These details have been long in the making. Before playing the game, Brander explained the project’s evolution, from his spur of the moment creation of an early version in the company of friends, to ordering the wood and black Settlers of Catan pieces online. Even though he enlisted the help of his girlfriend, Pamela Mackenzie, to design the elegant game-piece art, Brander confessed that “it’s way more expensive to make a board game than I thought.”

While the project has become bigger and more complex than Brander first imagined, its inspiration was relatively simple. “I like board games,” Brander told me with a laugh. Beyond this love of games, however, Zama originated in a spontaneous idea to combine multiple forms of gameplay in response to a need in the board game world. According to Brander, few games include a high degree of strategy, simultaneous gameplay between opponents, and a variety of ways to play that eliminate any luck.

Zama is many things, but its simplest achievement is that it is a fun two-player board game that can be either short and sweet or long and arduous.

This vision for Zama did not emerge fully baked. Brander explained that his DIY project had to undergo countless revisions and focus-group trials to refine its rules and pace. In fact, Brander is still continually refining the game. He is currently trying to create a complementary smartphone app to eliminate the use of paper for mapping out one’s moves.

Despite this constant refinement, Brander claimed, “Making the board game is easy, but it’s all about pedagogy.” Though I could picture his earlier struggles in explaining the game, his straightforward teaching methods now seemed like second nature as he taught me the world of Zama.

The story of Zama comes from a legendary third-century battle between the Roman Empire, led by Scipio Africanus, and the Carthaginian Empire, led by Hannibal Barca. The war simulation in the game is facilitated by stripping away any restrictions on game-piece movement, as well as having the opponents plan and execute their moves simultaneously. Together with your opponent, you create the battlefield with blank tile pieces, or ones with lakes, forests or mountains stencilled on. The creation of the board is purely random, and so each game of psychological warfare will never be the same.

The goal is simple: each player must capture the other’s Commander piece. To do this, the opposing sides must confront each other, with the gameplay split between ‘Planning’ and ‘Action’ phases.

Playing with the creator himself, I was pitifully defeated within the second turn. Creativity and experimentation are indispensable to the game’s strategy, but even with the game’s accessible learning curve, the process of becoming a skillful player is very gradual. However, with enough patience, Zama is an easy game to get invested in.

Board game enthusiasts know that making an engaging two-player game is the not the easiest of tasks. Zama is many things, but its simplest achievement is that it is a fun two-player board game that can be either short and sweet or long and arduous. In a world of leisure dominated by video games and the internet, it’s refreshing to see a thought-provoking game that takes place offscreen.

For more information and a visual representation of the game, visit facebook.com/zamaboardgame or kapipal.com/zamaboardgame. Zama is available at the Gamers’ Guild at McGill and can be purchased at Drawn & Quarterly.

The post Bringing back the board game appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Six Characters opens with a director and his actors during a play rehearsal. Before long, a masked family of six interrupts the rehearsal, claiming to be unfinished characters in search of an author. The six characters explain that they came into this near existence from the mind of an author, who then denied them full life when he abandoned them as figments of his imagination. The Director, played by Mal Cleary, allows The Characters to tell their story; The Director’s Actors become a second audience, and a meta play-within-a-play ensues.

The nameless Characters tell their family history to The Actors in the hope that they will perform their story, granting them full existence. They explain that The Mother (Julianna Astorino) and The Father (Nicholas LePage) have an illegitimate child, The Son (Oskar Flemer), while The Mother subsequently had three more children with another man who died. They tell The Actors of their complex familial relations, centring on The Stepdaughter’s (Mars Zaslavsky) work as a sex worker, due to her family’s poverty. The initial explanation, however, is only one version of the family’s story. As the play goes on, The Actors begin to act out The Characters’ story, and contradicting perspectives and narratives are revealed. In an interview with The Daily, director Anna Gordon pointed out that each of The Characters “has a different telling of the story.”

On stage, the six Characters echo Gordon, admitting that the words that create their reality are tricky and interpretive, and their meanings always subjective. Six Characters challenges the audience to grapple with contradictory accounts that are all, to an extent, both true and false. This dilemma is the essence of the play, as The Director and his Actors struggle to see that representing a universally true life experience on stage is impossible.

