Constellation Records – Backseat Mafia

Album Review: Bellbird – ‘The Call’: From free jazz to post rock, a quartet that find their own trajectory.

Constellation Records have long provided a portal for the extraordinary experimental music which orbits around their Montreal home base, but here we have them opening the apertures and focusing in…

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Album Review: Jessica Moss – ‘Unfolding’: The Montreal violinist/composer’s most incisive, inspirational statement to date.

Violinist and composer Jessica Moss has always made instrumental music that speaks out. Her essential work does more than reflect times, events and tragedies, it engages with them and voices…

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Album Review: SANAM –‘Sametou Sawtan’: Absorbing, ambitious free rock fusion from the peerless Lebanese six-piece.

It takes a singular vision to bring something new to the post rock table these days, loud/quiet trajectories and obtuse time signatures have long been overplayed, but Lebanese sextet SANAM…

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Album Review: T. Gowdy – ‘Trill Scan’: Inspired Early music and darkwave alchemy.

It was a question of time before Canadian producer/audio-visual artist T.Gowdy’s background filtered through to his engrossing electronic music and that time is now. Gowdy’s new album ‘Trill Scan’, his…

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Album Review: Joni Void – Every Life Is A Light : The Montreal sound artist delivers a new experimental-pop touchstone.

Pinning, hash-tagging, mood-boarding, even crisply describing Joni Void’s music gets no easier. Maybe the role Void plays is as a post post-sampling, cut & paste collagist or re-imaginer of the…

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Album Review: Godspeed You! Black Emperor – “No Title as of 13 February 2024 28,340 Dead” : intense, probing and cathartic contemporary rock.

Let’s start with some facts. Godspeed You! Black Emperor are a seminal alt rock, orchestral collective formed 1994 in Montreal. People who write about contemporary music see their early noughties…

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Album Review: WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN –’No More Apocalypse Father’: A probing, poetic and profound alt-rock record of today.

While much contemporary music of today seems required to focus on the ‘me’ some artists continue to probe wider into the things that ‘we’ do collectively, the injustices, the inhumanities,…

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Track / Video: WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN –GY!BE/Big|Brave/Ada affiliates announce tumultuous debut album.

A post rock summit, confluence or collab, some might even toss in the supergroup label if they were feeling flippant. Whatever you want to call the artistic meeting of minds…

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Album Review: Kee Avil -‘Spine’: experimental pop with a thrilling, raw urgency from the Montreal artist.

Two years ago Montreal producer Kee Avil’s debut for Constellation ‘Crease’ turned heads with its leftfield pop mosaicism, an intricate patterning of vocal, sound and instrumental shapes set with experimental…

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Album Review: ‘FYEAR’ – a phenomenal, poetic statement from the Montreal post-jazz ensemble (aka. FYEAR)

Music and poetry, poetry and music, the Montreal convened collective FYEAR show how potent this combination can be on this self-titled debut, out now via Constellation. Led by poet/novelist Kaie…

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