Violent

When Amazing Factory and We Are The City come together, special things happen. 

As We Are The City was getting ready to put out their latest album, Violent, they wanted to do a video for every song with Amazing Factory, much like they did with their previous EP, High School. Well, long story (very) short, they ended up spending several weeks in Norway making a feature film. 

The movie premiered last year to all sorts of awards, including Best Canadian Film and Best BC Film at the Vancouver International Film Festival, as the band toured film festivals all over the world with it. But now they are back in Vancouver for a week long run of screenings, starting August 28th to fulfill eligibility requirements as part of the consideration process for Canada's entry to the Academy Awards. 

Let me say that again, VIOLENT is one of a small number of films being considered to be Canada's entry for the Best Foreign Language Film category at the Oscars.

VIOLENT will be playing at the Vancity Theatre from August 28 to September 3 with the filmmakers in attendance; show times can be found here.  I saw a screening of the movie last year and it is just incredible and breathtaking, and dare I say... amazing.

Keys To The Streets - Video #2 ft Melbourne Ska Orchestra "He's A Tripper"

For the second year Big Smoke has teamed up with Keys To The Streets to film musicians performing intimate concerts on the public pianos located throughout the city.

The second video was just released and showcases the Melbourne Ska Orchestra on the piano inside the Vancouver Folk Music Festival grounds!

To see where all the pianos are located, click here. To see the archive of all the performances from this year and last, click here.

Here's what Adam Sharp of Big Smoke has to say about this video:
This year, Keys To The Streets was able to arrange placing a piano placed inside the Vancouver Folk Music Festival for use by any and all attendees, and with so many incredible artists from around the world scheduled to perform, it seemed like a golden opportunity to film some unique and intimate performances.
On less than a week's notice we were able to arrange filming with a number of the festival’s artists in their brief moments of downtime, and were even fortunate enough to capture a few performances from musical members of the public that we caught tinkering away over the weekend.

The piano, which was beautifully decorated by Ola Volo, brought so many people together for impromptu sing-alongs and candid performances and served as a snapshot of how special this entire Keys To The Streets project can be. Thanks for helping to bring it back for a fourth year, Vancouver! First up from the Folk Fest section of this years Big Smoke x Keys To The Streets video series is the insanely talented, Melbourne Ska Orchestra , who brought a bigger band than I ever thought we’d be able to handle given our minimal recording equipment.

Big Smoke Premiers "The Vancouver Connection, Vol. 1"

Big Smoke is a brand new Vancouver-based music label, that you might recognize from it's collaboration with Keys To The Streets, has just released it's first compilation album called The Vancouver Connection, Vol 1.

The playlist features 10 tracks by Vancouver bands, including Reef Shark, Dead Soft, Woolworm, and more.

The album officially comes out on August 14th, and you can pre-order it on their bandcamp page (and save 25% when you do so!) either digitally or on vinyl, and get two songs immediately.
Take a listen to some awesome Vancouver-based music below: