Tag: CRi

Music Festivals by William Ruben Helms

Spring and summer, along with warmer weather are just around the corner. And you know what that means? Festival announcements, followed by festival season.

Presented by Bell and Coors Light, OSHEAGA Music and Arts Festival‘s 17th edition will take place August 2, 2024 – August 4, 2024 in Montréal‘s gorgeous Parc Jean-Dreapeau. Over the course of 16 previous editions, OSHEAGA has become a global reference for great music and top-notch festival experiences: Attendees come to the Montréal and the festival to experience something that they simply can’t find anywhere else. Located on two islands, one which is man-made, just off the shore of Montréal Island and Vieux Montréal, Parc Jean-Drapeau was the site of the Expo 1967. The park has one of the most stunning views of Montréal’s skyline and Mont Royal, and while in the park, you’re able to catch a wide variety of artists, both emerging and established across an array of genres.

Festival organizers and books have curated this year’s festival with the explicit mission of appealing to fans of every genre, style and generation. Grammy nominated, rinsing folk pop artist Noah Kahan will be headlining the festival’s first day, August 2, playing what will be a rare festival set this summer. Fans of singer/songwriter pop can also catch Hozier, who played a sold-out show at Laval’s Place Bell last year; Teddy Swims, the genre-bending artist, who has dominated Tik Tok; Melanie Martinez, the alt-pop phenom, who has amassed over 12 billion streams and more; and singer/songwriter and actor Reneé Rapp, who starred in the Broadway production of Mean Girls — and played a much-talked about, sold-out show at MTELLUS last October.

If you dig punk and alt rock — and you were a child of the 90s or came of age in the 90s, OSHEAGA has got something for you: 90s punk icons Green Day will be headlining the festival’s second day, August 3. Fully expect to hear tunes from Dookie, American Idiot and more. But personally, I’d love to hear songs off Warning. Beloved old-school punks Rancid, rising Los Angeles rockers The Linda Lindas, riot grrrl legends Sleater-Kinney and The Smashing Pumpkins are the day’s biggest names. The Smashing Pumpkins return to the OSHEAGA stage for the first time in 17 years.

SZA, the biggest name in pop at the moment will be headlining the festival’s third and final day. And if you dig genre-bending pop anthems. T-Pain will be making his OSHEAGA debut. The festival’s bill features a wide variety of Afrobeats and Afropop including Grammy Award winner Tyla, who won the first ever Best African Music Performance Award for her global smash hit “Water;” Nigerian artist Ayra Starr; Haitian artist Michaeël Brun, who played a sold-out Festival International de Jazz Montréal show last year.

If you’re a hip-hop head who digs both chart-topping and underground emcees from across the globe, OSHEAGA will have something for you: This year’s lineup will feature Denzel Curry; Bronx emcee Lil Jay, who played Place Bell back in 2022; Swedish, experimental beat-driven sensation Bladee; British emcee Skepta, who has made a name for himself for pairing UK grime-driven bars with Afrobeat influences; Belgian emcee Hamza, who spits bars in a silky French; and Moroccan emcee ElGrandeToto.

If you dig electronic dance music, OSHEAGA will have something for you: Wildly popular Dutch DJ and producer Martin Garrix, who headlined last year’s îLESONIQ Festival will be playing; acclaimed French electronic duo Justice will be playing OSHEAGA to support their first album of original material in seven years; British electronic music artist and producer Labrinth, best known for the music in acclaimed series Euphoria will be making a rate live appearance this year, too. Additionally, there’ll be live performances from Overmono, Iréne Drésel, Confidence Man, The xx‘s Romy and DJ sets from Uncle Waffles and Mochakk.

This year’s edition will also proudly showcase homegrown acts. Roughly a third of the 2024 lineup features artists from Québec and Canada at large, including Ontario-based TALK, an acclaimed, multi-Juno Award-nominated, bilingual artist, with massive following in la belle province will be playing the festival. Acclaimed, Prince Edward Island-based indie outfit Alvvays are on the bill. Local funk outfit Clay and Friends, who I believe I caught at M for Montréal in 2019 or so will be playing. ASDIQ Félix Award winner CRi and local hip-hop outfit Planet Giza will also be playing on the OSHEAGA stage.

3 Day Tickets are already available. Single-day tickets go on sale Friday at 10:00am. Pricing and links are below y’all.

OSHEAGA 2024 TICKET PRICES
(Taxes and service fees included. Prices are subject to change without notice.)

