Music.Art.Ppl (MAP) is music and art collective based in Ottawa. Organizing inclusive events that incorporate live painting, visual projections, interactive decorations, and electronic music, MAP continues to strive to create inspirational spaces. Based in Ottawa, the collective has collaborated with the iconic venues such as National Arts Centre, the Ottawa Art Gallery, Mercury lounge, City at Night, Bar Robo, Happy Goat Coffee Inc., and more.
Paraphonique
SoundCloud
Dynamic rhythms, layers of arpeggios and crushed sounds make up Paraphonique’s cinematic soundtracks to a story always in motion; blurred landscapes as seen from a car window. Primarily using modular analog synths, vintage equipment and choice fragments found on old tapes, Nicolas Lavoie produces a colourful, malleable palette of sounds ranging from ambient techno to krautrock and electro. Often it’s one of those unique fragments from a tape or a synth experiment or even the ambient noise in his studio that inspires the mood of a track and generates its pulse. Paraphonique tracks featured on the first two Low Noise Productions cassette compilations in late 2013, not long before the release of the EP La Traversee du Continent, an intriguing blend of space-age electro with the noise turned up and sweeping rhythms. His album, music de nuit followed on the same label.
SlowPitchSound
Website
Cheldon aka SlowPitchSound is a “sci-fi turntablist” known for experimenting with music, visuals and live performance. He is the 2018 TD SoundMakers Composer in Residence. Cheldon has been developing his own style of music composition over 20 years and has released 7 studio albums. His work has been featured at Classical and New Music events, popular Indie music festivals, world renowned Electronic festivals, theatres, museums and many creative spaces. Cheldon’s passion for presenting fresh ideas has allowed him to perform works around the world with established artists from a number of genres. Together with longtime collaborator and legendary Toronto dancer Lybido, SlowPitchSound’s shows combine improvised music, dance and projected visuals to create a truly one of a kind performance.
Pursuit Grooves
SoundCloud
American born, Toronto-based music producer/DJ Pursuit Grooves (Vanese Smith) journeys through electronic spaces via intricate rhythms, soulful synths, moody cinematic atmospheres and heavy basslines. She has released numerous albums on her label What Rules as well as Tectonic, Rush Hour and the Brownswood to name a few. A Red Bull Music Academy alum, her latest project Felt Armour has been highly praised after a 3 year album hiatus. Armed with a degree in film, she creates visual and video art under the moniker Mo;delic Arts. Her designs fluidly compliment the pulsating imagination of her compositions
Classic Roots
SoundCloud
Currently based in Toronto but carrying the spirit of Northern Ontario with him, Classic Roots is one of Canada’s best kept secrets. Infusing tribal rhythms and his own boreal spirit over raw techno beats is his specialty and he does not disappoint for his debut release with M5! Red Pill’s slamming kick drum and powerful energy grab you from the opening beat and take you right into the matrix of techno bliss. Classic Roots is determined to continue producing his own music and share it with the world. His beats tell a story that embodies the bold spirit of the North.
Elysha Poirier
Website
A visual artist working in video, animation and film, interwoven with analogue techniques and digital environments, her practice is playfully organic with inquisitive faculties for how our systems mimic, investigate and adopt patterns found in nature, movement and sound. Elysha has produced installations, short films and engaged in live performances locally and abroad. Her approach is deeply collaborative, working with a diversity of artists stemming from experimental music, film, dance and theatre. Elysha is also a researching artist at Topological Media Lab (Concordia University) – a trans-disciplinary atelier-laboratory for collaborative research creation. She’s taught workshops on interdisciplinary arts while producing intimate performances that celebrate collaboration, bringing together artists working in audio/visual, dance and cinema.
Magic:D
SoundCloud
This sonic technician uses a creative mastery with music to convey soulful vibrations throughout his unique sets. Now based in Toronto, Magic:D has found his true calling by fusing two passions: blending his artistic soundscapes ‘n artistry with conscious self-explorations, or as he prefers to call it, ‘Journeying Within’.