“we all live in our own internal worlds and our entire perceptual systems are mediated by our own inner experiences. […] Humans are constantly performing.” – Anna Gordon, director of Six Characters in Search of an Author

Busting the myth of objective truth, Pirandello’s play also collapses the barrier between reality and performance, as The Director and his Actors struggle to wrap their heads around their uncanny situation. Since The Characters are fictitious, yet truly alive on stage, they cannot be understood as anything but corporeal. Their reality is bound to The Actors’ subjective interpretation and performance of that reality, and vice versa. Gordon explained to The Daily that “we all live in our own internal worlds and our entire perceptual systems are mediated by our own inner experiences. […] Humans are constantly performing.” By this logic, theatre and real life are inextricably intertwined. Neither is anything but the active shaping of an ongoing story.

Normally, this classic theatrical trope – the ‘play-within-the-play’ – could be considered overdone, if not for the theme of Six Characters. The existential struggles that define this particular play-within-a-play make it necessary for it to be confusing, fragmented, and mind-boggling.

Thankfully, the Players’ cast and director guide the audience, rendering the confusion beautiful. To contrast the many layers of the plot, the stage is, for the most part, bare. The only constant prop is the white shadow screens, with actors posed behind to display creepy tableaus in the background of the set. The screens add a whole other dimension to the play: while the action on stage occurs, the audience also experiences the reactions of the offstage family, as they fear the upcoming, inevitable pain of the family on stage.

Along with the play’s mind-bending nature, Gordon’s blocking of movement also plays an essential role. The constant and dramatic movement on stage – running, pacing, and falling to one’s knees – simplifies the plot, giving the two audiences space to breathe as they try to understand all that happens.

The costumes, too, enhance not only the show’s aesthetics but also its accessibility. The Characters all wear white plaster masks, which separate Actor from Character. The patterned masks make their faces look as if they had been sketched, much like unfinished drawings. Each character has a different set of eyebrows painted on their mask, which reveal their dominant emotion, such as sadness or anger. The Father’s is hardest to pin down, perfectly in line with his wiliness.

Unfortunately, the masks also prevent facial expression, and as such The Characters rely on their voices to deliver emotion. Much of the time, the actors resort to increasing their volume to convey strong feelings. This constant noise quickly loses its effect, leaving the actors with little variety in their vocal tones. Volume is a powerful tool, but in smaller doses. The actors do, however, maintain believability – particularly LePage and Zaslavsky, who strengthen each other’s acting through the clash between their characters. The masked children are also especially engaging; Flemer’s stage presence is full of energy, complementing Natasha Ukolova’s eerie non-speaking part. Cleary, as The Director, takes full advantage of his unmasked face to convey emotion, his eyes acquiring an excited look whenever The Director was particularly inspired by the play.

Six Characters in Search of an Author is a mix of heavy dramatism, absurdism, meta-theatre, and comedy. Players’ Theatre takes a confusing narrative and turns it into a sophisticated spectacle, inviting you to get lost in the layers.

Six Characters in Search of an Author runs November 19 to 22 at Players’ Theatre (SSMU Building, third floor). Tickets are $6 for students.

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After seven albums, Dan Snaith is beginning to make his accomplishments seem effortless. In Our Love, his latest release, Snaith, who goes by the stage name Caribou, creates a dense forest of electronic patterns, proving himself to be a true master of the dance floor.

The album opens with “Can’t Do Without You,” the perfect summer dance single. Although it appears uncomplicated at first, with lyrics that simply repeat the title over and over, this opening track dives deeper through sonic levels than any typical club song. As a single, “Can’t Do Without You” is beautiful and hopeful – bouncing and rising, with the listener’s heart following close behind. In the context of Our Love, however, the track is tragic. In interviews, Caribou has explained that the constant loop of the words “can’t do without you” points to the dysfunctional traits of love. The album as a whole presents the stark contrast between an idealistic view of love and its melancholic, sometimes obsessive, realities.

In keeping with his particular style of hypnotic dance melodies, Caribou launches his listener into the full sound of “Silver.” “I wish I never met you,” insists Caribou, his voice behind thick layers of trance. In the middle of the album comes “Second Chance,” a key moment in which trance church bells tumble down and form the backdrop for featured artist Jessy Lanza’s pleas of love. “Our Love,” which lends its title to the album, is Caribou’s most uplifting song as it exclusively presents the goodness of love. It’s also full of surprises, such as an outro of violin mixed with digitized beats matched to the bow strokes, all put together by none other than indie hero Owen Pallett.

Near the close of the album in “Back Home,” Caribou breaks out into strikingly honest lyrics: “I know that there’s something missing / does it mean you’re leaving me?” His dismal words segue from a jolting techno rise into an echoic ode as he asks,“Why is this what we’ve chosen?’

In this dance album, Caribou’s sound goes beyond movement; the warmth of Caribou’s crescendoing synths offers an escape from everything corporeal. His closing lyrics in “Your Love Will Set You Free” shift the album’s title from a past feeling to a present one and back again. In this conclusion, Snaith finally exposes the true heart of his album: a man who is powerless to the unpredictability of love.

