liner notes
Buck 65’s Deep, Deep Rap
By Ingrid Randoja
Buck 65’s Deep, Deep Rap
The year is 1957. The Russians launch Sputnik, the Frisbee hits store shelves and Jack Kerouac’s
On the Road is published. It’s also the year Nova Scotia-born rapper Buck 65 (a.k.a. Rich Terfry) uses as inspiration for his new album, Situation.
Terfry’s ex-girlfriend’s great-grandfather was a pioneer of the Dada art movement, which fuelled the musician’s interest in Dadaism and led him to Situationism, the avant-garde, political art movement that sprang from Dadaism. At its core, Situationism proposes that the morality of an act is dependent upon the situation in which it occurs.
“The Situationist International was formed in 1957 and I really got interested in that movement, and then I got obsessed about what was going on around the world and culturally at that time,” says the Juno Award-winning Terfry on the line from London, England, where he performed to a sold-out house the night before.
“The more I started to look at it, the more I started to realize that the events of that year were just incredibly powerful and interesting to say the very least, and I came to the conclusion that a lot of the developments of that year have shaped the way we think to this day.”
Situation is filled with stripped-bare hip-hop tunes that evoke a James Ellroy-ish view of the ’50s. He’s penned songs about ex-marine cops, girlie magazine photographers and bad-boy teenagers, complete with rolled up dungarees and fast hot rods.
“I really wanted to push myself on the lyrical side of things, I knew there were things I wanted to say, characters that I wanted to build and I wanted to get those things across as clearly as I could. But at the same time I wanted to make the rhyming structures much more dense and more complicated than I ever had before.”
And that he does, making it essential that listeners keep their finger on the replay button.
“We wanted to make a record that would reward repeated listening,” he says. “I always figured we’d make it deceptively simple and bury a lot of things in there, a lot of little details people might miss in the first listening. There’s a lot to sink one’s teeth into if one chooses to do so, but I don’t assume anyone will — I can’t force anyone and say, ‘Look deeper, there’s more there.’ I just want people to enjoy it and appreciate it on their own terms.”
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Daft Punk comes Alive
They are the Superman and Batman of electronic music, techno
superheroes Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem Christo —
otherwise known as Daft Punk. Pounding out futuristic pings that rock
underground clubs and sold-out stadiums, the French duo (who perform
hidden under futuristic helmets) clamour for your attention with their
concert CD Alive 2007
(available November 20th), which captures their performance at this
summer’s Wireless Festival in London. Their best work is all here — “Da
Funk,” “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” and the crazy catchy “One
More Time” — backed by the sound of thousands of cheering fans.
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Out this month
Angels & Airwaves
I-Empire (November 6)
Not content simply to release a follow-up to their debut album, We Don’t Need to Whisper, the alt-pop band is simultaneously putting together a feature film — also called I-Empire — that combines documentary footage, live performance clips and CGI-created war scenes.
Corb Lund
Horse Soldier! Horse Soldier! (November 13)
Alberta’s pride ’n’ joy releases his fifth country and western album, which was recorded in Nashville with his band, the Hurtin’ Albertans.
Kylie Minogue
X (November 27)
The millennium’s reigning disco queen offers up another batch of sleek, electro-pop dance tunes.