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Instant Coffee, BGL, The Lions and Paul Butler are part of the Canadian art collective scene creating work together in all parts of the country. Taking a cue from these groups, Nicholas Brown and Leah Turner worked together to put together his article.

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Over the last several decades, with the increasing prominence of socially engaged and interactive forms of contemporary art, we’ve all gotten used to the collective as artist. Exhausted notions of singular artistic authorship and the artist as lone, tortured genius have given way to modes of production that better resemble a film crew or rock band. But we in Canada have our own precedents to lean on, canon-forming modern artists like the Group of Seven, the Quebec avant-gardes Les Automatistes, and the artist-corporation General Idea as chief examples. Emerging from homegrown precedents and international influences alike, Canada’s art collectives and collectively-minded individuals are a mixture of regional and cosmopolitan sources. Some of them studio-based, conspiring to make objects like a cottage industry; others, nomadic collaborators whose output is ephemeral and contingent. The artists profiled here are difficult to classify by the very nature of their polymorphic output.

Photography GORDON NICHOLAS
Fashion Stylist MILA FRANOVIC
Fashion Assistant SARA GREGORAC
Hair & Make-up SHANNON REYNOLDS

Take a look at some photos by Adam Wright of Jason Jessee and his club, the Sinners.

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The first Sinners were two Rhodesian Army Selous Scouts who relocated to the LA area in the 70s after their country dissolved. From there it passed down to this younger generation. Most of the guys are still the wild-composed type, keeping true to their roots, mostly found in SoCal, except for some scattered nomads in Northern California, North Carolina, Iowa, and Minnesota. Honestly, they are not concerned with any self-promotion or hype, they just dig bikes and cars and friends. Nothing new there’s no magic in real life. They do a lot of things together. It’s neat and it makes me jealous of it. I first got involved with these dudes through Jason Jessee. We were shooting some skate shit, then it just turned to bikes and cars and I started shooting the other dudes. The majority of this recent explosion in car and chopper building and its lifestyle can be traced back to Jason. The Sinners just keep livin’ their lives. It’s just bikes and cars and people, and it goes really fast… then you’re dead.

The 25 + member band Gayngs came together over the work of Rory Olson. With each song being written at 69 bpm there’s no wonder that Prince showed up for the band’s first sexy show together. Interview by Saelan Twerdy. Illustration by Lori D.

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When Minneapolis producer Ryan Olson got together with his buddies in the soft rock/electro-soul band Solid Gold and decided to record a concept album inspired by 10cc’s immortal prom-jam, “I’m Not In Love,” he never expected the project to balloon into a year-long, life-changing odyssey that would bring together two dozen of Minneapolis’ finest musicians and culminate in a blow-out show that would include a visitation by the Purple One, Prince himself. Through eleven tracks of sultry soft-rock, blue-eyed soul, choral R&B, and a few otherworldly journeys into slow-motion cinematic ambiance all of which cruise at the highly suggestive tempo of exactly 69 beats per minute Gayngs’ album, Relayted, documents how such diverse musicians as Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon, members of The Rosebuds and Megafaun, and Rhymesayers/Doomtree rapper P.O.S. became a family.

Jake and Jamin Orrall are keeping it all in the family with their two piece, blood-relations-only band JEFF the Brotherhood.

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How do you grow a timeless psychedelic punk band that can perfectly combine a broad range of styles with an innate ease and charm? Take two brothers from Franklin, Tennessee, add one singer-songwriter father, three strings, one drum set, mix ingredients in a home studio for about a decade and there you have it: JEFF the Brotherhood.

Michael Barrow touches base with three different producers based in three different countries who are all making dance music for one.

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Despite living thousands of miles apart and having virtually no connection with each other, Mock & Toof, Babe Rainbow, and Phaseone are united in a couple of areas: each of them has released an excellent, emotive debut album in the last year, and, despite their diverse styles, they all make dance music that’s profoundly antisocial. Mock & Toof’s debut LP, Tuning Echoes, is a quiet, quirky and sometimes sad take on nu-disco; Phaseone’s rap-inspired synth beats make you feel like you’re staring out into the night from an airplane window, no matter where you are; and Babe Rainbow’s Shaved EP, which was immediately snatched up by Warp Records, is an eerie slab of ambient horror-step. Redolent of hours alone in their individual bedrooms, all three take styles of music invented for the dancefloor and twist them into something interior: a space for one. Call it a clubhouse for outsiders.

