Scribbler

Scribbler is, as far as I can tell, a strange group of pseudo-druid, feudal-revivalists operating in the Halifax region (where there are more bands than people). I got their 7? in the mail and it’s a mixed brew of depressing one-mic-in-a-box loner folk, manic distorted folk-rock, and (my favorite) a thirty-second cosmic noise-hippie freak-out. Even stranger is their remix project featuring a variety of artists I had never heard about doing even-weirder interpretations of their songs (including one amazing electro-psych track that’s no longer on their **Space (but will hopefully be on the soon-to-be-released C-90 containing all the remixes)). You, the reader, are also welcome to participate in the remix project, so feel free to contact them. In the meantime, pick up the 7? if you’re into echoey lonertude from the bowels of Canada’s most creative city.

- Weird Canada

t’s been an awfully long time since we’ve heard from SCRIBBLER, the noisy, experimental folk-rock crew from Halifax, Nova Scotia. Well recently they sent over this track “No Curtains” which comes from a scene-defining compilation put out by the Khyber Centre for the Arts in Halifax. It’s a 27-track cassette and the second volume of the compilation
“No Curtains” is their first studio recording which shows a world of difference from their My Old Lady 7?

- Styrofoam Drone

Scribbler may be the most uncool but unique in Halifax

Sarah Feldman
Arts Contributor

Halfway through a set at the One World Café on Nov. 12, 2005, Scribbler vocalist/guitarist Craig Currie pauses and squints out at the audience.

"Are we in tune?" he asks us. "Is there anyone musical here?"

He's joking, probably, but waits several seconds before resuming, long enough for the laughter to taper off and for a slight discomfort to set in.

It's the kind of thing that happens a lot at Scribbler's concerts, and it's this response — a kind of amused ambivalence — that seems to be a big part of the band's identity, a part almost as big as its music.

Scribbler consists of Craig, his brother Alex (guitar), Adrian Morrison (bass), and Franc Lopes (drums). The band aims to maintain an air of artlessness and eclecticism, citing influences that range from pop art (Duchamp, but "we hate Warhol") to no-wave inflected noise (The Burdocks, Sonic Youth) to more folky sounds (Syd Barrett, Skygreen Leopards).

Further inspiration is provided by Joel, a three-foot stuffed penguin the band members rescued from a dumpster outside Sobey's, and double-salt liquorice — which they've been trying to cultivate a collective taste for.

As performers, Scribbler's gang is disarmingly uncool, slouching and swaying onstage, and peppering the set with cheerful professions of incompetence. They speak with some admiration of punk ideals ("It's all about assault on the audience," says Craig of their new noise CD, Scannopapia) — even if, instead of swastika armbands, fuck-you lyrics, and power chords, their assault consists of a song about Noam Chomsky eating a Big Mac.

But underneath the anarchic gestures, Scribbler is also, it seems, a sensitive emo band that, like Conor Oberst's alter ego in Fevers and Mirrors, just wants to be a warm yellow light that pours over everyone.

"I'm not into aggression," says Craig, chewing the edges off a Styrofoam plate. "I just try to be, you know, graceful."

The contradictions in Scribbler's self-description fit well with the band's constantly changing sound, which makes it impossible to define the band in terms of any one genre.

The band's One World Café performance is fairly standard thrash-rock, often overwhelmed by percussion and bass; recorded songs such as "Night Shift" and "Follicle" offer intimate folk textures that highlight Craig's poetic lyricism and trebly, self-mocking vocal delivery; other performances incorporate baby monitors, bell machines, accordions and tin cans into the band's sonic oeuvre.

"We're really all over the map," says Alex, adding that fluctuations in the band's overall sound are mirrored by the shifting roles taken by individual members. "[In the] next show you see, Adrian might be the lead singer and Craig will ll be drumming."

For a band that only formed last March and admits to having played "some pretty shitty shows" at its start, Scribbler seems to be gelling fast. Last November alone the band played 11 shows, released Scannopapia, and was selected by The Coast to appear in their "Best New Music of 2005."

Scribbler plans on releasing another CD, Prussia, early in 2006, which will emphasize the band's folkier, more polished side. If the recorded tracks on Scribbler's website are any indication, it is this side — more than either the noise project or heavier performance style — that shows the band in its best element. While Scannopapia is interesting for sheer energy and range (by turns, it is engaging, dull, likeable, and thoroughly annoying), the spare, acoustic stuff of "Follicle" and "Night Shift" is better — as simultaneously moving and silly as Thom Yorke at his apoplectic best.

Even more promising is the prospect of music that joins the energy and originality of Scannopapia with the emotional resonance of the Prussia tracks. Indeed, given more time and better equipment, the band intends to bring these two musical alter-egos together, mixing noise and "pop" to make music that will hopefully elude any easy categorization. - Gazette

