Upwardly mobile

Local avant-pop act A Vertical Mosaic is a band on the move

By Lorraine Carpenter

 A trio of Waste Island misfits is making its bid to bridge the sonic gap between pop and the avant-garde in this city. On their very indie six-track debut No Nation No Blues, folk pop, percussive soundscapes--and an epic that sounds like New Order having a breakdown--all co-habit and get along quite well. The minimal, vaguely hypnotic live act equals this eclecticism, varying in both sound and intensity. The Mirror caught up with the band to talk about musical unity, their ghost band member and that moniker. [Note that the band's female third, Heidi Donnelly, is a silent presence.]

 Mirror: Does the band name have any special significance?

 Edmund Lam: It's from a book on Canadian capitalism. The content has nothing to do with us, it's just poetic, it has a nice ring.

 Ali Rahman: The book, which we all should read but haven't read, is about class structure, race and capitalism and, technically speaking, none of us are white males, so--

 M: Didn't your white male get deported?

 AR: Ah, Guillaume. Stefan Christophe was going to play with us but that didn't work out, then Guillaume [Pichois] came around and started playing guitar. It hit the spot but we couldn't find much place for him because we wanted to keep it minimal. Then his visa expired--the government didn't like him and sent him back to France. I'm still working with him, though. He's got a techno label and I'm supposed to send him some minimal beats, we'll do some back-and-forth.

 M: Do you have new AVM material in the works?

 AR: We have some skeletons in the making but we have to be recording to get them down. We're working more independently: Ed's been using his computer a lot and I've been at Concordia using their analog synthesizer and making weird electroacoustic stuff. It'll be an interesting challenge for the next record to bring those worlds together and still sound unified.

 M: The EP is quite diverse musically--do you plan to unify that element as well?

 EL: We do something once and, unless we think we can do it much better, we don't end up doing it again. Some of the stuff is not fully resolved, I think we can push it further and experiment, but we deal with it more song per song as opposed to having a universal style.

 M: Can you define what links the songs?

 EL: The songs are essentially very similar, it's just the way we present them that's different. It's mostly driven by melody, the contrast of melody and sounds, whether that results in pop or more noisy stuff.

 AR: We just keep getting more toys to play with and more records to listen to. You can catch a lot of references on the album, lyrical or otherwise. As opposed to a lot of bands who stand up and say, "This is us" as part of the canon of music, we're like living filters of what's happening around us. :

 At Casa del Popolo with Detroit Metal, Saturday, Feb. 10, 9pm, $5

 Riffage in reruns

 Local cover band '70s Child resurrect the dinosaur days

 By JOHNSON CUMMINS

 On the Main recently I stumbled across a poster proclaiming "'70s rock cover band," four words that strike a thick, hempy chord in my heart. According to the poster, they play Uriah Heep, Deep Purple, Babe Ruth and other bands currently championed almost exclusively by bikers. Let me wax nostalgic a moment: macrame#233; owls, Evel Knievel, nickel bags, knitted beer-can hats, feathered roach clips and all-night cocaine binges. Those were the days.

 I have arranged to meet lead singer Shakara Mahailet at a popular Duluth cafe#233;. Problem is, I've forgotten to tell her what I look like, or note what she looks like. After waving my dictaphone in peoples' faces like an idiot for 20 minutes, Mahailet finally struts through the door and I realize that only this ueberbabe could be the singer of a band called '70s Child.

 "I think a lot of people are getting into '70s hard rock now because it's stood the test of time and is now considered classic music. It's a type of music that really hits you here," she says, indicating her heart.

 Using my keen journalistic observation skills, I note that she would have been only knee-high to a grasshopper during her favourite decade. "I learned about music from my parents' records, because that was their generation. I started singing classical and I realized that the singing of Ian Gillan or Ozzy Osbourne was simply more suited to my voice--and more fun."

 Mahailet and myself are not alone in our fascination with the Carter and Ford years. Film soundtracks are delving into the '70s hit parade, "classic rock" radio is sweeping the U.S. and major fashion chains like Gap and Le Chateau are pimping lines drawn from the days of gigantic mirrored sunglasses.

 "I think a lot of people are getting into the '70s now because they're just discovering them for the first time. As far as the music goes, it was the first time we got such great combinations of different musical ideas." :

 At Barfly on Friday, Feb. 9, 10pm, $3

 Princess of power

 Lori the Hi-Fi Princess turns up the voltage

 By RUPERT BOTTENBERG

 While she won't be joined by her VJ partner Honeygun, there's no doubt that NYC-based DJ Lori the Hi-Fi Princess will be giving this weekend's Love on the Beat party the royal treatment. The Mirror eluded her palace guards long enough to get the skinny.

 Mirror: What kind of tunes do you spin, in clubkid terms?

 Princess Lori: Psychedelic techno, a fusion of hard techno beats with trippy sounds. Sometimes it can get tracky, more like techno, but then I like to drop in stuff that's more song-structured, like trance. I think the two sounds were ment to be played together--they fit perfectly.

 M: Now, what kind of tunes do you spin, in terms my mom would understand?

 PL: Does your mom know anything about the '60s? That might help her to understand the psychedelic part, and as for the techno--just think "hard."

 M: Your first gig was in '94 in Victoria, B.C., where you're from. At that point, you were spinning house. In '98 you split for the U.K., after which you went to Luxembourg. Was that where the shift to techno was cemented?

 PL: I'd started to buy techno when I was still living in Canada. When I moved to Luxembourg, I met Simmer, who runs the label I'm on. He got me into playing more aggressively. I spent time in Germany, Holland and Belgium, and saw a lot of great DJs. It took my love for techno to a whole new level. Techno is a lot more aggressive and I have found lately that it fits my personality a lot better.

 M: Whaddaya call those folks, anyway? Luxembourgeoisie?

 PL: Yup!

 M: Tell me a bit about Induced Dipole, your joint CD with Calvin Tang.

 PL: I've put out a lot of tapes, but CD quality is so much nicer to listen to. My disc is called Voltage and Calvin's is Charge. If you don't know what it means, look it up and you will see how the names all fit together. :

 With U.S. Marshall, Darjis and more at Love On the Beat 3, at 2275 St-Joseph E. on Saturday, Feb. 10, 9pm, $40, Info: (450) 625-7000

With Buck Rogers, Steady B and D.R. One at Tokyo on Tuesday, Jan 23, 10pm, $5