Magazine

Independent, provocative, now! The CJLO Magazine is the resource for features, reviews, and interviews. Established in 2004, and run by dedicated CJLO volunteers, the magazine covers the latest and best in local and international music, art, theatre, film, festivals, and more!


Thursday

Common Existence finds New Jersey’s Thursday at a crossroads: having been ditched by major label Island after their less-than-stellar studio album (2006’s A City By The Light Divided) and ending back up on their former home Victory Records, the band released a b-sides/rarities compilation in late 2007 entitled Kill The House Lights, and then last year dropped an EP with Japanese band Envy.


Psychroptic

With three previous studio albums already under their belts, Australian death metal giants Psycroptic released their fourth this year on Nuclear Blast Records to a fan base that had a pretty good idea of what to expect from them: extremely high caliber musicianship and a certain captivating energy that set the band apart from many of their less dynamic contemporaries.


The Knux

I learned about The Knux weeks before their debut CD Remind Me in 3 Days was to be released in October 2008.
 


2004 CJLO Staff Picks

“Hey, let’s do our Top Ten lists and post them on the website”. You figure that would be enough to send everyone scurrying to their keyboards and add to the avalanche of year-end lists that are fail-safe crowd favourites, if not the mark of lazy writing. So what happens when we’re too lazy to even do that? Well lure them with free alcohol.


2005 CJLO Staff Picks

The thing with lists, especially year-end ones, is that they undercut the obsessive passion of the music lovers. There's no true way around it, as any discussion will eventually boil down to inane nitpicking. That's why CJLO, as a whole, does not have a Top Ten list based on votes or anything remotely objective. Instead, we're throwing together individual staff picks from our motley crew of DJs, not to represent anything else but their true love for this year's music (mostly).


2006 CJLO Staff Picks

Once again, CJLO grew this year and if anything, it grew even more diverse judging by the staff picks below. Besides perhaps Ghostface Killah's Fishscale and Return To Cookie Mountain by TV On The Radio, there weren't many albums that found themselves repeated often among the different lists. It's a testament both to the goldmine of releases this year and to the eclectic tastes of the boys and girls that entertain you night and day on the ol' dot com.


2007 CJLO Staff Picks

As expected, CJLO’s third annual Staff Picks is a mixed bag of musical goodies from across the map. So much so that out of the thirty-one DJs who submitted their lists, no two #1 albums were alike. Of course, several of the year’s powerhouse releases resonated with the staff. Radiohead’s In Rainbows reigned as the most popular album, with The White StripesIcky Thump, The Arcade Fire’s Neon Bible and High On Fire’s Death Is This Communion not too far behind.


2008 CJLO Staff Picks

Well another year has come and gone and that means it’s once again time for the annual CJLO Magazine Staff Picks Round Up. It’s been an absolutely stellar year for music and our DJs here at CJLO have been eating it up. It seems Montreal’s own Wolf Parade may be the most represented band on this year’s lists, but New Brunswick, New Jersey’s The Gaslight Anthem, New York’s Vampire Weekend and Vancouver’s Bison B.C. and Black Mountain were also well liked by many.


NoMeansNo: Flaunting the New School

Playing Montreal for the first time in three years for the Suoni Per Il Popolo fest, NoMeansNo are perhaps Canada's greatest still-standing punk institution, a testament to the enduring partnership of its key members, brothers Rob and John Wright (along with estimable guitarist Tom Holliston, who joined the band in the early 90s following the departure of Andy Kerr), and the singularity of their sound.


Jimmy Smith (1929-2005)

 Jimmy Smith, a one-man revolution in jazz, passed away on February 8th, 2005. Words cannot describe the singular impact that this man had on the history of modern music. Back in 1955, according to Ira Gitler, pianist Freddie Redd barged into the Blue Note offices in Manhattan with a "mouthful of something elses" about this guy in Philadelphia doing crazy things with the Hammond organ in jazz.


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