LIVINGSTON - "Aggregate 17566408". Some of you may remember Henry Adam Svec's Artificially Intelligent Folk Songs of Canada, a collection of tracks ostensibly composed by a computer called LIVINGSTON, using algorithms informed by the canon of Canadian folksong. It was exquisite; you should download it; it's still free. Recently, LIVINGSTON's owners released a Volume 2. Like the first set, this is material that pretends that it was generated by McGarrigle-loving artificial intelligence. Like the first set, it's a gratis download. But unlike on Volume 1, Svec is no longer singing. Instead, Burning Hell's Mathias Kom has taken the microphone, interpreting the computer's latest printouts.
Similar to Volume 1's "Take It Easy but Take It to the Limit", "Aggregate 17566408" is, well, an aggregate. Listening uncarefully, it unfolds like a pleasant, winsome nonsense. Pay more attention and you will find yourself in a delirium of the faintly-familiar. A hundred scraps of famous Canadian song, sewn together like a quilt. It is like riffling through a musical yearbook, a yearbook for the past half-century, from Len to Neil Young, Constantines to Loverboy, Leonard Cohen to the Weakerthans, "The Log-Driver's Waltz" to (alas) "King of Spain". You'll drive yourself crazy trying to identify every reference; more fun to treat it like a ketamine-fuelled karaoke trip: a troubadour before you, mineral-voiced, singing you moments from your past.
Community Theatre - "Onward and Upward". Community Theatre is another grinning project from the geniuses of the folk underground. Kom and a pile of other singer-songwriters, all of em united in studio for a session in the Yukon. The contributors include Michael Feuerstack, Richard Laviolette, Baby Eagle, members of Construction & Destruction, Marine Dreams, and many more. Shotgun Jimmie leads the ensemble here, raising a tattered chorus. Part-pious, part-hilarious, it's a tribute to the northern lights and the endless journey; rousing as a husky's shout, stirring as hot coffee in a styrofoam cup. It's a new blizzard, a long-stoked fire, a cozy winter's cabin just filled with friends. A party you wish you were at, harmony flying out of that chimney like smoke.
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I am currently compiling my favourite songs of 2014. Please email me MP3s for anything you think I may have missed!
Posted by Sean at December 1, 2014 9:23 PM
and it will begin playing. All songs are also available to download: just right-click the link and choose 'Save as...'
