The Suoni Per Il Popolo festival is upon us for the next three weeks here in Montreal. It is hands down our favourite time of the year: not only do we get to see some of the label's artists share the stage with luminaries from near and far, but we get to join the fandom of artists to whom the festival will be introducing us, as it does every year.
 
On 1 June, Saltland will be performing at Casa del Popolo in celebration of the release of acclaimed sophomore album A Common Truth. Geneviève Heistek of Hangedup will be opening for this very special show.
 
Rejoice in the return of Eric Chenaux to our fair city on 9 June. He may be trying out new material since 2015's Skullsplitter. Joining him as an opener will be Jessica Moss fresh on the heals of her stunning record launch performance at Sala Rossa for Pools Of Light.
 
Montreal's Will Eizlini will be presenting a work of improvisation entitled Eta Kooram Nah Smech ! on 11 June featuring Jason Sharp.
 
Sam Shalabi (Land of Kush) joins collaborator Stefan Christoff for a synth and organ duet at the launch of their recording project entitled Small Scale Music on 12 June.
 
Avec le soleil sortant de sa bouche's JS Truchy (also of Fly Pan Am) will be doing a solo performance on 18 June in a program that includes the 10-year anniversary performance of Steve Godin's Cronus LP with Panopticon Eyelids, which features Fly Pan Am/Avec le soleil's Sébastien Fournier.
 
Finally, also on 18 June, Jerusalem In My Heart's Radwan Ghazi Moumneh will be presenting a solo piece for modular synthesizer and buzuk before Ethiopian accordionist and keyboardist Hailu Mergia.
 
More info: http://suoniperilpopolo.org/
 
Bons spectacles!

 
Godspeed You! Black Emperor will be embarking on a considerable tour across Europe and the UK this autumn. The band has not been on the road since a significant string of dates in early 2016.
 
The tour kicks off in Rome, with two special performances of a collaborative project with Canadian dance company Holy Body Tattoo. Godspeed’s collaboration on the troupe's renowned monumental piece has been shown across the world in performing arts festivals and halls since its premiere at Vancouver's PuSh Performing Arts Festival in January 2016.
 
Fribourg (CH) will mark the beginning of the band's own progress with stops in France, the UK, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. The tour will end at Paris' Elysée Montmartre on 07 November. Please see below for a complete list of dates.
 
Listen to "Peasantry or 'Light! Inside Of Light!" from their March 2015 release Asunder, Sweet And Other Distress
 

 

DD/MM/YY	PLACE	VENUE
13.10.17	Rome, IT	Romaeuropa Festival
14.10.17	Rome, IT	Romaeuropa Festival
15.10.17	Fribourg, CH	Frison
16.10.17	Toulouse, FR	Le Bikini
17.10.17	Bordeaux, FR	Krakatoa
18.10.17	Rennes, FR	Théâtre National de Bretagne
19.10.17	Rouen, FR	Le 106
20.10.17	Lyon, FR	Le Tobogan
21.10.17	Strassbourg, FR	La Laiterie
22.10.17	Lille, FR	La Condition publique
23.10.17	Brighton, UK	Brighton Dome
27.10.17	Glasgow, UK	ABC
28.10.17	Manchester, UK	Victoria Warehouse
30.10.17	Bristol, UK	Motion
31.10.17	London, UK	Troxy
01.11.17	Brussels, BE	Venue TBC
02.11.17	Amsterdam, NL	Paradiso
03.11.17	Berlin, DE	Festsaal Kreuzberg
05.11.17	Hannover, DE	Indiego
07.11.17	Paris, FR	Elysée Montmartre

 

 
"Music that’s wonderful to live with. Do Make Say Think's songs don't demand attention so much as reward it. A song can feel like an island with its own ecosystem, and an album an archipelago. It's challenging to find your way inside. In the oscillation from serenity to cinematic triumph, their music can seep into your conscious and float around your daily life, not so much a soundtrack as a pliable accompaniment. Even when it's not competing for your attention, Stubborn Persistent Illusions feels impossible to put down." - Pitchfork 7.8
 
