Thank You!

Soundscapes will be closing permanently on September 30th, 2021.

Open every day between Spetember 22nd-30th

We'd like to thank all of our loyal customers over the years, you have made it all worthwhile! The last 20 years have seen a golden age in access to the world's recorded music history both in physical media and online. We were happy to be a part of sharing our knowledge of some of that great music with you. We hope you enjoyed most of what we sold & recommended to you over the years and hope you will continue to seek out the music that matters.

In the meantime we'll be selling our remaining inventory, including thousands of play copies, many of which are rare and/or out-of-print, never to be seen again. Over the next few weeks the discounts will increase and the price of play copies will decrease. Here are the details:

New CDs, LPs, DVDs, Blu-ray, Books 60% off 15% off

Rare & out-of-print new CDs 60% off 50% off

Rare/Premium/Out-of-print play copies $4.99 $14.99

Other play copies $2.99 $8.99

Magazine back issues $1 $2/each or 10 for $5 $15

Adjusted Hours & Ticket Refunds

We will be resuming our closing sale beginning Friday, June 11. Our hours will be as follows:

Wednesday-Saturday 12pm-7pm
Sunday 11am-6pm

Open every day between September 22nd-30th

We will no longer be providing ticket refunds for tickets purchased from the shop, however, you will be able to obtain refunds directly from the promoters of the shows. Please refer to the top of your ticket to determine the promoter. Here is the contact info for the promoters:

Collective Concerts/Horseshoe Tavern Presents/Lee's Palace Presents: shows@collectiveconcerts.com
Embrace Presents: info@embracepresents.com
MRG Concerts: ticketing@themrggroup.com
Live Nation: infotoronto@livenation.com
Venus Fest: venusfesttoronto@gmail.com

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for your understanding.

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Monday
Nov292010

SURF CITY - Kudos

Even in the age of the internet, you never really know what's going on in a particular music scene until you actually take a trip there. I was reminded of this first-hand when, in 2004, I came back from Melbourne with an armful of terrific local bands about which I'd never even heard a whisper in this part of the world. A similar thing happened a few years back, when our shop's owner Greg came back from New Zealand with a few surprising chestnuts for the staff. Foremost among these was the first EP by Surf City—a noisy combo playing wildly fuzzed-out indie pop in the vein of Clinic, The Jesus And Mary Chain and that proud lineage of undersung Kiwi pop like The Chills and The Clean. It was a succinctly perfect little six-song debut—a total gem.

Now, after a little longer than we'd have expected (or liked), the band has finally put together Kudos, their first full-length. Coming off an EP that so well paired the brevity of the format to the band's uptempo style, it was always going to be interesting to see how they faired over the course of an LP, and Kudos does have a few tunes that reveal a more languid side. Tempos are more to the middle rather than the breakneck rush of EP standouts like "Headin' Inside". One track, the swirly, motorik workout "Icy Lakes", even runs just shy of eight minutes. But even on more drawn-out songs, the spirit of the band remains intact: all clangy and reverberated, Surf City make a most beautiful type of nonsense. Their music is not about any real literal meaning, but instead the thrill of playing primal and primitive pop music at really loud volumes in a basement—one where the PA system isn't quite loud enough to really make out the vocals, so the singer resorts to shouting non-sequitur mantras and catchy "oo-oo-oos" over and over just for the experience of letting it out.

And if you take the basement metaphor one step further as a comment on the overall isolation a New Zealand group has from any scene but their local one, it says something terrific about Surf City's approach: they're pure. This is honest pop music played by people in love with the feeling it brings them. That's it. Sometimes that says and means more to a listener than even the most well-crafted lyrics. Underrated and well worth your ears.

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