Category Archives: features

Sled Island in Photos

Four days of bands

by Steve Louie and Ryan Walter Wagner

by Steve Louie

Apollo Ghosts @ Arrata by Steve Louie


Our intrepid photographers Steve Louie and Ryan Walter Wagner managed to see a lot of things while Sled Island was underway. Here’s what they saw.
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Party Photography

Kathy Was Your Friend, Lindsay's Diet, The Futurists

By Jordie Yow

Photo by Lindsay's Diet

Photo by Lindsay's Diet

“I used to have a diary where I would put photos up just for myself and then eventually some people found out about it and asked me to email them photos, so I decided to make a website. That way, everyone can view it and take whatever photos they like and it’s also a good way to remember things. It’s a fun way to remember the night,” Kathy Lo, founder of Kathy Is Your Friend, wrote via email.

Those of you too young to remember Kathy Is Your Friend might not remember just how controversial party photography was when Lo imported it to Vancouver. The seemingly simple process of taking pictures of people at parties and putting them up on a website was a surprisingly polarizing issue. Some of the biggest sites in this genre are Last Night’s Party and the Cobrasnake, who became popular in the early 2000s when the cheapness of digital photography made it possibly for an enterprising photographer to quickly take hundreds of pictures and document a party. The sites’ popularity stemmed from a combination of human vanity, curiosity and the desire to document social gatherings. Only Magazine called the sites running party photography in Vancouver out in an uncredited 2007 editorial that declared the existence of these sites to be “uncalled for and retarded,” citing that the photographers running the sites were talentless, unartistic fame seekers. Read More »

Sled Island: Day 4

The Melvins, No Age, the GZA and more!

by Jordie Yow

Slowest Chug Ever by Ryan Walter Wagner

Slowest Chug Ever by Ryan Walter Wagner

Here it was, the final day of Sled Island. Our bodies beaten and complaining from the trudging through the sun, the steady flow of alcohol, the dehydration, the late nights and not enough late mornings. We set out to get the last that Sled Island had to offer.
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Once Upon a Record Store

Browsing the History of Independent Record Stores

By Debby Reis with assistance from Susanne Dewein

Illustrations by Melanie Coles & Lindsey Hampton

Illustrations by Melanie Coles and Lindsey Hampton

There’s really no record stores in malls anymore,” Grant McDonagh, Zulu Records’ owner, pointed out while discussing the state of stores in Vancouver—so unless you have a record store in your neighbourhood, you may have forgotten about the time before mp3s when hanging out in the record store was the way to learn about and collect music.

According to Scratch Records’ Keith Parry, record stores still fill this niche. “We’ve had dozens of in-store performances … and those … are [the] things that feel like you’re part of the community, you’re a cultural ambassador,” he said.

“You can usually learn something from someone that works at a record store,” Rob Frith, owner of Neptoon Records pointed out. “They may not be into the same music you are, but it’s usually something they have heard, or they sell enough stuff that … they can say, ‘Oh, well everyone is talking about this record’ and they can recommend something.” Read More »

Ariel Pink

Past, Present and Future: A Conversation with Ariel Pink

By Colin Throness

Illustration by Aisha Davidson

Illustration by Aisha Davidson

Ariel Pink – Round And Round

Discorder: First of all, how’s your day going, Ariel?

Ariel Pink: The day? Yeah, it’s going good. We’re about a week into our tour and we’re heading off for mainland Europe tomorrow. So we’ve got two weeks left. And, yeah, things are going good.

D: It’s eight days until your 32nd birthday. Actually, I’m 32 as well and I’ve found that, more and more, these early thirties are very significant years for young men in our demographic. For many it’s when we come to accept that our twenties are finally behind us and maybe it’s time to ask ourselves if we really are or should be adults. Do you feel like an adult yet, Ariel?

AP: Absolutely, I feel like an adult. I also feel like a child. And I feel like we’re all children, forever. [Laughs.] Everyone in their twenties has all this twenties mania and they kind of live as if it’s the beginning and end of the world. They screw up their lives in all sorts of ways, maybe. The teens are like a false start kind of thing, and the thirties, I don’t know how it is for you, but I feel like I’m mellowing out with age or something. Read More »

Sled Island: Day 3

Fucked Up, !!!, Ted Leo, Falafel King and more!

by Jordie Yow

by Ryan Walter Wagner

by Ryan Walter Wagner

Before I get into what bands I saw on Day 3 of Sled Island, I would like to take a moment to talk to you about the best thing about Calgary: all the bars in Calgary have awesome hand dryers. No messing around with paper towels after you’ve washed your hands, just stick your soggy hands under high powered heated air and let them dry. In some places they even have two right next to each other and you can give each of your hands a blast of heated air without having to share. It’s something Vancouver could learn from.

