I Heart the Music: Your Online Source for Live Music Reviews and Interviews in Toronto!

Do they play pool in Heaven?

On Tuesday, July 7^th, 2009, the Toronto alternative music community lost a radio legend.  Martin Streek was probably best known for his hosting and club gigs for 102.1 the Edge where he hosted such shows as The Thursday 30 Countdown, Friday Night Live at Sound Academy, and Sundays at Velvet Underground.  He lived and breathed rock, alternative and punk music, and even appropriated the life story of Joe Strummer (The Clash) as his bio on The Edge website, up until he disappeared from the airways two months ago.  A rock star in his own right, he will truly never be forgotten.

I’d only met him once, probably the same way most people did, one random Sunday night at Velvet.  He was of a smaller stature than his booming radio voice may have lead one to believe.  Casually dressed and unassuming, he flitted between the pool tables (where he would kick serious ass) to chatting with people around the club, fans and barflies alike.  If you didn’t know who he was, he just looked like any other bar patron. That is, until whatever song that was playing started winding down, and he would saunter back over to the DJ booth and pick up the mic.  Then there was no mistaking it.  That distinctive voice – deep and gravely, all charm and sarcasm and distinctively STREEK – would come through the speakers and over the airwaves all across the city.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  That man had the sexiest voice in radio.

He’ll be missed, not only by his legions of fans from his time at the Edge (before that called the Spirit of Radio, yes, he was there from the beginning two decades ago) but by the Canadian music community at large.  Streek was a staunch supporter of the independent music scene, helping many bands gain airplay during his time. His colleagues and fans alike all say the same thing; Martin Streek was a personality to be reckoned with. His love of music and his passion for radio was unparalleled and inspiring. He charmed everyone he encountered and made friends wherever he went.

Facebook, MySpace and blog tributes from DJs, musicians and fans like me, all are doing their part to honour this man. I can’t pretend that I really knew him, but I’m definitely going to miss him, and that voice.  Let the stories begin…

Check out Alan Cross’s tribute here.

Written mournfully by Nadia Elkharadly

Now in its fourth year, the Polaris Music Prize short list has been announced. Among the albums that made the cut are some amazing bands and some ones that we found a bit questionable. For those of you that don’t know what we are talking about, the Polaris Music Prize is awarded each year to ONE band that demonstrates the best full-length Canadian album of that year. What makes this prize so great (and not just the $20,000 cash prize for the winner) is that it is based solely on artistic merit irrespective of genre and album sales. The winner will be announced during an awards ceremony on September 21st at the Concert Hall in the Masonic Temple.

Here is the short list for this year’s prize:

Elliot Brood “Mountain Meadows”

Fucked Up “The Chemistry of Common Life”

Great Lake Swimmers “Lost Channels”

Hey Rosetta! “Into Your Lungs”

K’Naan “Troubadour”

Malajube “Labyrinthes”

Metric “Fantasies”

Joel Plaskett “Three”

Chad VanGaalen “Soft Airplane”

Patrick Watson “Wooden Arms”

Be sure to check back for our coverage of this amazing prize and all the awesome bands chosen as the best Canadian album this year!

Shoved in a little crowded space backstage at The Horseshoe Tavern, iheartthemusic got up close and personal with bandmates Tomas and Matt from indie rock band DD/MM/YYYY.  I chatted it up with the talented twosome about such things as their music (duh!) and their love of the old school Nintendo jams.  These two talented gents are making truly inspiring and unique music and their stage show is a must see.  Check out the Toronto indie rockers when you can, they will blow you away!

iheartthemusic: I really like your approach to music, which is kind of no approach at all, which works amazingly – not the same old shit.  Is there a method to your madness?

Tomas: We’ve been around for so long that there are so many different formulas. We always bring something to the music where someone will instigate something and someone will write a part. Like Mike, he’s an amazing bassist and when I present an idea to him on guitar he’ll write the perfect bass line and we evolve together; we learn how to play together and that’s the way we feel about drums too. When you have five guys constantly mixing like that the madness is that everyone has ideas and everyone wants to communicate them to each other and some just want to respond to an idea.  It’s complicated that way, but it’s not at the same time, it’s just like hanging out with your friends and saying, “I’ve been working on this idea, let’s try it!” and you do. We wrote the song “777″ so fast, the whole song is basically three two note cords that I play on guitar, but how we play it stretches out for the whole song and it changes but you wouldn’t even tell. 

iheartthemusic: Do you use the same formula for every album you make?

