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JIB06. Paul Linklater. Smooth Sailing and How

Paul linklater's Smooth Sailing and How is a double album with ep that wants to be a parallel universe with ep. An encyclopedia of lo-fi tresspasses, a crash course in 60s and 70s pop, an inner monologue that got out, a study on the theme of "guitar / drum texturing", and under all of that, some of the most solid melodies being written. the product of an immense labour, Smooth Sailing is a true novelty; for fans of independent music, a must-have double album with ep; for independent musicians, a wake-up call. It comes in a clear plastic box with three heavy cardboard sleeves. (Each of the sleeves has a colour screenprint of a drawing by paul linklater from his real notebook.) Enriched mp3s also for sale... HERE

JIB05. Dancers. (3) from Three Hundred Songs

31 has a nice melody and an incandescent vocal. 32 sympathizes with musical tourists like George Harrison. 33 is a straight-forward imitation piece, an exercise. 34 has to do with dreams and a bird significant. our lead singer is in top form here. conceptually, it's a dense work but we carry it off pretty lightly. 35 features a guest under duress and a middle eight on loan from someplace like Mesopotamia. 36 has a tri-part structure and draws on many sources, too many to enumerate here. 37 was a performance - we captured it. 38 is something you might listen to to relax, something you might hear on the relaxing station. in it, an immortal theme receives casual reappraisal. 39 tunnels through the 80s with a lantern from this year. 40 does too. 41 is restrained, that much shows. 42 took time to make, time and effort. 43 is a jazz song. one might imagine a band playing it, having lots of fun together. 44 is a playful composition that took lots of time to make because of all the choices that were made - an unusually large number of them. 45 is a choral piece. at the end, its artifice is stripped away cooly - it's a joke. 46 is a kind of folk offering. you're going to try to forget it. 47 went through many phases. it too is surely a folk music piece. 48 is classically composed, but sounds improvisatory. short but many-splendoured. 49 owes a debt to hip-hop but will probably welch on it. 50 is perfect for aerobics or just lunching with friends. it features a person on loan from Japan. 51 is just a repeated progression, effortlessly produced. 52 maxes out every single dial as though they - the dials - were straining to buttress the song's heroic melody. 53 is an early piece. clean melody and lots of feeling. we wanted to round out this our third and longest album with a bit of heart - for effect.
Here's a link to go to the Dancers page and one for the release's page

NEWS: friend Donna Orchard readying longplay release; Dancers (3), also a longplayer, coming soon; Paul Linklater pre-album project underway now; Doug Friesen launching sister site!

1) The good news is that our friend Donna Orchard (pictured, with instrument, above) is going to be putting together a self-and-boyfriend-produced collection of her beautiful balladry under the title Loved Ones, and it's set to be released right here, perhaps in the late summer. Some tracks can be tested out at Donna's myspace which seems also to be a meeting grounds for opera enthusiasts. 2) Dancers will be releasing the third disc of their Three Hundred Songs project next month. This time, it's all about having fun. It will be a 23 track installment and will include a few popular early numbers. Advance word is that it's going to be an album the majority of which you can dance to. Courting a broader audience maybe? They are also planning a world-wide print advertising campaign to correspond with the release (more on this later).

3) Paul Linklater has been working on a double album for months and months. As I understand it, the album is nearing completion and Paul will be putting up unfinished versions of the tracks intermitently on his myspace. This album is sure to be a wonder of both songcraft and home-studio artistry. 4) Doug Friesen is putting up a site called creative-ed. It will be a resource for teachers who would introduce creative teaching techniques into their classrooms. But he plans to host audio/visual artifacts of all sorts as well. Take a look and feel free to contribute or support it in some capacity.
JIB04. Dancers. (2) from Three Hundred Songs

"it's almost an album that makes you believe you could have made it yourself" - Walter Marcel "(2) finds Dancers pasting more cut-outs into its highly personal audio scrapbook Three Hundred Songs. As usual, all natural musical decisions seem to have been eshewed: crudely produced "test" pieces are butted up against what sound like soundtracks for jazz films (jazz films about the Orient by humourless westerners? films about Dancers?), while ice-cold beats disrupt the brooding Herrmann-like arrangements of Qohv. On the other hand, anachronistic rock (The Miracle) finds oddly relevant complement in the electronic disjecta-bop of It's a Circus. Not since Scritti Politti has a band had the patience to plumb its music for such unlikely synergies or the deftness to tease them out. If the ep has a flaw – and, to my ears, it has many though few are glaring and most are integral – this reviewer finds one in the casual perfectionism of Astral Keepers and Cartoons. These tracks sound heinously pre-assembled, as if pre-collected in Precambrian bedpots and scarcely cut or kneaded thereafter; a little safe and, what's worse, distasteful. Pieces like Song Generator Test and the lead-off Elders, however, are surprising, acutely observed reconstructions of actual events and easily make a case for a full pardon. As do the laboriously workshopped tracks of the back 3rd: Chuck Press bears the evidence of heavy erasure and a very heavy ambivalence about spiritual tourism – delightful. Whatever your orient, Dancers has a track for you this summer. Like it's predecessor, part 2 is not for everybody. Those already collecting, though, will find much here to laugh at, discard, or ponder."- Dan Burke Vavra (Extras on this release include a special folder of "ovals", "11 jpegs", a 300 songs scorecard, a new postcard, and a limited print tracklist illustration jpg) samples? / Dancers page?