In Winnipeg, Wednesday nights have become a lot more interesting for area musicians these last few months. Since May, Manitoba artists and those travelling through the landlocked Prairie province have been engaging in the Record of the Week Club, a new musical experiment that forces musicians like Weakerthans front-man John K. Samson outside their usual comfort zones.
The club explains:
The Record Of The Week Club is a weekly recording session featuring musicians from diverse musical backgrounds. Never knowing who their co-creators will be, an incognito and disparate group of musicians meet at MCM Studios in Winnipeg, Canada, every Wednesday evening. Over the course of one evening, they are charged with the task of getting to know each other, arranging, rehearsing and recording a piece under the guidance of Mike Petkau. The song is immediately mixed, uploaded and made available for download that same night.
Jazz drummers are being paired with punk guitarists and opera singers; classical violinists are being paired with taiko drummers and DJs and folk singers are being paired with sound collage artists and trombonists. The combinations are endless. And to top it off, we've invited local filmmakers to document the process.
In the most recent experiment, the club paired the Weakerthans Samson with Inuit throat singer Nikki Komaksiutiksak and Curtis Walker of electronic act Blunderspublik, who together wrote, recorded and mixed the track "Keewatin Arctic" in one evening. The song is now up on the Record of the Week Clubs website, along with all the older collaborations, which can be streamed for free or purchased. If you do dish out a bit of cash for the tunes, the first $100 in sales from each track will be donated to the West End Cultural Centre to support their efforts to rebuild the "greatest music venue in Winnipeg.
The Record of the Week Club will be recording and posting a new track each week until it finishes its run in mid-September.
The Weakerthans "Civil Twilight
The club explains:
The Record Of The Week Club is a weekly recording session featuring musicians from diverse musical backgrounds. Never knowing who their co-creators will be, an incognito and disparate group of musicians meet at MCM Studios in Winnipeg, Canada, every Wednesday evening. Over the course of one evening, they are charged with the task of getting to know each other, arranging, rehearsing and recording a piece under the guidance of Mike Petkau. The song is immediately mixed, uploaded and made available for download that same night.
Jazz drummers are being paired with punk guitarists and opera singers; classical violinists are being paired with taiko drummers and DJs and folk singers are being paired with sound collage artists and trombonists. The combinations are endless. And to top it off, we've invited local filmmakers to document the process.
In the most recent experiment, the club paired the Weakerthans Samson with Inuit throat singer Nikki Komaksiutiksak and Curtis Walker of electronic act Blunderspublik, who together wrote, recorded and mixed the track "Keewatin Arctic" in one evening. The song is now up on the Record of the Week Clubs website, along with all the older collaborations, which can be streamed for free or purchased. If you do dish out a bit of cash for the tunes, the first $100 in sales from each track will be donated to the West End Cultural Centre to support their efforts to rebuild the "greatest music venue in Winnipeg.
The Record of the Week Club will be recording and posting a new track each week until it finishes its run in mid-September.
The Weakerthans "Civil Twilight
