Fringe Arts
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Fringe ArtsWacky and weird
Among the bigwigs of Montreal’s summer music festivals—ahem, Montreal Jazz Festival—stands a small but significant festival that is as wacky and interesting as its name. The Suoni Per Il Popolo festival is gracing Montreal with its tenth year with an odd lineup of mysterious and obscure acts.
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Fringe ArtsThe beginning of an end for Isis
It’s the final curtain call for Boston-bred and LA-based post-metal outfit Isis. After 13 years and five full-length releases—as well as a myriad number of EPs and live albums—the Ipecac Record recording artists’ appearance at Club Soda on June 23 will be their last show ever.
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Fringe ArtsArcade Fire fails to bring the heat
I fell in love with Arcade Fire with the release of their groundbreaking album Funeral and had my devotion reignited with Neon Bible. I don’t believe there is much chance or much point in trying to accomplish what previous albums did. According to the interviews given upon the release of this new single, it seems the band agrees with me.
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Fringe ArtsCan’t stop, won’t stop
Two weeks ago, somewhere between the Greater Toronto area and Montreal, a high-priority freight train whizzed from Lower to Upper Canada carrying some unexpected cargo. As the train rushed towards Montreal, local songwriter Sean Nicholas Savage sat between two containers on a small plank, dodging CN Rail officials and writing his new album, Mutual Feelings of Respect and Admiration due out on Arbutus Records this summer.
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Fringe Arts
A literary first aid kit
In a dying print culture, magazines like GQ and Wired have attempted to make their mags more multimedia–with barcodes that can be scanned by cell phones to have stories sent to your inbox or holographic displays of Robert Downey Jr. or the Enterprise appearing in your laptop’s built-in webcam.
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Fringe ArtsDesigning poetry
What do the words “radical typographic experimentation” mean to you? Nothing? Then you need to get yourself a copy of Four Minutes To Midnight (23:56).
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Fringe ArtsAnglo writers on Montreal survival tactics
Every year, hundreds of young anglophone writers are lured to Montreal by English and creative writing programs and by the promise of living in a city with a vibrant and diverse cultural life. And every year, hundreds of students graduate from those English programs and move back to cities like Toronto, where they seek out work as writers, playwrights and graphic novelists. For many, the challenges of trying to make a living as an Anglo writer in Quebec seem too great. Blue Metropolis’s Reading The World From Montreal panel will feature four English-speaking writers discussing the difficulties of being an Anglo writer in Quebec.
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Fringe ArtsLiving on the edge of appropriateness
Who wants to wait to be discovered when self-discovery is right at your fingertips? Daniel Pelissier sure doesn’t. “I’m not going to wait for someone to ask me to publish my photos, I’ll just do it myself and have fun with it,” said Pelissier, co-founder of Young Healers, a local photography zine that opts for a DIY esthetic. The zine publishes photographs of emerging artists Pelissier deems worthy of attention.
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Fringe ArtsIt’s all true
“When I was making the zine, I never let the impermanence of the medium change the way I wrote,” said Jeff Miller of the 15 years he spent writing his Ghost Pine zine. “I would always make sure that it was not just good enough, but as good as it possibly could be, which I think is one of the only ways to grow as a writer.”
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Fringe Arts
Andrew Piper predicts the future of the printed word
Books have survived the gramophone, radio, television and the audio-book. But will they survive the iPad?