Tinashe – Aquarius

Aquarius, the debut album from R&B singer Tinashe, is a whirlwind of big emotions and big names. Named after Tinashe’s zodiac sign, the album features well-known collaborators and producers like rappers ScHoolboy Q, A$AP Rocky, and Future. Tinashe began her music career in 2012 with the release of two mixtapes In Case We Die and Reverie. A year later, she released her third mixtape Black Water.

Aquarius explores the ups and downs of being in love. With melodic crooning over a groovy bass and chiming notes, the eponymous first track establishes the tone for the album. “Welcome to my world,” she whispers as the song’s percussive layers fade out. The song is a strong start for an album that only gets murkier as it goes on. Tinashe takes us on an emotional rollercoaster of falling in love, breaking up, and making up. She sings about the profound joys of love in “How Many Times,” then shifts to heartbreak on “All Hands on Deck.” This rollercoaster, though musically pleasing, lacks a peak – we never get a gut-wrenching lament nor a euphoric proclamation of love like Beyoncé’s “XO.” Instead, the album is more of a collection of radio-ready singles, which compromises the logical progression between songs. This is not unforgivable, however, for a young artist trying to establish herself – concept albums can wait.

In Aquarius, Tinashe experiments with quite a number of industry veterans, and does so with mixed results. Chart-topping producers Mike Will Made It and DJ Mustard both offer excellent tracks. But, her album pays the price for its superb production and luscious beats with a jarring incoherence, the result of its array (or disarray) of musical styles. In the end, this disjointedness makes it hard to define Tinashe’s style.

The track with the most potential, “Indigo Child (Interlude),” is cut short after only a minute and a half. While it lasts, it captures the listener with a build-up of distorted bass haunted by trickling piano keys and capped off with reverberating drums that never quite climax. Tracks like these show that Tinashe could, possibly, become an excellent artist. Aquarius has the elements of a great album – vocal passion and quality production – but an effective synthesis of the two has yet to be achieved.

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Jamie Ross: A Script of Desire
The first performer, Montreal-based Jamie Ross, knelt on the stage while a series of radio recordings played, broadcasting interviews on the “fear of our greatest cravings.” Once the audio faded, Ross snapped out of his trance. The performance became informal and very personal as Ross spoke to attendees about his preteen years, blurring the lines between performer and person. He talked about when he used to “hide his faggotry,” and would code his journal entries with “sigil magic” – he explained this as writing in a code which his conscious mind would eventually forget through a form of meditation. The writing is then therapeutic and not traumatic. Ross picked a journal page at random onstage and began to decipher the secret passage. Then suddenly, he decided amidst fits of laughter that the page was too personal. With Ross unable to continue, his show abruptly ended. After the show, Ross told The Daily that although driven to “pretty deep depths of despair” in the past, he is “actively reclaiming that method of self-help” with his performance by divulging his “sigil magic.” Ross retells pockets of his past onstage, and so he is indistinguishable from his art. His performance was both off-putting and captivating in its unusual rawness.

Acid Wave Film & Video Laboratory: Arachne
This terrifyingly trippy video experiment from Montreal video artists Acid Wave Film & Video Laboratory retells the myth of Arachne, the mortal-weaver-turned-spider by the jealous Athena. The film focuses less on the myth itself and more on a presentation of Arachne as a strong, outspoken woman who challenges the hierarchal structure of the gods. Acid Wave also opposes hierarchy in its own creative processes, as Arachne is an experiment in collective art-making. The story was made in seven distinct pieces and afterward woven together with noise music, computerized hands weaving data-like silk, and a stop motion transformation from human to spider. Simply put, the overall effect was very cool.

Amalia Wilson: Poster in Two Acts
The uncanny took a backseat to the mundane with Amalia Wilson’s movement piece, Poster in Two Acts. The abrasive sounds of two coffee makers plugged into an amplifier brought the ordinary to the forefront of the show. Wilson, the lone American performer of the evening, reminded the audience of the beauty in the everyday, performing tasks like folding blankets with a careful movement. In two acts, Wilson explored the possibility of combining theatre and dance into a moving sculpture. Just as Ross embodied his performance, Wilson also says that she and her art are “inextricably connected.” Though unwilling to speak explicitly on the subject, Wilson told The Daily after her show she recently experienced a personal loss. With this experience in mind, she offered a fresh perspective on how to prepare for our own death. For Wilson, life is “an accumulation of tiny movements or actions that aren’t notable.” Though this may appear bleak at first, her outlook is actually hopeful. Every ordinary action could be the last thing she ever does and that in itself gives meaning to her show.

