Canadian Musician magazine showcases unsigned Canadian acts in our Showcase section. We publish this section online to help further promote Canadian artists.
Archive for September, 2007
Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
Who: Kiran
Where: Thornhill, ON
What: so smooth
Contac: Lake City Entertainment Inc., 99 Bronte Road, #150, Oakville, ON L6L 3B7, 416-697-0791, , www.kiran-funk.com.
Adult-contemporary R&B/pop artist Kiran Singh was born in Ireland when his family left South Africa for a time. Moving back, they lived under Apartheid, learning to deal with the racist laws and segregation. At home, he was exposed to music by his parents and elder siblings, listening to everyone from Michael Jackson to George Benson and Nat King Cole. When Kiran was 10, the family immigrated to Canada to start a new life. Excitedly, he enrolled in piano lessons and for high school attended Cawthra Park Secondary for performing arts, where he learned to play acoustic guitar, bass, and percussion, in addition to composing his own songs. Not surprisingly, at the University of Toronto, he chose to study music, earning a Bachelor of Music in vocal jazz and a Bachelor of Education in music. It was while working at The Gap of all places that he met his eventual executive producer and co-writer, Mark Bronson. Along with producers Bryant Didier (also a co-writer), Larry Thompson (Neverending White Lights), and songwriter/producer Michael St. Clair (Jacksoul), they began creating what would become Kiran’s self-titled debut album. It’s a mellow recording, a lounge-y mix of R&B and piano-bar jazz, including “You Took A Bite,†“Ready,†and horn-inflected “You’re The One For Me.†More than two-dozen musicians guest on the tracks and help him realize his once-impossible dream.
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Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
Who: Dan Mangan
Where: Vancouver
What: folk – sung, sealed, and delivered
Contact: Shannon Martin at File Under: Music, 604-628-5275, , www.myspace.com/danmangan.
Mangan’s debut album, Postcards & Daydreaming, features 12 self-penned songs, produced by Daniel Elmes at Dubvibe Productions and co-produced by Mangan and Simon Kelly. The first single is “Journal Of A Narcoleptic,†which has received some love at CBC Radio 3, but “So Much For Everyone†is the cut with almost 16,000 plays on his MySpace page. The mournful song runs just under seven minutes and is so slowly delivered, one anticipates each line. The rough-voiced folk singer-songwriter has toured the UK twice and the US. He will soon try and get a foothold on his own territory after his 2007 North By Northeast showcase in Toronto impressed Canadian booking agent Julien Paquin at Paquin Entertainment. Mangan will tour in Australia in early October then across Canada in late October and November. Postcards & Daydreaming isn’t his first recording. At 17, he released his first EP.
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Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
Who: Colin Munroe
Where: Toronto
What: one man pop band
Contact: Marked Music, Andrew Kennedy, , 416-669-6070,www.colinmunroe.com.
After working behind the scenes, writing and producing for such R&B and hip hop artists as Glenn Lewis, Divine Brown, Saukrates, Ray Robinson, and Brassmunk, this 26-year-old Toronto-based musician is finally pursuing a solo recording career. Playing every instrument, his self-produced debut album, Don’t Think Less Of Me, mixed by Mark Needham (The Killers, My Chemical Romance), is not what one would expect from a guy who has been an important peg in Canada’s urban music community. His songs are pure pop with lyrics that are insightful and thoughtful, sometimes polar to the upbeat sound. From the incongruously chirpy “World of Pain†to the whoa-oh groove of “Will I Stay†to the more wistful and melancholy “Divine†and pounding pop of “One Draw (You Had Me),†it’s not all smiles for Munroe lyrically. After volunteering at a hospice in Calcutta, India in 2004, he realized just how good the lifestyle is in the western world. “I saw a lot of that coming into the music, a frustration with the day to day lifestyle that can be so mind numbing in its comfort, in its luxury, so life sucking. And so there’s a lot of frustration within a lot of the lyrics about that,†he says.
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