It was buddies at first sight. In 1999 Fos met Chopper, the legendary originator of the Osaka Daggers in all his colourful glory. Now the Dagger’s membership has grown and Fos has the pleasure of introducing the rest of the world to the whole cast of characters.

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These days, no matter where you are in the world, you have instant access to everything that is happening in skateboarding. Thanks to Youtube you can watch any skate part that has been filmed in the last 20 years. Skateboarding is spreading around the world at an amazing speed, and if you turn up in even the world’s most remote cities to skate, the kids there will have seen all the latest company videos and will be completely aware of who did what down what and who left this company for that company. So just imagine going to a city and skating with a crew of people who have no concept of modern skateboard media whatsoever—wouldn’t it be almost indescribably refreshing? Well, there is such a crew, and here I’m talking about the Osaka Daggers.

Keeping hunger and nic fits down, the cornerstores that support The Rice Block in Vancouver, Kalamata in Calgary, Elephant Direct and Dimestore in Montreal have given each city’s crew more than just their names.

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To be taken seriously any self-respecting skateboard crew needs a few things. Some are obvious, like a headquarters and a signature spot. For the first, either a house (preferably low rent, durable) or a store (low prices, still durable) will do. Number two could be a local park or a significant street spot. Of course, these are only two of the countless things that give each particular group its flair. All these choices combine to form the heart of a crew; and crews, in turn, form the heart of skateboarding.

Vancouver’s 2010 International Go Skateboarding Day.

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Go Skateboarding Day might be considered a Hallmark holiday, but it’s definitely not the flower and card buying kind. This summer solstice in Vancouver, Go Skate Day embodied the spirit of everything that skateboarding is with the spirit of freedom, lots of energy, a little rebellion, cops, and some cash offered up for the skaters directly from the local skate shops.

As former lead-singer of the beloved, now defunct Toronto-based garage punk band The Deadly Snakes, and now with several stellar solo folk rock albums to his name, André Ethier could be forgiven for stopping there. With his psychedelic colours, saturated brushstrokes, and abject subject matter, Ethier proves painting’s hallucinatory potential. Leah Turner chats to Ethier about painting, the grotesque, and Led Zeppelin versus Picasso.

Styling DANDILION WIND OPAINE
Styling Assistant ARIANA PREECE
Hair REMPEL ROQUETTE
Make-up JENNA KUCHERA (Nobasura)
Models DAVID, SZAM, KUTTER and SALLY

Best Coast couldn’t have happened anywhere else. Bethany Cosentino, a lifelong native of California, only had to spend one winter in New York City to figure that out. Less than a year into her cross-country transplant, Bethany contacted her old friend and bandmate Bobb Bruno and told him she had some songs in her head that she wanted him to record. Later that week, she was on a plane back to Los Angeles and the first song to come out was the beloved beach-pop hit, “Sun Was High (So Was I).” Thus began Best Coast. The dozen or so songs released since then have never strayed far from that first splash, usually featuring languid guitar riffs and choruses that seem lifted from some unknown girl group, while lyrics tend be of the heart-on-the-sleeve variety and gel well with the simple, yet highly memorable melodies.

Das Racist started blowing up RSS feeds last year with their maddeningly catchy song, “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.” Months later you might have seen reblogs of their essay/haiku attacking New Yorker music writer Sasha Frere Jones’ thesis on the end of rap. Then there was the next-level Village Voice essay about their year as a meme which represents something of a high point in internet navel gazing.

Snoop Dogg’s Doggystyle. That has to be my favourite L.A. record. It’s just so L.A. man, it’s ridiculous,” Flying Lotus is saying as we talk from the polar ends of the continent. He sounds tired – it’s been just hours since a roof-raising performance at New York’s La Poisson Rouge with Kode9 & Nosaj Thing. By now the beginnings of the Flying Lotus story are well-documented; born Steven Ellison to heralded lineage, his aunt being the great Alice Coltrane, Ellison emerged in the wake of the late J Dilla to lead instrumental hip-hop into an unforeseen future.

