Exploding onto the scene with a DIY ethos and an unforgettable live show, MONOWHALES have spent the last three years firmly establishing themselves as one of the most exciting new bands on the Canadian musical landscape. The band’s first single from their upcoming album, “All or Nothing,” was released this past August, hitting Top 10 at Alternative Radio in Canada and continuing to climb.
Their latest offering, “BL/FF (Fake Friends),” drips confidence, oozes slickness, and provokes the listener to be promiscuous as hell. Imagine a late night – your phone dings and you get that far too familiar message. “U up?” appears in that blue text bubble and you say “fuck it.” You jump in your car at 3am, and turn “BL/FF (Fake Friends)” up, surrounded by streetlights and heavy feelings of lust on your way to some spicy sleepover.
Gillian Stone is a Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist who aims to reconcile tenderness and dark emotion in her work. Her music is an exploration of inner and outer landscapes, turbulent feelings, recovery, and the juxtaposition of femininity and imperfection. She uses vulnerability to create a safe space to explore the dichotomy of beauty and discomfort. Gillian’s debut single “Bridges” is a building, echoing psych-folk track written during a summer of self-imposed turbulence.
London, ON born Indigenous electro-pop DJ Wolf Saga’s aim is to keep you dancing with catchy hooks while inspiring deeper contemplation. His work references contemporary issues close-to-home, from missing and murdered Indigenous women, to toxic relationships and equality. Wolf Saga’s philosophy is that music has the ability to touch on, and speak to, societal issues while still ensuring you have a good time on the dancefloor.Wolf Saga’s new self-titled debut album represents eight years of personal and musical development – the soundtrack to a chapter in his life. The album’s self-produced focus track “Fall Out” is an upbeat, danceable synth-driven track with a funky bassline.
Toronto-based alt-pop artist Josh Tavares has been a music lover from an early age. Josh began experimenting with original music when he was 10 and took every opportunity he could to perform. Writing music is by far his favorite part of the creative process and almost always starts with a title and works his way through the verses and chorus from there.
Josh’s new single “Tightrope” is a downtempo alt-pop track exploring the contrast of your real emotions versus what you choose to show everyone around you.
Create and immerse yourself in your own reverie with ESCPE’s latest EP Cloud Walk, now out on Gravitas Recordings. Reality is based on what one submerges themself in, and ESCPE encourages listeners to engage in an absence of mind and exist in their own universe through six ethereal offerings. Presenting five solo productions and one collaboration with Axel Thesleff, Cloud Walk is a transcendental tapestry of sonics that resides in the heavens. “Dawn” approaches with an array of luminous sensatories, guiding occult unknowns across the ether.
As dawn breaks, “Dusk” emerges to restore balance to the cosmos through elegant and celestial soundscapes. Featuring Axel Thesleff, a euphoric inauguration in “Suncrown” welcomes listeners to the dark, mystical kingdom of enlightenment. Uplifting and healing vocal chops revitalize “Memories” once forgotten, as listeners resume their path towards awakening. “Sacred” is a pensive excursion through the troposphere, voyaging aloft a cumulus of dreamy synths. “Overgrown” resolves the eclectic Cloud Walk with exquisite acoustics, bidding farewell as one returns to the Earth’s soil.
In our eyes and hearts, Maxine Linehan is the newly crowned Queen of Christmas (sorry, Mariah Carey) after her newest album dropped on November 13th. Not only did she give the early merrymakers an excuse to start blasting holiday music before and during Thanksgiving, but her magical voice has now brought us through the November – December transition with such enchantment.
This Time Of Year, a 12 track album filled with the joyous, snowy, hopeful warmth we all know and love during the Christmas season. Though we could be persuaded to listen to any Christmas album, there’s just something so special about Maxine Linehan’s voice, production, and passion that comes with each track on this album.
The newest single off the album is a lovely rendition of the classic hit “Happy Xmas (War is Over)”. “We live in a world where we continue to be divided by religion, politics, race to name a few subjects,” Maxine says. “John Lennon and Yoko Ono wrote this song asking us to choose peace, asking us to choose kindness. 39 years later we’re still working on it. But I still have hope. 2021 can be a year without fear.”
The album starts with Maxine’s rendition of Somewhere In My Memory/ Believe, that we know and love from the ever popular Christmas movie, The Polar Express, and finishes off with “Silent Night” in a way you have never heard before. But, our favorite track on the album has to be “I’ll Be Seeing You”, as there is a haunting vibe to the track that we never knew we needed.
You can find us decorating our trees, blasting This Time Of Year, and drinking hot chocolate in our candy cane onesies for the next couple of weeks. And we would bet that even those Christmas scrooges and grinches in our lives would love this album.
Modern Mystery 
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