Tomas: We do the same thing, we just keep switching members.  For the first album it was just me on guitar and Matt on drums; one of our members Mocher wasn’t even in the band at the time.  So there is an evolution of our band that I think that anyone who has followed us for that amount of time is probably really aware of how much we’ve changed and how deliberate those changes are.

iheartthemusic: You guys are known for using non-conventional/abstract instruments.  What new instruments did you use on your most recent album Black Square?

Tomas: We use a lot of synthesizers, but the synthesizers aren’t really that unconventional, it’s just that we use delay pedals and certain layers like looping layers. I think the weirdest instrument we have is Mocher’s omnicord, which is like a keyboard with sonic strings that are not real stings but you can play them like a string and they have these little chords you can play like autochords.

iheartthemusic: Where do you find that?

Tomas: It’s kind of rare.  You can find it on the Internet on eBay or certain junk shops or trade shops. It’s a cool instrument! It’s not a cheap instrument either it’s got a really good personality for a synth. That’s the thing about our band, although we’re writing kind of weird music we’re actually using really traditional instruments. I play guitar and drums, Mike plays bass, we have a keyboard player and Jorden is a trained pianist… In a lot of ways we’re responding to the tradition of rock and roll.

iheartthemusic: And you use the other instruments to add depth to the traditional ones.

Tomas: Our sound is a bit more unique.  We’re doing these things like layering a guitar and a bass and a keyboard just like anyone else does but maybe it’s our rhythms that change the feel of them.

iheartthemusic: Also, and I don’t know if I’m saying this correctly, but don’t you guys change intervals throughout the song?

Tomas: I know what your saying, yeah, it makes sense. That’s also part of it, sometimes a part of a song just demands to be in a different time signature because of the feel and that’s a really personal thing. It’s complicated because there is so much of us in the music. I think the most successful thing about DD/MM/YYYY is that a lot of our personalities and sensibilities are in the music and those choices of time signatures aren’t just to be flashy or technical they’re there to insert more soul… I think our music is very danceable too, so it’s all about feel, if it’s moving you it’s successful that way.

iheartthemusic: I also hear you guys rotate roles? Do you just do that in your stage show or on the album as well?

Tomas: We rotate for our show and for the album.  Ultimately the big goal for DD/MM/YYYY is to be seen as a collective not unlike Broke Social Scene.  We have different music but we have very similar sensibilities in some regards.  In terms of music I’ve always loved drums and rhythm, I’ve always loved guitars and synthesizers. Oh look Matt is here!  Would you like to join the interview?

Matt: Sure.

Tomas: [Recapping what was said......]

Matt: I totally agree! [Laughs]

Tomas: Do you want to elaborate?

Matt: Well, I don’t want to be redundant, but some people say that your sound is defined by your limitations like how good you are.  Maybe if you’re really good at guitar you do a lot of guitar solos or something. So for the changing instruments, it’s like not all of us are as good at one instrument vs. the other, so the songs are bound to be different sounding.

iheartthemusic: You mention Frank Zappa as being an influence. What other things influence you, and it doesn’t have to be an artist or musician?

Matt: The answer is video games. We’re in the van all the time on tour and one of the dudes has an iPod with full out video games, people think we’re insane!

Tomas: All the good Nintendo music wasn’t made coincidentally it was made by a specific composer and I can’t think of his name at the moment.  The guy who made a lot of Nintendo music is a musical genius in a lot of ways because he incorporated all of these pop songs that have existed, they sound like Madonna or sound like Prince and then make them into a video game song that’s all just little synthesizers. It’s like DD/MM/YYYY, we’re incorporating all these pop influences and pop sensibilities and somehow converting them.

iheartthemusic: This is like old school Nintendo, right?

Matt: Yeah.  Like once you get into stuff like Play Station, you have Garbage on the soundtrack, like literally the band Garbage.

iheartthemusic: If you could choose, what is your most favorite thing to do: compose, tour, or make music videos?

Tomas: Write music.

Matt: Yeah, easily writing music.  You loose sight of it when you play if you play the same songs night after night. It’s still fun but it looses something.

Tomas: I don’t think that’s true, I think that sometimes you get a song after playing it certain amount of times, after sixty times you get that song finally,not how to play it but you begin to understand it as a musician or as a band member at least.

Matt: Let me rephrase, we’re a lot more giddy while we’re writing it and than afterward I still love the songs and everything but I don’t have that giddiness about it.

iheartthemusic: What do you want your fans to feel when they leave your gig?

Matt: Just like confusion I guess. I want people to be like “what was that?”.  My favorite is when someone says they liked it but they don’t know what happened.

interviewed by Kristen Tignanelli

photography by Joyce Wong

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