The Happiness Project
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The Happiness Project
''The Happiness Project'' is the title of Charles Spearin's debut album. Best known for his work with Toronto-based bands Do Make Say Think and Broken Social Scene, Charles Spearin began performing samples of The Happiness Project live during Broken Social Scene concerts, offering insight into the inspiration and concept of the album, which was long-listed for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize. On April 17, 2010, Spearin won a Juno Award for the Best Contemporary Jazz Album for ''The Happiness Project''. Concept The project sprang from casual interviews with people in Spearin's neighbourhood on the subject of happiness. After each interview I would listen back to the recording for moments that were interesting in both meaning and melody. By meaning I mean the thoughts expressed, by melody I mean the cadence and inflection that give the voice a sing-song quality. It has always been interesting to me how we use sounds to convey concepts. Normally, we don’t pay any attention to t ...
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Charles Spearin
Charles Spearin is a Canadian multi-instrumentalist from Toronto, Ontario. He is primarily known as a founding member of indie rock bands Do Make Say Think and Broken Social Scene. Career As a teen, Spearin studied at Etobicoke School of the Arts, a music-oriented high school. In the mid-1990s, he studied audio engineering at the Harris Institute for the Arts. During this time, he became friends with Kevin Drew over a mutual admiration of the post-rock band Tortoise. For a short time, they played in a band called Djula, but grew dissatisfied with performing. In 1998, they released their first album under the name KC Accidental. This collaboration grew to include many musicians who went on to form Broken Social Scene. In 2002, Spearin teamed with members of Broken Social Scene, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Silver Mt. Zion, Do Make Say Think, Shalabi Effect and Strawberry to make the supergroup Valley of the Giants. This project resulted in a self-titled album, released in ...
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Avant-garde Music
Avant-garde music is music that is considered to be at the forefront of innovation in its field, with the term "avant-garde" implying a critique of existing aesthetic conventions, rejection of the status quo in favor of unique or original elements, and the idea of deliberately challenging or alienating audiences. Avant-garde music may be distinguished from experimental music by the way it adopts an extreme position within a certain tradition, whereas experimental music lies outside tradition. Distinctions Avant-garde music may be distinguished from experimental music by the way it adopts an extreme position within a certain tradition, whereas experimental music lies outside tradition. In a historical sense, some musicologists use the term "avant-garde music" for the radical compositions that succeeded the death of Anton Webern in 1945,Paul Du Noyer (ed.), "Contemporary", in the ''Illustrated Encyclopedia of Music: From Rock, Pop, Jazz, Blues and Hip Hop to Classical, Folk, Worl ...
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Jazz Fusion
Jazz fusion (also known as fusion and progressive jazz) is a music genre that developed in the late 1960s when musicians combined jazz harmony and jazz improvisation, improvisation with rock music, funk, and rhythm and blues. Electric guitars, amplifiers, and keyboards that were popular in rock and roll started to be used by jazz musicians, particularly those who had grown up listening to rock and roll. Jazz fusion arrangements vary in complexity. Some employ groove-based vamps fixed to a single key or a single chord with a simple, repeated melody. Others use elaborate chord progressions, unconventional time signatures, or melodies with counter-melodies. These arrangements, whether simple or complex, typically include improvised sections that can vary in length, much like in other forms of jazz. As with jazz, jazz fusion can employ brass and woodwind instruments such as trumpet and saxophone, but other instruments often substitute for these. A jazz fusion band is less likely to ...
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Arts & Crafts (record Label)
Arts & Crafts Productions is a music-focused media and artist services company that offers information as an independent record label, management firm, merchandiser, and publisher worldwide. It has earned 21 Juno Awards. Arts & Crafts has been called one of Canada's most important record labels. History Founding Arts & Crafts (also referred to as "A&C") was launched as a music company in 2003 by friends Jeffrey Remedios & Daniel Cutler both former Virgin Records executives as well as Kevin Drew, who co-founded flagship group Broken Social Scene (BSS) with Brendan Canning. The partnership was originally intended as a vehicle for self-release and artist management of Broken Social Scene's breakthrough album '' You Forgot It in People'', and the structure quickly formed as a platform to release albums and manage the careers of artists directly affiliated with members of Broken Social Scene. In addition to BSS albums the labels first releases were by Stars, Jason Collett, Feist ...
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Drowned In Sound
''Drowned in Sound'', sometimes abbreviated to ''DiS'', is a UK-based music webzine financed by artist management company Silentway. Founded by editor Sean Adams, the site features reviews, news, interviews, and discussion forums. History ''DiS'' began as an email fanzine in 1998 called ''The Last Resort'' but was relaunched by founder and editor Sean Adams as ''Drowned in Sound'' in 2000. The freelance writing team is currently spread across four continents – North America, Asia, Europe and Australasia. The site is mostly based on contributions from unpaid writers and has an integrated forum to allow for discussion and comments on interviews, news and reviews. It also includes a user-rated database of artists and bands as well as details for most live music venues (big and small) in the UK. The site has over 60,000 registered members, and gets around 470,000 unique visitors per month. In 2006, the site launched a podcast called ''Drowned in Sound Radio''. In November 2007 ...
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Pitchfork Media
''Pitchfork'' (formerly ''Pitchfork Media'') is an American online music publication (currently owned by Condé Nast) that was launched in 1995 by writer Ryan Schreiber as an independent music blog. Schreiber started Pitchfork while working at a record store in suburban Minneapolis, and the website earned a reputation for its extensive coverage of indie rock music. It has since expanded and covers all kinds of music, including pop. Pitchfork was sold to Condé Nast in 2015, although Schreiber remained its editor-in-chief until he left the website in 2019. Initially based in Minneapolis, Pitchfork later moved to Chicago, and then Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Its offices are currently located in One World Trade Center alongside other Condé Nast publications. The site is best known for its daily output of music reviews but also regularly reviews reissues and box sets. Since 2016, it has published retrospective reviews of classics, and other albums that it had not previously reviewed ...
