Cadence Weapon, Paper Beat Scissors, and pseudo-antigone
Cadence Weapon
Parallel World // Entertainment One
“It was a parallel world” are the titular lyrics that open the newest release from Edmonton-born Toronto-based rapper, producer, writer, and poet Cadence Weapon. What follows is “Africville’s Revenge” a hard hitting track where Cadence Weapon explains who he is, what he’s done, and what he stands for. The song highlights systemic racism, gentrification, and how despite his achievements, his race is what others use to define him. Accentuating the aggression are the jagged synths and bass-laden beat, which create a powerful opener to an amazing album.
Parallel World takes these themes and sounds and blends them with ideas of surveillance, sensationalist activism, individuality, and the concept of perception versus reality. This ten track album has a run time of just under a half hour with most songs being less than three minutes, save for two. Each song delivers thought-provoking lyrics, a grime inspired sound, and catchy hooks.
I’ve been having trouble trying to put this album into words that Cadence Weapon doesn’t put best himself. Every song on the album is complexly dense with lyrics, sometimes making it hard to follow along, but don’t let the smooth flow stop you from paying attention, because what he talks about in this album is important to hear, and he delivers these messages alongside featuring artists such as Fat Tony, Jacques Greene, and a show stealing verse from Backxwash in the albums eighth track, “Ghost”.
Parallel World is an album that’s leaking with insight and perception, and through this, Cadence Weapon encourages the listener to look inside themselves to find how they can help others make the world a better place, rather than give in to the quick-paced trends of sensational activism, or even worse complacency. It’s a thoughtful approach towards socially conscious subject matter and a masterpiece of an album. You’d be doing yourself a disservice not listening to it, so go and check it out!
- Brandon Kruze
Paper Beat Scissors
La Mitad // Forward Music Group
After the release of his acclaimed record, Parallel Line (2019), Montreal-based indie-folk musician Tim Crabtree returns with a new release under his artistic moniker Paper Beat Scissors. Crabtree is a well-established artist with an extensive discography, which culminates in a slightly different release with La Mitad.
La Mitad is a Spanish-language reworking of selections from his work in Parallel Line, inspired by his time in Argentina for his master’s studies and his encounter with Spanish versions of music by Jon Secada. The album was released on April 30th, 2021 through Halifax, NS-based label, Forward Music Group.
By and large, La Mitad rearranges the tracklist of Parallel Line and at times provides some subtle, different takes on the original record. It’s quite astonishing in its instrumental arrangement; overwhelming upheavals and discreet atmospheres are cultivated à la Andrew Bird and Bon Iver. The most substantial difference between these two records is the Spanish vocals, which certainly give the record a slightly different texture across the board. At times it is particularly effective at captivating the intimate atmosphere of tracks like in the single “Formas” and the track “La Mitad,” at others it can be a bit distracting when the lyrical deliveries don’t completely finish articulating themselves. I will concede this quarrel because Spanish is my first language. Though with this context, I will say that this reworking of Parallel Line had moments that got me thinking back on Spanish and Latin American ballad pop like Alejandro Fernandez “Me dedique a perderte,” or Pepe Aguilar’s “Miedo,” Alejandro Sanz’s “Amiga mia” and “Corazon partio.” And for me, this is the peculiar achievement of La Mitad as opposed to Parallel Line, in that what sets this new release apart is its candid intimacy rekindled by the artist refamiliarizing himself with his work in another language.
Though it is a bit limiting to say much about the instrumentals of a prior release, the reinvention of Parallel Line in La Mitad really captures its most elementary influence - much like listening to the Spanish and English versions of an Enrique Iglesias song back to back, the contrast of perspective and explorative connection in La Mitad is able to flesh out the pictures that Crabtree crafted in his lyrical heartstring pulling. There is a simple fascination in this reinvention of familiar tracks, that in it of itself makes all the difference in the listening experience.
- Simone A. Medina Polo
pseudo-antigone
Into the Void of Infinite Sadness // Pyric Gestures
I want to jump into the phenomenal Into the Void of Infinite Sadness right away, but before I tackle this engaging, transgressive and intellectually fulfilling work by Edmonton’s pseudo-antigone, I want to talk a little bit about the genre it belongs to. Chances are, unless you’re 17, an internet nerd or a music writer, the term Hyperpop might be a bit off your radar, at least for the next six months or so before it becomes the next big thing in pop music.
Every once in a while a hip new trend in music comes along that fully embraces the avant garde while still cleaving to popular aesthetics and commercial potential. Typically these movements in art spring from marginalised communities before being consumed and re-contextualised for mass appeal by the pop music community. Disco, New Romanticism and EDM all began as underground movements that flourished in extra-societal spaces before becoming massive cultural movements that touched every stratum of society; Enter Hyperpop, the newest trend in modern music that manages to be as completely outré and impenetrable as the most extreme forms of experimental music while simultaneously possessing the capacity for massive chart success. Think everything ridiculous about pop music taken to its most extreme conclusion then filtered through the candy-colored lens of high-camp/trash fashion aesthetics (with some memes from 2004 and a prescription for adderall thrown in for good measure) and you might start to get the picture.
While it’s hardly accurate to label Hyperpop a microgenre (there’s now a spotify playlist, Madonna has worked with hyperpop producers and Rebecca Black’s Friday got a recent anniversary remix courtesy of Dorian Electra) the genre is still fresh enough that I imagine most people over 25 to be relatively unaware of its existence, let alone the fact that there’s a burgeoning Hyperpop scene in the midst of the Alberta prairies (as I write this the ink is practically still drying on the RCA records contract of Calgary teen Hyperpop sensation ElyOtto).
One of the more compelling artists on the Alberta scene is Edmonton based producer and performer pseudo-antigone. Riding the tide of new Covid Crisis releases (Hyperpop very much seems to be the genre of Covid isolation) she has managed to drop both an EP (Things are Sinking In) and now a full length album over the first few months of 2021. Like my personal fave Hyperpop sensation Dorian Electra, pseudo-antigone reps a lot of the hallmarks of the genre that make it the most compelling - an almost fetishistic attention to aesthetic detail, simultaneous huge nerd energy both for low-brow mid-noughties internet geekdom and highbrow philosophical pretension (I’m assuming the name is a shout out to Heidegger and his fascination with the play by Sophocles) and decidedly gender non-corforming/queer identity discourse.
Much like New Romanticism before it, Hyperpop does not comfortably exist outside the context of the queer experience; club bopper “Sigma Male” is a great example of the playful approach to gender politics that make the genre so compelling, and definitely the prime banger of Into the Void of Infinite Sadness. Another massive standout is the aggressively infectious “How To Become An Internet Catgirl (Bitch, I'm Ethereal)” featuring Edmonton drag artist Cherri Satin, a song I’d dearly love to see get an accompanying music video. The entire outing is full of tunes that ooze sass and humour, which is ironic given the title and the fact that the record definitely seems steeped in emotion. It’s also steeped in intellectualism, and I loved the density of the lyrics combined with the unabashedly goofy aesthetics. This is a really fun record that also has emotional gravitas, stupidly catchy hooks, progressive production techniques and generally great songwriting. It’s also the type of stuff that is either gonna totally confuse or straight scare the shit out of parents, which makes it punk as fuck in my books.
- Shaun Lee