"The nine instrumentals that make up the band's first album in almost as many years have a warmth and earnestness that permeates their complex emotional movements. Their soundscapes seamlessly blend the organic and rustic infrastructures of urban life. These songs have their own agency." - Exclaim 9/10
 
"Musical statements like this, able to carry so much weight yet move so freely, and all without saying a word, are few and far between. Stubborn Persistent Illusions finds Do Make Say Think returning as restless and reaching as they’ve ever been." - Line Of Best Fit 9/10
 

 
After much anticipation, we are thrilled to release the newest work by the renowned Toronto artists Do Make Say Think. The eight year gap between recordings has seemingly only reinforced their dexterity with the raw materials of their brand of frank, impetuous composition.
 
Do Make Say Think has a well-earned reputation for imbuing their instrumental music with soulful and emotive narrative power in a class of its own. Among the band’s special strengths is an ineffable naturalism that avoids anything too woolly or proggy, abstract or academic, while remaining a fundamentally guitar-based group whose ornate four- and six-string interplay balances rockism, pastoralism and electronic-influenced post-production.
 
Stubborn Persistent Illusions is built from this distinctive toolkit, at once familiar and as fresh as anything DMST has committed to tape. A short Bhuddist poem about boundlessness and recurrence informs this profoundly imagistic listening experience, amplified by the beautiful original album art paintings commissioned from Marianne Collins.
 
See our release page for full information and to purchase the album. You can also support this release by ordering it digitally on Bandcamp.
 
Stubborn Persistent Illusions can be streamed from Spotify or Apple Music.
 
The Toronto launch show will be taking place at the Danforth Music Hall on June 10, 2017. Tickets are going fast, so get yours soon here.
 

After some time focusing on other projects, Esmerine are touring Europe at the moment and were in Paris a few days ago. Watch the band play "The Neighbourhoods Rise" and "A River Runs Through This City" as they warmed up the space at Espace B for what was a fantastic sold-out performance. Be sure to check our TOURS page for more Esmerine dates.

 
"An ambitious work, using simple elements Moss has created a sprawling composition that, while instrumental, manages to capture a sense of the precarious danger of our time. Listening to it is a despairing but also cathartic experience." - Exclaim, 8/10
 
"There is a warm solemnity to Pools of Light, like participating in a communal prayer...this album is an interplay of hope for the hopeless and hopelessness for the hopeful, an emotional process in which the sharing of an all-encompassing pain is the relief that provides a basis to keep dreaming." - A Closer Listen
 

 
We are proud to release Pools Of Light, the Constellation debut of Montreal violinist and composer Jessica Moss. With this work, Moss has developed a distinctive and impressive approach to violin that combines a natural technical fluidity, a recombinant command of folk, classical and modern idioms, and an adventurous exploration of signal-bending and analog effects that uniquely expand the spectrum of the violin as sound source. The compositions unfold at a stately, inexorable pace, combining sound-art and signal-processed timbres, extended melodic and contrapuntal lines, and the periodic deployment of stark, minimalist vocals.
 
This is elegiac durational music at the intersection of neo-classicism, soundtrack, electronic, art-punk and avant-folk – a decidedly organic, non-academic, profoundly searching and emotive work, guided by Moss’s liner note mantra: “FEELING LOVE IN A MELTING WORLD”.
 
See our release page for full information and to purchase the album. You can also support this release by ordering it digitally on Bandcamp.
 
Pools Of Light can be streamed from Spotify.
 

 
The Montreal launch of this release will take place at La Sala Rossa on May 9. Moss will share the stage with Toronto’s Fiver and Constellation alumnus/artist/sister Nadia Moss (Frankie Sparo, Carla Bozulich’s Evangelista, LRADs, etc). Jessica will later be sharing the stage with Les Bonhommes (feat. Greg Saunier of Deerhoof) at Union Pool in NYC on May 16, and Constellation's own Joni Void and Jason Sharp on May 18 for the Toronto launch of "Pools Of Light".