Jordan Klassen/Fortunato Durutti Marinetti/The Golden Age of Wrestling
Jordan Klassen
Tell Me What To Do // Independent
The always captivating Jordan Klassen has independently released Tell Me What To Do (three years after Big Intruder) and it could not be more evident that he knows exactly what he is doing as he continues to craft some of the most gorgeous arrangements in Canadian music today.
Okay, let’s get the obvious out of the way - Klassen instantly beckons Sufjan Stevens comparisons with multi-instrumental folk melodies, hushed intimacy and his ability to sing in entrancing falsetto. Comparing Klassen to Stevens sells him short though, but is a complementary comparison, nonetheless. Whereas Sufjan always leaves me with a feeling of aching for something I have lost, Jordan leaves me aching in present contentment and hopefulness. This latest release highlights his increased adaptability as he matures as an artist and his ability to compose individual tracks as an artistic whole.
Tell Me What To Do is sophisticated and polished without losing that raw human essence. It’s the perfect calming antidote to the global anxiety we all currently face. Klassen authentically translates what it means to be human: vulnerable, hoping, hurting, and growing. His versatility weaves in and out on the album; at times orchestral and lifting, at times subdued and earnest. The album is both calming and catchy. The album boasts a myriad of instruments: guitars, violins, harpsichord, drums, xylophone, piano, and clarinets, electric samples and drums. But it’s his entrancing vocal range seals the deal.
- Nicola Gunter
Fortunato Durutti Marinetti
Desire // Musty Dusty
Desire, by Fortunato Durutti Marinetti is like taking a trip through 1970s Chelsea, New York whilst traveling in a 2020 Tesla Model 3. The influence of 70s rock & pop crooners Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen & John Cale can be heard amidst more modern sounds of baroque-pop acts like Stars, Final Fantasy and Yo La Tengo. Durutti’s poetic approach to his lyrics mixed with the stellar, layered, lush string arrangements makes this album a dynamic collection of romantic, moody & beautiful songs which can stand the test of time.
The opening track titled “Seasonless” starts the record off in a blooming & enchanting way. Swelling strings and flute sounds intrigue the ear and create a loving feeling in the stomach. This sonic wonderland moves smoothly into “The Bell That Doesn’t Ring”, which gives me the vibe of John Cale’s album Paris 1919. The production offers a bouncy string section, offset vocals, and a bedrock of warm melodies. The lyrics are mysterious and imaginative. “Wordess Morning” comes next and this track is like a cool breeze in a hot city. Here is where the Lou Reed comparison really comes in. The way Marinetti’s vocal weaves in between the slow, swampy bass line makes me think of The Velvet Underground. There are darker sounding cuts on this album though. “Year of Sundays” is a gloomy, stormy number which thunders and floods as an early Leonard Cohen song would. “Everybody Tells Me” is a slow, relaxed saunter with spicy guitar playing, fantastic backup vocals and a hypnotic, locked-in beat. The album closes with “Feeling of Desire” which is the heaviest number of the bunch. The droney, psychedelic climax makes this the perfect closer on the album. It sounds like it could have been on the first Constantines’ album.
The fact that this style of pop music is being made in Canada amazes me, and one would suggest that Marinetti might be spearheading a new trend. It is clear they have a deep understanding of music, poetry and art, creating something quite incredibly unique in Desire.
- Todd Andrews
The Golden Age of Wrestling
Tombstone Piledriver // Independent
Vancouver-based DIY musician Jeff Cancade, who also creates music as Devours, describes his new project The Golden Age of Wrestling as a “glambient side project” that “combines elements of ambient music, Hollywood soundtracks, chamber singing, and the sounds of classic Nintendo games to create moody, evocative scores for sleepless city nights.” Oddly enough, this sentence probably contains twice as many words as the entire lyric sheet for Tombstone Piledriver, as the album is mostly instrumental. Cancade creates deeply personal and emotive songs as Devours, but while that project conveys its feelings through the lyrics, with TGAOW Cancade guides the listener through a range of emotions with the arrangements alone. Make no mistake, Tombstone Piledriver is packed with just as much feeling as Cancade’s Devours albums, but without the thematic direction provided by a lead vocalist, the listener is free to submit to the emotional suggestion of the music and attach their own meaning to the musical backdrop.
On Tombstone Piledriver, The Golden Age of Wrestling hits a sweet spot by creating ambient, electronic music that isn’t too dancey or too droney. It’s always moving, and never feels repetitive. It doesn’t feel like you’re intended to lose yourself in the music on the dance floor, though allowing the synth swoons to sweep you away is still appropriate. Structurally, the songs avoid the verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus template. Instead the songs seem to feature movements or suites as they change dramatically from part to part. Somehow, this album feels incredibly organic, despite its electronic components and its lack of human voices. It feels like some of the especially expressive droids from the Star Wars universe made an album; The sounds are machine-made, but they move organically creating a robot conversation, or interpretive dance in audio form. Oddly enough, when it is used, the human voice functions like an instrumental accent of some kind, so many of the voices and the instruments here take turns doing the same things. The words are often indecipherable, drawing more comparisons to droid-speak. The way these sounds blend together is astonishing. Different sounds trade off or flow together, but there’s never an excessive mess of sounds layered on top of each other. Cancade knows how to share the spotlight between the members of his robot orchestra.
Even though there are vintage Nintendo sounds in its sonic palette, this music is so much more alive than the 8 bit soundtracks of old, yet many of the lush, textured moments would supplement modern video games very well. Plus, while the composition is enlightened, the order of the tracks perfectly divides up the songs so that the listener never gets exhausted, or restless. “Goth Roulette” is an epic and complex song with a haunting pulse, and Bon Iver-style chamber vocals that repeat the word “together” triumphantly while various synth tones frenzy together. Eventually everything cuts out for a split second before returning in an effusive swell in the closest thing to a “drop” that this record offers. It’s an eruptive moment that draws the listener in, but it isn’t laboriously telegraphed like the drop moments in dancefloor hits. The surprise makes the device that much more effective, and then the song is followed by the ethereal mid-album breather “I Know What You Did Next Summer.” This beautiful song could fit over a bleak, slow-motion “all is lost” moment in one of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings films, but then a twinkling synth gives the song a hopeful turn, albeit a subtle one. These dynamics serve the record perfectly and it’s this attention to detail that makes the album such a satisfying listen. It’s moving, but never melodramatic, and it shifts seamlessly between moments of anxious chaos and thoughtful harmony.
While some side projects don’t sound different enough from their makers’ primary projects to warrant an existence on their own, The Golden Age of Wrestling distances itself from Devours in its approach, tone and composition, and it earns its existence as an entirely different artistic body. TGAOW does something new,and it does it well. Even though the album provides no information about the connection between the music and the wrestling theme, present in the artist’s name and the album title, Tombstone Piledriver will knock the listener out and send them to a blissful chaotic dreamland.
- Devon Dozlaw
