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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Friday
Apr012011

JULIANNA BARWICK - The Magic Place

As far as album titles go, this is about as perfect and to the point as it gets. Following her debut Sanguine from a couple of years ago and last year’s Florine EP, Brooklyn’s Julianna Barwick has produced the most beguiling album of the year so far with The Magic Place.

With little more than her voice and a cathedral full of reverb, Barwick carefully builds up layer upon layer of mostly wordless vocals that reach high enough levels of intensity to rival the heights reached by that magnificent Pastor T.L. Barrett reissue from last year. Barwick’s transcendence, however, is much closer to European choral music traditions (think Le Mystere de Voix Bulgares without the brain-mulching dissonance) than it is to soul-cleansing American black gospel. She is the anti- (counter-? contra-?) Enya, vocal ambient music that can be as unnerving as it is overwhelming in its beauty. She is much closer aesthetically to Kevin Shields, who achieved a similar effect on My Bloody Valentine’s more repetitive pieces, such as "To Here Knows When" or on the feedback-driven "Glider". And way back in the '60s, David Crosby nailed down a blueprint for Barwick’s sound on "I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here" from his debut If Only I Could Remember My Name, perhaps his most moving piece, a spectral a capella fragment which, until now, has remained unrivalled.

Much of the magic of this album comes from the singer’s knowledge of when to let the reverberations ring out. She never gets Wagnerian with it, allowing the power of her music to come from timbre more than tumult. Compositionally speaking, her works are built around stacked melodies (her live performances are, no doubt, based on loops) rather than shifting harmonies. Most striking is "Keep Up the Good Work", both gorgeous and terrifying as it features her characteristic upper range with a highly vertigo-inducing vocal swoop. Its power is ineffable, something that does not feel created but, like a force of nature, like something that always was.

With only the barest occasional accompaniment on piano and other effects for colouration, Barwick continues to forge her original path, establishing herself as (literally) one of the most original voices on the scene right now.  

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