Colleen Linseman
Bandcamp
A gifted sound facilitator of traditional Amazonian healing, she has recorded three CDs and facilitated sound healing retreats in B.C. Hawaii, Peru, California, and all across Canada. Colleen is the inspiration u0026amp; owner of the enCHANTed Healing Centre and is a Certified Shiatsu Therapist u0026amp; Holistic Health Practitioner with over 20 years working experience. She explores the heart of health at the core of alternative medicine, massage, aromatherapy, sound therapy, conscious movement, nutrition, meditation and many other healing traditions. Colleen’s life is dedicated to the preservation, study, and teaching of shamanic knowledge for the welfare of the planet and its inhabitants. Colleen has worked extensively in the Amazon with her Traditional Native Elders to bring ancient methods of healing and awakening to the modern world in ways that can be assimilated and integrated into our awakening evolutionary times. Colleen channels a variety of sacred light star languages guided by higher self along with Shipibo icaros, with a modern tone of harmonies and overtones accompanied by all her worldly instruments. Colleen has been initiated as a healer and channeler from her earliest of memories.
Ryan Sage
Patreon
An artist of many mediums, Ryan specializes in Sketching, Illustration, Creative Photo Manipulation and Digital Design. He founded icura in 2012, a spiritual education resource. Ryan helps people by giving them ancient and modern information that dissolves stagnation. His advice is usually presented as digital art and spoken word. He often uses astrology and traditional healing methods for this. Over the past 6 years, Ryan has trained alongside several teachers of traditional healing. Ryan uses technology and music to impart this healing message. He is fascinated by the worlds of Frequency Entrainment and Sacred Geometry. He aims to authentically synthesize the worlds of Philosophy, Aboriginal Wisdom, Mysticism, Religion and Nutrition. Ryan believes: “The ultimate strategy to heal the body can be as simple as changing one’s state of mind.”
Shannon Brown
Website
An artist, arts educator, film producer and arts administrator, Shannon’s most recent exhibition, The PORTALS Series, delves into the use of digital technology to assist in her quest to unite the left and right sides of her body in the act of art making. Her visionary art hangs in collections across Canada, Mexico and the US and she has exhibited in over 40 venues from The Canadian Consulate in San Miguel Allende Mexico, and The Edward Day Gallery to The Atlanta Georgia Folk Festival and the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition. Shannon’s company Elevator Films produces documentary films on subjects such as Laughter (Laughology, 2010), Stupidity (2003), Gay Marriage (Escape to Canada, 2004) and Precognitive Dreaming (Seeing 911, 2010). These films have been broadcast on Discovery Channel, CBC, CTV, Channel 4 in the UK, and The IFC among others. Shannon has studied Earth Medicine with Liddy Flewelling, Dreaming with Robert Moss and Visionary Art with Alex and Allyson Grey, attending the invitation only visionary intensive at COSM in 2016. She found her first creative family as a Senior Singer with The Young Canadians of the Calgary Stampede and since then has been the lead singer in a number of bands in Montreal, Kingston and Toronto.
Treebot
Website
The Treebot knows neither where it is from nor who its people are. One day it self-assembled from some digital trash someone had thrown into the woods. What the Treebot did know was its purpose: to assume the appearance of the dominant life form on Earth and impart wisdom and love through music.
Deep Sixed
Bandcamp
This well-dressed instrumental duo from Kingston, Ontario features Adam Weave (The Huaraches, Heavy Living) and K.L. Sealegs (Fire Moss). The band blends junk keyboards and bass-heavy beats with blistering guitar to create music that is equal parts science-fiction soundtrack, post-rock anthem and no-wave dance score. “Hitchcockian Nintendo music” that “wouldn’t be out of place in a 80s indie thriller film,” say fans.
UN
Bandcamp
“UN is a dark wave, experimental techno project by Montreal music producer Kara Keith. Hypnotic, minimal, industrial and pop, UN is punk and dance at the same time. Like giant black lego pieces fitting and falling out of each other on the dance floor at a rave inside a medieval castle in the 90s” – Sid Fisher
Pelada
SoundCloud
This Montréal electronic duo resonate with audiences for their re-contextualized blend of Chicago house, Detroit techno with more abstract u0026amp; abrasive club music. The duo, comprised of vocalist Chris Vargas and producer Tobias Rochman, create a sound combining a patchwork of sequenced analogue synths, drum machines, samplers and voice that is both urgent and powerful. Chris Vargas’ lyrics, delivered in Spanish, explore themes of power, surveillance, social, environmental and gender politics. The resulting live sets are living and breathing entities, energetic and combative. Pelada grew out of the city’s infamous underground after hours warehouse scene, performing alongside DJs, punk groups, and live experimental electronic acts. These large parties are often illegal, populated by an eclectic mix of punks, club kids, ravers and freaks, promoting a spirit of inclusiveness and open-mindedness. Pelada embraces this diverse crowd united by a shared interest of letting loose, unsatisfied by what is being offered in the more mainstream clubs.
