various nonprofit environmental groups, as well as getting fans to buy into the concept. GMG officially launched with a small gathering of artists, music industry mavericks, non-profit partners, and environmentally#conscious # fans. The intimate house party also included performance by founding musician members Maroon 5, Dave Matthews Band, The Roots, and Guster. Guster guitarist/vocalist, Adam

Gardner and his environmentalist wife Lauren Sullivan envisioned GMG as an offshoot of Reverb, which itself is already responsible for greening nearly 100 major music tours. In the spring of 2004, the couple followed the Barenaked Ladies and Alanis Morissette on their “Au Naturale” tour, reaching out to friends and peers in the music world who would share their passion. They found resources (Bonnie Raitt) and renegades (Barenaked Ladies) to help figure out how to make touring a greener experience. “It was the dichotomy between how I was living at home, and what life on the road was like with my band, that sparked the idea for Reverb in the first place,” explains Gardner. Barenaked Ladies were the first band to take on the green challenge, and were matched with greening coordinators who took responsibility for recycling, composting, biodiesel fuel

‘Mosh 1’, Lynette Miranda vehicles, and Barenaked Planet, an onsite village of eco-friendly vendors. Each concert also began with a global warning awareness video. Reverb is now preparing to "green" its 100th tour in 2011, having worked with other Canadian artists including Avril Lavigne, Arcade Fire, and most recently Drake on his first-ever tour as a headliner. "I feel like as musicians a lot of the time we underestimate the power of our influence and our voice," Drake was quoted as saying during the tour. Other performers have also been recognized for their achievements. Some such as Bonnie Raitt, George Harrison, and Willie Nelson have been doing it long before it was fashionable. Bob Geldof and Bono were the poster activists of the 1980’s, while it was ladies who ruled the 1990’s, with Sarah McLachlan and Sheryl Crow leading the way. Bonnie Raitt co-founded Musicians United for Safe Energy as a response to the Three Mile

Island nuclear eruption in 1979, and performed five "No Nukes" concerts at Madison Square Garden along with fellow musicians. She continues touring today offsetting carbon emissions and using the highest grade of biodiesel fuel available. Willie Nelson actually created his own alternative fuel made primarily with soybeans, and his Farm Aid concerts celebrated 25 years of supporting family farmers in 2010. Dave Matthews Band created the BAMA Works Fund and the BAMA Green Project to merge arts and the environment. The Roots created Jam Session as a forum for social activism; Green Day joined forces with the National Resources Defense Council asking fans to demand clean energy and green jobs, and Jack Johnson co-founded Kokua Hawaii Foundation to support environmental education in schools. KT Tunstall works to neutralize her carbon production by planting trees in her home country of Scotland, and donating to renewable energy causes in Sri Lanka.

Other ambassadors include Phish who started an outreach organization called Green Crew to help clean up their tours and educate fans how to travel using their recommended resources for organic food, ride-share programs, and ecofriendly lodging. Perry Farrell has greened his annual alternative Lollapalooza by adding Causapalooza, an environmental education lovein. He also joined forces with Doors drummer John Densmore and actor Josh Hartnett, to launch the Global Cool climate change campaign encouraging the reduction of carbon emissions. Don Henley founded Caddo Lake Institute to fund ecological research that protects the only natural lake in his home state of Texas, and Radiohead teamed up with Friends of the Earth on their most recent tour, while Sheryl Crow estimated the total carbon reductions on her last tour were equivalent to nearly 100 homes not using electricity for an entire year. More recently, the much publicized and highly controversial BP oil spill became the focal point of

‘Mosh 2’, Andrew Lynette Hammerand Miranda ‘Crowd’,

a planned music festival about to take place along the ocean shore of Alabama. The Hangout was in jeopardy of not happening when the leak sprung less than three weeks before the event was scheduled. Instead of viewing the disaster at sea as detrimental to their planned beach party, the promoters switched gears and took it upon themselves to take action. The concert was dubbed The Concert of the Coast, and went ahead with an overall resounding message denouncing such avoidable environmental atrocities. So as some musicians may be viewed as harbingers of their own success, there are those that continue to be vocal about issues of concern. It just so happens that now they are viewing themselves through a mirror and making a conscious effort to change their reflection of the future.

by Bryen Dunn

the headliner words by Christopher Green photos by Constance Hunt Applause is one of those little corners of the world you don't really get to see for yourself unless you're right on top of it. You think you understand itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;you imagine a great number of human beings slapping flesh against flesh in an auditorium, appreciatively, respectfully, even frantically, and you know that this is the idea of applause. But this is even less than a beginning. The anatomy of human ecstasy is truly grasped only from within the belly of the beast, and its power, its intense, gravitational dynamism, its desperation, will only reveal itself when the applause is for you. It all begins with silence. No round of applause is complete without a vanguard of anxious quiet, the tiptoed expectation of something you can only sense on the maddening edge of your vision. You grip your mic, lift your pick, tense your arms, and breathe out, out. There is nothing. And then the sound begins, your sound. The first wondrous chord, the clarion voice, the quiet drumbeat like a guest softly knocking. And then, their sound. It's slow at first: a vicious cry from a half dozen points in that inky, rolling sea. Then something happens that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world, a sound like the beginnings of a light rain, only harder, inconsistent, and filled with something you can't begin to pull from the periphery. This is only the first vague hint; this is the brief, volatile outburst of so much tension, so much high-pitched energy wound around you and your audience, tightening its grip, pushing you closer together, thickening the darkness that surrounds you both. And then something else. You're a bar and a half in and suddenly, with dizzying force, recognition drops from the ceiling and grips them all, it ripples out from the stage like a blast wave, and then

