All Posts By

Angela Korra'ti

Music

Newfoundland vs. Quebec: FIGHT!

Okay, all you bands over there in Newfoundland? You b’ys aren’t going to take this MIGHTY QUEBECOIS INVASION of my iTunes playlists lying down, are you?

My fellow Great Big Sea fans, especially those of you who live or have lived in Newfoundland, or who are otherwise well-versed with Newfoundland music: I call upon you: who are the Newfoundland bands I should be investigating, to continue this whole delightful theme of “other bands I should check out while Great Big Sea is on hiatus”? Here are Newfoundland bands I already have albums by:

The Irish Descendants (Across the Water, Rollin’ Home, So Far So Good, Southern Shore)
The Fables (all of their discs)
The Punters (Certified Trad. Music, Songs for a Sunday Morning)
Shanneyganock (Volume VII)

Recommendations for any specific other albums by any of these groups welcome!

Also: the Navigators have already been brought to my attention, but so far I haven’t been able to find their albums sold somewhere where I can actually get them. Recommendations on that also welcome!

And, anybody not on this list, I want to hear about them. Bonus points if they’re anyone GBS has had dealings with, extra bonus points if there are bouzouki players involved! GBS-like style–i.e., high energy, with big full harmony on the vocals, the more people in a band singing the better–is ideal, although I’ll take smaller groups or solo artists too!

September 15, 2011 by
Quebecois Music

Not done swooning over Quebecois trad yet

So a kind Internet passerby (thank you, M Kenney!) has just alerted me to two pieces of Critical Information:

One, that Éric Beaudry, the brother of Simon and current member of La Bottine Souriante, is also in a band called De Temps Antan which requires checking out.

Two, and much more importantly, that Éric and Simon HAVE AN ALBUM. I have just ordered the hell out of this, since CD Baby has it, and this just trumped my planned orders of further LCE and LBS albums. This album should go very, very well with the ones by Nicolas Boulerice and Oliviers Demers that I just ordered, too!

(How do you say “gimme gimme gimme gimme” or “grabbyhands” in French? Or perhaps “CD Baby ROCKS?”)

Exploration of the Beaudrys’ site clues me in as well that OMG, Éric plays the cittern! He just got significantly more interesting, because citterns? Almost as awesome as bouzoukis! \0/

Furthermore, userinfoscrunchions has informed me that I should check out a group called Mes Aïeux as well. So this week’s clearly shaping up to be the week everybody on the Internet throws me their Quebecois trad recommendations! Keep ’em coming, you guys, I’m loving this!

September 14, 2011 by
Movies

Bring out your crap, redux

It has been proposed to me by userinfostickmaker, O Internets, that a little Danish flick called Reptilicus is a potential candidate for a future Murkworks Movie Suckoff! Inspection of this flick’s IMDB entry shows promise.

But for a proper, truly well executed Movie Suckoff, my friends, we require another vital component: a Sci-Fi Pictures Original, ideally in theme with this movie, to compete!

So I put it to you: name me your titles! What’s a good Sci-Fi Pictures Original Crapfest we could put this movie up against?

September 13, 2011 by
Quebecois Music

Dangerous Podorythmie is my Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer cover band

Hey, look what I found! Video clips of the Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer concert, from the album I was posting about before! \0/

This one is “Yes Very Well”, the second part of Track 10 on En personne, where it suddenly turns into an entirely different and MUCH MORE LIVELY song. The gent singing lead on this is roaring out those lyrics, and now that I can see he’s a skinny rake of a dude, I’m all the more impressed by the force of his voice! It’s this specific song that, the first time I listened to the album this past weekend, made me go HOLY CRAP, they are much, MUCH better live than in the studio, and they don’t suck in the studio.

And this one, right here? This is what I mean when I say that there’s just something absolutely pure and primal about Quebecois mouth reels and podorythmie, making music with nothing more than your mouth and feet. That video is “Les Turlutes”, track 16 on the album! Look for the podorythmie stomp-off about three minutes in.

And now I can tell that one of their podorythmie guys must be one of the two of them who used to be in La Bottine Souriante. I am almost certain that the guy in the left-hand chair (left from the viewer perspective) is the one who was singing lead when La Bottine Souriante performed at Chateau Ste. Michelle back in 2000, the first time I ever saw Great Big Sea in concert. So he’s either Michel Bordeleau or André Marchand. Either way, he TOTALLY pwns the guy in the other chair, in the stomp-off in the second video.

Some brief audience reaction shots in the second vid, too, show that the audience is clearly getting into it, and there’s a bit of Quebecois-style vertical movement going on there. Or given that this is Quebecois music, maybe le mouvement vertical! I very, very much want to see these gentlemen perform in person now. I may fangirl all over Great Big Sea and Le Vent du Nord for having pretty pretty bouzouki players, but if you’re bringing it hard enough? You don’t have to be pretty.

And these gentlemen are bringing the HELL out of it. Well done, messieurs! XD

ETA: More videos! Sur la Vignelon, again from the same live concert. And also, Au Diable Les Avocats, which appears to be their official video for this particular song.

ETA #2: A bit of judicious Googling has educated me that in fact, both of the podorythmie guys in LCE are the former La Bottine Souriante members! And, in fact, the guy in the left-hand chair has got to be Michel Bordeleau, since from what I’m seeing on the French Wikipedia page for the group, André Marchand was no longer in the group by the time I saw them perform. Plus, that’s clearly Michel’s voice in “YoYo Verret”, the track I love the most off the old LBS album Rock and Reel, a.k.a. Xième! He’s also the one described on LCE’s current site as having “dangerous podorythmia” and they are NOT LYING. \0/

September 13, 2011 by
Quebecois Music

Motherlode of Quebecois musical awesome!

