The Scope

The short list for the Atlantis Music Prize was released recently, but we thought we’d take a look back at the top 30 long list before too much time passed. There are some overlooked gems in there, too, that shouldn’t be missed.

Here are most of the nominees, talking about their albums in their own words.

For more information on the Atlantis Music Prize, visit http://www.atlantismusicprize.ca/

AM/FM Dreams – Whistle And Sing

(http://alonetone.com/amfmdreams)

From Damian Lethbridge: This album was made during a very sad period of time. It was written and recorded from June to October of last year. We were losing and then lost a very dear, loved one during its recording (Mine and Danielle’s grandmother). Shortly after we lost our grandfather, Marc’s grandmother and then a very close family friend who we’d all known since we were kids. Pretty much all the songs revolve around that whole ordeal. While there’s a lot of sadness in the album, there’s also a lot of joy, and celebrating the memories and good times that we had as well. There are a couple of songs on there I still can’t sing live without breaking down. But it’s one our favourite albums we’ve ever done. It’s a tribute to our lost loved ones and an ode to the passing of time and youthful wonder. Most all of the songs stem from little stories or experiences from our childhood or memories we had of visiting our grandparents. The cover is a picture of my grandmother on her wedding day standing outside her house. The back of the album is a quilt she made for me and Melanie.

Bird and Bear – Into the Moon

(http://www.myspace.com/birdandbearband)

From Jillian Freeman: Basically, I had written a lot of songs over the years and was itching to get them out to the public and start playing shows, but wasn’t quite sure where to start. Enter Jon Janes, best known for The Mountains & The Trees. He helped a lot with finding a place to record, contacting a great sound engineer (Leo Bruce at Henge Studios), booking shows around town to get the name out there, and giving advice on how to flesh out the songs I had originally written with just an acoustic guitar and my voice. Over the summer and fall of 2009 we made the album, with Jon playing a lot of the backing instruments, and with the help of fellow ginger, Paddy Byrne (Matthew Hornell & The Diamond Minds, Repartee), on bass.

Blair Harvey – We Used to Rock and Roll

(http://www.myspace.com/blairharvey)

From Blair: I wanted a band album but didnt have that kind of cash and I really wanted to record, so I thought why not live at The Rose, just me and a guitar? We had to put in fake applause on the record to cover up the drunk talk that was going on through my performance.

Cara Lee Coleman – Love Songs, Lullabies, and Dance Hits

(http://www.myspace.com/caraleecoleman)

From Cara: Well, it started off as a children’s album but events in my life at the time were inspiring me to write other material. This album was inspired by three things: 1. My daughter Layla. 2. Love in different shapes and forms and 3. Garage band loops and beats (it’s fun to play, okay!) So the title Love Songs, Lullabies and Dance Hits is quite literal.

Catmanduah – Handful of Gleam

(http://www.myspace.com/catmanduah)

From Danny Keating: Handful of Gleam is a collection of songs. There are no hidden clues, not satanic backward messages, or re-affirming life lessons… the band was expanding and our sound followed. It needed a new house to live in. I guess the neatest part of it all was we learned to use some new gear, and were able to take these songs out of our bag of tricks and make room for new ones… No fights!

Jetset Motel – ST

(http://www.myspace.com/jetsetmotel)

From David Picco: The album came together when we met a fellow named Adam Ferri at The Halifax Pop Explosion. I told him we were looking to make an album and he offered to record us at his family’s studio. It’s called Orchard Studio’s because it’s on a giant apple orchard in North Mississauga… great place! There were a lot of great things about recording it. I enjoyed the whole process, but the best thing was kicking everybody’s ass at NBA jam during break. I left the studio undefeated.

Joe Belly – Nickles and Dimes

(http://www.myspace.com/joebelly)

I find it difficult to talk about my songs and recordings even though I can talk about music in general all day. This record is just a collection of songs that I felt the need to record. The recording went well, I was pleased with the arrangements, rehearsals, song selection, I tried to do as much live as possible but having said that I had a larger budget for this record so I was able to be more selective. The highlight of the record for me is the duet I did with my wife Sherry Ryan, called “Separate Lives”. The song was arranged and everything was finished except the vocals. I had the melody written but only one verse and a chorus written. The night before our last day in the studio Sherry and I sat at the kitchen table, drank beer and wrote a couple of verses, the bridge and the last chorus and worked out the harmonies. It was the most fun I had during the entire recording process and It’s my favorite song from the record.

