M FOR MONTREAL – FIVE TO WATCH
Montreal is the Canadian cultural powerhouse that gave us The Arcade Fireplace, 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 Struggle can be there too, however within the meantime listed here are 5 acts that might 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 serious 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 observe 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. Just like Grandaddy, they use mundane imagery to discover their cultural historical past and its influence on the trendy 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
Sluggish Down Molasses
There’s a clue to this Saskatoon, Saskatchewan four-piece’s sound in each their band’s title and track titles similar to I Want The Darkness and Nihilist Whisper. Its noisy, intense, dense frequencies have been constructing over 5 albums in 15 years, the most recent – 2021’s Minor Deaths – looking for slightly mild 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 anticipate 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 power and influence. 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 jot down vertically as a substitute of horizontally”.
https://sunglaciers.bandcamp.com
Emma Beko
Montreal native Emma Beko comes throughout as a sort of hip-hop influenced Kae Tempest. You can even marvel if her deeply private self-analysis is slightly too over-sharing, however there’s a compelling poetic high quality to her unflinching honesty. Simply two EPs into her solo profession – the most recent, Digital Injury, launched earlier this 12 months – Beko is fearlessly experimental, a Christine And The Queens with extreme nervousness points.
https://emmabeko.bandcamp.comSUBSCRIBE TO LTW