And then I fucked it up COMPLETELY.

That’s as good a way as any to start this article, which I can assure you has been in post-production for a very looooooooooong time. Earlier in the year, when we were still known as Three Chords No More, I sat down with Martin Reisle and Brendon Hartley from Maria in the Shower to do our first ever in-person interview. Keep in mind that going in, Maria in the Shower were (and continue to be) one of my favourite bands, local or otherwise. So you could say I was pretty determined not to blow it. However my crappy voice recorder, combined with a super-loud meeting venue, followed by hours of transcribing conversation resulted in eight pages of interview and no real way to approach the article.

What does one include? And what to delete?

Well here we are, months later, and a decision has been made. I’m going to post the interview in it’s entirety. Not because it’s too long (it isn’t) and not because I couldn’t decide on what was important to post. On the contrary, I’m posting the entire thing because it’s a damn good interview. I honestly feel that everything Martin and Brendon said is important in understanding the band. And also I know that as a fan this is exactly the kind of article I would want to read about Maria in the Shower. So without further ado, here it is! Read the rest of this entry »

Hey! Check out this neat little documentary by SFU student Emily Chia! It’s called Our Community Music and it’s the most awesomeness you can fit into 10 mins. Basically, I would describe it as the best and most concise primer for anyone interested in finding out about a handful of Vancouver bands and the Vancouver music community in general.

Featuring members of Apollo Ghosts, Bible Belts, Chris-a-Riffic, Collapsing Opposites, Lala, Lost Lovers Brigade, The Greenbelt Collective and Unreliable Narrator.

The Cobalt’s getting the axe this week, but not before they host a final round of killer shows. We’re heading to the doomed venue tonight to see Two Cabins, Nu Sensae and B-Lines tear the roof off, and YOU SHOULD COME! This is our public service announcement for the morning.

The most important thing to know about the Vancouver music scene is that it doesn’t just cover one genre of music like a lot of other scenes from the past. Detroit in it’s heyday was predominantly rock ‘n roll. New York cornered the market on North American punk and new wave. Seattle, of course, had grunge. The current independent music renaissance that’s been taking place in Vancouver over the last couple of years, however, has shown a bit of everything. Case in point: Two Cabins. We first saw their name on the bill for the last-ever show at the Cobalt, looked up their MySpace, and were once again astounded that a Vancouver band could so completely tap into a genre of music that we didn’t even know existed in the city. Wanting to know more about the band, we contacted the two bandmates, and they were gracious enough to answer a bunch of questions. Here we go! Read the rest of this entry »

This just in from our friend Lyn from Portico:

Hey gang,

Portico is playing at a Copperspine showcase show this coming Friday. It’s at Little Mountain Studios on 26th just west of Main. $10 gets you mini-sets (3 songs or so) from a bunch of great Copperspine artists:

Roger Dean Young
Pellucid
Abramson Singers
Jesse Matheson
Dan Brodie
Cameron Dilworth
Shout White Dragon
Kent McAlister
Sarah MacDougall
and us, Portico

The set times will be determined by random name drawing from a hat at the start of the night so come at 9 and stay till 11 and you’ll get to see everyone. That’s a lot of music in 2 hours, you’re gonna be exhausted.

K, so 9pm Friday. See you there.

Hey everybody!

We’ve been busy as bees here at the site, but we’ve managed to come up with a couple of new ways for everyone to contact us. First off, a brand spankin’ new e-mail address. We love getting mail! Who doesn’t? So feel free to pull our coats at theauralkinetic [at] gmail [dot] com. We promise to get back to you with the quickness. You can also get ahold of us at our new Facebook group as well. But wait! There’s more! We also took one for the team and became card-carrying members of the fiasco known as MySpace. Check us out and add us as a friend!

Yer pals,

The Aural Kinetic

Oh my god, Kidnap Kids! You’re so cute!

Holy crackers you guys! Thanks to your inquisitiveness and internet savvy (and our secret helpers) this site has really been tearing it up in our first week! We’ve had a couple hundred hits in the last couple of days alone, with more coming in all the time. And that’s without any advertising on our part whatsoever! On that front, look for some flyers to make an appearance around town toward the end of this week. Then we’ll see what kind of fire we’ve started!