Sunny Nestler: 1-D Simulator
Centring a superb performance around “the childhood experience,” Sunny Nestler showcased an experience that fed off of both comfort and discomfort. Nestler prepared 1-D goggles for the audience that plunges their vision into utter darkness, except for one thin line. Props like earplugs, juice boxes, and illustrations of strange sea creatures with tentacles and spider legs were also provided, creating a clash between childhood stimuli and sensory deprivation. Through its “sensory deprivation aspect,” the “alternate experience” as a group was off-putting, yet still reassuring in its communal nature. Not much happened in the ‘performance,’ leaving the audience to contemplate the senses, depth perception, and general feelings of aberration.

Artists like Nestler are redefining art on the daily, and studios like Rats 9 give them the space to do it. Spaces like these encourage artists to explore the unanswerable question, “what is art?” While Nestler and the other performers did not provide a definite answer, they left audience members with a whole host of questions that will keep Montrealers engaged and excited for what comes next.

The post Up close and experimental appeared first on The McGill Daily.

This year’s Nuit Blanche featured standard street festival staples of workshops, dancing, music performances, and a never-ending flea market. Walking down the avenue, there were sights to see in all directions: to my right was a group of jokester breakdancers with a paraplegic teammate, who during their off time played the Pokémon theme song and pretended to “catch” random festival-goers with mimed Pokéballs. To my left, children crowded together to have their faces painted with beautiful butterfly and floral designs. Transparent trucks featured surreal yoga routines, an unsettling blend of performance and advertising due to the lack of a fourth wall between performer and audience. Smiling salsa dancers encouraged us to join them in their workshop as we walked by, while the main stage featured the generic and muddy beats of DJ Claire. More obvious than Nuit Blanche’s cinema theme was its commercialism – shoe vendors lined the sidewalks, seemingly half of the attraction for festival-goers.

This was, however, only the surface of the festival. Nuit Blanche is all about art and culture, and hot dogs and burgers are only a by-product. Moving past the seemingly never-ending sea of shoes, I discovered the rows of independent artists that make up the festival’s core. Combatting the stereotype that art ‘worth buying’ is found in galleries, each of these artists displayed their innovative and intriguing works along the avenue.

Claude Lapierre, for example, specializes in street photography and documentaries. His major themes include people’s ways of life and unpolished urbanity. His usual photo-taking process is spur of the moment, he told me while showing me a photo of a New Yorker holding an ornate picture frame on the street. “I don’t know this guy,” says Lapierre. “It took ten seconds. So, you know, it’s quick.” His photos, which feature car wheels, birdcages, and fallen shopping carts, contain an element of awkwardness and peculiarity, which stems from a lack of symmetry and sheen. This contradiction between discarded objects and today’s sleek and refined urban living makes for captivating art. Eager to welcome art enthusiasts into his world, the friendly Lapierre keeps his prices relatively low, considering that all of his images are printed on photographic paper instead of with an inkjet printer.

After I spoke with Lapierre, a notably unorthodox art form caught my eye: street concrete and garbage encased in clear, rectangular prisms. The artist Jean-Paul Labelle is deeply influenced by the stress of urbanity, and decided to quite literally recuperate the imprints of stress, in object form, that circulate in the streets. He collects asphalt, pipes, car parts, and gloves, glues the pieces together, and then submerges his sculpture into resin. These moulds could not be more relevant to a street festival, he said, remarking on the fact that his art is the reverse of Nuit Blanche’s theme: instead of painting on the street, he takes the street out of the ground and turns it into art.

After a healthy dose of cold colours from Labelle’s art, I began to search for warmer pieces – and soon came across the paintings of Félix Girard, which bring to mind the artistic board game Dixit. Girard’s work emphasizes bright colours, drawing influence from childhood day dreams. He tackles many different kinds of images and subjects, from anthropomorphic mushrooms to happy musicians playing in an ensemble. The two elements that truly unite his works are his drawing style and his colour palette, which favours autumn colours in particular. “I have a story in my head for each painting, but I want the people to see what they want, too,” he said.

Opposite to Girard was graphic designer Geneviève Le Guerrier-Aubry, who told me that story has never had any importance in her art. She begins with a blank sheet of paper on which she glues one real butterfly or dragonfly. Then, the insect becomes her inspiration, determining the atmosphere and the colour palette. She creates abstract shapes around it, using a combination of pastels, acrylic paint, and construction paper, the atmosphere evoking flight, instability, and gravity. Once finished, she scans the images to properly conserve them and then cleans up the sides of the page, so that a white void surrounds her expanded shape.

