Pierre Stemmett - Float EP (Review)

Pierre Stemmett – Float EP (Review)

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Pierre Stemmett manages to hit a shocking number of musical spots on the aptly titled Float – a four-song collection of deeply contemplative and emotional tracks that gently winds and seeps its way into your ears. Undoubtedly headphone/empty (Or at least single-occupied) room music, mired in youthful heartbreak but brimming with introspection that belies Stemmett's youth, Float does flash moments that would fit perfectly in a downtempo DJ set or a smaller house party. It's the difference between the aching lilting chords of “Sleep Walking” and the deep, droning bass of “Blur” with its gently plucked strings and hard-driving bars courtesy of fellow South African Kearne Dragon. Both songs are dripping with the aforementioned heartbreak and longing – the dominating feelings permeating the EP front to back. Stemmett's delicate, emotive voice cries “I know you hate me, but I love you/I wish I could do this without you” in between surprisingly disarming (and appropriately emotional) rapid-fire raps on the seriously big “Head Space” – it's a moment that proves how starkly naked Stemmett can be about his feelings, a trait that continues to set his music apart from stuff that may be sonically similar. The title track “Float” sets the space with its atmospheric, almost anti-gravitational feeling, untethered to almost anything beyond Stemmett's attention-demanding voice. Like any good EP, Float is a cohesive musical idea, completely filler-free and leaving the listener craving more of the sonic vision. Highly recommended listening. (Independent)

Back to Bass-ics: A Guide to Bamboo Bass Festival 2019

Bamboo Bass Festival 2019 – Back 2 Bass-ics

Hola, orta vez! Bamboo Bass Festival is now less than a month away, and it’s getting down to crunch time when it comes to prepping for the adventure of a lifetime. Most of you reading this probably have your flights and accommodations already in order (and if you don’t…get on that, yesterday), but what about the other details? Things like transportation, food, what to bring, and what to do before you leave? If you haven’t traveled much before, there’s a lot more to it than you’d expect…and if you do have the experience, then you know how easy it is to miss something!

This will be my third trip to the jungle, and while that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, trust me when I say there is plenty to learn with each visit. With the last two years being some of my best festival experiences to date, I couldn’t be more excited to return to the jungle surrounded by friends and the jungle crew that is quickly becoming la familia.

From everything you need to know about to Bamboo Bass, to the basics of traveling to & from the Rich Coast, this guide is a collection of tips and tricks to ensure your experience in paradise be the absolute best one it can be!

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5 Questions with Rags #72 - SIDEWAY

I first found out about SIDEWAY (formerly Sidewaysounds) a couple summers ago when he laid down tunes on a old school bus that was transporting people from downtown Victoria to the top of Brown's Mountain for Tall Tree Music Festival. (Note: That old school bus is known as The Community Action Bus and it's usually doing more important things than transporting festival goers.)`I knew literally zero things about him or what kind of music I would hear on this journey, but I was quickly pulled out of my comfortable anti-social bubble at the back of the bus, into the midst of people, closer to the speakers. Dude had the two most important things I look for in a DJ - instantly recognizable taste and no genre allegiance. Turns out, on top of being a solid DJ he's also a damned-fine producer, creating some pretty smashing, forward-thinking bass music. “For me the tune has reach up and grab your attention, that's when you know you're onto something,” Sideway told me, talking about what in music is grabbing at him these days. “I like to browse SoundCloud for hours and just have it on in the background, and when a song grabs my attention I know its worth taking a closer look at which often leads me to brand new artist discoveries. Same goes for when I’m making music… I’m very hands on, just creating until something sounds interesting and grabs my attention and then building around that as inspiration. But it's all a very fluid process for me, my tastes have evolved many times over the years and I expect that will continue.” Probably get on the train now, because if current Sideway trends continue, whoa! You're gonna be glad you got on these sounds early!

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1. What was the first album you bought with your own money?

Haha, okay this is going to sound super lame, but music was never really a big thing in our house growing up. Like, my parents didn’t really listen to anything except the odd ABBA album. Exposure for me was through friends and so the first impression made on me was Stan by Eminem. I think I was 12. I couldn't buy the album but my friends did and we had that shit on repeat just like every other kid. Another early favourite was Coolio – Gangsters Paradise. The last album I can remember buying on CD was Kid Kudi - Man on the Moon, used to rinse that out a bunch as well.

But when my cousin snuck me into my first club at 16, I fell in love with electronic music, or techno as it was referred to back then, and have really appreciated everything from minimal to trance to glitch hop to electro and dubstep. These days I favour a pretty bass-heavy, eclectic mix of tunes, basically anything that fits goes in my book.

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5 Questions with Rags #71 - Frase

Like a lot of people, I fell in love with Frase the moment I heard him start singing. His voice is illegally-smooth and soulful – captivating. And he writes groovy, chill songs full of heart, full of feeling. I always smile seeing his name on a festival lineup, knowing no matter what is going on, I'm going to get an hour of Frase calming my soul. This past summer, I caught his incredible set at Bass Coast and realized that as he's played more and become a favourite of these big west coast bass crowds, that same bass has found its way into his live sets. But where a lot of artists who experiment in heavy bass can have their identities swallowed up, Frase has found a way to blend the pensive grooves of his music with the higher energy that heavy bass injects into everything.

