For the month of January we are streaming Hold Back Light Show in the music section of winhara.com.

Hold Back Light Show was our debut album, recorded over the span of 2 years with Byron Kent Wong, and released in October of 2008.  (Some of you may remember our release party at The Rivoli in Toronto).

The tracking, mixing and mastering of this album took us to many strange and wonderful places (Shogun Labs, Homework Studio, Canterbury Music Co., Jao Carvahlo Mastering) and introduced us to equally wonderful people.

If you would like to get a copy of this record for your very own you can do so in a couple of ways.  Hold Back Light Show is being sold at Soundscapes in Toronto.

To download a digital copy or order a CD online use these links:

Enjoy!

In 2008 we released an album entitled Hold Back Light Show.  We want to know which of these songs are your favourites so that we can make sure to keep them in the live set!  Thanks for taking the time give us some feedback!

These songs can be streamed on our MySpace page.

Hold Back Light Show is available on iTunes.

A few months I discovered a site called Musebin (musebin.com) which serves up 1 line music reviews.  140 characters or less.  Music reviews for the Twitter generation.

Great.  More internet A.D.D.  Not only am I not going to spend the time to go pick up a music rag and read a whole review, I’m not going to read more that 1 line now?  Except that even when I do read full reviews they are usually crap.  They trash an album simply because it’s Pop.  Or rave about garbage because ‘nobody gets it, it must be genius’.  Or they’re so long-winded I have know idea whether they liked it or not.

I hate pitchfork.

Musebin works like this:  You log in.  You write a one line review of an album – love it, hate it, don’t care, whatever.  Now the part that makes it worthwhile:  Other people read your review.  They can then Agree or Disagree with it.  Multiple review of an album each rated by other people for accuracy creates a much more useful picture of an album than a page written by some dude with a beef against making music AND a living.

What’s the point if you end up reading a bunch of reviews anyway?  It’s the original one line that grabs your attention in the first place.  My latest discovery was an album by a band called Elbow…

(5 minutes later)

… And of course now I can’t find the original review I was looking for, but it said something like “Parachutes era Coldplay meets DJ Shadow”.  That sucked me in, I read more reviews, checked on the previews on iTunes and bought the album.  It’s Awesome.  Buy it.

Even better is that Musebin will send you an email with the 10 best reviews in it every week or so.  And if you have twitter their twitter feed is pushing out new reviews all the time.  I discovered Byetone via twitter post:

“As rhythmic as it is ambient, as gothic as it is dance, as lush as it is stark, this album is a masterpiece.”

The real strength of the site is of course in its membership, so check it out.  The more people who review and rate other peoples reviews, the more useful it becomes for all.  If the radio, Much Music or Pitchfork haven’t turned you onto anything good lately, Musebin just might.

www.Musebin.com

I had heard about it, talked to people and theorized about it.  But I never really got it until I talked to my brother the other day.  Listening to music has changed.

There are six years between Dave and I – not a very big age difference – but we are worlds apart when it comes to how we experience recorded music.  He hasn’t bought CD in his life; I’m staring at a rack full of them.  He listens to songs one at a time; I listen to albums.   We discussed this while he sifted through songs (I should say singles) on his iPod touch.  He said the reason I buy music is because I’m a musician.  Is that the only reason?

Somewhere between Dave and I there is a watershed age.  It may not be a hard line.  Everyone at every age rips off music.  But for those under the divide the cognition has changed.  Instead of getting music for free, for them, music is free.  That’s the way it has always been.

How old are you?  What are your music habits?