crows to burnaby

Speakers Series

Saturday from 11-6 was the New Music West Speakers Series, which we figured would be a good opportunity to hear a bit about others' ideas on the industry, meet some people, and learn some things. It was held at the lovely Centre for Performing Arts across from the library.

Speakers included Daniel Cutler of Arts & Crafts Records (Feist, Broken Social Scene), psychotherapist Phil Towle, and Raine Maida of Our Lady Peace. There was also a SOCAN Songs & Stories showcase featuring Jeremy Fisher, Kinnie Starr and Leeroy Stagger, all of whom were excellent, but the first two especially moved me.

I can't say that I had any great "a-ha" moments with any of the speakers; I think I learned more from Lefsetz's letter than I did on Saturday. The message was the same message that we've been hearing for a while now: you don't need a major label, the internet is a great tool for independent bands, you've got to learn to do it all yourself, not just the music side...

Ironically, after a day spent bashing the majors, the final session of the day was an A&R panel session consisting of reps from the majors, talking about what they had to offer in today's modern music world. Perhaps NMW should have mixed the indies and the majors in the panel and gotten some real debate going. That might have also helped with the crowd, which was dismal; attendance for each session ranged from about 25-75 people, in a theatre with a capacity of 1800+.

Saturday night

Originally I had lined up about five bands I wanted to see Saturday night, and had my time planned out from 7:00-11:00. I didn't make the 7:00 because we all took our time having a nice dinner after the last session and dissecting the day's events.

I also missed most of the 8:00, only catching the last two songs from Edmonton's Storyboard at the Plaza, which I quite enjoyed. (BTW, they not only have a female bassist, but a female drummer, an even rarer sight.)

But I'd mostly been interested in seeing Au4, since Cindy at IMU mentioned them and I really liked what I heard online. Saturday at New Music West would be their debut show.

Well, they put on a hell of a first show. Smoke, synchronized lights and videos; damn good sound, and a really great set. Extremely tight, extremely together. Everything they did made it clear that they're ready to move up to a larger venue at a moment's notice. And most importantly, the music was wonderful. I bought the CD before their set was even done, and that is unusual for me - I'm slightly wary of buying CDs at shows, because so often it just doesn't match up to the live version. But I've been listening to it over and over, and I still think it's beautiful and can't seem to stop listening to it. (You can stream the entire album online on their website - click "listen".)

They're very obviously influenced by Nine Inch Nails (not the aggressive side, but the ambient keyboard side), and their myspace page also lists Air and Massive Attack as comparisons. You can hear all of this clearly, though not so clearly that you mind in any way.

Anyway, after that show, I felt pretty much done for the evening. It'd been a long week already, and the next two bands on my list (The Blue Alarm and Motion Soundtrack) were bands I'd already seen before. So I called it a night.