Each of these diverse artists arrived at the same conclusion when asked about the value of Nuit Blanche: they relish the chance to talk to curious observers and allow their personal artist’s touch to seep in as they discuss their work. The artists are happy to connect with festival-goers – that’s why they came, grateful for this chance to display themselves and their crafts (and the sales don’t hurt either). Opportunities to see accessible art, not to mention converse with the artists, are not commonplace. Nuit Blanche brings artists and attendees together at a personal level, chatting casually or listening attentively to each other’s thoughts on the work at hand. People go to Nuit Blanche to connect with the art, without glass and ‘do not touch’ signs in the way.

In the end, there was no theme, cinematic or otherwise, that tied the street festival together – it was simply an amalgamation of its various booths. While talking to spectators like myself, however, I realized that street festivals don’t need to be curated like a gallery. The commercialism or lacklustre acts that might have hurt a more formal cultural event could not detract from the power of a street festival where everyone – artists, businesses, and spectators – feeds off of each other’s energy. Without the interaction between artist and viewer, galleries can only imitate the depth that Nuit Blanche sur Tableau Noir adds to its art, by situating it within a community.

The post Get outside of the gallery appeared first on The McGill Daily.

For much of his career, Burial (William Emmanuel Bevan on his driver’s license) has had a reputation for making music that evokes a very specific emotional palette. His sound is abrasive, and in the past has made me feel cold and scared. There is a particular mood for listening to Burial, usually a solitary one.

With Rival Dealer, his newest three-song EP, Burial attempts to reinvent his music and try something different. All of the echoing gloom fans loved him for is still there, but for the first time his sound is uplifting and more hopeful. Vocals take the stage in this EP with prominence like never before, some of them exploring themes of LGBTQ-based bullying.

The first song and title track is a traditionally Burial-sounding song. The urgency of “Rival Dealer” is unmistakable and there seems to be a sort of battle between the airy vocals and the beats, each terrified of the other. “You are not alone,” a haunting echo, is heard often in all three songs. The last two minutes of the title track peel away to a synth lullaby, segueing flawlessly into the melodic “Hiders.” This ballad slowly rises into a heartbreaking ode to loneliness, repeating “you don’t want to be alone” in a pained voice.

The third and final song, “Come Down to Us,” is the climax of the album. It begins with a hollow church chorus and transitions within the minute into a psychedelic sitar loop blended with an auto-tuned gospel voice. Burial’s soft, muddy beats resonate subtly and add a sonic depth to the song, creating a warm and quieter atmosphere. “Come Down to Us” changes yet again and becomes a strong, twinkling sweep of synth, yet still remains deeply rooted in the ground.

Burial ends this masterpiece with one final statement, though this time non-musical. He samples The Matrix and Cloud Atlas co-director Lana Wachowski’s Human Rights Campaign speech from last year, “Without examples, without models I began to believe voices in my head […] that I will never be lovable,” bringing the EP to a close. The emotional progression of the songs – from fear to isolation to acceptance – almost resembles a concept album. With experimentation, Burial has widened his range while maintaining his classic sound. It pays off, and Rival Dealer gives listeners a newfound intrigue for his future work.

–Christian Favreau

Frankie Cosmos – pure suburb
Unsigned

Described by lead singer Greta Kline as “the pride soldiers show when they are returning home from battle victorious,” Frankie Cosmos returns after 45 digital albums (many of which consist of six to ten tracks, some of which are as short as 18 seconds) with pure suburb. The release of pure suburb is an exercise in setting vulnerability and honesty to music.

The backbone of the album is the stripped-down quality of the vocals and the revealing honesty in her lyrics. The album opens with “ballad of freedom” as Kline croons in multitracked third person “She feels in between/feeling and nothing.” Each track that follows is a raw narrative of Cosmos’ love for her dog, New York, and Ronnie Mystery (a pseudonym for Kline’s bandmate and partner Aaron Maine). The instrumentation takes a back seat to the vocals – quietly strummed guitar, purring organ, almost no percussion. It follows a tradition of twee indie pop, somewhat precious, but at least emotionally true. Most of these tracks would be right at home on the Juno soundtrack. Closing with “your name,” Kline reflects on the candid nature of musicality with “Your name is so great, I make the mistake of making it known,” then proceeds to burst into a chorus chanting, “oh Ronnie, oh oh oh Ronnie.”

