Fiver - "Rage of Plastics" (mp3 removed at Triple Crown Audio Recordings' request) A churnsome dirge, a grindish blues, distended swing from the woman who sings for One Hundred Dollars and the Highest Order. Simone Schmidt writes songs by manipulating smoke in the air, seeing where it falls and rises. But she sings in a plainer way, intoning the words, loosing them right and left, as though she's laying the groundwork for a more elaborate song. Canadian music that feels like American music - drier than Alberta, more haunted than Manitoba. Fiver is laying the foundation of a ghost town, and she doesn't even know if the damn spirits will move in. [buy - it's very great]

Elsewhere:

Pressur.es is a video project by Derrick Belcham and Ruby Kato Attwood; they aim to unite original dance choreographies and (mostly) original music, by artists like Little Scream, White Hinterland, Colin Stetson and Julianna Barwick. Belcham is best known for his video work with La Blogothèque and A Story Told Well. Attwood is the lead singer for Canada's best noh-wave band, Yamantaka//Sonic Titan (who released a bonkers, brilliant new track this week). Together they're making this fine thing and raising money for it. Using Indiegogo, the friendly-to-Canadians version of Kickstarter, Pressur.es hope to collect $10,000 for new music, new choreographies, new films. Essentially, I think, to pay people for their art. This is worthier than most of the seedy crap we waste our cents on. So please, please give them something.

Two weeks ago, the New York Times debuted the first film in the Pressur.es series: "Forcelessness", with music by Sarah Neufeld, choreography by Emery LeCrone and dancers Kaitlyn Gilliland & Pierre Guilbault.

Here we debut another film from the series: "In The Dark", with choreographer/dancer Mary Cavett, and music performed by Fiver's Simone Schmidt. (It's a Mills Brothers cover.)

Whereas most of the first five Pressur.es films are abstract, emotional works, "In The Dark" is conceptual. Cavett waits alone and blindfolded in New York's Central Park, slow-dancing with anyone who will take her. "Will take her" or, really, give themselves over to her. There are men and women, children and business-types, dudes passing through. Sometimes Cavett dances alone, in her polkadot dress. Maybe it's a piece about loneliness, maybe it's about bravery, maybe hope or vulnerability or the extra-ordinary. But throughout it all, Belcham's camera tracks the scene; Schmidt sings her messy rosy waltz, and anything could happen. In a way, anything does. Maybe Cavett's still out there, twirling.

Donate to Pressur.es and help them keep making these things.