New Music – Canyons | The Music Fizz

NYTimes By BEN RATLIFF Canyons is Ryan Grieve and Leo Thomson, two producers and D.J.’s originally from Perth, Australia, who in 2008 started a label called Hole in the Sky and began to work roughly on the model of New York’s DFA: a label, a production team, a sort of band with nebulous personnel and personae.

The first album by Canyons is “Keep Your Dreams” (Modular), and it’s a good exercise in categorical confusion: pre- and post-disco, analog-synth ambience and noise, drones, 1970s German experimental rock, new wave. All that, and it doesn’t feel overthought. Last year, in an e-mail interview with Dazed Digital, they said: “Perth is like the most isolated city in Australia. You have this feeling that the world is so far away, which causes you to be more objective. You end up listening to music that you like. We ended up liking music because of the sound and not because the band was hip or trendy at the time.” Well, they’ve made a very hip record full of useful paradoxes. It’s got songs that hold together and songs that fall apart; immaculate clean-tone guitar and distorted guitar; live drums and rhythm machines; Matt Keagan’s droning saxophone choirs and concise, hard-punched saxophone solos, as if conceived for a genuine hit record; singing with accuracy and purpose and singing with self-sabotaging floppiness. A lot going on here. Score one for isolation.

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New Music – Canyons

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