Your Winters Are Like Summers Here | DOminiONATED September 2020
🔥Ora Corgan, Bells in the Ruins (Victoria BC)
Listening to Ora Cogan's Bells in the Ruins feels like walking through fog. The ten electro-folk-ish songs from Cogan - a multi-disciplinary artist based in Victoria B.C - have a murky film and a weighty spookiness. On opener “Sleeping”, Cogan swims slowly and steadily through the heaviness while on songs like “Skull” and “Fixe”, agitated drum and synth combos zip dangerously by her like cars plowing through zero-visibility conditions. Bells in the Ruins is not for the faint of heart.
Laura Stanley
🔥“Wish U Were Here” by L CON (Toronto ON)
On its own, “Wish U Were Here” is a fun, fuzzy romp of a quarantine song. There's some tasty electric guitar (including a solo!) from Lane Halley and some wonderful sax from the incomparably talented Karen Ng, and half the lyrics are the same line: "Wish you were around." It doesn't even have to be about missing a loved one — if you've been quarantining since March, you'll miss just about anyone at this point. But anyway, this song may have the funniest Bandcamp liner notes, with credits for "strum guitar + quiet synth" versus "cooler and better played electric guitar" and "more prominent synth" and finally "cover art thrown together while trying to remember high school photo shop." So all in all, a wonderful little package.
Michael Thomas
▶︎▶︎ LPS / EPS
Étcheby, Pas avant une couple de jours (Québec)
The world moves too fast. Even during a pandemic, there are endless emails to send and news to read and friends to call. It's all too much. Étcheby's pas avant une couple de jours, on the other hand, feels like a long weekend or taking a Wednesday off. Étcheby (Mathieu Hachebé) sings slow and soft and sprinkles his folk songs with playful additions like electronics all while celebrating Yves veggie-based foods and lying in bed. Heed to Étcheby's advice next time you're feeling overwhelmed.
Laura Stanley
Your Winters Are Like Summers Here, Songs from a Quarantine (Hamilton ON)
Your Winters Are Like Summers Here is as apt a band name for this time of year as Songs from a Quarantine is for this year and time. The release was originally performed by the Hamilton-based musician Mike Baker between July 2019 and March 2020 and was conceived to be a live performance-only project. Obviously, fate has different plans for Baker. Songs from a Quarantine moves like a heat map across the emotional peaks and valleys of the last few months, swirling together elements of ambient experimentation, droney shoegaze, and traditional composition in a way that's both unsettling (like winter's impending isolation) and oddly soothing (like summer's first flush of freedom).
Jim Di Gioia
▶︎▶︎ SONGS
“Patty Sees Her Soul” by Gus Englehorn (Quebec City QC)
Earlier this year, Gus Englehorn released Death & Transfiguration, an exhilaratingly twangy and punkish debut LP. In the new video for the enrapturing track “Patty Sees Her Soul”, Englehorn uses surreal black and white visuals which perfectly match the tenor of the song. When Englehorn repeats “never really ever really,” it feels like your brain is melting out of your skull. But, like, in a really good way.
Laura Stanley
“Never Love Me Again” by R McClure & Tall Shadows (Cumberland BC)
R McClure & Tall Shadows describe themselves as “old-time music reimagined for the modern era,” a timeless blend of the traditional and modern. “Never Love Me Again” has echoes of classic country songwriting that's shot through shoegaze reverb, swirling dream-pop melodies and heartbreaking sentimentality.
Jim Di Gioia
“i’m not a nihilist” by suffer fools (Vancouver BC)
Distorted screeches, jingle bells, and harmonies reminiscent of a Gregorian chant open up “i’m not a nihilist”, the latest track from Vancouver Island’s suffer fools. The self-proclaimed “former child star, current trainwreck, and future pop messiah” lives up to this description, burying hummable melodies in industrial sludge. Refusing to settle, the song's constant movement reflects its repeated line “I try to find some kind of light, but I’m not able." While it may sound bleak at first, this track blooms into an anthemic refusal to give in to hopelessness.
Sam Boer
INSTAGRAM • FACEBOOK • TWITTER • SPOTIFY • YOUTUBE • SOUNDCLOUD
If you are enjoying our newsletter, please tell a friend (or ten) to subscribe to our monthly musings. If you really enjoy what we're doing, please consider subscribing to support DOMINIONATED, ensuring that our collective of writers and creators can keep producing valuable content like this in the future.