exploremusic

“Kasparov” by Royal Canoe

The Waking Eyes are a good bunch of boys originally from Steinbach, which is about 40 miles east of Winnipeg. They live in the big city now and have had a couple of albums.

They’re in the midst of a bit of a break right now, but Matt Peters from the band felt the need to get his friends to help him with a solo project called Royal Canoe.

Basically, it’s Matt, the other three guys from the band Plys, a series of friends from in and around Winnipeg. The result is an album called CO-OP Mode—which means more sense if you live in a community where there’s a co-op store. The record’s been done for a while, but when the Matt and some guys started playing some shows, they were moved to put it out.

Try a song called “Kasparov”, which is about chess grand master Garry Kasporov. The hook is that the song is about some love letters written to him by Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer that beat Kasparov at chess in 1997.

“Passport Control” by The Black Dog

The Black Dog is interesting. This is a UK electronic outfit who spent way too much time in airport lounges. They remembered the old Brian Eno album called Music For Airports from 1978 which was written to convey a sense of peace and wonder to the airport environment.

Today, though, there’s no peace. Civil air travel is anything but civil. So The Black Dog has written an album called Music For Real Airports as a rebuttal to that old Eno record. As someone who spends far too much time in airports, Alan really digs this album. You can start with a song called “Passport Control”, but it’s all interesting.

“Georgia” by Yuck

Then there’s Yuck. Alan likes them just for their name. Yuck is a couple of former Cajun dancers who decided that they’re rather follow in the fuzzy footsteps of bands like Sonic Youth and Dinosaur Jr. Try a single called “Georgia”.

“Datascroller” by Apparatjick

We’ve heard from Apparatjick before. They’re a supergroup of sorts consisting of Guy Berryman (the bass player from Coldplay), the keyboard player from A-Ha and the guitarist of a Danish band called Mew. Their image is fascinating. You have to see their official website and their MySpace page to begin to understand it. There’s an album called We Are Here and see what you think of a song called “Datascroller”.

“Negativeland” by NEU!

Finally, a little deep history. There was a German band called NEU! Formed by a couple of guys who split off from Kraftwerk way, way before Kraftwerk became anything significant. NEU! (along with a band called Can) pretty much invented the genre known as “krautrock”.

All of NEU!’s albums have finally been re-released on CD and if you want to know what Joy Division sounded like before there was such a think as Joy Division, you need to learn about NEU!. Alan recommends their self-titled debut record from 1972 and a track called “Negativland”. You won’t believe this music is almost 40 years old.