Results tagged “cd”

One of the biggest complaints that Toronto hip hop artists have is that they are ignored by local media, and, for the most part, they're right. Drop the Needle hopes to help remedy this by checking in with some of the city's finest artists each month to see what's up.

Torontoist is ahead of the game for previewing some of the best music choices this week (Queen West fire benefit, Forest City Lovers' CD release) but Musicologist will give you one more recommendation—just for kicks.

In the music industry's latest attempt to lazily claw itself out of the grave, the Songwriters Association of Canada (SAC) is proposing a $5.00 per month licence fee on Canadian Internet accounts that would legalize music downloads. They're calling it the Right to Equitable Remuneration for Music File Sharing, a "reasonable and unobtrusive system of compensation" that will allow consumers to fill their bellies full of all the music they can handle from any peer-to-peer network while creating added revenue for artists, publishers, and labels alike.

It wasn't long ago that Torontoist was rapping about Five Blank Pages' CD release; Last Blush, their first full-length, was just unleashed onto the white-belt world last October, but this weekend marks a significant change in the band's line-up. Since growing from Noyan Hilmi's solo project to a full-fledged band, the group has consisted of Hilmi, sister Chelen Hilmi, and wife Pinar Ozyetis. The band added bassist Rajiv Thavanathan later on, and has been kicking around Southern Ontario's indie scene with their really, really adorable pop music ever since. Saturday, February 2, however, will be Chelen and Rajiv's last show with the band. The two are moving on to focus their energies on other projects, both musical and non-musical, and Five Blank Pages have promised the "most funnest and craziest show we can" to show them off in style.

No, you are not mistaken; Michael Bublé, Ozzy Osbourne and Rob Zombie are all passing through the city this week. Imagine Michael Bublé (for some unknown reason) making a vocal cameo during Ozzy’s sure-to-be "Crazy Train" encore? Best mash-up, ever! Or not. Ozzy, Michael, and that ridiculous idea aside, there is a show worthy of your attendance for reasons beyond an ideal encore.

When local promoter Dan Burke so unabashedly declared “less drugs, more shows” as what he looks forward to for this calendar year, no one believed the drugs portion of that resolution—but Friday is reason to start believing the show portion.

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset.

Toronto seems to get its annual dose of legendary outsider filmmaker John Waters around this time.

Last Wednesday, legendary Canadian music retailer Pindoff Record Sales sold off their 72-store Music World chain. Two days later, the new owners filed for bankruptcy protection and and will likely lay off 648 employees by the end of January. And so it goes. According to court documents, Music World plans an "orderly wind down," including closing stores and liquidating inventory. The retailer has been in dire straits for years, propped up by the Toronto-based...

A Good Idea (In Theory) is a new play currently running at Passe Muraille that, as its title implies, is trying to do things a little differently. For starters, in lieu of a program, audience members are given a soundtrack CD. As the play's website explains, the idea behind the project came from the question: "What would happen if an award-winning stage play by a young Canadian was supported by a group of independent...

William the Conquerer may have been a great tactician and a bit of a bastard, but we're not quite sure if he was a talented musician.

There are a few good reasons to check out C’mon’s CD Release Party this Friday, September 21, at the Horseshoe Tavern. The most important, however, is to watch bassist Katie Lynn Campbell do that insane thing where it appears like her body is about to snap in half she’s leaning so effing far back. That is how rock ‘n’ roll C’mon are; severed spines be damned! Among the other reasons to be kickin’ it at Queen and Spadina this Friday are Ian Blurton’s beard, the presence of new solid drummer Dean Dallas Bentley, and the fact that C’mon are one of the loudest bands in this city. Like Hogtown’s own Motörhead, but with less warts and proper microphone technique. Sort of.

If you're downtown and looking for a lunch-hour chill-out tomorrow (Wednesday), head over to Indigo in the Manulife Centre at Bay and Bloor. At 12:15 p.m., Juno Award winner, Grammy recipient, Officer of the Order of Canada, and Canada's Walk Of Fame starholder Diana Krall will be sitting behind a piano and performing songs from her latest release, The Very Best of Diana Krall. If you didn't get your autograph fix during TIFF last week, Krall will stick around after the show to sign copies of her CD.

Very early on this year, Torontoist was bold enough to predict that this may be the year of Basia Bulat. Nine months later and we may not have been very far off the mark. Ms. Bulat released her new album Oh, My Darling in Europe this past March, and has recently signed to Hardwood Records to finally (finally!) release her debut album tomorrow here in Canada.

