I write about interdependent culture, postcapitalism, experimental art, protective spaces, and their relationships to the mainstream

Recent features:

The Grind: Carney’s budget (nearly) maintains meagre status quo for the arts
The Grind: Canadian artists brace for austerity: ‘Cuts will hurt everyone’
The Grind: SoundList is dead. Long live Earlobe
The Grind: Nightlife braces for Bill 10
New Feeling: Rae Spoon: Looking for friends in low places
The Grind: Ten years of Halocline Trance
New Feeling: Godspeed You! Black Emperor at History on election night
New Feeling: Beyond random access: Grassroots music organizations on the benefits of decentralizing institutional memory
Exclaim!: Lightning Bolt made the walls sweat at Toronto’s Project Nowhere
Exclaim!: Leah Singer and Lee Ranaldo forged a new road ahead at Toronto’s Project Nowhere
Exclaim!: Pelada took their last stand at Project Nowhere in Toronto
Exclaim!: WE ARE WINTER’S BLUE AND RADIANT CHILDREN make the good themselves on ‘NO MORE APOCALYPSE FATHER’
Exclaim!: Beth Gibbons looks to a lost future on ‘Lives Outgrown’
Exclaim!: Madonna’s Celebration Tour took Toronto through the decades and beyond
New Feeling: Ontario’s Cloud 9 festival offers a glimpse of a sustainable future
Exclaim!: Austra finds her “dream project” in rewriting Tchaikovsky
New Feeling: Chamber music: Toronto musicians bring Pauline Oliveros and deep listening to city hall
Exclaim!: myst milano. forges through the fakery on ‘Beyond the Uncanny Valley’
New Feeling: How Trickle Down Music is helping artists punch upstream
Exclaim!: aja monet’s ‘when the poems do what they do’ is a roadmap to somewhere greater
Exclaim!: Devours’ glittering ‘Homecoming Queen’ welcomes you into its complicated alienation
Exclaim!: Harrison pushes beyond the material world on ‘Birds, Bees, the Clouds & the Trees’
Long Winter: SuKha Never Dies and the double-edged sword of “Goddess” life
New Feeling: Hipgnosis, song acquisition, and the elephant in the room: How the IP gold rush is feeding industry consolidation
Long Winter: J3M looks for love across the universe with ‘AFRONAUT’
Long Winter: Sicayda: Heavy gaze
New Feeling: After the gold rush: Wonderhorse reviewed
Long Winter: Cheyenne Rain LeGrande ᑭᒥᐊᐧᐣ layers up
Long Winter: Vasuki Shanmuganathan: dream warrior
Long Winter: Malik McKoy: from architecture dropout to city builder
Long Winter: Unpaving paradise: Shonee brings biophilia to the big city
Exclaim!: Aquakultre is more than just Halifax’s hottest R&B star – he’s a community (“Best Canadian Music Writing 2022” – Invisible Publishing)
Exclaim!: Kazoo! Fest makes its “long-overdue goodbye” by doing what it’s always done
New Feeling: Family Values: Lawnya Vawnya reviewed
New Feeling: Joseph Shabason and André Ethier come out of the kitchen with Fresh Pepper (later reprinted in iss. 1 of The Grind)
Exclaim!: Joel Eel’s heart works harder than most on ‘Love Infinity’
Long Winter: Jane Inc. is more than a sum of its parts
Long Winter: Kyla Charter flattens space and time on “Qwyn”
Long Winter: Extremely fast and incredibly online: a conversation with B Wijshijer
New Feeling: Free space: The future of live music is wide open, but what will we do with it?