Website
Niki Sehmbi graduated from OCAD University from Drawing and Painting with a minor in Expanded Animation. Her works explore 3D still models and the digital animated/manipulated image. The 3D shapes shift and move about leaving imprints and unveiling alien and psychedelic forms like how a brushstroke leaves a trail of paint. Experimental in nature, Sehmbi’s works analyze the 3D moving form in a 2D space of observation. With the focus on manifesting strange worlds and detailed foreign landscapes developed entirely with a single 3D shape.
Spooloops
SoundCloud
The music of spooloops is a deeply personal journey into texture and rhythm, community and technology. Ian James Newton is a southern Ontario based artist whose multifaceted social experiments provide atypical ways for people to come together. He uses aspects of contemporary art, music, and underground festival culture in novel combinations to construct provocative environments that subvert social tropes to encourage meaningful experiences. He is known for his art studio, Zero to One, and his underground gatherings; Blue Dot and Kabelsalat, as well as his music under spooloops. His art, generally, questions current cultural relationships to technology and is not interested in technology for it’s own sake. His interest lies in separating it’s promise from it’s potential. His long-standing live techno project, spooloops, is an evolving exploration into these themes. Much of the live set is improvised, and always performed without a computer. Using machines live encourages unexpected behaviour as well as fidelity limitations, breathing life into the sound. Spooloops’ sets are a shared exploration by artist and audience. Unafraid to take risks and play with tropes, often using simultaneous unexpected sonic ingredients; cultural tension, existential humour, nature, industrialization, psychedelic, longing, euphoria, love, headedness or rooted-ness, spooloops’ sound always falls forward in unanticipated directions.
Orphx
Website
One of the most highly respected acts in both techno and industrial circles, Orphx have been developing their signature fusion of hypnotic rhythms and experimental noise for the past twenty years. Using modular and analog synthesizers, software, location recordings and feedback circuits, Rich Oddie and Christina Sealey draw upon the darker, psychedelic fringes of techno and combine these elements with the experimental aesthetics and themes of early industrial music. Orphx gained an international following as one of the pioneering acts within the European ‘rhythmic noise’ scene and more recently came to the attention of techno fans through a series of acclaimed 12″s on Adam X’s Sonic Groove label along with standout remixes for artists like Perc, Oscar Mulero and Svreca. Oddie and Sealey have performed throughout Europe and North America at celebrated venues like Berghain and Tresor as well as many notable international electronic music festivals such as Movement and Mutek. Their live performances are renowned for delivering improvised sets that combine software with modular synthesizer and other hardware. Orphx has released nine full length albums and numerous singles on vinyl, CD, and cassette that have had a significant influence on many artists in the present wave of industrial techno. Building on a sprawling back catalogue that stretches across the divisions between industrial, ambient and techno, their recent outputs have demonstrated that Orphx is both a pioneer and an innovator in the powerful fusion of rhythm and noise.
Silla u0026amp; Rise
SoundCloud
Silla u0026amp; Rise: This Juno-nominated trio blends Inuit throat-singing and futuristic dancefloor beats, Silla are Cynthia Pitsiulak (Kimmirut, NU) and Charlotte Qamaniq (Iglulik, NU). Their name comes from the Inuktitut word “Sila” meaning weather. Sila is what surrounds us; it is what connects us to our land, to the moon, sun and stars, the ocean and the air we breathe. In respecting and honouring the need to preserve Inuit culture and paying homage to our land and the strong connection to its spirituality, they experience and perform the sounds of traditional and contemporary throat songs. Rise is Ottawa’s Rise Ashen, a Juno Award nominated global-grooves producer, DJ and dancer who has spent his life pursuing the intersection of traditional and futuristic music.
Jonah K
SoundCloud
An audio alchemist specializing in deep, bass-driven electronic music, Jonah K is a fearless explorer of the dark and equally at home creating music for both mind and dance floor. Complex rhythms, heavy bass, and haunting atmospherics feature prominently in his work and his extensive list of releases have received praise from the likes of Ninja Tune’s Solid Steel Radio, Biome and Black Sun Empire. Over the last two decades, Jonah K has established himself as a major contributor to Canada’s electronic music community. He has organized numerous events, performed both Canada-wide and internationally, and is co-founder and resident artist with the Dark Rooms, Suma and Spectrum collectives.
Jax a Muse
Website
Jackie Levitt is a multimedia artist and performer who mixes and projects abstract, textural, and narrative video creations onto three dimensional installations. She specializes in animating raw and unconventional spaces with light and colour, augmenting sonic experiences with live visual experiences.
