Where pucks once flew 15 feet or more on the ice, shoppers will stare at a 15-foot wall of cheese. Today’s grand opening of the new flagship Loblaws store at Maple Leaf Gardens is a long-awaited step in the repurposing of a Toronto landmark. Along with Ryerson University’s Peter Gilgan Athletic Centre at the Gardens, [...]

As far as live acts go, the Blue Man Group would seem to fall somewhere between a ‘90s Lollapalooza side stage oddity and an indisputably bitchin’ laser show. Stemming from this altogether radical branch of entertainment, the resulting performance is a cavalcade of flashing lights, pulsating rhythms, and perhaps most surprisingly, hearty laughs.

When you’re writing about a concert, or even if you’re just at a concert, one of the nice things to do straight away is note the eclecticism of the audience. Like the LCBO, concerts are the great leveler, flattening out all the differences of race, gender, class, et cetera. At concerts, fans new and old mix and mingle, clink plastic beer cups, and sing along together, humming the half-verses they can’t remember the lyrics to. And it’s fun to feign surprise at this; at the idea that people who dress different sometimes like the same things, and that a whole universe exists outside of your own personal processes of taste-making and self-cultivation.

Tan Dun: Water and Paper Concertos To start, let’s get philosophical: what is music? Is it intangible, or can it be physicalized into a concrete object? Is it what emanates from trained musicians in the string, wind, or brass sections, or can it be found in other places, by any person, through unexpected instruments? And [...]

Blood Ceremony, looking appropriately evil. Considering how they wear their influences on their sleeves (or ritual cloaks), it may seem a bit counterintuitive to hail Blood Ceremony as Toronto’s most original band. But we’re doing exactly that. Formed in Toronto in 2006, Blood Ceremony’s sound invokes the heavy riffs of contemporaries (and UK label mates) [...]

Mike Carparelli and the Damien Hirst–painted guitar. Photo courtesy of Carparelli. Remember the Imagine Concert? Of course you do! Remember how we told you that despite its total collapse there was still a silver lining and the promise something good might come of it all? Well, that’s finally become a reality, thanks to the sale [...]

Toronto indie band-cum-sandwichers Neon Windbreaker. Photo courtesy Joe Fuda. When anyone with an internet connection can download the entire Flipper discography via BitTorrent for free in thirty-seven seconds, selling records can be tricky. The industry’s need to fix the problem has spawned a myriad of half-measures, from including download codes with special edition translucent-colour vinyl [...]

The Rural Alberta Advantage prepare to play for an adoring capacity crowd at Lee’s Palace. It’s been more than a year since The Rural Alberta Advantage‘s Nils Edenloff, Amy Cole, and Paul Banwatt have played a full show in Toronto; in November 2009, they sold out Lee’s Palace a week before the show. This time, [...]

We want to grab the Imagine Concert, give it a Corleone-style kiss and tell it, "You broke my heart!"

Tunng is weird. The band plays “folktronica,” which is a stupid name for a genre if there ever was one. Really, they play folk, but play it in such a way, with so many instruments and so many weird diversions on the way to and from the pretty bits that they’re best at, as to [...]