Long Winter: Communal energy: a conversation with Ciel
Long Winter: How ISO Radio found its way home
Long Winter: What if Toronto’s rave scene had a universal resource database
Exclaim!: Damon Albarn blurs past and present on ‘The Nearer the Fountain, More Pure the Stream Flows’
Exclaim!: Grouper’s latest brings every ‘Shade’ of Liz Harris into focus
Long Winter: Moving forward in reverse: a conversation with Obuxum
Exclaim!: Mas Aya’s ‘Máscaras’ is a rewarding sonic revolution
Long Winter: The future is Absolutely Free
Long Winter: 25 years of LAL (“Best Canadian Music Writing 2021” – Invisible Publishing)
Long Winter: 500 years and counting: Status/Non-Status
Exclaim!: Breeze unites Toronto’s shattered music scene on ‘Only Up’
New Feeling: How music streaming’s option anxiety birthed another single-serving economy
Exclaim!: The Halluci Nation turn anti-colonialism into a celebratory dance party for ‘One More Saturday Night’
Exclaim!: Simon Provencher and Olivier Fairfield give computer chaos a human touch on self-titled debut as Album
Musicworks: Album review: Joseph Shabason – ‘The Fellowship’
Exclaim!: YlangYlang’s new EP deconstructs the ‘Cycles & Decay’ of ambient music
Exclaim!: Vallens continue their Lynchian worship on ‘In Era’
Musicworks: Review: ‘Hum: Drone Listening Walks’ by Kristel Jax and Tasman Richardson
New Feeling: Why I’m not writing about DIY anymore
Musicworks: Catherine Debard’s sonic soul searching
NOW: Fiver’s Simone Schmidt on how music communities can rebuild after COVID-19 (“Best Canadian Music Writing 2020” – Invisible Publishing)
NOW: The Comfort Zone re-emerges in Parkdale
Exclaim!: WLMRT are dead. Long live WLMRT
Musicworks: Album review: Oiseaux-Tempête – ‘From Somewhere Invisible’
Exclaim!: How Music Felt the Climate Emergency in 2019
Exclaim!: Everything in Its Right Place: Inside David Psutka’s Home Studio
Exclaim!: Meet Gong Gong Gong, the Restless Beijing-Montreal Art-Punk Duo Channelling the Concept of ‘Phantom Rhythm’
Exclaim!: An Essential Guide to Brian Eno
Exclaim!: Holly Herndon interweaves human and artificial intelligence on new album ‘PROTO’
Exclaim!: Joni Void is reborn on new album ‘Mise en Abyme’
Exclaim!: Jayda G bridges the art/science gap on ‘Significant Changes’ (“Best Canadian Music Writing 2019” – Invisible Publishing)
Exclaim!: James Holden destroyed a Hammond organ scoring Chris Kelly’s ‘A Cambodian Spring’
A.Side: We need to pay attention to how musicians interact with borders
Exclaim!: Kid Koala channels Greek myth on ‘Music to Draw to: IO’
NOW: What is the Halluci Nation?: Bear Witness is curating this year’s X Avant festival, expanding the powerful and inclusive concept established on A Tribe Called Red’s last album
Exclaim!: Chilly Gonzales: A deep dive into the long strange trip of a genius provocateur
Exclaim! Marie Davidson critiques the club life she once enjoyed on ‘Working Class Woman’
Exclaim!: Sarah Davachi takes us to church on ‘Gave In Rest’
Exclaim!: Chastity seek sanctuary within and from their Whitby hometown on ‘Death Lust’
NOW: Bernice’s new album is breezy, whimsical and delightful
Exclaim!: Jean-Michel Blais’s night moves on ‘Dans ma main’ are far from the sunny days captured on ‘Il’
Exclaim!: Nils Frahm built his dream studio for ‘All Melody’ and may never use it again
Exclaim!: Esmerine discuss climate change, cities, and riding an upward spiral of hope on ‘Mechanics of Dominion’ 
Exclaim!:  Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith experiments with self-expression inspired by nature on ‘The Kid’
Exclaim!: Forest raves, drone therapy, and noise made for three sleepless but exciting and dramatic nights at Electric Eclectics Festival
Noisey: Silver Mt. Zion’s Jessica Moss reflects on the state of the world on ‘Pools of Light’
Exclaim!: Droning on: Experimental, intense, emotional trips were a long, welcome distraction this year
THUMP: X Avant is the Toronto experimental festival creating dialogue between diverse communities
Noisey: Bruno Capinan yearns for divine grace amidst Brazil’s political crisis
AUX: Prophets of Rage head north of the border to… Make Canada Rage Again?
AUX: Hillside Festival’s big heart a win for the underdog
AUX: Lydia Lunch is the liver of America
THUMP: Inside Drone Day, the grassroots holiday encouraging DIY therapy through drone music
Noisey: Holy Holy took one last deep dive into David Bowie’s early work in Toronto
Noisey: Pizza, poutine and punk: meet the founder of Montreal’s infamous Pouzza Fest
Noisey: Colin Stetson reimagined a 1976 Polish symphony as an electronic black metal opus with saxophones
Chart Attack: Kazoo! Fest asks: What does an accessible festival look like?
AUX: Somewhere There is the heart of Toronto’s creative music scene
Chart Attack: CD-RIP: Is it possible to run a label selling CDs anymore?
Noisey: Several Futures connects parallel universes on ‘Before You Forget’
Noisey: Matt Monoogian uses solitude as a vehicle for self-confrontation
Noisey: Pantayo bridges the Filipino diaspora with their take on kulintang
Noisey: Table for one: An oral history of Dine Alone Records
Noisey: Unstoppable: an oral history of Stomp Records
AUX: Compilation seeking Big Canadian Tunes
Exclaim!: What I play: Beliefs
Chart Attack: It’s Gonna Be Us!: An oral history of Blocks Recording Club
Chart Attack: The circle closes for Owen Pallett’s early-’00s band Les Mouches
Noisey: The new single from Babysitter’s forthcoming LP is a gravel-throated call across the country
Noisey: The Folk challenges mental illness and adversity with a built in support group
Noisey: Luminato’s ‘Apocalypsis’ offered a new view to the end of the world
Noisey: Celebrating William S. Burroughs’ 100th birthday with dream machines and guttural howls
Noisey: The X Avant new music festival transcended culture
Noisey: Copyright Board of Canada defends “world’s lowest royalty rate”: “Maybe it’s too high. I don’t know.”