“I think it was osmosis. The bass kind of just worked its way in. I recognized that when you're putting on a show at nighttime in a club, people wanna dance. They want to feel the bass. I find a lot of really heavy bass music doesn't have a lot of soul in it – I'm not saying everything, but there is a compromise right? The more bass, the less soul there is usually. It's been kind of a challenge to me to make something that will work in that club environment but is still something that I'd want to listen to, something that people could put on a chill,” says Frase, talking to me on a break from touring, at home in Ymir, BC. “As a solo artist, I needed the tracks to make the show hyper. There wasn't much myself or Emily could do to make our performance more exaggerated, it was the music that had to step up and be more hype. Her being my partner and a dancer has also had a big influence on me wanting to make more dance music. I'll be working on a beat for hours and it's pretty chill, I'll play it for her and she'll be like, 'Meh.' But if I make a house song or something that's more danceable and only spent 20 minutes on, she'll say, 'Yeah, that's amazing.'”

As his profile and his sound have both expanded, Frase's audiences have become increasingly diverse, playing a variety of venues and festivals around the west coast and Canada. This past summer included a life-changing stop at Koksilah, here on Vancouver Island in the Cowichan Valley. “Koksilah was one of my highlights, just in terms of my ethics and my values. I definitely want to give them a shout out. It's a mix of music and a lot of workshops about reconciliation and Indigenous rights. It's a more workshop-based festival than a party festival. There's so many conflicts in the world right now and it's really nice to have a festival like that that's really about progression, bringing these issues to the forefront and talking about them and working them out instead of blaming other people for what's happening. 'Koksilah' means 'thank you' in Cowichan language. The location of the festival was a former residential school and a few of the elders mentioned they can't go inside. There's a lot of trauma but that's what this whole festival is about – reconciliation and reclaiming these spaces and helping people work through this trauma and create allies to focus on the problems we're facing now – deforestation and pipeline drilling. The Indigenous are really on the pulse of that. Snotty Nose Rez Kids, Mob Bounce played, the lineup was definitely leaning towards Indigenous artists and artists of colour and as a white man I was really honoured to be invited and ask to perform in those kind of spaces. It was really powerful. I got the logo they used for the festival tattooed on my arms.”

The world is a groovier place with Frase creating music in it – in more ways than one. After a few years of grooving to his music and catching his shows, we're honoured to finally welcome this righteous bean as a guest on the 5 Questions.

If you're in Victoria this Friday (Nov. 9), make sure to go catch Frase at Capital Ballroom with the homies Illvis Freshly, Bousada and Sidewaysounds. Seriously. Do it.

1.Do you remember the first album you bought with your own money?

It was Fine Young Cannibals. I was 6. I remember I got a walkman – it was on tape – and I remember walking around to it non stop. I listen to that album now and it's still pretty sweet! The production and the vocals and the dance-y soulfulness it has...it's super cheesy, don't get me wrong, but I understand why my influences have gone the way they have. When I was a little kid all I listened to was dance music. Dance Mix '94 and '95, all of those, pretty mainstream poppy kind of dance music.

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#festivalseason - Rifflandia 11 rounds out the season in musically diverse style.

Another year of Rifflandia and another year of a densely diverse musical memories to help get us through the cold winter months. Unbound by any genre allegiances, Rifflandia is free to mine any part of the modern musical map they deem worthy and to their credit, each year they dig hard to bring something unique to the city of Victoria. Something different than the swaths of other catch-all festivals that flood the market each and every festival season. And in their 11th year, Rifflandia did not disappoint. With 150+ acts over three days, four nights and 14 stages, there was more than ever to take in. We didn't stop for the duration of the weekend and in amongst the chaos, these were the acts that left the biggest imprints on our ears over the four relentless days.

Best Non-musical Thing We Saw At Riff - KARMIK

We're don't necessarily advocate drug use at Rags Music, but we damn sure as hell advocate safety and and taking care of each other. Thankfully the good people at KARMIK made their first appearance at Rifflandia. Breaking ground is nothing new to the team at Karmik, so it only made sense they were the first organization to bring a mass spectrometer to Vancouver Island, and establish a legitimate drug testing presence at Rifflandia. To give you how big of a deal that actually is, the legendary Shambhala Music Festival (Salmo, BC) took years of fundraising and donations to be able to provide attendees with the technology – at an event that arguably has more drug use than Riff. But, Victoria definitely has needed something like this for years, and even with local law enforcement pushing back, the lovely individuals of Karmik stood their ground and provided a much needed service in Victoria that has been long overdue. Hope to see them back next year!

Gentle Mind

One of the first acts of Rifflandia weekend, Gentle Mind took the stage at Phillips Front Yard Thursday night to show how to kick off a festival right. With a small crowd and a chill in the air, the Vancouver soul (Acid soul? Jazz soul? Soul pop?) group started with a small smattering of people – more photographers than festival-goers – and by the end of their set, the stage was packed and the people were eating out of the bands hands. The bands originals, including their standout “Nighttime in Crema”, popped and pulled in the listeners with their slickness, their depth and their soul. A couple of choice covers sprinkled in to their set helped give a new audience familiar touchstones: A lovely rendering of Haitus Kaiyote's sultry “Nakamarra” and a groovy as hell cover of The Weeknd's “I Can't Feel My Face,” the latter of which took me way too long to recognize. We singled out Gentle Mind as a band to watch at this year's Rifflandia and they didn't disappoint, setting the tone for another great weekend of music.

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