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  Acclaimed hip hop - poet - author Cadence Weapon gives Montreal a kiss at Casa Del Popolo with Fireball Kid & Ura Star. 

    Always providing an electrifying performance, Fireball Kid & Ura Star did not fall short. On a crowded stage, they found the space to dance and jump around, reflecting the audiences’ energy. The idealist pop best friends remind me of the sweetness of friendship and dance every time I see them. I never feel jealous for lacking a best-friend-connection like that when I see them because their presence fills my heart with joy and my body full of dance.

    Cadence Weapon’s newest album, Rollercoaster, feels urgent, but he wasn’t rushing on stage. Leaning into his home field advantage in the Mile End, Cadence was very happy to be here. Armed with just a mixing deck and a microphone, his stage presence felt like an English teacher turned old friend. In a midnight purple chromatic shirt and a really fun tie, using Fireball Kid merch as a towel (provided by the band), he exudes friendly swag. He's so naturally comfortable on stage, been in the game for over 20 years now, and the audience was largely made up of his friends. He spoke to us in between each song like we were all hanging out in his living room, telling us little anecdotes about the producers or the meaning behind the song or specific lines he thinks we’ll love; often stating that “this next one is a banger” and commented on the fake humility a lot of artists exude. He’s proud of his work and thinks it's great, and we all know it is. He’s so confident that he’s written a book about his experience in the hip-hop industry. Bedroom Rapper came out in 2022, and it chronicles his personal history of rap and the scenes he’s been around. He also writes about his effort in imbuing politics into his creative practice, something I respect very highly of artists, using music and art to bring real material change in the world. I am very excited to read his book.

His album Rollercoaster has a dystopian hyper-rap feel; it focuses on the authority technology has over our lives and global politics. The internet used to be a cool back room, he said, to chill and find niche art on; now it's full of extremists and doom. He spoke about his recent deletion of the ‘X’ (formally Twitter) app from his phone, which he wrote about in his recent Substack post. He’s sick of the tech oligarchy that is leeching our energy away and fracturing communities. He made a point that the more he talks about it on stage the more he has to stick with it, cause damn, sometimes it does feel good to scroll. He spoke a lot about how much he loves Montreal, how good this city treated him and how awesome it felt to be back. He gave us a snapshot into his Mile End life, living off of Van Horne, walking around the block to hang out with his friend, eating lentils and watching obscure documentaries, never thinking that years down the line that very friend would have kids with the richest man in the world. We all laughed really hard at that. 

The whole vibe at Casa that night felt so hopeful and pure; the snow was melting and our jacket layers were thinning. Cadence commented on how you can really tell it's spring in Montreal cause people are just making out, on the sidewalk, on the corner of the stage (sorry guys), all over the place; it's a beautiful time, and Cadence is having a blast. “Hey guys,” he says at the end of his set, “where are we going after this?”.

Montreal hosted the longest lasting Gaza solidarity encampment in North America. In this episode, learn how student activist at Concordia and McGill made it happen and their ongoing struggle for Palestinian human rights.

This project is funded by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.

Art by James Fay

Any show which can rouse me from my Monday mid-afternoon, post-Hive free lunch nap better be one worth writing home about – Starcleaner Reunion and Friko’s Monday night show at Bar Le Ritz was worth every second and the near 40-minute trek it took to get home. In my anxiety over (somehow) never having been to Mile-ex’s indie darling venue, Bar Le Ritz, and my fundamental distrust for the 55 bus’ schedule (or lack thereof), I got there so early I saw the band arriving. I quickly settled into my corner post and scanned the sea of oversized-glasses-wearing, proud mullet sporting crowd that brimmed with Marché Floh warriors, and readied myself for a night ripe with all that these bands had to offer. 