If you've spent any time at all-ages punk shows in the last five years, chances are you’ve seen the Flatliners in action. Performing together since the tender age of fourteen, the band has made a name for themselves over the course of their six-year existence thanks to a tireless work ethic and the ability to write some catchy effing songs.

With music download trends showing that the coveted male 18–24 demographic is more interested in the music of their ancestors than anything current, music store HMV is dropping CD prices on oldies like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. HMV hopes that the move will convince young men to abandon the web and start stealing from retail stores again.

Songs about zombies, drive-by shootings, Obi-Wan Kenobi, pirates, monsters, punching people in the face, pregnancy, "reeking and seeking," families, obesity, virginity—all of them catchy, all of them disconcertingly happy-sounding, and all of them sing-and-clap-along-able. That is what Austin's Oh No! Oh My! is made of, and their albums—their self-titled full-length; their new EP, Between The Devil and The Sea; and their Jolly Rogers demo that the songs from the new EP are culled from—are the best pieces of pop to come along in a very, very long time. No kidding.

Canadian music fans might have heard of Sherrie Lea Laird. She covered Sade's "No Ordinary Love." She has a band, Pandemonia, and they just released a classic rock CD called Left to Die...In the Wide Open.

When Maximo Park released their debut in 2005, many critics were hoping the new wave revival was coming to an end. A Certain Trigger was catchy, but also included almost every post-punk trope that could be imagined. It's jolting rhythmic changes took time to get used to, but slowly the band managed to ditch the comparisons to Razorlight and The Futureheads. Fast-forward to this year's Our Earthly Pleasures, where the band has slightly toned down the frantic, angular rock and taken steps toward a slow, steady maturation process. The Newcastle quintet landed in Toronto this past Saturday night to support their latest disc by playing to a hyper, sold out crowd at the Mod Club.

Last night, one of Torontoist’s adolescent fantasies came true … no, not that one…we finally saw synth pop group The Spoons in concert!

The problem with doing a weekly CD review is that an excellent album will sometimes cross your path, only to realize that you can't get to it for weeks. Then they explode (sort of), play a show that gets covered by everyone and their Grandma (a.k.a. The Star), and you end up twiddling your thumbs, not sure if one more review is really going to say anything different from all the other ones. It might not, but Five Roses (Secret City) by Miracle Fortress is too good and we can't let it pass by.

When The Ghost Is Dancing played our Back To School Party last September, they described their sound as "GODZILLA POP." Fast-forward to the release of their debut cd, The Darkest Spark (Sonic Unyon), and it's cleary evident why that description is appropriate. They've expanded their lineup since their EP came out, leaving the number of band members at a staggering nine. Not only have they grown in size, but their sound is appropriately more rich and grandiose. Unfortunately, their epic pop does not always work on their debut, meaning that the small faults on their debut become monumentally huge. Like Godzilla destroying Tokyo, everything goes up in flames quickly.

For Toronto's Kids On TV, it's been a long road to get their debut album completed, one that has lasted the better part of three years. For those waiting to hear Mixing Business With Pleasure, released last week by the Blocks Recording Club, there has been the lingering question of how the music would translate from the live show onto tape. For a band that is so infamous for its high-energy, explicit performances, how would the music hold up on its own? Very well, it turns out.

Final Fantasy alert! Over the past week, the always-lovely Good Hodgkins has twice graced us with new Owen Pallett tracks.

If Torontoist wasn’t looking after the kids tonight, we’d be checking out The End of the Internet. The End is scheduled tonight at The Press Club (850 Dundas Street West) for precisely 9 p.m. The upstart, performance-based reading series, which has been ending the Internet for almost a year now, is hosted by man-about-town Louis Calabro.

There are as many types of poetry as there are different styles of music. Books of poetry are usually confined to a shelf or two at a local bookstore, but if you want to buy a CD, you visit an entire store dedicated to music. When someone professes to like poetry, the reference is probably to a favourite type of poetry, and not all poetries—just as a jazz afficionado might dislike Country and Western, or a pop music fan might hate Metal.

From the million-record-selling stadium band to that guy who used to sell cassettes on Queen Street, Torontoist readers share their stories of the city's lost-but-not-forgotten musical acts. Today's Revisited review comes from Cameron Gordon.

You may be aware that there are no plans to release the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters in Canada, as reported by The Toronto Star, Dose, Twitch Film, and, of course, us, in our film column last week. If, like us, you're saddened by such news, there's not much you can do to make yourself feel better about it, other than, I suppose, continuing to watch it on The Detour on Teletoon (10:15 p.m. weeknights) or... winning some excellent Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie swag?