Kreative Kontrol

Ep. #66: Wes Marskell + Jason Couse of the Darcys

Post author By vish
Post date January 28, 2014

Wes Marskell and Jason Couse are childhood friends who play together in a Toronto band called the Darcys. Known for an enigmatic kind of powerful pop music, the Darcys’ latest album is 2013’s Warring (out via Arts & Crafts) and they’re playing a sold out show with July Talk at Hillside Inside in Guelph on Saturday Feb. 8. Here Wes, Jason, and I discuss their band house, the best apples, Toronto District School Board arts funding cuts, how kids ask the darndest, most astute things, being crazy kids who destroy golf carts in Toronto, the Muppet Babies version of the Darcys band called Bernice, going down on white girls, the insane saga of Wes’s amazing Breaking Bad-esque rise and fall as a student in Guelph, amazingly inspirational high school teachers, drugs, the history of the Darcys and a short list of places where its members are prohibited from frequenting because of past indiscretions, the criminal undertones of the Darcys, remixing everything, covering Steely Dan and not being some kind of gimmicky band, surprising people with new sounds and a new project involving the work of Cormac McCarthy, awkward intensity, the song “Horses Fell,” and more

Related links: thedarcys.ca hillsidefestival.ca vishkhanna.com

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Tags Arts & Crafts, Breaking Bad, Cormac McCarthy, Guelph, Hillside Festival, Hillside Inside, The Darcys, Toronto District School Board, Warring

News Podcast

Ep. #65: Tanya Tagaq

Post author By vish
Post date January 23, 2014

Tanya Tagaq is a truly singular artist who hails from the Nunavut territory in northern Canada. Though renowned as an Inuit throat singer who has collaborated closely with Björk and Kronos Quartet, Tagaq makes music that absorbs and reflects many genres and is impossible to pigeonhole. 2014 will see the release of her long-awaited follow-up to 2008’s acclaimed album Auk/Blood and on Saturday Feb. 8, she returns to Guelph for a double-bill with Timber Timbre as part of Hillside Inside. Here, Tagaq and I discuss why people south of Nunavut are being kind of pathetic about this whole Polar Vortex thing, her relationship with Guelph, why her last album reflected a passive period while her forthcoming one will be more aggressive, her plans to make electronic and metal music soon, her new album’s tone, fracking, Neutral Milk Hotel, the weird transcendence of underground culture, how to express opinions about politics as a vocalist without using words, her opinion of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, her new album’s title and artwork, some stories behind her yet-to-be-released songs, why her new album doesn’t have many special guests but her next album will, whether she’s concerned about tokenism or the way people have distorted or misinterpreted her work, how her story and an infamous ex-manager inspired her friend Geoff Berner’s hilarious new novel Festival Man, her upcoming show at Carnegie Hall, her relationship with Björk, why Buffy Sainte-Marie makes her cry, the song “Fire ~ Ikuma,” and more.

Related links: isuma.tv/tagaq hillsidefestival.ca vishkhanna.com

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Tags Björk, fracking, Guelph, Hillside Festival, Hillside Inside, Kronos Quartet, Neutral Milk Hotel, Nunavut, Polar Vortex, Stephen Harper, Tanya Tagaq

News Podcast

Ep. #64: Sharon Jones

Post author By vish
Post date January 22, 2014

Sharon Jones is a powerful, distinctive, and compelling American singer and performer who fronts one of the world’s greatest bands, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings. Their new album is Give the People What They Want and was released this month via Daptone Records, as Jones continues her recovery and treatment after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last year. We caught up at her hotel in Toronto this week and discussed how Montreal was the first city that made her feel like a superstar, why America is confusing soul music with whatever ‘retro’ means and how soul music is a worldwide phenomenon, how Martin Scorsese is such a fan, he put Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings in The Wolf of Wall Street and what that experience was like, why she insisted on a do-over when she performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno last week, the song “Now I See,” the undercurrent of rage on Give the People What They Want and how it relates to issues of economic disparity and her battle with pancreatic cancer, why she’s out promoting her record when her health isn’t 100%, a thorough explanation of her condition, why she tries to be open and honest with her fans about everything, how her ordeal has placed the American health care debate in a new light for her and why the politics surrounding it are racially motivated, writing her own songs vs. conveying the ideas of other writers, her recovery and future plans, how she manages the band’s social media platforms, the song “Making Up and Breaking Up (And Making Up And Breaking Up Over Again),” and more.

Related links: daptonerecords.com vishkhanna.com

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Tags Amy Winehouse, Daptone Records, Give the People What They Want, Martin Scorsese, Obamacare, pancreatic cancer, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, the Affordable Healthcare Act, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Wolf of Wall Street