things really start to happen. The drizzle becomes a torrent, a crescendo of life and love and drugaddled hysteria, and the sound of a billion souls rises from the ground, up from the anonymous nether, coalesces above their trembling heads, resolves into an image you can't identify. Early in the morning, hours after you've left the stage, you'll wake up reeling, seeing the image clearly for the first time, and it will look like the very form and figure of Hope, of Concord, of Beauty, of Eternity. You'll find yourself unable to express this to the others at breakfast, but you won't need to. The heat of this sight will be burned into every pair of eyes that greet you over coffee and hotel croissants. The sound drives you, it pours itself in through your skin and burns like oil, and you fly through the set, you are airy and weightless, you're sitting on the amplifiers watching yourself play, and you hear things in yourself that you never noticed before. The audience has become static, white noise, lurking patiently behind the tumultuous bedlam of your art, waiting for the moment to seize you, waiting to spring like a tightly coiled trap. And when it does, when you've finally tossed your last note out into the electric air, when that static is set free, the force of it is flattening. It can split the atom. The thunderous joy, the unfathomable cacophony of the human body in the throes of catharsis and adulation, rolls over you like the treads of a tank, and leaves you wondering exactly what filled all those millions of moments that led to the spot where you stand. There is nothing before, after, or around that sound; it is the length and the breadth of the universe. And when there is nothing left of it but echoes off the walls of your hotel room, only then do you even begin to realize what was really going on up there. Only then do you see the sequence of every lifetime that has filled your seats, the isolated frame of existence lying precisely between walking in and walking out, and the myriad frames that must follow it, all the way through to the end. This is applause, this is what it is to be lauded, to be told explicitly that you, you, have changed the course of history. You have diverted streams. You have made it.

Don’t punch out the tabs by Joe Zucchiatti

The shameful truth revealed in the final ten seconds of a ninety minute recordable cassette tape, sloppily overdubbed, so that in moments of quiet the original recording still bleeds through and as The Essential Dixie Cowboy comes to a close and Jenks “Tex” Carman finishes bashing holy hell out of his National Steel and singing in a voice so delightfully off-key I am transported to a world in which there are no keys other than his own I am forced to remember that there was a time when I actually liked the fucking Doors

Which reminds me of my father by Taylor Eagan Punch drunk on the saxophone, Monk tells me not to play what he's playing, to let the drummer sound good, let things go by. A lesson in listening. I try to listen harder -hear trains by 380, bites of grapefruit taken, squeaking bedsprings and bear traps snapping. This is what I fall asleep to and dream of James River jazz, that I cup in my hands. It spills out over the edges. The sounds sneak up on me like an open window covered in wet leaves. It must have started raining. When did it start raining?

david K.

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Broken Dreamsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, Ione Citrin

Wither West by Michael Schram Wither west like the cheeks of an ancient hornman, Stretched by the pressure of jazz passion. Push west where the very vowels of Kerouac mince on the mind. Where notes and chords are blown to die. Where billboards like gravestones record the final act. Ah Frisco The end of the line, Thin laws and thick syrup, Ah Jack, Your artist is dead.

by Ben E. Campbell

‘Where is Auntie ‘Em’, Ione Citrin

Selected Moments from a love affair with music by Ben E. Campbell ** The Neil Young phase. Neil Young’s “Sugar Mountain” on the drive up to the grounds, state hospital grounds, set high up on the hill. Interning on the psych floor. “Oh to live on Sugar Mountain, With the barkers and the colored balloons.” Some days wondering how crazy I am myself. I steal Christmas trees, drink too much, and listen to the Doors. Am I the next in line? Make it through it all: the stares, the cries of tormented anguish, then drive back off the hill. “Oh to live on….” I find a darkened bar and lose myself in thought, in Neil Young in my head phones. Neil Young’s “Fuckin’ Up” as I pull myself from bed. Sixteen-beer hangover. Thick tongue set loose inside my mouth. Is that a chipped tooth I feel? “Why do I keep fuckin’ up?” roaring off the swaying walls. A scene comes rushing to my mind: me tossing a lawn chair in the yard. “Call the fucking police—see if I care!” I screamed. I walk on through the house. Back door open, lights still on, the smell of built-up gas —a stove eye blazing. Neil Young sings “Comatose but walking still” as I turn a sharpened corner. “Don’t light it!” I yell. A friend perched on the couch, cigar in his lips, red lighter at his mouth. No need to cut this journey short. There’s more fuckin’ up to be done on down the road. Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” on a late-night, mid-week drive. Convertible Wrangler. The sky a sea of stars. No place to park my thoughts. No need to park my thoughts. Let them float free now. I mean, really float free. No worries of the future. No need to search for love. You’re never truly free till you’re free from your own self. And it was Neil who took me there.