Mary Barry – Chansons Irisees

(http://www.marybarry.ca/)

From Mary: I grew up in St. John’s at a time when French was taught by teachers who could only write it on the board. I was very keen to learn, had great marks in school, but I’d still never really heard the language spoken. It was a chance visit to Expo in Montreal during the ‘Summer of Love’ that would change my life. There I discovered a whole new culture that was alive and thriving and, best of all, everyone was speaking French! I was instantly hooked and headed back to Newfoundland with that summer’s passion aflame in my soul. Though I could find no French records in St. John’s, I did discover that Petula Clark, the famous British pop artist that had taken the world by storm, also sang in French and I started listening to her songs, enthralled. It was at that point in time that I decided that I’d not only become fluent in French, but I’d sing in French, too, and that one day I would record a whole album in French.

Well, here I am with my first album in French. This album is my humble tribute to that time and to those artists who touched my life so profoundly. It is only fitting that I went back to the source to record it, in the place where it all began so long ago.

Matthew Byrne – Ballads

(http://www.matthewbyrne.net)

From Matthew: On the simplest level, this album is a collection of some of my favorite traditional ballads — interesting stories combined with beautiful melodies. There is a strong history of traditional singing in my family and that is how I have learned many of these songs. This album ended up becoming a snapshot of both the songs passed down to me and those I’ve found myself. Billy Sutton (producer) and I did almost all of the arranging of these songs in the studio. Every now and then we’d look at each other as if to say “yes, that’s it.” There’s something very motivating and satisfying about those moments, especially when you’re new to the studio environment.

Other People – Shady People

(http://otherpeople.rpmchallenge.com/)

From Amy Joy: This was recorded for the RPM Challenge … everything was written in a rush! But maybe best we didn’t have a lot of time because we’re pleased with how it turned out. We would decide on chords and progression together. I would usually come up with the words, we’d work out the melodies together. Then Grant recorded all the instruments, then we did the vocals … and Grant mixed it! Best moment? When we wrote “Wind-Up Robots” and “Fancy Hats”. We wrote these within a couple of hours each. We had no idea how they’d turn out but we love them now. Worst moment? For Grant, mixing at 2 am in the morning the day before it was due.

People on Pause – ST

(http://peopleonpause.rpmchallenge.com/)

From AE Bridger: I had a few songs and concepts lying around that I was very attached to but didn’t seem appropriate for AE Bridger, and Guzzwell was a fountain of creative energy at that point. Every week, we got together for a few hours and churned out a couple new songs. There was no time wasted and there were no roadblocks because we both acknowledged that we had to simply allow the music to happen and not get in the way.

On the last day of February, Barrett Porter (Guzzwell’s girlfriend and one of the singers in Pre-Raphealites) showed up while we were mixing the album and she laughed out loud when she saw us. We were both wearing our outdoor jackets, pacing Guzzwell’s living room in silence, listening to the album, completely self-absorbed.

Rick Lambe Band – High Expectations

(http://www.myspace.com/ricklambe)
From Rick: The album came together from a bunch of songs I wrote over the last five or six years, plus a couple of co writes with Chris Kearsey, and the whole band. I am really happy with the songs which were all recorded live off the floor (not multitracked) at Krisjan Leslie’s studio Lab Of Chaos, except for “Benjamin” ( a song written for my son) which was recorded with Charlie Barfoot. The whole process of recording this album was the best moment for me. It was super smooth, fun and musically my favorite release i have to date. I think the live feel of the songs is what people have been really enjoying.

