M FOR MONTREAL – FIVE TO WATCH
Montreal is the Canadian cultural powerhouse that gave us The Arcade Hearth, Grimes, The Bernard Lakes, Patrick Watson, Chromeo, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Malajube and, er, Males With out Hats. Yearly since 2006 M For Montreal – the nation’s equal to the UK’s Nice Escape music convention – has showcased the town’s most promising rising expertise.
This 12 months the competition is extra various than ever, with acts from everywhere in the nation, together with heavy rock, indie, electronica, punk, indigenous shoegaze, hip hop and efficiency poetry.
Louder Than Battle might be there too, however within the meantime listed below are 5 acts that would take M For Montreal 2022 by storm.
Kamikaze Nurse
Naming their debut album Bucky Fleur as a nod to French thinker and activist Simone Weil – a significant affect on each Albert Camus and Jean Luc Goddard – Vancouver’s Kamikaze Nurse aren’t any run-of-the-mill punk band. Noise pop, post-punk and even obscure whiffs of prog all affect their second album, Stimuluso, the title monitor of which has all of the spiky noise of Mars Volta or Gang Of 4.
https://kamikazenurse.bandcamp.com
Ombiigizi
Canada’s indigenous individuals are massively under-represented in indie rock, however Ontario duo Ombiigizi (pronounced “om-BEE-ga-ZAY”) could also be about to interrupt the mould. Much like Grandaddy, they use mundane imagery to discover their cultural historical past and its impression on the fashionable world. Described as “indigenous shoegaze”, they however have a lightness of contact that earned them a Polaris Music Prize nomination for debut album Sewn Again Collectively.
https://ombiigizi.bandcamp.com/album/sewn-back-together
Gradual Down Molasses
There’s a clue to this Saskatoon, Saskatchewan four-piece’s sound in each their band’s identify and track titles reminiscent of I Want The Darkness and Nihilist Whisper. Its noisy, intense, dense frequencies have been constructing over 5 albums in 15 years, the newest – 2021’s Minor Deaths – looking for a bit gentle someplace within the maelstrom. A prairie Sonic Youth with a few of The Remedy’s darkish pop pizzaz.
https://slowdownmolasses.bandcamp.com
Sunglaciers
As you would possibly count on from a band whose second album – Subterranea – hasn’t received a track longer than 3:37 on it, this Calgary, Alberta act are excessive on vitality and impression. Nominally a guitar band, thrives of motorik keyboards tip the tunes additional into an off-kilter world described in good artwork gobbledygook by multi-instrumentalist Mathieu Blanchard as “attempting to write down vertically as an alternative of horizontally”.
https://sunglaciers.bandcamp.com
Emma Beko
Montreal native Emma Beko comes throughout as a form of hip-hop influenced Kae Tempest. You can even marvel if her deeply private self-analysis is a bit too over-sharing, however there’s a compelling poetic high quality to her unflinching honesty. Simply two EPs into her solo profession – the newest, Digital Injury, launched earlier this 12 months – Beko is fearlessly experimental, a Christine And The Queens with extreme anxiousness points.
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