‘Neil Young’, Christian Simpson

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Bedroom Guitarâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, Andrew Fish

i want to play you but in a good way play you like charlie mingus' bass stand you upright and tall your hips curved with my longing you throw spanish like a boomerang and it slides pleasantly off my back # you are fit to be played # i want to drown in your effervescence # maybe you could show me there's more than one way # to speak jazz ?

For The Woman at Gristedes by Erren Kelly

It's funny, Well, Ironic. Of all the things I believe You taught me-Tying my shoes, And one plus one, And peeing in the pot, And how to whistle, And not to be afraid of the dark, And learning how to drive, And a million other things-I don't know if I Ever Thanked you For teaching me The G Chord--

The G Chord by Jay Mouton

(for Helen)

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Juno 1â&#x20AC;&#x2122;, Andrew Fish

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Glitterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, by Lindsey Lee

Welcome to Colorful Colorado by Jesse Goolsby

" " Northbound, outside Boise City, Oklahoma, sixty-eight monstrous white windmills whirl a zipping dusk-wind. And three, angled the wrong way for the southwester, stand as silent prairie sculpture, waiting for a breeze to gather off Baja. Wide-load trucks like felled skyscrapers carry Singapore shit no one needs into the center of America.

Black skid marks litter Highway 287. Calm, but lonely, I consider possible causes: darting antelope running for it, Jack and Cokes with dinner, Zoned out singing to Tom Petty or Joplin. Two miles to Colorado, a Diesel’s laid new skid marks. I know they’re new because I see the truck on its side with cops all around. And as I drive by I case for clues, but all I see is a pool of milk, a deputy picking up plastic containers, and a woman, shaking her head as her red hair blows like electrocution. ! ! Although I don’t know it yet, I’ll be as scared of this road as she is. A few years later I’ll watch my Army Ranger son hurl himself out of my speeding sedan after he tells me about shooting up two children outside Kandahar. Under Petty’s stoned warble I’ll lock up my breaks and etch my own forty-foot black tattoo on the Colorado Oklahoma line. But this is long before that, and I can still see the whiteness of milk and windmills in my rearview. But up ahead, more skid marks, with more to come. If we could lay out the scabbed skids one after another, how long would the long length of fear and regret reach? Would we feel the collective gulp, the short-lived prayer against physics? Would you feel my forty feet, my rush to reverse, the spinning, smoking tires retracing the still-wet tracks? And how would you know just by looking at the road that I pumped on my son’s shredded body until I crumbled under the “Welcome to Colorful Colorado” sign?

This One Kid’s Offertory by Curtis Van Donkelaar

His mother said, “Listen up, little boy. Because my Frere Jacques is about a penguin. He thinks he’s going to be invited to party. He dresses up.” —This Mother Imaginary, a filament, this lowslung song which was the capper of his bedtimes. She would always be this song, long after she was gone: Father Jack and a penguin dressed for the ballet— As he lay under bedsheets, she darkened the room. He had a nightlight, but he could barely make out her features, as though a drain by the closet sucked parts of her down in swirls. She leaned close and her music came sad from the chest, like the scratchy records she played, sometimes into the dawn. She’d go back to the player a dozen times, between refills, to reset the needle to the first song again, the pride and joy of a band he wouldn’t remember. Only the penguin, the waiting, the parties to come. She sang to him and floated, and he heard the needle lifted and replaced, lifted and replaced, the clink of ice in bourbon, too many repeats to stay awake and count. “What comes after the first song?” he’d once asked, and she straightened his pajama collar before the answer: that she wished she played the bass. The string bass. Because those lows are stunning.

‘Chord’, Andrew Fish

‘Bass Man’, Andrew Fish

‘Guitar Player’, Andrew Fish

‘Drums’, Andrew Fish

‘Sitar’, Andrew Fish

‘Jesse’, Andrew Fish

My Idea of Fun or, Cormac McCarthy, author of Blood Meridian, goes to see Iggy and the Stooges at a music festival in 2008. words by Jeremy Hanson-Finger photos by Andrew Hammerand

The ragged crew arrayed across the clearing awaits the Iguana. Their clothes dirt encrusted and sweatsoaked. Their skin pierced by metal studs and rings and also bearing inked symbols both threatening and arcane. Once they were freshfaced youngsters who moved East for love. Now theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re scarred husks with stomachs full of rotgut and bile. The Kid among them. Summerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s furnace has browned the deciduous trees that surround the clearing. Marching feet have trampled the grass to dust. The sun is at its zenith overhead. Everything is still.