The only flaw in the short and addictive tracklist of Frankie Cosmos’ pure suburb is that 17 minutes of audio leave you craving more. The songs evoke a connection with the listener that can only be reached through hearing such sincerity in narratives set to soft acoustics, such as in “bottom lip.” Kline’s personal character is so present in every track, and with lyrics like “Talk to me, I’ll tell you a gooey never ending story,” it even feels as though she’s singing directly to you. The melodies are simple but reverberate with deliberation as Kline gently nudges the boundaries of the minimalistic indie rock genre.

–Gelila Bedada

The Venetia Fair – Basically Just Does Karaoke
Unsigned

On their Facebook page, Boston hardcore combo The Venetia Fair claims that they aim to make music that is “theatric, chaotic, catchy, and sometimes a little silly but not too silly because it’s also serious business.” This translates to a sound not unlike a messier, less-ambitious Panic! At The Disco.

Well, maybe just a different kind of ambitious. Where Panic! makes frequent attempts at sonic evolution like their classic-rock forebears, The Venetia Fair seems content to record a cover album that invites unfavourable comparisons to those same musical giants. The first three tracks are unassailable classics of pop music: “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen, “Come on Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners, and “Rock Lobster” by the B-52s; all venerated and overplayed, fixtures on the sort of “100 Best Songs of All Time According to Baby Boomers” countdowns that VH1 used to air.

But apparently The Venetia Fair wants to hear them again. Unsurprisingly, they’ve got nothing to add to “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Their take on “Lobster” is weirdly dark, somehow managing to keep the song’s original campy feel, but siphon out the fun.

The back half of the album consists of slightly less venerated source material, but little improvement. Their cover of Green Day’s multipart pop-punk suite “Jesus of Suburbia” lacks the drive and dynamics of the original. “Camouflage, Camouflage,” originally by post-hardcore favourites The Blood Brothers, is short of a credible sense of urgency and mania.

Strangely enough, it’s “Come on Eileen” that’s served the best by The Venetia Fair’s puckish spirit. The original already had a bit of messy, bar-band energy to it, and isn’t hurt by a little extra volume. Not that this is a new revelation: the Dropkick Murphys have been doing celtic folk-via-hardcore punk for close to two decades now. Maybe that’s the problem with The Venetia Fair: they’re not selling anything you can’t buy better down the street. If you’re looking for a hardcore pastiche of Queen, there’s Foxy Shazam, and dramatic, kitchen-sink emo is far from rare these days. Basically consists of the worst types of cover: not bad, but exactly competent enough to make a listener long for the original.

–Hillary Pasternak

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings – Give the People What They Want
Daptone

Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings is an 11-piece band whose fifth album, Give the People What They Want, does just that. Press “play” and snappy, toe-tapping tunes pour forth, peppered with Jones’ smooth, soulful, and strong vocals. The first of the ten songs on the album, “Retreat!,” contrary to its title, surges forward into this melodious and fun retro-chic musical world. Saxophones, drums, trumpet, electric guitars, and tambourine complement Jones and her backup singers’ peppy interjections.

The second track, “Stranger to My Happiness,” features Jones’ reprimands to the person who “stole [her] heart away.” This turned out to be bitterly ironic, as the song itself stole my heart away by really bringing the soul. Here’s a challenge: don’t dance, I dare you. The total 1960s-influenced ditty “Making Up and Breaking Up Over Again” is absolutely repetitive and catchy. You’ll feel like a co-conspirator with “Get Up and Get Out,” as Jones croons, “No one can know that you are here” to her on-again, off-again lover. The ninth track, “People Don’t Get What They Deserve,” brings the cool with its punch, staccato sax riffs, building crescendos, and a chorus that almost reads (or, in this case, sings) like a line from Queen’s anthemic “We Will Rock You.” If the proverbs have taught us anything, it’s that “Cheaters never prosper,” a lesson Jones reiterates in this ninth song.

If you haven’t picked up on this yet, Jones has a really powerful and supple voice. The album experience is like listening to The Supremes circa 2014, but much, much richer timbre-wise, and more tonally satisfying. Soulfully warm and comforting, like the aural equivalent of a deep dish of mac and cheese, this funky album is the perfect antidote to the dreary days of January. So what are you waiting for? Get the funk onto your feet.

– Reba Wilson

The post The Daily reviews appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Matador / Other People

After a rather forgettable three-song EP, producer Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington team up once again for their debut album, Psychic.

The journey into Harrington and Jaar’s ambient world begins with “Golden Arrow.” Its slow, varied build, lasting a total of 11 minutes, may not be a casual listener’s favourite song, but its importance to the album as a whole is immeasurable. Not only does “Golden Arrow” act as an apt introduction to the atmospheric album, it also gives insight as to where Jaar is heading as an artist. Harrington’s experimental guitar riffs, jumping back and forth from bouncy to mellow, complement Jaar’s organ-like production, creating a perfectly full and haunting sound.