Anyhow, so Friday was not a stat holiday which meant most people went to work and the bands took the day off, which allowed us to take a bit of a breather before heading out. The Olympic Plaza main site still got going around 4:30 p.m. just in time for anyone who worked downtown to rush to the venue.
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Sled Island: Day 2

Drinking games, stolen bicycles, Chain & the Gang, Why? and more!

by Jordie Yow

Canada Day, the second day of Sled Island, resulted in plenty of day parties with bands playing them. Many of them were free to non-pass holders so a lot of people came out. As a result, we got started early. Read More »

The Shilohs

"My favourite thing in the world is when they dance"

By Jenn Perutka

The Shilohs, illustration by Tyler Crich

The Shilohs, illustration by Tyler Crich

Recording an EP in a building that’s rumoured to be haunted in the middle of the night during a heat wave would tend to make anyone a little crazy. Drummer Ben Frey of the Shilohs elaborated, “The last song we recorded was at 5:30 in the morning … the laugh you hear in the beginning of the song ‘Having a Good Time,’ that’s me laughing at Johnny [Payne] talking to a stuffed lizard with a cigarette in its mouth.”

Despite the unique circumstances, what came out of the recording process were beautifully crafted countrified pop and mellow folk jams on the Shilohs debut self-titled EP.

I met Frey, bassist Dan Colussi and guitarist Mike Komaszczuk at Jonathan Rogers Park, and ended up speaking to guitarist Johnny Payne over the phone the next day as he’s currently touring with his other band, Fanshaw. We discussed the band’s unorthodox recording process for their first EP, working with Steve Bays and their future plans. Read More »

Shad

Tetris, the Skill of Luck, Geography is Destiny, Being Extra Canadian, the Internet Blowing his Mind

By Sarah Berman

Shad – Yaa I Get It

Shad – Call Waiting (Interlude)

It was daylight outside, but you wouldn’t have guessed it from the subterranean lighting inside the Biltmore Cabaret. Hip-hop wordsmith Shad and I shared a red velvet booth, while his bassist Ian Koiter absent-mindedly grooved in the background.

At that moment, we were contemplating the finer points of the 1984 video game Tetris.

“I play a lot of Tetris on my computer. It calms me down in a weird way,” he said. “There’s definitely a rhythm to it. I find it relaxing.”

This unexpected tangent came amid discussion of Shad’s third record TSOL, which was released May 25. I had asked whether the letters on his album cover were meant to resemble those geometric Tetris pieces that perpetually fall from the sky.

“Yeah. You know what? Nobody’s ever asked me about that,” he said, adding that there’s a latent philosophical reasoning behind the nostalgic puzzle game reference. “It’s sort of about fitting things together, and breaking down walls, too.” Read More »

Slam Dunk!

"We try to keep a sense of humour about it or else we might end up working at Long & Mcquade. With goatees. And chromatic tuners"

By Julie Colero

Four friends from Victoria, Jordan Minkoff (guitar/vox), Caitlin Gallupe (bass/vox), Luke Postl (drums/cat wails) and Duncan MacConnell (guitar/vox), found themselves in a riotous new formation almost two years ago, when they were asked to do some cover tunes at a cancer benefit show. The four-piece performed songs by the Sonics, Fleetwood Mac and the Traveling Wilburys. The set was so well received that the group decided to take things to the next level by hunkering down and writing some songs of their own. All four band members are already long-time Victoria veterans, even though they’re all still in their early 20s (Postl and Minkoff play in Colourbook, MacConnell is in Cobras Cobras Cobras, and Gallupe now plays in her brother Brooke’s band, Immaculate Machine), and so are well-versed in being in a band. “I liked going back and doing the ol’ punk rock stuff, together with the best buds I had; it made sense. I was sick of doofin’ round!” joked Postl.

At first, the band stayed close to home, playing house parties and small shows for friends, “so they could have a good time on weekends, ” explained Minkoff. Thankfully, Slam Dunk decided that other music fans needed to have fun weekends, too. Read More »

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