In the meantime, here’s a couple of things we’re working on:

1) The good kids at Apollo Ghosts agreed to do an interview! And, so did Two Cabins! Both in the same day! That’s going to be some good reading FOR SURE. Look for those to get posted up later on this week.

2) Just today I wandered over to Scratch Records and bought a copy of No Kids‘ full-length LP “Come Into My House” and I’m listening to it RIGHT NOW. It’s so sweet and amazing that a review will be forthcoming just as soon as I can write a great one and not botch it up. Maybe we can have a word with those kids too…

3) We’ve been looking into all sorts of lesser-known (but nonetheless GREAT) bands that we hope to shed a little light on. Who’s been picked up on our radar today? Half Chinese, Kidnap Kids!, and Bad Fate, just to name a few.

4) And, as always, we’re just putting the finishing touches on a little sit-down we had (months ago!) with Martin and Brendon from Maria in the Shower. If you haven’t heard of them, you should check ‘em out. They’re awesome!

Other than that, we’re just chillin’ like villains.

Love to you all,

The Aural Kinetic

This is an excerpt from an old interview done by Nardwuar the Human Serviette with Henry Rollins. Rollins is pretty irritated, but he had a few interesting things to say about the Vancouver punk scene back in the day:

Nardwuar the Human Serviette: Do you realize that Ron Reyes lives in Vancouver?

Henry Rollins: Yes.

Nardwuar: You know, one of the original Black Flag singers, like yourself, and he’s a born again Christian!

Rollins: Well, we all end up something.

Nardwuar: But I thought that’s kind of neat. “All sins forgotten” and Ron Reyes. And you’re in Vancouver BC!

Rollins: You know, the way you can put it all together like that is just amazing. Because I never would have been able to piece it all together like that.

Nardwuar: Well Henry, also, you were in the movie Johnny Mn…

Rollins: Johnny Mn?

Nardwuar: Mn…Johnny Mneumonic written by William…

Rollins: …

Nardwuar: …Gibson. A Canadian! Who lives in Vancouver, BC, Canada!

Rollins: Right.

—

Nardwuar: Why do you think people think you hate Vancouver or Winnipeg? People think you hate Vancouver or Winnipeg!

Rollins: Well, because I used to very much. Because I would come here and you guys would be a shitty, spitting, heroin shooting, equipment stealing audience who we weren’t allowed to kill. So after I got out of Black Flag and I didn’t have to come here anymore, when I became the boss of the system, I stopped coming here so I didn’t have to get spat on have my equipment ripped off by idiotic punk rock junkies. So I gave the city about seven years to cool off and came back and found it to be a very wonderful place.

Nardwuar: So it’s no longer Drunkville to you.

Rollins: No.

Random Cuts double-shot part two! We’ve got the latest 7” Sleep / Jail Stripes (Nominal Records) on the turntable and we’re all set!

By naming the opening track “Sleep” somebody in Random Cuts has shown themselves to have a great sense of irony. Simply put, if you set your alarm clock to this song, you’d start your day with a heart attack. Maybe it’s because I’m in a good mood and the sun is shining and I don’t have to work today, but I personally like this track a lot more than either “Rat Capacity” or “Destroyed”. The guitar blips and bleeps are interesting (as opposed to agitating) and the drumming is a crash-and-smash bonanza. While “Sleep” is still heavy as hell, it moves faster, feels brighter, and is generally a lot more listenable than anything I’ve heard before from either Random Cuts or Mutators. That’s not to say it’s a complete 180 – any song by Justin is likely to have that certain dark edge – but this one has wheeled it back considerably.

“Jail Stripes” opens with a drum/guitar combo that will start any room stomping. It hasn’t been mentioned before but it should be mentioned here; the back-up singing in this band is really what really fills out the sound and adds that extra layer to the recording. With the possible exception of “Rat Capacity”, I would say that nowhere is it more prevalent than on this track. While Justin sings “Will your stripes just float away?” and the back-up goes “Oh! Oh-oh-oh!” the call-and-response effect is what really tells the story. It’s another dark one for sure, very much in the vein of their first 7”, but again I like this one more just due to the fact that it sounds somewhat cleaner and follows those old conventions without coming off the rails.

Our final verdict? If you have the money, buy both 7” records. But if you have to choose between the two, we’d go with “Sleep / Jail Stripes”. Also, keep an eye out for “Make Damage / Pigeon Park” coming out this month on Nominal Records.