The album hits other high points with “Heart” and “Paper Trails,” both featuring a mix of soft, feel-good guitar licks with airy vocals and synth. Shortly after, the album loses its momentum. “Freak Go Home” is similar to “Golden Arrow,” although it lacks a sense of direction. To be fair, there are brief redeeming moments within the song, but, as a whole, it doesn’t keep up with the rest of the album. In fact, it’s not until the very end that Psychic proves itself to be one of the strongest albums released this year, tying up all loose ends with its poppy, echoing beats. The song “Metatron” concludes listeners’ short visit into the duo’s minds in a nicely satisfying way.

Psychic takes listeners on a journey, one that is sometimes lively and sometimes dark and unpleasant; as Jaar puts it, “the project’s called Darkside for a reason.” Psychic attempts to pack so much into a short time, triggering conflicting emotional responses within a single song, which may leave some feeling a little disoriented. This album may not please all first-time listeners, but for those who give it a chance, it’s an experience worth having.

-Christian Favreau

Lazer Kitty – Moons

Unsound America

Described as a Seattle “experimental-improvisational-space-rock trio who make soundtracks for the cosmos,” Lazer Kitty’s newest album Moons is nothing short of ethereal. The trio’s soundscape, inventive and textured, illustrates a cosmic sound infused with full bodied swells of synth punctuated with a crashing wash of cymbals.

Transporting listeners into the dark caverns of space, Moons feels like floating in zero gravity as breathtaking nebula swirl before your eyes. The album, sound-packed with a crossfire of synth waves, puncturing drums, and heavy bass, is designed for the fantastical mind. Although initially alienating, Moons grows increasingly more mesmerizing with each listen. The rippling instrumentals are mysterious and hypnotic, the abstract synth noises wander and rove, but not without intent.

From beginning to end, Moons offers a kaleidoscopic eccentricity. Opening with “Hyperion,” the extraterrestrial vibes launch into a funky melody – an eight minute escape into a galaxy far, far away. Guiding us into a lyricless space odyssey, track melts into track. “Dino Wipeout,” as the title suggests, has an ominous vibe, the guitar sombre but ending on a calming note. The celestial mood  combines a progressive rock rhythm that tinges “Pilgrimage” with indie psychedelic undertones and strikes a mystical groove in “Titan.” But, with other tracks on Moons, the band has deviated far from anything resembling a straightforward song, which leaves tracks like “Luna” and “Io” resembling something of a thought experiment. This album is most certainly for the audacious but earth-bound listener, with moments of cohesion, but  leaves more to be desired in terms of substance. The music doesn’t demand our attention, but it is these unfocused elements of Moons that make for perfect background, catering to a crowd that can appreciate the intangible yet abstract quality.

-Gelila Bedada

Blue Sky Black Death – Glaciers

Fake Four

Glaciers’ first track, “I” (Blue Sky Black Death is anything but creative with its track titles), plunges listeners right into its own world with a slightly cheesy 1980s-soundtrack-gone-dark sound. Sporadic vocals and echoing sound effects make Glaciers’ sound, like its cover art looks, eerily intriguing. At times beautifully engaging, Glaciers is an album with highs and lows, a compelling musical exploration that fails to reach as far as it could.

Blue Sky Black Death, hailing from Seattle, Washington, is a production duo composed of Kingston Maguire and Ian Taggart, better known, respectively, as Kingston and Young God. The duo is known for their unique artistic process, mixing live instrumentation and sampling to create a multi-genre, layered sound. Glaciers, their fourth album, has a musical fluidity reminiscent of Montreal-based art rock band Braids and electronic legend Burial, an intricate bubbly pop meets ambient dubstep.

The duo provides soothing ambient instrumentals, with echoing vocals that can be a touch overdone, like on “II.” “IV” features vocals bordering on the lackluster and repetitive, but redeems itself with textured instrumental layering – pretty much as pop as ambient electronic music can get. With only one of its five tracks under ten minutes, Glaciers lives up to the immersive goal of ambient music, sometimes to the point where a listener might actually forget they’re listening to anything distinctive. Only in “III” does Glaciers’ much-heralded hip hop sound truly take centre stage, giving the track a stronger rhythmic backbone. In fact, “III” is the album’s strongest track, combining the rest of the album’s light ethereal instrumentals with a solid bassline and vocal hip hop touches. Turning up the hip hop influence a notch higher would have given Glaciers the chance to flourish that much more as an explorative electronic album. As it is, Glaciers risks falling through its shaky foundation.

