Fall Music

MUSIC * New bands we're excited about these days include the country-cool Horsebath, indie duo Pillow Fite and punk act Cluttered, which counts Against Me!'s Laura Jane Grace as a fan. (Yes, really!) Read more about each soon on thecoast.ca.

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Sit up and Let Dreams Be Noticed

Catch the infectious ambition (and addictive bars) of Halifax's hottest hip hop collective. BY MORGAN MULLIN

MAJE w/LDN Collective

Dec 5, 9pm, The Seahorse Tavern, 2037 Gottingen Street

In a west end backyard shed, there’s a framed photo of Drake drinking a shot out of his upturned Grammy award. It’s lit with a soft reverence, hanging above recording equipment like a cross above an altar. Aydan Brown, Cornell Reddick and Luke Berryman— a handful of members of the 11-person hip hop collective Let Dreams be Noticed, Halifax’s answer to Odd Future—are looking down, backs facing Drake, harvesting the perfect words from the shed’s low-pile carpet. “That first song...if I dropped that and the next day in school I got roasted by everybody, I just wouldn't even be here right now,” says Brown, who raps under the moniker Mano SOS. “But it didn’t go like that.”

Luckily for him (and luckily for all of us who love rap that skews boom-bap), hyper-local fame came knocking instead. Brown recalls the night his Snapchat was lit up with everyone at the school dance rapping along to an LDN—hit and the mushrooming Soundcloud streams. He and his best friend Kye Clayton— the group’s nucleus, who isn’t hanging out today because he’s in the studio with local hip hop heavyweight MAJE—both had a knack for MCingg, so they kept going, bringing other friends along in their against-the-odds plan to make professional music. Never mind that most of them are under 20—most of the rappers they idolize started in grade school, anyway. The result? A group of galling young talent calling a host of influences (like J Cole, Future and, yes, Drake) to mind—all over beats composed and verses spat in this very shed.

“We put a beat on and then we’d all just take turns rapping, singing, doing whatever,” explains Berryman, who knows that a beat he made is hitting when everyone pulls out their phones to start writing a verse. Two sonic generations after The Roots crowned themselves the last hip hop band, LDN rounded out its hefty catalogue of solo albums with this summer’s eponymous group LP—a brash, addictive effort with bars that lacerate. If they believe in the old adage that dreams don’t work unless you do, these kids are making sure theirs are clocking overtime.

“I feel like it’s more or less just keep working towards it,” comments Reddick, who performs as Nelly2Drippy, when asked about the air of possibility that surrounds him and his friends. Adds Berryman: “We genuinely believe that we are different than everybody else making music right now, and that we will be at the top.” a

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Zamani at St. Andrew’s

Zamani w/Patrick and Daniel at The Stage at St. Andrew’s

Nov 1, 7:30pm, St. Andrew’s Church, 6036 Coburg Road, $16.93, tickets via eventbrite.ca (search “The Stage Mondays”)

Zamani cemented her status as a name-to-know back in 2019 when she went from making bedroom beats to playing an attention-grabbing set at OBEY Convention (which is now called EVERYSEEKER Festival). Since then, her star has been rising ever higher, burning a trail through the exosphere as she nabs awards like the SOCAN Young Songwriters Award and Artist of the Year at the African Nova Scotian Music Awards. Her creamy-vocalled brand of R&B is a blend of India.Arie and Solange—and has propelled her to stages from Rotterdam to Taiwan. Along the way, it’s made fans of the likes of underground hip hop legend Tracey Lee, who asked her and local neo-soul mainstay Kwento to perform on his 2020 album, Glory.

Now, though, the certified triple threat (she writes, produces and sings her own work) is getting the hometown headline show she’s long deserved, taking to the newly active Stage at St. Andrew’s the first night in November to remind your ears how a hot bassline and cinnamonspiced vocal delivery can change everything and can combat any windchill. "I think the goal, for me, in music, is to be able to impact other people," she told The Coast back in 2019, days before the OBEY show that put her on the map. “Because I don't want fame or that kind of stuff... I really want to impact other people with my music the way that it helps me.” Here, she’ll do just that, with supporting act Patrick & Daniel rounding out the bill. —MM For all the new goings-on in the Halifax music scene this fall, we’re gonna start with one thing that won’t be happening: The Halifax Pop Explosion appears to have shuttered, with no word yet of festival dates and no updates to the safer spaces survey it promised to deliver back in March 2021. The Atlantic Restorative Company—an outside consultant HPX hired to help mitigate its social mediafuelled firestorm and the underlying systemic racism it failed to address—has confirmed in emails to The Coast that it severed the festival as a client in late March 2021.

And while live music in general is back with a bang (notably Nova Scotia Music Week, lighting up Truro Nov 4-7 and Symphony Nova Scotia’s slated return in late October), the recent introduction of proof of vaccination to enter cultural gatherings means our dreams of mosh pits are one step closer to returning (the communal chip bowl at Gus’ Pub, however, will rest in power forever).

A stalwart of the scene and a frequent handup to about-to-break acts, producer, mixer and composer John Mullane (who you may know as the vocals and guitar of David Bowie-beloved band In-Flight Safety) recently launched a new studio space, called Future Dad, in Spryfield. We hope it comes with ample shelf space to show off Mullane’s past and future wins at Nova Scotia Music Week and the East Coast Music Awards.

Joel Plaskett’s Dartmouth destination New Scotland Yard has changed its name (presumably to avoid any New Scotland-based confusion happening in the area). The spot now goes by Fang Recording and Morely’s Coffee. “We’re keeping it hi-fi,” main studio engineer and alt-country king Thomas Stajcer promises in an email, a sentiment applicable to both the coffee and music. Alongside both (and alongside Taz Records’ Dartmouth foothold), a new bookshop will also squeeze into the location at 45 Portland Street, called Friction Books.

R&B scene mainstays (including Keonté Beals) are putting their metaphorical money on Harmz, a Halifax-by-way-of-Nigeria musician, as a star on the mic. The artist dropped his debut album in late September, an effort infused with calypso and Top 40 vibes. Also file under one to watch: The honey-voiced Laviita Shanel, whose song “It Ends Today” was one of the best tracks of 2020.

Halifax’s bearded balladeer Ben Caplan is releasing new music this fall ahead of a string of North American and European tour dates: Recollection will be landing on streaming services this week. Meanwhile emo rocker No, It’s Fine. is putting the spit and polish on its second album of 2021, a to-be-named effort dropping in November. Other Halifax musicians of note in the studio right now? Boom-bap behemoth MAJE, triple-threat singer-songwriter-producer Zamani (see more on both at left), the ECMA-nominated aRENYE and high-energy hip hop sibling duo Advocates of Truth. —MM

Scene Heard

Your record of news to note from the Halifax music scene.