A fun game I like to play sometimes is searching for random city tags on Bandcamp and seeing what pops up. Usually do Canadian cities, but checked out Montevideo in Uruguay today.

Happy I did, this song fucks

Some solid AF stoner doom out of Japan. They're headlining a show in my neck of the woods tonight, so they came up on my radar and my fuck am I glad for that!

Some solid guitar driven stuff out of Halifax, NS! From Bandcamp:

Wielding buzz saw guitars, power-punk riffs, and fuzzed-out garage vocals Outtacontroller comes crashing out of the gates of North End Halifax with frantic, gritty pop songs about girls, gumption, and graveyards.

Loud shit from Peterborough, ON! Band description from Bandcamp:

Using only a voice, drums, a bass, and an arsenal of effects pedals, CROSS DOG plays a loud, noisy, socially conscious blend of feminist punk, hardcore, and metal.

(If someone has a better genre label, let me know, bad at categorizing stuff like this)

So I was digging through the tracks of the excellent Montreal, QC ska-punk band Bill McNeill, and I noticed the featured artist who did a little rap on Pirate Booty. Decided to take a closer look and, while not my usual stuff, I actually kind of dig this track. So here you go - from Montreal, SoMad!

Been digging through some old zines for a local Ottawa, ON haunt and came across this track. Out of Kingston, ON, House of Targ zine October 2019 pinup band Deux Trois!

Credit to 613trending, I guffawed.

Some very solid psych pop out of Sarnia, ON!

So I've started getting into fan cam footage from live band shows posted by some dude in Japan (Tokyo I think) which has exposed me to music/bands I dig that otherwise would have never, EVER crossed my radar (shoutout to q23 on Youtube)

This got me thinking: what other music could I discover by putting in 'Live at [x]', in the appropriate language, in Youtube (bonus points if someone can point me to another service or someone on Peertube or something)?

Will share my own venue list for Ottawa, ON Canada in the comments later today/tomorrow.

Fuck it, we're playing 7 degrees of Gaven Dianda until someone gets sick of it and posts something else :)

Here's some great stuff from Toronto, ON's The Polite Society! From this Wavelength Music article:

Polite Society originally was known as Hollow Earth, back when Gaven Dianda (also of Flashing Lights) and Amy Bowles (of Pony da Look), got things started with Jim Bravo, Sean Kennedy (Blood Ceremony) and Christopher Norman. When Dianda and, later, Bowles left to pursue their other artistic interests, James Scott (of Heavy Ethics) joined in, as did Paul Kehayas.

The current lineup — Scott, Kehayas, Bravo and Norman — have played under the name of Polite Society for about a year, timed with the release of their first album, self-titled as Polite Society.

The album is a proggy, psychedelic journey with peaks and valleys that will have listeners picking up notes of Bowie, Skip Bifferty, maybe a little bit of the Animals and the Zombies with a touch of Mick Ronson’s wizardry.

Cracks, a week or so ago: You know, I'm kinda blowing up the feed here a bit, maybe I should take a break and let other people post stuff

Cracks, now:

Anyway, here's some instrumental space rockesque stuff from St. John's, NL duo Elder Caius! Bandcamp link to the album here, but I'm a sucker for liquid lightshow footage so shared the YT video.

Beginning to think I need to break up these '7 degrees of Gaven Dianda' posts with unrelated stuff, but seriously, I keep finding amazing shit! I really have to go thank his former Thee Gnostics bandmate for starting me down this path...

Here's a track from The John Denver Airport Conspiracy out of Toronto, ON. Following bits stolen from this interview from Panm360.com by Stephen Boissonneault:

Band members are: Cameron (guitar and vocals) Jordan (drums and backing vocals) Savanna (violin, percussion, backing vocals) Andrew (organ/keys, slide guitar, harmonica) Charles (guitar/flute), and me, Richie (bass, vocals). The John Denver Airport Conspiracy came from Cameron and Jordan when first forming the band … a bit of a joke on the Brian Jonestown Massacre (we love you) at first I think, but it stuck [...]

Our influences are pretty wide as we all collect records and listen to all kinds of music. As for our sound specifically, I would say The Byrds, The Velvet Underground, Stereolab, The Kinks…all those 60’s psychedelic bands…13th Floor elevators, Love, Incredible String Band, The Pretty Things etc.

