New Music International Festival celebrates creative deviancy
Now in its third year, the Montreal New Music International Festival Festival brings contemporary composers and musicians from across the globe to Montreal for 13 days of concerts, conferences and workshops. This year's MNM Festival boasts an assemblage of 72 composers, 28 ensembles, 11 conductors, 23 soloists and over 700 musicians, all presented in partnership with the Société de Musique Contemporaine du Québec, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, CBC Radio Two (93.
Bryan Poole discusses kraut-rock and angst
Among even the best of contemporary musicians, longevity is a rare trait. The most promising artists can easily be shrugged off after a sub-par sophomore release. Of Montreal challenges this trend. Its most recent release from Polyvinyl Records, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer, marks another high point in the band's nearly decade-long musical career.
B-grade comic book adaptation done right
As the latest addition to a long line of second-string superhero movies, Ghost Rider may not blaze any particularly new or exciting trails for the genre, but unlike so many of its cinematic contemporaries, it approaches inherently silly subject matter with enough tongue-in-cheek bombast to save it from eternal damnation.
Last Friday, the Los Angeles Times reported that the long anticipated reunion of Van Halen's (more or less) original lineup has been cancelled. Following the January announcement that the hair-metal demigods would finally ascend to the musical Valhalla that is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the promise of the band's reunion with original frontman and rock icon David Lee Roth has dissipated, as if inevitably.
Billy Bob goes to space!
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to notice that the title of the Michael Polish's (Northfork, Twin Falls Idaho) latest film, Astronaut Farmer, is incongruous. What's more, NASA's wholesome heroes have recently lost some of their glorified mystique: both the film and the recent incarceration of astronaut Lisa Nowak (arrested for the attempted murder of a romantic rival for her extra-marital affair lover) suggest that being a good parent is a loftier aspiration than flying to the moon.