This being another post actually written while I was on hiatus, but I wanted to get it down while it was fresh in my mind!

So as y’all know I have become very fond of Quebecois music, and I have no fewer than four bands I’m following: La Bottine Souriante, Le Vent du Nord, La Volee d’Castors, and Les Charbonniers de L’enfer. This last group are the ones who are entirely a capella, specializing in the mouth reels and podorythmie that I love so much about music from Quebec, and they ALSO have two guys who used to be in La Bottine Souriante, so a couple of their voices sound very familiar to me.

I’ve snagged their one live album off of iTunes, and I’m tellin’ ya, people, they are way better live than I expected after listening to their first two albums I’d bought! They are so much more vigorous in live performance that I was entirely blown away by several of the tracks. They have a couple on this album where they’re roaring out the lyrics–or in the case of one track, tearing through the mouth reels at unbelievable speed. And, AND, if my poking around on Google and on their website is any indication, they have two guys doing the podorythmie, not just one.

The album is called En personne, and for those of you with iTunes accounts, I highly recommend checking it out. For those of you not iTunes-inclined, I was also able to find this site here which appears to be for a chain store in Quebec. They can’t sell MP3 downloads to customers outside Canada due to copyright restrictions, but they DO have listenable samples–and they will ship CDs to US customers. Their page for the album in question is here–AND there’s ALSO a DVD!

Check out the samples for tracks 4, 10, 13, and 16 in particular, wherever you check it out. iTunes has longer samples than the Archambault site does, enough to give you a feel for how LCE sound live, though the really good bits of tracks 4 and 10 are towards the end so you may not get those in the samples. Track 16 is ALL mouth reels though and goddamn, it is awesome. XD

I am totally ordering this thing on my next paycheck. I have got to see the video that goes with this concert, especially if they have two guys on the footwork.

AND AND AND they also have a boatload of La Bottine Souriante albums I’m going to be ordering–five of ’em I’m missing, and I’m particularly interested in the more recent ones since LBS have had a significant shift in members over the last few years, so now they sound rather different than they did when I saw them perform way back in 2000 along with GBS at Chateau Ste. Michelle. What particularly amuses me, now that I’m actively fangirling Le Vent du Nord, is that the lovely Monsieur Simon Beaudry has a brother who’s in La Bottine Souriante now! ;D

And speaking of Le Vent du Nord, that site also has the one remaining LVN album I don’t have yet–a recording of a live concert they did along with the Quebec Symphony Orchestra, which was apparently not widely released, since it’s not on iTunes along with the rest of LVN’s albums. I am totally ordering this, too.

I really need a proper icon for Quebecois music now! Stompyfeet, that’d be the ticket. 😀

September 12, 2011 by
Books

Paging Kat Richardson

Hey, userinfokatatomic! I think I found your Icelandic doppleganger! She writes crime fiction, even!

For the rest of you, I randomly spotted this author’s name when I was browsing the mystery section at Third Place, and since I thought crime novels written by an Icelandic author sounded interesting, I thought I’d look her up. Found her Wikipedia page and thought “hey, she looks kind of familiar–WAIT”.

I suspect unfortunately that she will not have an adorable geek hero in her series, but I’ll report back after I read her. 😉

September 12, 2011 by
Books

The Anna is on Vacation book roundup post

This was actually written during my downtime the week of September 5th, though in keeping with my radio silence, I’m scheduling it to be posted on Monday the 12th! So here we go folks, various and sundry books to add to the Stuff I’ve Bought This Year list.

Picked up in print:

  • Aftermath, by Ann Aguirre. Another of her Sirantha Jax SF series, on which I am horribly behind! Continuing to buy this series in print because that’s how I started buying it, and I’m not a fan of mixing and matching formats in the same series.
  • Omnitopia Dawn, by Diane Duane. SF. Recommended to me some time ago, and I finally opted to pick it up in mass market paperback rather than ebook form, just because Diane Duane seems worthy of having around in print!
  • Look Closely, by Laura Caldwell. Mystery. Actually picked this up a few weeks ago, when userinfosolarbird had her gig at Inner Chapters, but forgot to note it on the book log.
  • Hellbent, by userinfocmpriest. Book 2 of her current urban fantasy series. It features a vampire, but hey, I’ll put up with that for Cherie Priest!
  • Wayfinder, by userinfomizkit. The second half of her urban fantasy Worldwalker duology. Picked up because, as always, Kit rocks.
  • One Salt Sea, by userinfoseanan_mcguire. Book 5 of the Toby Daye series, on which I am woefully, woefully behind!
  • The Truth of Valor, by userinfoandpuff. Book 5 of her ongoing SF series featuring Torin Kerr, which I am also behind on, and I need to get caught up on her too because Tanya Huff ALSO rocks.

Picked up electronically:

  • Knight’s Curse, by Karen Duvall. Urban fantasy. This is a release by Luna, the same folks who publish userinfomizkit‘s Walker Papers, and I know Karen via the Paranormal Mystery list I’m on. Looking forward to reading her work.
  • The Murder at the Vicarage, by Agatha Christie. Mystery, as should of course be obvious; this is a Miss Marple, in particular. Picked up as a B&N freebie, due to the woeful general lack of Agatha Christie in my library.
  • Spider’s Bite, by Jennifer Estep. Urban fantasy. This one has been on my radar for a while as a probable library book, but it was on sale for $1.99, which was too good an opportunity to pass up. *yoink!*

Up to 194 for the year.

September 12, 2011 by