The Gaven connection: Richie Gibson played with Gaven as a member of The Saffron Sect. Here's a link to an absolute banger where he's credited for sitar, autoharp and feedback.

Continuing the 7 degrees of Gaven Dianda game, here's a track from Hamilton, ON's Christine Leakey.

This is another artist who has been super prolific over the years, in a ton of bands, etc. It's worth giving her website a gander just to see how deep that rabbit hole goes (and to check out her visual design work, which is dope). I really like this track, and there is a lot of musical variety on the album it comes from. Worth a listen!

The Gaven connection: Back in the 90s-early aughts, Christine did vocals and guitar for a female-fronted post-punk psych band, The Double Feature Creatures (which was fucking awesome, for the love of god click this link). Gaven is listed on Discogs as a drummer on their single Stranded at the Drive-In.

So I'm just going to say that today's (or this week's, perhaps month's) game of 7 degrees of Gaven Dianda is paying off like crazy :)

Here's a track from The Super Friendz of Halifax, NS. This Wikipedia entry gives a pretty good rundown of the group.

The Gaven connection: After The Super Friendz broke up in 1997, Matt Murphy's cover band [The Flashing Lights]( https://theflashinglights.bandcamp.com/album/where-the-change-is] became his primary musical vehicle. He and bassist Henri Sangalang moved to Toronto and recruited Gaven on keyboards, tambourine and harmonica.

Shared this track specifically because of the upscaled video and audio on YT, but really dig Machine Green off of Sticktoitiveness

A very cool, if very sombre, album from self-proclaimed 'blackgrass' band Wychwood out of Ottawa, ON.

About the band, from Bandcamp: We identify only half-jokingly as “the world’s first blackgrass band.” We play old murder-ballads and other spooky traditional folk songs, with some bright and sentimental spots thrown in for contrast. Some days we’re acoustic purists. Some days we like to corrupt traditional folksongs with bits of black metal, ambient, and noise music. We’re trying to make folk music dangerous again.

About the album specifically, because I think it's a great concept. Also from Bandcamp: Songs for the 80th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki [...] We hope you enjoy the music, and that it strengthens and inspires you to to do what you can as the tides of war and dehumanization are rising once again. Please share it around if you believe in it [...] everything from this album is licensed as Creative Commons (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike), which means you can use it however you like and make your own things with it, so long as you give us credit and aren't trying to profit from it.

Ok, so this is a weird one, but I dig it and it promises to be a fun rabbit hole to dive into.

From Discogs: Gaven was raised in Hamilton, Ontario and began his musical career playing in several underground rock psychedelic-experimental/ garage-beat groups. (The Mustard, The Bards, The Double Feature Creatures, Thee Gnostics, Zamut Nevagnu Eniarrol, The Polyester Explosion, The Smoke Rings, The Satisfaction) Joined The Flashing Lights in 1999, after a spell in More Plastic formed The Saffron Sect in 2003. He is associated with the Transcendental Rodeo and The Spiritual Sky Blues Band (both with Matthew "Doc" Dunn). He currently performs medieval music (Gittern, Citole, Lute and Percussion) with the Pneuma Ensemble for Medieval Music, who specialize in the European repertoire of the 11th-14th centuries with an emphasis on historically informed performance practice. Currently involved in a French-language pop project with group Les Pommes De Lune (featuring ex-members of Les Incapables, Les Séquelles and Le Chelsea Beat).

Found by way of a post on another site from another member of Thee Gnostics (cool weird space rock stuff, some stuff on Soundcloud and Youtube but the audio quality of what I found is pretty garbage, and while I like it an adjective I wouldn't use is 'musically tight').

Pretty sure I'm going to be diving into the Hamilton psych/garage scene of the 1990s this week :)

Good morning! :) Here's a nice track to drink your coffee to.

From WCTLive.ca
Mother Sun is a 4-piece psychedelic pop band from Kamloops [British Columbia ...] Three songs from 2019's Caramel Clouds were cleared to appear in the American television series Shameless, and [...] the band has partnered with Birmingham, Alabama-based indie label Earth Libraries to release July 2020's SIPS.

A very cool musician who has worked with other cool musicians in Ottawa, ON. 100% a track worth sharing, the rest of the album is very different but I dig it hard, highly recommend.

I mention the 'other cool musicians' bit simply because Mike Dubue of HILOTRONS, among other projects, has a strong influence on the final product here and is worth a shout out in his own right.