-Nathalie O’Neill

The This Many Boyfriends Club – Die or Get Rich Trying

Whatever happened to reverb? The alt-rock music of the 1980s and 1990s was dripping in the stuff. Sometimes it was used to dreamy and decadent effect by shoegaze and dream pop acts like My Bloody Valentine, sometimes to create avalanches of sonic aggression (see every grunge act ever). These days, listeners looking for layers of swirling fuzz to swaddle their ears generally steer toward the electronic end of the Pitchfork spectrum, where echoing, distorted synths are thick on the ground. But there are those that prefer their drone old school, originating from guitar strings rather than computer keys.

For this particular flavour of music geek, we have The This Many Boyfriends Club (Cas Kaplan, Andrew Miller, Lara Oundjian, Veronica Danger Winslow-Danger, and Evan Magoni, among them two McGill alumni and one current student), who clearly seek to revive the ancient age of reverb. The early 1990s indie-rock scene is writ large across their new EP Die or Get Rich Trying, in the intertwined boy-girl vocals, the burbling rumble of the bass, the alternating roar and jangle of the guitars. This is especially evident in the endearingly cluttered quality of This Many’s arrangements – everything seems to overlap a bit, as if each instrumental track is racing the others to a song’s finish line. At times, it seems that the band’s musical intake is entirely limited to the years between 1988 and 1992.

While This Many’s focus could be called narrow, there’s no questioning the fact that they know their little corner of the pop music universe exceptionally well. They’ve nailed the Pixies’ stop-start dynamics on opener “Alright,” and “The Swan” is essentially a slightly shouty My Bloody Valentine track with a bit of chugging guitar on the verses for texture. They manage to effectively straddle the reverb divide, using noise to channel punkish angst and ambient melody. Get Rich Trying clocks in at a skimpy 10:41 for five tracks, and it’s unlikely to garner a terribly wide audience. But anyone looking for alt rock nostalgia is going to find just the shot of adrenaline they need

–Hillary Pasternak

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The plot of Letters to my Grandma jumps from protagonist Malobee’s story in Montreal to her grandmother’s life in India, but it also alternates between past and present, vividly retelling a story of the Hindu-Muslim conflicts of post-partition India. Playing a total of four characters – Malobee (an Indian immigrant to Canada), her grandmother, her mother, and a Muslim nurse –- Bhojani jumps back and forth onstage, with only scarves and sound effects to differentiate her characters.

Though the bulk of the play consists of back-and-forth conversations between grandmother and granddaughter, the story takes a turn when Malobee admits to her grandmother that she is dating Mark, a Muslim (unwelcome news for her narrow-minded grandmother). Instantly, a wall comes up between the two women and the communication ends. The two women’s interactions with Muslim characters deepen throughout the play, hinting at a potential for personal growth and acceptance.

Bhojani needed to fully understand the intention of each character’s lines to take on this “amazing challenge” of playing four different roles, she explains. When asked how she was able to keep a clear picture of all her parts, Bhojani replied that she had “sat down with the director and mapped out each [role].” To find the humanity of each of her characters, Bhojani walked around as each and exaggerated every physical movement. The focus needed for this task proved to be even more laborious when considering the story’s non-linear plot. But it was worth it: this tactic of showing only brief scenes of the very different lives of the two women proved to be very effective, leaving the audience wanting more and yet simultaneously satisfying it with heart–wrenching moments.

“For me, the main thing to take away is that change is possible,” says playwright Anusree Roy. Multiple interpretations of the story exist – some in which Malobee’s boyfriend is British, some in which he is Muslim. When asked why Roy had chosen to make her Mark Muslim, she admitted: “This is something like the fourth version [of the play]. I wanted to get it right.” For now, Roy says she has decided to focus on the Muslim/Hindu conflict rather than a British/Hindu one so as to better link the conflicts the characters face in Canada with the ones they face in India. Roy hopes that these conflicts deliver her message.

Similarly, director Lib Spry wanted audience members to be able to reflect on the “decisions we make in life, why we make them, and how they can affect future generations,” she explains. But more than anything, both writer and director wanted people to be moved by the story.

The beauty of Roy’s short play (clocking in at a mere 60 minutes) is that the audience can easily understand and universalize its simple moral. Coupled with a devoted woman portraying the depth, but also the comedic quirks, of each character, this tale made for an exceptional performance.

Letters to my Grandma is running at the Teesri Duniya Theatre at 3819 Calixa-Lavallée through October 13.

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