Sean McCann – Lullabies for Bloodshot Eyes

(http://greatbigsean.com/)

From Sean: This album came together over a period of years, utilizing tracks we worked on in the period after ][Great Big Sea's] ‘Hard & the Easy’ came out, and newer songs we wrote in the intervening years. Some of it was recorded at the old GB Studio on Water Street, some in New Orleans, and some on Alan Doyle’s laptop computer, often backstage and elsewhere on the road. The best moments were in the early days, laying down some of the sounds in a cabin basement in the Humber Valley, when we immediately knew we had some great songs.

Surrogate Activity – ST

(http://thescope.ca/bands/surrogate-activity)

From Juls Mack: We’d been a band for about four months and had seven songs, which meant.. cassette demo release time! We borrowed some equipment, because, at the time, I didn’t have my own guitar amp (thanks Nick Baker!) and Steve’s drumkit was a little lacking. Peter Andrews, who had recorded mine and Steve’s previous band, Rumours, and played in a few bands with Jen, came over around Christmas-time 2009 and we pumped some tracks out onto his laptop in the Shark Tank basement. It was my first time playing guitar on a recording. I had fun! Maybe too much fun, because we did the songs way faster than we usually do them. When Jen came over to play her extremely complicated bass lines over our extremely simple guitar and drum parts and was right fussy about how sped-up it was. Sorry Jen!

The Mountains and the Trees – I Made This For You

(http://www.myspace.com/themountainsandthetrees)

From Jon Janes: Well, after having some success with the EP, “Hop, Skip, & A Jump,” in the fall of 2009, people started asking when they could expect a full-length album. Knowing that momentum is best acted upon quickly, I started making plans to record in the winter of 2010 and put out the album by that summer. One of the best things was, during the mixing process, we used an old 2″ analog reel-to-reel and tape for all the delays and echos. I’m a bit of geek when it comes to gear, so to use old technology like that just make my day.

Tied Down – ST

(http://www.myspace.com/tiedxdown)

From Bee Traverse: We’d been playing shows since February, had just expanded our repertoire, and figured it was about time we recorded some of our material. Around the same time my partner Chris had recorded for local power violence band SEVERED TONGUE on his laptop. For free. Being the opportunists we are, we booked a date with Chris and SEVERED TONGUE bassist Jordan and set up some vocal mics in our jam space with foam draped over things in a half-assed attempt to counteract the fact that we were in a concrete basement. After adding a sample from Saved by the Bell and bass-boosting the whole thing we sent it off to return on cassette tapes.

I missed out on most of the fun, being at work. By the time I got there, Juls was finishing up her guitar tracks. The headphones were broken and falling off her head so she tied them there with a scarf. It looked like she had a toothache or something. Doing vocals, especially for a hardcore band, is always kind of awkward. It doesn’t sound weird to me, but to everyone else around it just sounds like I’m screaming at nothing. We were terrified that somebody would call the cops reporting a domestic dispute. I recorded them behind a curtain (which was actually just a blanket), thank god.

Vicar – Moment

(http://vicar.bandcamp.com/)

From Tyler Lovell: I had been debating making a live band for the project ever since the first release but I knew I needed more material before playing live. Worst thing to happen was my recording interface died right before I started working on this. I didn’t have the money to get another one so a friend loaned me theirs. It’s this little $100 Line 6 thing. Doesn’t sound very good at all, so I spent a lot of time with digital effects to adjust a lot of the sounds.

Also, imitating a crowd of hand claps/stomps can be way harder to record than you might think! I spent too much time trying to get a good sound on those. You can find good sounding samples on the internet. Mix them with your own and your set!

Victor Lewis (Vickee Loo) – The New Depression

(http://www.myspace.com/victorlewis)

From Victor: This album came together as a result of a few things: I had just discovered cool sounds in a borrowed keyboard, the RPM challenge had just started, my friend pat canning, brad power and i all got trapped in my house on a february snow day with a bunch of music equipment at our disposal, I had been listening to Ariel Pink’s early lo-fi albums on cassette tapes in my car, I had just watched the first season of Jem and the Holograms with my girlfriend, and I figured it was time I do my own token-80s-nostalgia shit since everybody else seems to be doing it these days. It’s a sell-out, cheapo, bandwagon recording. It started cynically but ended up being really fun and heartfelt.