As Starcleaner Reunion filed onto the stage, I was immediately throat punched by the overwhelming power of the drums of Sam Unger, winding me so hard I was nearly knocked off my feet from this incredible first blow. But the punches kept rolling, as I attempted to catch my breath from this full-body drum-ambush, the reverb and distortion surrounded me in an almost claustrophobic wall of sound so thick and impermeable it was as though I was placidly suffocating. Starcleaner Reunion’s undeniable melancholic groove, in combination with the wiggly guitar and keyboard, created this sense of distorted time, as though the venue's air had a heightened viscosity to it. Whether it was Bar Le Ritz’s propensity to overuse the smoke machine or the sound quality emanating from Starcleaner Reunion, time seemed to move differently during their set. As the Stereolab-esque tracks like “Plein Air” and “Snowfeel” droned on, I felt the sensation of falling in a dream, that never-ending black hole, stomach sinking moment just before your body jolts you back awake. The fragmented poetic lyricism of singer Jo Roman, whose corporeal command of the mic literally pulled words out from her, as they hung in the air surrounded by the 5-piece band’s near orchestral quality. Before ending their transportive set, they got the crowd jumping with “Ribbon Le Chou” which left me buzzing and jittery as if having just downed one too many vodka redbulls.  

No sooner had Starcleaner Reunion’s set finished than Chicago’s own four-piece band Friko exploded onto the stage with an ear-splitting post-punk sound and spirit. Lead singer Niko Kapetan’s voice pierced through the all-encompassing scratchy guitar and chugging bass like a needle straight to the vein, injecting the audience with his guttural, aching lyricism. In near comical fashion, as the emotional potency of the songs poured out of the band, their convulsive onstage writhings only intensified to the point of near possession – Kapetan looked like he was having a vision, with his eyes even rolling back in his head. 

As the tinnitus-inducing wall of sound assaulted my poor ear drums (and I kicked myself for not taking my personal ear protection more seriously), I took a second to re-collect myself and remember where I was. By the time I had gotten my bearings, just nearly shaking the residual disorientation of tracks like “Hot Air Balloon”, I was knocked off course for the third time as Kapetan approached the keyboard with “For Ella.” A tear-jerkingly raw and hauntingly ethereal song, whose throbbing ache is only magnified tenfold when experienced live. In a time when everything seems to be coated in a thick layer of irony, the earnest beauty which poured from Friko transformed the humble venue into a Sunday mass, the audience in rapt reverence of Kapetan's modest prayer.

The audience was whisked once more into an experience I can only describe as “a stretchy galactic sound” (which is all I wrote in my notebook), with songs such as “Statues,” “Cardinal” and “Where We’ve Been” which rang with a hollow nostalgia as each pang from the lonesome keyboard seemed to swallow me whole. The oceanic, fluid quality of Friko’s tide pulled the crowd back and forth like the moon. As they oscillated from genre to genre, toying with emotional highs and lows, Friko explored a full spectrum of human emotions in their hour-long set. 

Much like the mantra of Friko’s latest album, Where We’ve been, Where We Go From Here, I’ve been drawn into the band's gravitational pull and will certainly follow where they go from here. With my ears still ringing from the show, I fished my wired earbuds out of my pocket and immediately pulled up Friko’s discography, not wanting my experience with the band to evaporate. Any band that inspires me to listen to only their music all the way home is a concert worth seeing in my books, and in this case both Starcleaner Reunion and Friko left me utterly entranced.

Activists spray painted a Tesla dealership in Côte-des-Neiges NDG the morning of Wednesday March 19, spraying the facade and doors of the building with pink paint to protest Elon Musk’s involvement in climate deregulation in the USA, and demand Canada establish stronger climate protections.

Two people, Valérie Lachapelle and Marcel Paré, both 21 years old,  were arrested for the act of vandalism and are expected to appear in court in May with conditions. They represent the group Last Generation Canada, a network of climate activists mostly aged between 18 and 21 who aim to bring attention to their cause through illegal means. 

CJLO interviewed Paré to understand why he vandalized the plant and press the reasoning for his tactics.