New Music West '06

Officially running April 26-30, the shows that are advertised as being part of the event start on the 25th with "Neo-post-punk" band Editors and New York's indie stars Stellastarr* at Richards on Richards and the next day has The Stills also at Richards, and there's a handful of other 'premium' shows from Indie darlings to DJ sets and from Bluegrass to percussive Funk.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, though...

I'm not really anxious to see any of the larger shows that are listed as premium features this year, but some of the smaller venues look promising. At this point my highlights might include, based off past experience, or non-scientific methods such as going solely by the cool sounding name; a method that has let me down in the past...

Wednesday at the Lamplighter

• A Thousand Year Plan 12:15 AM


• Mothra 11:30 PM


• Voltage 10:45 PM


• Musa 10:00 PM

Thursday at the Buffalo Club

Gasoline Magazine Launch Party

• Priestess 11:30 PM


• Rayzing sons 10:30 PM


• Approach the Throne 9:45 PM


• Lillix 9:00 PM

Friday at Pub340

• The Stumblers Inn 12:45 AM


• Hellbound '71 11:45 PM


• The Smokes 10:45 PM

Saturday at The Pic

• Nanochrist 12:15 AM


• Broken Nose 11:30 PM


• Cranston Foundation 10:45 PM


• Soma City Ward 10:00 PM


• Elixir 9:15 PM

The Limerick Junction (Formerly The Brickyard)
Thursday

• Anthill 12:00 AM


• Jimmy Zee 11:15 PM


• Portico 10:30 PM


• Vilot 9:45 PM

Friday

• Mia Kulba 12:00 AM


• Tracey Saxby 11:15 PM


• Carmen Hillary 10:30 PM

Saturday

• Paint 12:00 AM


• Liz Clark 11:15 PM


• Natalie Edelson 10:30 PM


• Opening Axe 9:45 PM

Lamplighter Saturday

• Transit Radio 12:00 AM


• TV Heart Attack 11:00 PM


• Ninjaspy 10:00 PM


• Like A Storm 9:00 PM


• Bel Riose 8:00 PM

Check out some tunes from
Stellastarr* and Editors, or try the Official sound site at Soundpost on the NMW site

My experience with Soundpost was less than stellar; basically it didn't work at all on any of the computers I have access to. They claim to be providing a collection of songs by the artists taking part in this year's event, but after arguing with their web site for an hour or more I can only suggest that you don't bother. For the past couple years, Texas music fest SXSW has released a huge, multi-gigabyte, 1000 song collection that you can download easily and quickly with BitTorrent. For Vancouver's New Music West, you can select up to TEN songs at a time, and then it will fail to log you in, or the web server will toss an error and pack it in.

I'd rather not link to AOL of all places, especially since I can't get RealPlayer to install on the office computer, but it did work from home...