By MIKE LANDRY
At first it was just two guys playing
music in their living room
with a glockenspiel and ukulele.
Then Alex Currie and Adrian
Morrison noticed the radiator.
Since its modest beginnings
almost three years ago, the Radiator
Collective has had its first compilation
record debut at No. 1 on local
music charts, and recruited more
than a dozen local bands and two
international ones under its
moniker.
This year promises to be a
breakout one for the collective, with
new albums and more touring.
There’s also another compilation in
the works that should feature every
band in the collective.
Adam Bowes, lead singer of The
Crimson Tides, a punk band that
belongs to the collective, calls it
“the best of the weirdos in Halifax.”
“We give people who make
unusual music a soapbox to play it
and people to help lift it and carry it
around town,” says Currie. “People
who don’t fit in anywhere else we
take them in and surround them
with like-minded people.”
Currie and Morrison bring
together bands they like that are
making music for themselves, and
sign them with no prerequisite of
style or genre.The result is a hodgepodge
of music you’d be hard
pressed to find on any label anywhere
in Canada. And it’s sure to
have at least one band you’ll find
intriguing, if not flat out fantastic.
Radiator already features the
faux French dance pop of Le Coque
et les Phoques, the evil death noise
of D/A A/D, the hard-nosed indie
rock of Telecommando, and Currie
has no idea what the next band to
join will sound like.
“The only real unity is that we
don’t take ourselves too seriously,”
says Ala Montgomery, who handles
Radiator’s website, money and merchandise.
“From one band to the next it’s
apples and oranges, especially
when you compare members in one
band who play in another,” says
Currie, who performs in Scribbler, a
folk-rock/noise group akin to Sonic
Youth, and Money Over Bitches
Fresh, a rap group that sounds like
the Beastie Boys’ early home demos
but with more Hulk Hogan references.
Even in terms of recording quality
every band sounds different.
Many artists record in basements or
live to capture the energy of the live
show.
“I definitely don’t want everyone
sounding the same,” says Currie. “I
like it when people do it themselves,
going down to their basement
with a four-track and pounding
it out. It’s your band, so it
should be your sound.”
Initially, Currie put out a music
zine and held art shows under the
Radiator Collective banner, figuring,
“let’s put the name out there
even if we’re the only ones on it.”
Currie, who’s originally from
Pictou County, says the Halifax
music scene intimidated him at
first. Once he started Radiator it
didn’t take long before he started to
meet other musicians who felt the
same.
“If you’re going to make weird
music you’re going to attract weird
people,” says Currie. “Birds of a
feather, I guess.”
Currie signed The Crimson Tides
after seeing the band spray painting
their logo on government property.
Bowes says being on Radiator has
helped, because the variety of
music helps expose people who like
one of the bands to other bands.
Radiator received local critical
acclaim with its first compilation
CD. All 250 CDs sold in one night,
and it was rated 25th in the top 100
albums of 2006 by CKDU radio.
Currie says that’s pretty good
considering they originally sold the
CD for $5 and ended up giving it
out for free.
Money hasn’t come along with
the acclaim, and Currie doesn’t
intend to make much of it. Radiator
is working on updating its website
to include lots of free music, and
Currie is still playing a $160 pawn
shop guitar with a broken bridge.
Any money earned goes towards
touring and putting out more
albums.
More than a label, the collective
pools resources. Currie had no idea
how to ship albums across Canada,
but he was able to use the collective
to help him learn how.
“Why try to do this by yourself
when you can have eight bands
behind you? Ten heads are better
than one.”
The collective also comes in
handy when trying to promote
bands that normally are too obscure
to be noticed, because they can be
promoted as a bundle.
Although the collective has been
well received there have been some
discouraging moments. None of the
bands have been invited to play local
festivals like the Pop Explosion, and
D/A A/D was cut off eight minutes
into his set at Gus’ Pub, because the
owner couldn’t stand the noise.
Currie doesn’t let these
moments get to him, because as
long as he’s having fun he’s going to
keep doing it.
“Being in the collective you
know that at least 20 people will like
your music,” says Bowes. “And
sometimes that’s the only 20 people
who matter.”
s.mikelandry@gmail.com - Halifax Commoner

Ashleigh Gaul
Assistant Arts Editor

I’ve made things a bit difficult for myself. Here’s a synopsis of some of the things I’ve said about Scribbler in the past:


Prussia [Scribbler’s last release] is the best Halifax release of 2006 (Gazette, 2006).

Everybody in Halifax… should be wearing giant foam Scribbler number one fingers (Gazette, 2007).


…so, I’ve been doing a lot of sitting in the bushes outside Scribbler’s house lately… (diary entry, 2006).


Scribbler set a pretty high standard with last year’s Prussia. To be fair in this review, I’m going to pretend that Scribbler had never released Prussia.


So, there’s this local band called Scribbler. The members play a lot of different instruments. They all play each other’s instruments, too. That might explain how a band of up to six members can sound so consistently cohesive, whether they play with their full lineup or with a minimalist arrangement of two or three.


The singer, Craig Currie, reminds me a lot of Elliott Smith, only in that he writes songs that are much heavier than they seem. His songs are screamed lullabies or sobbed anthems.


The rest of the band seems to take infinite pleasure in morphing Currie’s almost objectively pleasing melodies into dance, noise, blues and bare rock arrangements, and playing them on as many instruments as possible.


Scribbler’s trademark may be its malleability in arrangements, and the band is at its best when following this formula. - gazette

Jen Bond
Staff Contributor

Scribbler’s second album takes its listener on a schizophrenic tour that just, for lack of a better term, fits.


At first, Prussia seems a bit jarring, transitioning from pop-punk to soundscapes or folksy melodies, with a dash of grunge added for good measure. Upon a second listen, however, the seemingly incongruous styles make sense as the tracks borrow elements from one another and spin a continuous melodic thread.


With its strong bass line, the track “Jellyfishes Ghost” slides effortlessly into the following song, “Crosscarmellose,” becoming a background sample. The resulting combination makes me want to lie on the floor and stare into the abyss, Requiem for a Dream style (but without the heroin).


“Larry” leads off the second half of the album by catapulting back a decade and across a continent, borrowing from the tried-and-true gritty stylings of Seattle-based grunge. This homage is then followed up by more soundscape tracks — take “Follicle” and “Abscond North,” for example — that have decided inclinations towards the folk music genre.


Scribbler takes some risks with their sound on Prussia. In the end, the album is an enjoyable listening experience, although its reliance on well-known genres may be a little too safe. And it leaves one wondering: on Scribbler’s next manic meander, could there be more? - gazette