The territory of wild beasts lies only a short length of rail from the world of commerce. This is the land of those for whom progress and its measured lines holds no beauty. Only anger and provocation to anger. They’ve gathered here in this clearing with a savage joy like jackals around a kill. A detuned squall of noise breaks the silence like dawn through a bruised and swollen eyelid. The guitarist stops layering feedback and repeats a simple but distorted dirge in a minor key. The bassist chips away at his strings. The drummer slams his sticks onto the taut skins of his set. The crowd spasms. Blue arcs of electricity sizzle and spit between them. The Iguana strides onto the stage shirtless. His skin is wrinkled like an old saddle and his muscles and ribs protrude like ropes across his torso. I want you all up here with me, he says. I want you all close to me right now. The crowd storms the palisade that rings the stage. A dozen people scramble onto the

platform where they continue to seize and buck. Their motions all the more disconcerting now they’re spread out. Each sporadic movement visible. Sexless as herkyjerky marionettes. The Kid falls back into the crowd with a bootprint on his chest. Behind him the dance has turned into a flatout brawl. The dancers linked not by some common electrical impulse but by a total insensate rage. Rage at everything. Rage at nothing. The howl of the northeastern wolf. Now I wanna be your dog, the Iguana sings. The twelve dancers stay on stage until the end of the song. Their faces cataphatic. Their idol among them. Blood splashes onto the ground turning the dust a deep maroon. A woman clutches her eyebrow which previously held a hoop of steel and is now the source of a crimson stream that pours down her face like rainwater down a gulch. She pants as she shoves her way between fists and shoulders and feet. She won’t be missed by anyone. Not in this crowd.

The Iguana undoes the buttons of his jeans and shoves his microphone out through his fly. The other musicians continue pounding and strumming as the singer thrusts his pelvis forward and swivels it around. The guitarist’s steady minor riff carries with it a premonition of evil. A half formed image of pale ghosts who rode down from the North and left nothing but ashes and pillars of smoke. My idea of fun is killing everyone, the Iguana sings. He jumps from the stage into the aisle behind the palisade. He pulls the microphone back out of his fly. Somehow the Kid is still standing. Jerking his head and singing along. The Iguana leans over the fence and puts his arm around the boy’s shoulders. He holds the microphone out in front of them and for a moment the Iguana’s growling voice is joined by the Kid’s reedy tenor. My idea of fun. Is killing everyone. When the Iguana was as young as most of the members of the crowd are now he used to cut himself with a razor and smear peanut butter all over his chest during performances. But now he’s an old man. There’s something neutered or even redacted about him. About the way he dangles a black rod out of his pants instead of his own legendarily equine member. But still raw power inheres in his aged frame. And the Kid can’t ignore the ball lightning that scorched through his nervous system when The Iguana touched his shoulders.

* When the spectacle is over and the last cracks of thunder fade out against the cliff that backs the clearing the Kid stands motionless again. His shadow stretches away from him. His chest will turn purple and yellow and green by tomorrow morning. The cut that jags across his left forearm has already clotted and crusted. The crowd disperses around him. The wounded have been dragged away leaving sidewinder trails in the earth dotted with brown patches of sweat or drink and speckles of blood. The Kidâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ears ring. His teeth gleam against his pulledback lips.

s e h ac

e P

f l e s r e h s doe N I L R E B IN

by Burnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s European correspondent, Nadja Sayej

- Berlin, Germany You may remember ArtStars* 34 where I interviewed Peaches backstage in Toronto as she prepped for her role as Martha Thirteen in the Chilly Gonzales film, Ivory Tower – a performance artist character that partly fibs herself. She’s at it again, but this time, onstage. Not the rock stage (we know that), but sweeping the theatre stage this November in Berlin as she premiered Peaches Does Herself the Opera to celebrate the 10year anniversary of her first album, the Teaches of Peaches. On the private VIP opening night, we sat front row to catch an elaborate show chock full of glittering costumes, dancers, divas, drag queens and of course, the queen herself. And after? I snuck backstage (as I did in the Peaches episode right here) to find traces the star – destroyed balloons, a pink wheelchair and silver guitars from the show. Everything except the star, herself. She disappeared right after the show.

‘Jimi’, by Dean Russo

by Dane Swan

Dancehall

I miss the bass, the wining, the grinding and grinding, warm breasts pressed against my adolescent chest – the melodies of youth. We sang along to an English I rarely hear – replaced by poor mimicry: the fantasy of minds who’ve never seen the Atlantic. Rarely smoked; always carried a lighter – anxious for the moment our host asked us to illuminate the sky. When I hear these melodies I feel close to home – enraptured by passion, familiar voices call me.

‘Bob Marley’, by Dean Russo

introducing...

BURNER Records Two renegade electronic music producers met and the force of their combined energies caused seismic shock waves to reverberate across the digital download globe, through the blogosphere, into radio airwaves, across dance floors and beyond. Paul David and Barletta are maverick dance floor maniacs who together have founded Burner Records, Burner Magazineâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s badass brotherly partner in crime. With highly anticipated releases forthcoming in 2011 from Warrior Music, Jan Hartwig, Gentry Jones and a Toronto Sound compilation album to boot, Burner Records releases are available for purchase on Juno Download and iTunes. Here, the co-founders interview each other.

photo credit, Gabriel Bourget

Barletta @ Paul David

Paul David @ Barletta

B: What was the first note you ever heard?

PD: It takes a lot of energy and determination to be in the music industry. What keeps you inspired?

PD: The guitar feedback at the beginning of "Ticket to Ride" by The Beatles. There are colonies of people in the earth, and there are also colonies of sects of people who gather and, with a medicine drum, praise and try to mimic and adopt the lifestyle of different genres of music. Which one is real? They are both real. Dance music is global and ancient and current… It's a unifying force and everyone is feelin' it… We're just adding more sub bass to the medicine drum. Is there one organic or synthetic instrument that defines electronic music for you? The Moog Modular. All synthetic sounds you have ever heard can be created on this synth. Bob Moog was a fucking genius. Music can be measured in audial length, but how can one figure out how wide a song is. Is it infinite? A good song is a circle… It goes round and round… When is your favourite time to create music, night or day? Why? I'm ready for it any hour. Each different time of the day brings its own moods and perspectives and I want to experience how that influences music creation… I don't wear a watch.

Paul David’s Sunset Electric EP is set for release on March 14, 2011 on iTunes and Juno. For tour dates & more info, visit soundcloud.com/paul-david

B: The cost of seeing a shrink if I ever decided to stop being creative. What's your prediction of where dance music will be in 20 years? It will be outlawed as a narcotic. Dance music will be the new cocaine. Can you reveal one of your production tricks you have discovered recently? Zero compression on the master track. I mean, uh, learning how to mix properly? What is it about an artist that makes you want to sign them to Burner Records? If the track gives me shivers, it's time to break out the pen and paper. Do you ever wonder what people on other planets think of music here on Earth? Yeah they're probably like chowin' down on space ribs and being all like "pffft... amateurs, those assholes need sound to communicate -- Hey Xenofer you wanna go hack into Obama's twitter?"

Barletta’s Come Down EP is out now on iTunes and Juno. For tour dates & more info, check out soundcloud.com/djbarlet

‘Contender’, by Ileana Johnson

Places by Mary Kane

They say to bring it from the diaphragm. That’s where the song is. The only place. Find it and it will open you. Here’s a little time we can borrow I crushed it out of my throat. Constricting the muscles to try and shape it into a beautiful, flowy ribbon. It was small and shaky. No good. I kept trying. I am stubborn. At least that’s what you said. Oh, can’t see no other way, no way It’s like losing something. It’s only in one place. Once the keys in the dishwasher. Once Abby in the EZ Bake. Tomorrow may rain with sorrow I don’t like to think about where I left you-you, me, or where you are now. If I consider you alive still without me, maybe happy? I get a deep pinch between the throat and diaphragm. I said I wanted the best for you, because that’s what you say. Can’t see no other way

I heard a song today that we loved together. I thought of leaving it there, on your couch where I first gave it to you. All the clouds blew away." But I took it back. I always take back my songs. You have so many other things: the bike pump, my other person. I sang it so many times I lost count. In my VW, I’m a real singer. The stereo so loud, I believe I hit all the notes, even the tiny ones. Other drivers would think me impressive if they bothered to look. Got no trouble today, with anyone I sang it from the right place It’s enough for me baby and didn’t try to make it good. It’s enough for me

‘Folk Singer’, Daniel Mendoza

Piano (an excerpt) Martin Willitts Jr.

1.######## Piano Bench # This was a good place to hide things from my brother, tearing apart things that did not belong to him into unrecognizable fragments claiming he wanted to know how things work when he did knowâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;he knew things were for his torment. # He would never look inside the guts of the bench, like it was an incurable disease. # I sat on it playing preludes, knowing some things are sacred, a place the ignorant feared to tread, the music of secrets right there in front him, mocking. ##

!Not Stirred", Mai Ismail

The Soundtrack of Airport Goodbyes by Kurt Cole Eidsvig

You have to leave. You have to stay leaving. This is the beauty of airplanes. Notice the way road turns to rivers and hollow veins once you pass the signs for the airport. The highway signs render green/white reminders to the number you gave me, twisted up and sweaty on a balled-up cocktail napkin. I’ve tasted your lipstick on glasses you haven’t even touched yet. I’ve dialed your phone number into a jukebox and remembered what loving meant while I listened to quarters liquefy like brandy in ice. These drinks before us are too shallow to even bother with melting. Instead, I’ll persuade warmth to my mouth as if brandy was your tongue and my airplane wasn’t leaving yet. I’ve watched blond girls imitate you— walking as if they can hear a jukebox, walking like remembering pinball machines. You’re walking away, breathing brandy, and I may never leave.

LISA G. BAUER is an American born artist who currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Bauer uses themes from her own experiences to depict memories that have been of significance in her life. These subjects merge her past and present together as symbols. Her work is currently up on www.lisagbauer.tumblr.com and she can be reached at lisagraceannbauer@gmail.com. JANÈE J BAUGHER currently lives in Seattle and holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University. #Her poetry has been adapted for dance and set to music at University of Cincinnati, Interlochen Center for the Arts, and Dance Now! Ensemble (FL).# Baugher is the author of Coördinates of Yes (Ahadada Books). JEFFERY BERG#received#an MFA from New York University. #His work has recently appeared in#Harpur Palate,#MiPOesias,#Ozone Park Journal,#Gay & Lesbian Review,##Inertia Magazine, and#Softblow.#He#lives in New York and edits poetry for#Mary – A Literary Quarterly#and the online journal#Clementine. ALEX BROWNE is a University of Windsor Visual Arts graduate who now applies himself as a photographer. Born and raised in Toronto, he has worked with numerous clients throughout Canada representing different businesses, magazines, musicians, and promotional companies. His scrupulous use of lighting, colour, and raw finishing techniques are very distinguishable, and that's why he is now a part of the Burner team. www.alexbrowne.ca BEN E. CAMPBELL grew up on a heavy dose of 70s folk singers and 80s metal bands. Although bluegrass and country dominate the airwaves of his native Appalachia, his tastes in music remain eclectic. He loves to lose himself in Pearl Jam, the Drive-by Truckers, and especially Neil Young. IONE CITRIN is one of the most dedicated artists of our day, painting, sculpting and mixing media with delightful abandon. She turns out piece after piece, and the work has a purity of expression that is rare in an artist that is as eclectic as herself. HALEY CULLINGHAM is a journalist, writer, and travel junkie from Toronto, Ontario, who spends her more legitimate hours at the office as Associate Editor of SheDoesTheCity.com, and her less legitimate ones surrounded by highway signs, beat-up paperbacks, novelty items, vegetarian food, intrepid schemes, and general chaos.

JASON DEARY always wanted to be in a band. When he was a kid, all his friends could play guitar. He#tried.#Now those friends are in bands and he draw pictures for them (cuz he still can’t play anything to save his life). Doing illustrations for bands has allowed him access to the music from more of an inside perspective.#Doing illustration work is a blast.##Jason#thinks that way too often artists can get caught up with an overly serious self righteous attitude. When you’re drawing skulls with fast paced punk tunes blaring, it's hard not to have a good time.## BRYEN DUNN is a freelance journalist with a focus on travel, entertainment,lifestyle, and community concerns. He’s also an event promoter, deejay selector, and keen follower of the local and international music scenes. Having contributed to several local, regional, and international publications, he’s always willing to take on assignments of interest, discover the unknown, and attend parties with free booze. www.bryendunn.com TAYLOR EAGAN lives in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.# KURT COLE EIDSVIG’s poetry has appeared in journals like Hanging Loose, Slipstream, Main Street Rag, BigREDandShiny, Borderlands, and others. He is a visual artist and poet who lives and works in the Fort Point Arts Community in Boston, Mass. ANDREW FISH grew up in a Vermont print shop and received his formal training in New York City as an artist assistant and art gallery employee. He attended School of Visual Arts in the 1990’s and worked as a Resident Assistant at the Governor’s Institute on the Arts in VT. He currently lives in Somerville MA where he exhibits and sells work regularly. Visit www.wanderingfisheye.com For now, JAMEY GALLAGHER lives in New Jersey. GAIL GHAI is a poet and high school English teacher. Her work has appeared in Descant, JAMA, Kaliope, Poet Works, Shenandoah and the Yearbook of American Poetry. Ms. Ghai’s awards include a Pushcart Prize nomination, a Henry C. Frick scholarship for creative teaching and a citation from the State of Pennsylvania for her writing workshops with mentally challenged adults. She is the author of three chapbooks of poetry & a Color Thesaurus poster, “Painted Words” @ www.artpoetica.com

JESSE GOOLSBY’s work has been published widely, including recent pieces in Epoch, The Literary Review, Booth, and Harpur Palate. #He was raised in Chester, California, and currently lives/teaches in Colorado. He serves as Fiction Editor at the international journal War, Literature & the Arts. #You can follow Jesse at jessegoolsby.blogspot.com CHRISTOPHER GREEN currently lives and works in Cincinnati. He earned his MA in literature from the University of Toledo, and plans to continue on at an MFA program--somewhere warmer, preferably. In addition to Burner he has been published in#The MacGuffin, the deadline, and ken*again. He maintains a website at http:// chrisrgreen.wordpress.com. ANDREW HAMMERAND is a photographic artist born in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Andrew received his BFA in fine art photography from Arizona State University in 2008 and currently lives and works in Mesa, Arizona. His work has been exhibited in various juried and group exhibitions, and most recently he was a cocurator of the traveling exhibition, "South Phoenix through the Eyes of Youth". JEREMY HANSON-FINGER#is co-editor of Dragnet Magazine (dragnetmag.net). He is working on a collection of short stories, entitled Airplanes and Bad Things Happening to Women. Let it be known, however, that he#likes#women and doesn’t want bad things to happen to them. You can visit his website#at hansonfinger.tumblr.com SARA HAROWITZ#is a Ryerson#journalism student#who dreams being a feature writer. She#hopes to#write about#real people and the experiences that connect us, that make us human. Above all she believes in the power of raw emotion and its importance in getting all you can out of life. Her work has previously appeared in such publications as Off The Map, Sticky Magazine and andPOP. She's thrilled to add Burner to the list and be able to call herself a Burner Babe. You can find her on Twitter as @sarowitz. CONNIE HUNT is a student of social and consumer behavior, a voyeur of all things cultural.# Rarely found without her iPod and headphones, she uses her passion for music as the backdrop to visual innovation. #Connie resides in New York City where she enjoys practicing yoga, eating great food and tearing up the dance floor.

MAI ISMAIL is a young artist from Toronto. His use of both traditional and digital tools gives his work a modern yet traditional feel. Having traveled Mai has learned many things from different cultures and hopes to share his work with the world. ILEANA JOHNSON is a young AfricanAmerican, Philadelphia artist who believes in innovation and avant-garde ideals.# Ileana Marie is a portraitist who works with wood as well as traditional art media. She believes that Art that does not take a risk is art that will not evolve or inspire the next artist! DAVID K is a native New Mexican artist working primarily in print and photography, and an art historian concentrating on the avant garde in Central and Eastern Europe. He was recently included in Taipei and Berlin exhibitions curated by the N.S.K. group IRWIN. He currently lives and works in New England. MARY KANE is a full-time marketing manager and part-time MFA student in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Although in “Places” she mourns a lost love while borrowing lyrics from Patty Griffin, this year is full of new love and music for Mary. Her work has appeared in Murphy Square and Kaleidoscope. ERREN GERAUD KELLY has never dated kim kardashian, nor has he ever performed on american idol. he is rhythmically challenged. he also lost his swag, but still has the box it came in. he thinks milfs and cougars are fun. he wanted to list his publications, but lindsay lohan stole them.... ALAN KING’s poems have appeared in Alehouse, Audience, Boxcar Poetry Review, Indiana Review, MiPoesias and RATTLE, among others. A Cave Canem fellow and VONA Alum, he’s been nominated for both a Best of the Net selection and Pushcart Prize. His first collection of poems, Drift, will be published in 2012 by Willow Books. When he’s not reporting or sending poems to journals, you can find King chasing the muse through Washington, D.C. — people watching with his boys and laughing at the crazy things strangers say to get close to one another. NAOMI KRUPITSKY is a student at New York University, where she spends most of her time reading, writing, thinking about reading and writing, and talking about reading and writing.

LINDSEY LEE grew up in Houston, Texas and after graduating high school began her education in Austin, Texas, where she currently resides.# She has been featured in several publications including Shoot For Your Life, the Urban Outfitters Blog, Art of the Day, and We Are Disposable.# #### TRICIA LOUVAR is a visual artist and writer living in a bucolic area of Los Angeles, California. # www.tricialouvar.com COLLEEN MCKEOWN is an artist and illustrator who lives and works in Toronto, Canada. She makes drawings, books and crafts. In 2008 she graduated with a BA in Design from Ryerson University. Her focus was in illustration, and she has a strong fondness for drawings of pretty ladies and working with her hands. GERARDO MENA is a decorated American war veteran.# He was awarded a medal for bravery.# He likes to set impossible goals for himself and then smash them with his hands that are shaped like hammers.# For more information on Gerardo Mena, go to www.gerardomena.com DANIEL MENDOZA (b.1988) is a self-taught illustrator based in Canada. He recently received a BFA degree in New Media from Ryerson University. As well, his illustrations have appeared in a few different magazine publications (online and print) around the world. You can view his illustrative work on his Flickr page: http:// www.flickr.com/dmendoza/ LYNNETTE MIRANDA is an interdisciplinary artist currently working in Chicago, IL. She received her BFA in studio art, concentrations in photography, video and fiber art, from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in May 2010. She will be exhibiting at Cobalt Studio Project Space in May 2011. JAY MOUTON has#numerous works in national literary magazines, as well as hundreds of music reviews on various musical artists. His most recent publications include works in The New Plains Journal, Ellipsis, The Reston Review, Tennessee English Journal, and the Chattanoogan.com KATHLEEN REICHELT is a Toronto artist who works with paint and collage, writes and performs in short art films, experimental theatre and audio.# Reichelt's practice pursues poetry, absurdity, irrationality and play.# Her current project “Goddess” will be exhibited in March at 253469, an artist run space that she jointly manages.

