Having recovered from Canadian Music Week, we have a few observations to share beyond the usual “this band played, they were good” reviews. (more)

3 a.m. is no time to begin writing. But Canadian Music Week has had me up all night, bouncing from one sweaty, gross venue to the next. I guess many of us will have to do the same thing today. It’ll be a tough slog. Toronto’s Dentata are much tougher than that. In fact, they’re the most hard-bitten thing you’re likely to hear during CMW. In what seems to be a nebulous mix of indie rock bands and singer-songwriters (and I must stress I love seeing these artists as well), Dentata are mean, scary, and rough. (more)

DD/MM/YYYY were one of the first bands we covered on Resonancity, so when we heard four-fifths of the band were regrouping to form the new group, Absolutely Free, inviting them to play our CMW showcase was a total no-brainer. But since they don’t have any music online beyond a few live videos, and since they’ve only played a handful of shows, we decided to meet up with multi-instrumentalist Moshe Rozenberg in a park in Kensington Market to get a sense of the new direction.
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Detroit industrial punk duo Bad Party – who make their Toronto debut at our CMW showcase this Saturday – mix pounding drum machinery and ripping guitar that makes you want to both dance around and rough someone up at the same time. But while frontman Nate Savino has a reputation for bad-assery, I found out he does not condone fighting, or at least not bullying. (more)

Today we continue our roll-out of previews for our CMW showcase with another song premiere, this time from electro-horror-punks Cellphone. If you’re not familiar with the band that may have a little to do with their defiantly unGoogle-able name, but it’s actually their second moniker. The band recently rebranded from the more descriptive Skitso-Convo.
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Gearing up for our first Resonancity showcase at the Comfort Zone this Saturday has us very excited. We stand behind every band on the bill, though we know none of them are exactly industry-friendly. So, starting today and running every weekday up until the show, we’ve decided to give you a preview of each band. Today, we start with local noise-makers Connoisseurs of Porn.

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Saturday, March 24 will be a landmark day for Resonancity. That’s the day we extend our reach from the comfortable confines of the internet to the sinister, oft-raided, and, if we’re being totally honest, kind of creepy (but awesome) Comfort Zone. The infamous den of iniquity will be the setting of our very first live Resonancity showcase, a Canadian Music Week bill of skuzzy, attention-grabbing rock and roll. (more)

About halfway through Oneiric, I began envisioning the album as the soundtrack to a significantly lower-key prequel to Christopher Nolan’s Inception. My imaginary prequel would begin after Leo DiCaprio and Marion Cotillard wash up on the shores of Limbo and ends when they tear themselves out of the dream (this is all quickly summarized in the film. I always thought it could have been a standalone tale). The prequel follows them while they live as gods inside their own heads, and live a lifetime together in the space of a few minutes. Life is good inside Limbo, until the dream begins to overtake their memories of reality. (more)

Being neighbours to the U.S., we can all relate to living beside a culture-sucking mammoth. And I suspect Owen Sound, a small city in Southern Ontario, feels the same way about Toronto. (more)

Electronic music in Toronto is presently enjoying some serious love (see Trust, Austra, Azari & III etc.). Jumping into the party is Phèdre, a collaboration between April Aliermo and Daniel Lee of Polaris Prize-nominees Hooded Fang, and Airick Woodhead of Doldrums fame. Eschewing the surf rock feel of Hooded Fang’s critically acclaimed release, Tosta Mista, Phèdre comes off like an ode to electronic decadence. It’s a lush, sensual album, and you’re likely going to want to get your dance on soon after hearing it. (more)

Between chilling pool-side with Ty Segall and trolling the streets of Memphis for Gonerfest, you might describe local photographer Ivy Lovell as “embedded” in garage rock. She’s right in that scene like HST was with the Hells, and no doubt has a story to tell. (more)

You might notice our third annual Bands to Watch list has taken a stylistic turn from previous years. While Toronto’s rock and punk scenes mature, the electronic music and hip hop coming out of our cultural patchwork is impossible to ignore (see: the 2011 success of Austra, Azari & III, The Weeknd and Drake). A slew of local albums were on critics’ 2011 year-end lists, yet no one’s talking about a “Toronto sound” (like Montreal circa 2003 or San Francisco circa now). That’s because we don’t have one. But interestingy, we harbour fertile pockets across multilple genres, so we tried to capture a cross-section of that on this list. – Marsha Casselman, Richard Trapunski and Chris Wright (more)