Healing Powers From The Warped Heart Of Toronto

Received these two albums last month from Toronto's Healing Power Records. I had a flick over at the band roster and recognised The Deeep, so I dived in - and how refreshed I became. 

First album was Tecumseh from Matthew 'Doc' Dunn. This didn't mean much to me at first, until I realised Dunn was indeed the Doc Dunn that has been a collaborator on some of the recordings of celestial flyers MV&EE. Apparently recorded back in autumn 2008, Tecumseh blazes a languid trail through pastoral psychedelic ramblings, with touchstones of Native American mythology and pastoral associations. Canadiana? Perhaps. It makes for buoyant listening though - place the headphones on and drift.

Then there's the double-headed bubbling electronica of Toblerone Boys/2 Cool 2 Hate, the double-cassette release by Toddler Body/Toblerone Boys (at least I think - it is all rather on the vague side). Aside from having a moniker that brings up often disturbing articles when plugged into a Google search, the (artist? collaboration? art installation? aliens?) provide some seriously warped trips that lie somewhere between Dan Deacon, Scraps and an aggressively deluded Tobacco, such skronky effluent should hurt the brain. Not every track works, but with the amount of material here, that isn't exactly the point. Guerrilla soundscaping under the influence of Amytal.

Healing Power also released an album from Brodie West (The Ex/Drumheller) - clearly this label has its finger on the weirder pulse of Toronto. I'll be watching these guys closely in the future.

Not Not Deeep

Go back two weeks and work rudely interrupted my week of posts relating to everyone's favourite west coast noise label, Not Not Fun. Well its unfinished business, the posts I managed to get out only scratched the surface, so here's an effort to wrap the Not Not Fun posts up.

The Deep are a beat/electro/noise duo based out of Toronto. Their first release, the Life Light cassette, dropped back in early December on NNF. Life Light is six tracks of soaring sugar perfect vocals lushly draped by minimal, twisted electro bass loops. Theres been plenty of examples of this perfect female vocal married to a dark tonal underbelly around Not Not Fun 's releases and influences recently - I'm thinking LA Vampires and Zola Jesus here - but The Deeep's work takes this flavour to new beautiful plains. The vocals of Isla Craig are frankly angelically stunning, and juxtaposed against Wolfgang Nessel’s sparse bass rhythms they stand out even more, creating something darker, deeper and more intriguing, like a single bloom floating in a stark wasteland. If Life Light is just their first outing, 2011 holds bags of promise for The Deeep.

The Deeep - Mudd

The Deeep's Life Light cassette is available from Not Not Fun here and the duo will release a 12" of Muddy Tracks as an extended version of the 'Mudd' track on NNF's new sister label 100% Silk, here. Taster vid below...

THE DEEEP - MUDDY TRACKS TEASER from 100% Silk on Vimeo.