GENERAL ADMISSION TICKET / SINGLE-DAY: starting at $165 CAD
GENERAL ADMISSION TICKET / 3-DAYS: starting at $395 CAD

CASINO DE MONTRÉAL GOLD TICKET / SINGLE-DAY: starting at $320 CAD
CASINO DE MONTRÉAL GOLD TICKET / 3 DAYS: starting at $745 CAD

PLATINUM TICKET / SINGLE-DAY: starting at $685 CAD
PLATINUM TICKET / 3 DAYS: starting at $1,620 CAD

American Express Cardmembers can get Front Of The Line® presale tickets started yesterday at 10:00am ET and goes until tonight at 10:00pm ET tonight.

Click HERE to take advantage of the offer.

3-Day Tickets are available here: https://osheaga.com/en/tickets-osheaga-2024

Single Day Tickets will be available here, tomorrow morning: https://osheaga.com/en



Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Throughout the course of this site’s almost 10 year history — yes, almost 10! — I’ve spilled quite a bit of virtual ink covering the New York-based electronic music duo and JOVM mainstays Beacon. Now, as you may recall, the duo, which is comprised of Thomas Mullarney III (vocals) and Jacob Gussett (production, keys, synths) have developed a reputation for a minimalist approach and sound that draws from R&B, house and electro pop paired with Mullarney’s achingly tender falsetto.

Beacon’s third album, 2018’s Gravity Pairs found the duo writing material that went off in a completely different direction from their previously released work. They embarked on open-ended writing sessions in which they adopted a more liner style of songwriting instead of thee loop and texture-driven method they had long used. And the initial demos they wrote were essentially built around piano chords and guitar phrases with vocal melodies, which they then edited into a number of iterations, which found them looking through each individual version from a multitude of angles and directions.

Naturally, the duo expanded some songs and pared others back. Much like the bending of light through a prism, the abstract, deeply patient, almost painterly creative process eventually turned the material they wrote into a space in which seemingly different colors, tones and textures — minimalist ballads, elaborate pop spirituals and driving dance tunes — can coexist simultaneously and at different speeds, spreading out like a sort of spectrum. And with each iteration, the duo discovered they could easily expand upon how they presented the material within a live setting: they could play the same material in a straightforward fashion — or they could play the same material in a different fashion that added or subtracted color and shading, depending on the circumstances, their moods and their desires. And while pushing the duo’s songwriting and sound in new adventurous, new directions their work has remained imbued with a vulnerable and aching yearning.

Since the release of Gravity Pairs, the duo have been extremely busy. Last year they went on a successful North American tour with Nick Murphy. They shared a series of stripped-back studio sessions — and they released a remix album featured edits by Elkka, Helios, and CRi. 

Interestingly, Beacon introduced covers into the Gravity Pairs writing process as a way of breaking out of melodic patterns while discovering new sonic spaces within others’ songwriting. The JOVM mainstays start off the new year with a run of live dates in Europe, which includes a January 21, 2020 stop at the Paradiso in Amsterdam — and their first ever studio recorded cover, a cover of the Pixies‘ “Wave of Mutilation.” Inspired by the slower tempo and phrasing of the UK Surf B-side, which showcased the original’s mutability, Beacon’s slow-burning piano-led meditation finds the duo amplifying the playfully morbid surreality of Black Francis‘ lyrics, said to be about the phenomenon of Japanese businessmen taking their own lives after their businesses fail in the 1980 while being hauntingly gorgeous.

“We wanted it to feel uncanny and have the recognition of the original unfold slowly for the listener rather than being obvious or immediate,” Beacon explains in press notes.

The JOVM mainstays will be embarking on a European tour through January. Check out the tour dates below.

Beacon Europe Tour 2020

01.17 Berlin, DE – Musik & Frieden
01.18 Hamburg, DE – Uebel & Gefährlich
01.19 Copenhagen, DK – Vega
01.21 Amsterdam, NL – Paradiso
01.22 Cologne, DE – Helios 37
01.23 Brussels, BE – La Machine
01.25 Warsaw, PL – Hydrozagadka
01.26 Prague, CZ – Cafe V Lese
01.28 London, UK – O2 Academy Islington
01.29 Paris, FR – Supersonic
01.30 Bucharest, RO – Club Control