Sweet Magic London, McIntosh Gallery, Half a Dino and APK Live present Delicate Steve, Say Domino, Whoop-szo, Cartoons, and Hellaluya.
Sweet Magic London is a music, art, and film micro-festival happening in London, Ontario, Canada.
More like an art project than a festival, Sweet Magic London’s aim is to make the city more interesting by collaborating and experimenting with its artists, organizers, and spaces.
In August, Sweet Magic London will explore the city’s creative past and present through a series of micro-events including bands, art installations, film screenings, pop-up galleries, exhibits, and retrospects.
About Delicate Steve:
"Every 30 or 40 or 500 years, the DNA of culture itself emerges from the translucent blackness of the not-so-shallow underground. You hear a new band, and you think, "This is really something. This is like My Bloody Valentine, minus the guitars." But then you think, "No, that's not true. That's not what this is like at all. Plus, there are lots of guitars here. I'm a goddamn idiot." You want to walk away, but now it's too late; now, you start to wonder what makes this music so deeply arresting. You wonder why you are dancing against your will, and you wonder why every other sound you've ever heard suddenly sounds like the insignificant prologue to a moment you're experiencing in the present tense. You find yourself unable to perform the simplest of activities — a cigarette becomes impossible to light, a mewing kitten cannot be stroked, a liverish lover cannot be ignored. By the album's third track, there is nothing left in your life; everything is gone, crushed into a beatific sonic wasteland you never want to escape. This, more than anything else imaginable, is the manifestation of artistic truth ... a truer kind of truth ... the only kind of truth that cannot lie, even with the cold steel of a .357 revolver jammed inside its wet mouth, truculently demanding a random falsehood. Welcome to the work-a-day world of Delicate Steve." - Chuck Klosterman
"Delicate Steve imposes strange limitations on its music: It's largely wordless, with a primary "voice" built around Steve Marion's sinewy, high-pitched slide-guitar leads. Polyrhythms give the band's songs a skittish, jumpy quality — they often threaten to barrel ahead of themselves. But within those restrictions, or perhaps because of them, Delicate Steve's music maintains the capacity to surprise. Its two albums are guitar showcases that don't shred, dance records that don't adhere to familiar beats and classic-rock throwbacks that fan out into world music, prog, reggae, surf-rock and more, with the propulsive jitteriness of Ratatat and the sideways oddness of Dirty Projectors." -NPR
Delicate Steve - "Wondervisions" Video (Feat. Nat Baldwin)
"When it comes down to it, I’m not sure that Steve Marion is really trying to make a great album. I think he’s trying to make the best Delicate Steve album he can. And, if there’s nothing else to say about Positive Force, it’s at least clear that he’s succeeded in doing exactly that." - Tiny Mix Tapes
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPKfX1WEldo
"Two years ago, a lanky guy strung together a weird band name to label his equally weird music seemingly carving out a genre of its own. A tongue-in-cheek press release penned by Chuck Klosterman, a collaboration with manic drummer Zach Hill of Hella, and a signing with Luaka Bop later, Steve Marion has rose to more prominence with his screwy guitar noodling. In 2011, under the moniker Delicate Steve, Marion concocted a debut full-length called Wondervisions that sounded like a carbonated drink that pops in your ears, proving that instrumental rock could, in fact, be fun to sing-a-long to." - Pretty Much Amazing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdY3StmCCZU&feature=related
"There are few electric guitar masterminds putting their expertise to such unique ends as Steve Marion does under the project heading Delicate Steve. On 2011′s excellent debut, Wondervisions, Marion established his musical skills, utilizing his guitar like some sort of mystical synthesizer that (with only a few pedals) could just as easily sound like island-inflected plinks to tribal squawks. On the follow-up, Positive Force, he’s at it again, once more crafting an album in which virtuosity works toward the achievement of focused songcrafting rather than acting as its own end." - Consequence of Sound
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZZEptcS230&feature=related
"The whimsical tone and ingratiating melodies of Delicate Steve's Wondervisions made for an endlessly likable debut that was an easier sell than many other instrumental rock albums, which tend to get bogged down in proggy self-indulgences. For Positive Force, man-behind-the-curtain Steve Marion sidelines the outside players who collaborated with him on Wondervisions, composing and performing the album entirely on his own. And while that makes for an impressive technical accomplishment, Positive Force emerges as a slightly more insular, stuffy effort." - Slant Magazine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJhxCgvac3k
"His billowing compilation resonates without words, its sterling procession an otherworldly creation that remains grounded somehow. Instrumental projects are often tough to execute given the public’s shortened attention span, yet he does it with a bubbly finesse that doesn’t overstay its welcome. If anything, Steve makes you wish he would’ve stayed a little while longer, to bask in the warm glow of his effervescent resonance." -Drowned in Sound
Also presenting are...
*APK Live
*Half a Dino
*Out of Sound Records
*LondonFUSE
Also performing are...
*Say Domino (Out of Sound Records - London ON)
*Whoop-szo (Out of Sound Records - London ON)
*Cartoons (Daps Records - Toronto ON)
*Hellaluya (Daps Records - Toronto ON)
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About Sweet Magic London:
Sweet Magic London is a music, art, and film micro-festival happening in London, Ontario, Canada.
More like an art project than a festival, Sweet Magic London’s aim is to make the city more interesting by collaborating and experimenting with its artists, organizers, and spaces.
In August, Sweet Magic London will explore the city’s creative past and present through a series of micro-events including bands, art installations, film screenings, pop-up galleries, exhibits, and retrospects.
Co-presenting is McIntosh Gallery and LondonFUSE.
Comments
this was an amazing show, I am revelling in the fantasticness.