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Do Make Say Think
Do Make Say Think is a Canadian instrumental band formed in Toronto, Ontario in 1995. Their music combines jazz-style drumming, distorted guitars and wind instruments, and prominent bass guitar. Biography The band formed in 1995 as a recording project for a Canadian youth dramatic production. They rehearsed for the production in an empty elementary school room. The four simple verbs 'Do', 'Make', 'Say' and 'Think' were painted on walls of the room, and the band adopted them as their name. In 1996, the band progressed as they practiced in the rehearsal room in the basement of the University of Toronto radio station CIUT. The song "Chinatown" from 2002's ''& Yet & Yet'' is featured in the movie ''Syriana'', as well as '' The Corporation''. The song "The Landlord is Dead" from ''Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord Is Dead'' and "Chinatown" from ''& Yet & Yet'' are also featured in the movie ''A Simple Curve''. The band's fifth full-length album, entitled ''You, You're a History i ...
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Broken Social Scene
Broken Social Scene is a Canadians, Canadian indie rock band, a musical collective including as few as six and as many as nineteen members, formed by Kevin Drew (vocals, guitar) and Brendan Canning (vocals, bass) in 1999. Alongside Drew and Canning, the other core members of the band are Justin Peroff (drums), Andrew Whiteman (guitar) and Charles Spearin (guitar). Most of its members play in various other groups and solo projects, mainly in the city of Toronto. These associated acts include Metric (band), Metric, Feist (singer), Feist, Stars (Canadian band), Stars, Apostle of Hustle, Do Make Say Think, KC Accidental, Emily Haines, Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton, Amy Millan, and Jason Collett. The group's sound combines elements of all of its members' respective musical projects, and is occasionally considered baroque pop. It includes grand orchestrations featuring guitars, horns, woodwinds, and violins, unusual song structures, and an experimental, and sometimes chaotic producti ...
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Polaris Music Prize
The Polaris Music Prize is a music award annually given to the best full-length Canadian album based on artistic merit, regardless of genre, sales, or record label. The award was established in 2006 with a $20,000 cash prize; the prize was increased to $30,000 for the 2011 award."2011 Polaris Music Prize Long List announced"
. Aux (TV channel), aux.tv, June 16, 2011.
In May 2015, the Polaris Music Prize was increased to $50,000, an additional $20,000, sponsored by Slaight Music. Additionally, second place prizes for the nine other acts on the Short List increased from $2,000 to $3,000. Polaris officials also announced The Slaight Family Polaris Heritage Prize, an award that "will annually honour five albums from the five decades before Polaris launched in 2006." Details ab ...
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Kevin Drew
Kevin Drew (born September 9, 1976) is a Canadian musician and songwriter who, together with Brendan Canning, founded the expansive Toronto baroque-pop collective Broken Social Scene. He was also part of the lesser-known KC Accidental, which consisted of Drew and Charles Spearin, another current member of Broken Social Scene. Drew has shared in the direction of Broken Social Scene videos under the name Experimental Parachute Movement. In 2008 he wrote and directed a short film called "The Water," inspired by and starring his bandmate and former girlfriend Leslie Feist. In 2009, Drew contributed to the AIDS benefit album Dark Was the Night produced by the Red Hot Organization. Drew grew up in west Toronto and attended the Etobicoke School of the Arts, along with Metric's Emily Haines, Stars' Amy Millan and novelist Ibi Kaslik, where he, Amy and Emily studied drama. He was married to Jo-ann Goldsmith, a social worker and an occasional trumpet player in BSS. Drew's second so ...
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Evan Cranley
Evan Cranley is a Canadian musician based in Montreal, Quebec. He records with the bands Stars and Broken Social Scene, although he considered joining the band Metric before finally joining Stars. Musical career Early on, Cranley was in the band The Universe of Forums. In the 1990s, he was the trombonist for the Toronto-based band Gypsy Soul (later Gypsy Sol). He was also a part of Big Rude Jake's back-up band in the late 1990s (he later quit, stating there are only so many shows one can do dancing around in a flesh-coloured zoot suit with a trombone). Cranley was one of the original line-up of Broken Social Scene after the band was expanded from the core members Kevin Drew and Brendan Canning. One of the songs on their first release, '' Feel Good Lost'', is named after him ("Cranley's Gonna Make It"). He is a contributor to all Broken Social Scene albums in various capacities. In live performances with Broken Social Scene, he usually plays trombone or guitar. He was also a con ...
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Justin Small
Do Make Say Think is a Canadian instrumental band formed in Toronto, Ontario in 1995. Their music combines jazz-style drumming, distorted guitars and wind instruments, and prominent bass guitar. Biography The band formed in 1995 as a recording project for a Canadian youth dramatic production. They rehearsed for the production in an empty elementary school room. The four simple verbs 'Do', 'Make', 'Say' and 'Think' were painted on walls of the room, and the band adopted them as their name. In 1996, the band progressed as they practiced in the rehearsal room in the basement of the University of Toronto radio station CIUT. The song "Chinatown" from 2002's ''& Yet & Yet'' is featured in the movie '' Syriana'', as well as '' The Corporation''. The song "The Landlord is Dead" from ''Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord Is Dead'' and "Chinatown" from ''& Yet & Yet'' are also featured in the movie ''A Simple Curve''. The band's fifth full-length album, entitled ''You, You're a History i ...
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