Derek Swaim is a bit of a mystery man. I’ve had the pleasure of shooting with him only a couple of times, during which very little dialogue was exchanged, and even the two days I spent with him leading up to this interview were pretty quiet. However, once we got down to, it turns out he has a fair bit to say. Despite growing up in the skateboarding obscurity that is Kamloops, Derek has managed to acquire a reputable list of sponsors by making frequent trips to Vancouver strictly to shoot photos and film, never succumbing to the party scene that can plague even the most motivated. Anyone who’s seen his parts in Sophomore Jinx and Tens can attest that his style goes behind that prominent mane of hair, and even though Derek may seem quiet, it’s only because he lets his skills on a skateboard do all the talking.

Can music ever really be a guilty pleasure? Sure, maybe we all find ourselves grooving to music that our friends may find offensive, but really where is the guilt? There is after all an argument for all genres and an appropriate time and place for most artists. The Grateful Dead had some good jams. Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” is actually quite brilliant if you give it a chance. And shit, if you feel like Celine Dion is speaking to you, then go ahead brother and listen. With this in mind, we prodded and poked some of our favourite skaters for some playlists. Maybe you will be shocked, maybe you’ll be pleasantly surprised, maybe you’ll be relieved, and hopefully you will be stoked. So pass the ipod around as we embark on a multi-genre roller coaster ride through the tents of the rave we call skateboarding; from No Doubt to Toxic Holocaust and from Paul Anka to Rhianna, you are sure to find something you like. I hear the trance room will be going off!

Seven Secret Playlists with Spencer Hamilton, Alex Olson, Adam ‘Mortal’ McLaughlin, Torey Goodall, John Cardiel, Jamie Tancowny, and Mike Carroll.

a visit with Studio Skateboards.

Board in one hand and a beer in the other, I strain my eyes to focus on the blurry street scene in front of me, staggering in the depths of a drunken stupor. I thought giant-sized 8.1% Labatt Blues were my friend, but I’m not so sure right now. After five of ‘em, I might as well be blind. I’m in Montreal, at least I know that, and I do think I wandered a bit too far from the bar. Is this the Plateau? I think it is. Fuck it. I take another deep swig. Just then my foot catches somebody’s front stoop; the bottle falls from my hand, smashing on the pavement. The noise draws the attention of someone from inside. The door opens and I’m greeted by a friendly looking fellow wearing a loose sweater. We immediately recognize each other. It’s Darrell Smith. “Darrell!” I bark drunkenly. “What the fuck! You live right here?” Montreal is crazy like that. You never know who you are going to run into.

Drawing inspiration from the likes of “master” painters such as Diego Velázquez and John Singer Sargent, the portraits of Stephen Appleby-Barr are no Sunday paintings. The Toronto artist has combined carefully researched practices of the past with a penchant for the archaic. Appropriating the conventions of Victorian cartes-de-visite and daguerreotypes, the artist inserts his colleagues, friends, and contemporaries into mythic tableaus, complete with the mannered expressions of identity that pervade these historic sources. What results in this body of portraits is a legacy of an imagined brotherhood that highlights the residual ritualism of contemporary societies and fraternities. Appleby-Barr’s interest in collective identities parallels his own membership in the five-man collective Team Macho, which includes Lauchie Reid, Chris Buchan, Nicholas Aoki, and Jacob Whibley.

PHOTOGRAPHY MICHELLE FORD
Stylist MILA FRANOVIC
assistant ARIANA PREECE

Toronto gets kind of a bad rap. For Americans, it’s Canada’s cute attempt at having its own New York city. For most Canadians, it’s the sprawling, smoggy financial centre that thinks it’s so important. Vancouver’s got the ocean and the mountains, the laid-back West Coast vibe and the famous marijuana. Montreal’s got the almost-European bohemian cool, the unbelievably cheap rent and lax liquor laws. Toronto? Well, it’s got the CN Tower. That’s the common wisdom, anyway. Torontonians themselves, of course, know different. Hogtown isn’t the biggest city in Canada for nothing – it’s a massively diverse metropolis, and its patchwork of distinct neighbourhoods are miles deep with history and character. That also means that it has some of the best arts infrastructure in North America: you can barely trip over a streetcar track without landing in a bar, art gallery, or concert venue.