WESLEY RICKERT is a Toronto artist who invents philosophical problems and the philosophical reasons required to overcome his invented problems.# He also plays an electric stick guitar and keyboard in an all artist art noise band and produces short experimental art films. For the last two years he has been jointly managing 253469, an artist run space. Born and currently residing in Brooklyn, NY, DEAN RUSSO has been painting people and animal portraits for nearly 10 years. Attending The School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute in New York City, as well as his background in graphic and fine arts, has led to his unique style of painting. He is a proud member of The Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition and The Brooklyn Arts Council.#Dean works in a variety of media, including acrylic, mixed media, graphite and collage and prefers to work on canvas.# NADJA SAYEJ, host of ArtStars*, writes about art for artUS, Border Crossings, C magazine, Canadian Art, the Globe and Mail, the New York Times and was splashed the cover of Eye Weekly as “the next Jeanne Beker.” She was called “Center Stage in Toronto in an Art in America cover story. She is a columnist for enRoute and is busting her ass in Berlin, Germany, and surrounding countries. Follow the adventurous fun on Twitter or her ever-popular Facebook fanpage or even on LinkedIn, as well. NANCY SCOTT, Easton PA, is an essayist and poet. Her over-500 bylines have appeared in magazines, literary journals, anthologies and newspapers, and as audio commentaries. She has published two chapbooks and won First Prize in the 2009 International Onkyo Braille Essay Contest. JORDAN SEDGE#has spent#the last number of years#working and traveling around the world. He recently returned to Canada with the hopes of putting his academic and worldly experiences to use as an artist. His paintings are characterized by crisp lines and vibrant colours. For more information please visit www.jordansedge.com# MICHAEL SCHRAM is a filmmaker, poet and spoken word artist, despite his best efforts. An active artist of the Canadian Spoken Word and Slam community, he welcomes any stage. He loves his bicycle and Burner Girls. Not in that order.

CHRISTIAN SIMPSON, a life-long musician with bands including Glueleg and Saga, is a passionate artist in many media. Most recently this has manifested in his collection "Icons", which marries his love of music with the visual.#These intricate acrylic and MDF compositions shine a spotlight on 20th century musical greats. PETE MICHAEL SMITH lives and writes in the Midwest, which is a surprise to just about everybody. His poetry and fiction have appeared online and in print in a variety of journals. More of his work and contact information can be found through his irregularly updated blog, honeyedmagic.com. JOHN STOCKS is a widely published and anthologised writer from the UK. Recent credits include an appearance in ‘Soul Feathers’ a poetry anthology, alongside Maya Angelou, the English poet laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, Bob Dylan , Len Cohen, Rimbaud and Verlaine. This anthology was the second best selling poetry anthology in the UK in January, is raising money for cancer care, and can be ordered online from Waterstones UK. Jon lived in Manchester when it was the creative and inspirational hub of the UK music scene, spawning ‘Joy Division’ and the ‘Smiths’, returning to Sheffield to witness the rise of ‘Pulp’ and the ‘Arctic Monkeys’. DANE SWAN was born and raised in Bermuda to a Bermudian father and Jamaican mother, visiting family involved trips to small villages in Jamaica like Yallas and Land’s End, or to New York communities like Crown Heights in Brooklyn. The great story-tellers he heard in these communities were his only literary professors. At 17, Dane moved to Canada with his brother to further their education. Dane’s poetry can be found on CD, 12”Vinyl, MP3, in anthologies and in poetry reviews. #His first full-length collection of poetry in print, "Bending the Continuum" is slated for a May 2011 launch with Guernica Editions.

CURTIS VANDONKELAAR lives in Michigan with one wife, two hermit crabs, and three cats. Before fiction, he played the violin and worked in libraries and pizza joints. He now works studiously upon two collections and two novels, one or more of which might someday be finished. Until then, see curtisvandonkelaar.com ALEXIS WHITE received her BA in English from Carleton College, and is currently enrolled in the MFA program in Creative Writing at Oregon State University. Previous publications include The Atlanta Review, The Melancholy Dane, Wordletting, and Dilate. Alexis is currently working on a book-length collection of poetry. MARTIN WILLITTS JR’s recent poems appeared in Naugatuck River Review, MiPOesias, Flutter, Atticusbooks.net, and Caper Journal. He was recently nominated for two Best of The Net awards and his 5th Pushcart award. He has 11 poetry chapbooks and 2 full length poetry books including “The Girl Who Sang Forth Horses” (Pudding House Publications, 2010), “Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for Cezanne” (Finishing Line Press, 2010), “True Simplicity” (Poets Wear Prada Press, 2011), and "My Heart Is Seven Wild Swans Lifting" (Slow Trains, 2011). JOE ZUCCHIATTI lives in Whitehorse and is by a large margin the oldest person at the local skateboard park and the youngest person in his Tai Chi class. He has no idea what other people his age do with their time. JF is an artist/dj/producer and 1/2 of TheFranDiscos. He learned how to draw from watching cartoons and is addicted to black crack (vinyl records). His likes are tattoos,#high-tops, bong hoots#& steaks medium rare, and dislikes fake djs,#bad sound systems, shady promoters & yappy dogs #

!"#$ %&'()*!+(,-%+&.$ /001# next up....

JUNE 2011

ISSN 1925-3508