Welcome to our beta site!
Please note : we are still under construction. We will be uploading content casually as we make some necessary changes to the home page. Coupled with that are new content features, a radio show, some monthly events, and the allusive ‘music venue’ we keep talking about. Keep checking back to see how the website is progressing and whats happening with SP.
From the Sound Pollution Team
Sound Pollution Media, in collaboration with Brainmatter Entertainment and Empress Entertainment Group, is bringing the rap battle where it belongs, back to downtown Toronto to host 2010’s best series of Battles. Spit It Out features carefully selected Hip Hop and freestyle artists from the independent Canadian Urban Music scene. The series Launches on Thursday March 11th, 2010 at Empire Night Club in Yorkville, as an unofficial Canadian Music Week Event. Spit It Out will be a monthly battle series that continues throughout the summer, until our panel of industry judges has crowned a winner.
For instant event updates, find us on Facebook
Contact Us
Empress Entertainment Group
empressentgroup@gmail.com
Brainmatter Entertainment
brainmatterent@gmail.com
Sound Pollution Media
soundpollutionmag@gmail.com
TRISH – Innovator in Canadian Urban Music
Melissa Bessey
Born into a musical family and in the music industry from a very young age, Toronto’s very own urban sensation Trish has all the right ingredients to make it to the top. She’s relentlessly stylish, versed in many genres of music including R&B, Hip Hop and Reggae and with Luther Brown as a mentor; she’s quickly making waves for her choreography and unique song writing. Trish always gets her fashion right, Toronto may be home but her style is international.
Trish has performed across Canada with many other home grown acts like J Diggz and opened for Flo-Rida on his latest Canadian tour. This past summer she teamed up with the Monsters of Hip Hop for an international competition where dancers from around the globe uploaded videos of them dancing to a Trish tune and fought for their chance to perform alongside Trish at the Monsters of Hip Hop finale in Florida. Sound Pollution caught up with her on a break between studio sessions and travel destinations, for a quick update on the Canadian Urban music scene’s ‘next big thing’
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Unleash The Archers Appeal to The Imagination with ‘Behold The Devastation’
posted by admin @ 11:15 PMDemian Seale
Photos Courtesy of Unleash The Archers
Headbangers seem to pay little attention to aesthetics: tattered jeans, oversized shirt gored in ghastly images, raggedy hair – all a striking statement screaming “substance over style!” Indeed, often metalheads do purposefully slum it to advertise this irony: what you get is more than what you see.
But this belies a hypocrisy – ripened heshers can testify to a time when purchasers could only check cover art, and band logo, and…hope. Hence, there’s a visceral connection to metal imagery, evolved from an era without downloads; and, extreme metal was never heard on radio; magazines such as Metal Forces were difficult to find, and expensive. You went on gut instinct, and bands won or lost with fans as much on an aesthetic connection as musical.
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Melissa Bessey
Born Wilfred Kanu Jr., independent hip hop artist Freddy Will releases his first book entitled My Book of Chrymes with Soul Asylum Poetry & Publishing Co., which coincides with his 2009 album release While I’m Still Young – The Talking Drums 1.2v.
Freddy’s book is a non-fiction account of his early life and experiences in West Africa including time spent in Sierra Leone, the Gambia and Liberia during the 1989 genocide. Though he recalls sometimes gruesome realities of growing up in a third world country; like becoming desensitized to the site and smell of dead bodies as a youth; Freddy also explains the aw-inspiring beauty of these places and how the desolation and violence are not the only thing youth are aware of when that is the only reality they know.
April Bessey
..continued from 11/01/2010
Photos Courtosy of Jeslyn Lamontage
Today our scene may not be as diverse as in the past but the DIY ethic is still lingering. There are many genres and sub-genres around that are starting to gather and play shows because of the lack of bands in one specific genre of music. This new years eve, Project Pain ( a local promoter ) put on a show with the lineup of one of the regions only punk bands, Terrorist, from St. Catherines, alongside Niagara Falls death-metal band Bathed in Blood and The KAC, a local hip-hop artist; just to name a few. This could be viewed as a good or bad thing by hardcore lovers of any one of these genres. Either way, I definitely think it’s one of the first shows of its kind, and a diverse approach to putting on a live show. This is the spirit of a good thing; it’s all about the music and with today’s lacking indie scene, people need to throw more house parties and more unique shows. Over the past few years, within my own experiences, I have seen many local punk bands short lived but they all had a good run like NOP, SFS (single finger salute), The Legendary Klopecks, 40 Deep and Sexual Assault, just to name a few.
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By: Melissa Bessey
This is Sound Pollution’s first instalment of a monthly series aimed at giving you an insider’s view on how Canada’s music business movers and shakers really feel about the current state of the Canadian independent music scene. SP Editor Melissa Bessey talks to one of the founders of online international music magazine, SoundProof (http://www.soundproofmagazine.com), Chris Stevenson and gains some insight on why not to fight the numbers game when trying to get your music ‘out there’. Read the rest of this entry »
April Bessey
Over the past couple of decades, punk rock has faded in and out of mainstream culture, much to the dismay of its more loyal followers. Booming, bursting and tearing at the seams one minute and searching for its last breath on life-support the next. In the Niagara Region, we haven’t reached the climax of that orgasm in a long time, if ever. In the past there were many small venues, including outdoor shows at city parks that supported punk music and were host to historic moments, like the Ramones at the Hideaway and the English Beat at the Mindbomb, both now defunct venues in St. Catharines. In addition to bars and club venues, Niagara also has a history of popular ‘punk houses’ which help perpetuate punk culture in spite of a lack of support for the scene today.
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Gena Meldazy
Single fathers in Canada may have a new way to find voice in the court system: through the hip hop community. For the sceptical, go no further than the Hamilton-based artist Changer; a hip hop musician, producer, web developer, entrepreneur, and single father since the age of 17. After gaining custody of his son, Changer looked for ways to make positive connections with other parents in custody battles, through his music: “My name represents self improvement, change for the better or get out. Don’t hide from your mistakes or run from your mistakes.”
Brad Reckless
For the short time The New Enemy have been around ( roughly two years), the Toronto, ON natives have managed to earn a reputation for themselves by sharing the stage with some notable acts and have been working with Nick Zampiello (Against Me!, Converge) in the studio amongst other prominent producers and engineers. With two E.P’s under their belt, Shakedown being their most recent, the band (rounded out by vocalist Clint McLean, guitarist Luke Muldoon, bassist Declan Kerin and drummer Chris Branston) have done some serious foot work to get their progressive style of hardcore heard by the masses and they show no signs of stopping.
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