The time has come to whittle things down a little! Now that juat over 1/10 of all the bands are left in competition for their spot on the Sirius stage at Pop, we're narrowing down the tracks on the player as we get closer to what you guys think is worth a listen. Here's a random sampling of the top 50 favorites and a link to a page with the top 200! The final 3 will be announced on 08/30, so now's the time to make your vote count!

Black Kites	ZWERG
Lyrical Eye	Aaron Ross
Ten Kens	Les Handclaps
Educated Consumers	Fucked Corpse
The Buttless Chaps	Maxime Robin
Library Science	construction and destruction
Black Eyes and Neckties	boats
Vincent Bergeron	Lucy And The Popsonics
The Consonant C	LUMI
ONE MAN MACHINE	black feelings
Ghost Bees	MIXYLODIAN
Mille Monarques	Ladies of the Canyon
E-603	Curtis Santiago
These Hands	Mothers Fathers
PEPPER RABBIT	the High Dials
The Lovely Sparrows	The Craft Economy
Deep Dark United	Two Hours Traffic
The Ostrich	Flufftronix
215:TFK (The Freshest Kidz)	FRED
Bruce Peninsula	Sing Leaf
jason kent	Michael Zapruder's Rain of Frogs
Pete Samples	Flowers Of Hell
Archivist	Camphor
Dreamsploitation	The Weather Station
The I Spies	Zeroes

 

Did you hear about The Persuasions? The benchmark for a capella ensembles will come to visit the streets of our beautiful city in October. We are really excited about hearing their voices at POP. Check out this movie to have a taste of what's coming:

At this moment, you can send your song requests here, and buy tickets for the show there. Keep in mind that the weird demands that you may want to send in as jokes will still be considered as possibilities. The Persuasions have already made an album only with Zappa covers. Take a chance with your favorite King Crimson or Radiohead song, you never know what could happen.

This unmissable event will take place on October 4 in the magnificent Ukrainian Federation!!!

45c The glowing blind spot of 2007, featuring everything not packed into the more conventional countdowns and wrap-ups of the year gone by (ie. episode 45, Sides A and B ...). In this episode I take advantage of Jack Dylan's overseas incompetence (ie. Part 2 of Side B is coming soon) to deliver a kind of outtakes intermission ... touching on some late discoveries / oversights from 2007, some reissues, some covers, and some soundtrack samplings. Maybe my favourite of the 2007-in-review-bunch. Anyway, by some calendars, we're only a couple of days into the new year. We'll dedicate this one to Heath Ledger; may it carry him through the afterlife.

PopCast #45C [I Want You to Know - 2007 Covers, Reissues, Soundtracks, and Oversights]

Featuring: Ólöf Arnalds, Sandro Perri, Elfin Saddle, Wilco, Nelson Angelo e Joyce, Stephen Malkmus, Peter Sarstedt, Jonny Greenwood, Sunset Rubdown, Andrew Bird, CSS.

Miracle Fortress

The Luyas

Think About Life

Adam & The Amethysts

The Pop Montreal International Music Festival is proud to present the 2nd POP OFF tour of 2008 . The tour is a great way to show the community and artistic spirit that is alive and well within the Montreal underground. We thought there was no better way to do this than to take a group of bands that are all intimately connected (all 4 bands will share members) and put them on the road to spread the happy vibes. First up is the Luyas who are Jessie Stein, Pietro Amato and Stef Schneider. Three awesome musicians who together create hypnotic and ethereal pop gems. For some shows Adam & the Amethysts will open. Adam is Adam Waito and The Amethysts are a rotating cast of characters who help give life to Amethyst Amulet an album critics are calling “the hit of the summer”. Following The Luyas or the Amethysts is the psychedelic Pop bliss of the sensational Miracle Fortress. Miracle Fortress is the brainchild of Graham Van Pelt, but the live configuration now includes Stein, Waito and Nathan Ward. To end things off we bring you the explosive and electrifying Think About Life, where Van Pelt will be joined by musical renegades Martin Cesar and Matt Shane to bring you the greatest dance party imaginable.

July 25 - Ottawa, ON:: Babylon

July 26 - Toronto, ON:: Sneaky Dee's

July 27 - Guelph, ON:: Hillside Festival

July 31 - Quebec City, QC:: Le Cercle

August 2 - Charlottetown, PEI:: Hunter's Ale House

August 3 - Sackville, NB:: Sappy Fest

Art for Metal's Sake at the Vice benefit exhibit for Acrassicauda

After struggling to perform even one show a year in their pretty tormented hometown of Baghdad, now refugees in Damascus, Syria, Acrassicauda (Latin for "Black Scorpion") found themselves as the central focus of the Vice documentary Heavy Metal in Baghdad. Their cause is now the drive behind this upcoming weekend's photo exhibit at the Emporium Gallery.

Come see the works of local and super fantastic international photographers, such as Peter Beste, Jerry Hsu, Tim Barber, Ryan Foerster, Angela Boatwright, and Jens Stoltze, down on the wrong side of the tracks in Westmount. The opening takes place on Friday, Oct.26 from 7pm 'till midnight, and the works will be up throughout the weekend from 11am to 8pm.

And if you still haven't given into helping out a bunch of guys who dream to live in peace, grow their hair long, bang their heads and play metal as loud as they want, you can always ponder the issue of cultural and artistic freedom while perusing the prints online here.

wordsy flyer

Emporium Gallery, 3035 St-Antoine studio 74

We don't fancy ourselves modern Marconis, but the Pop Sirius Player has been pretty influential on our own day-to-day internetting and is proving to be quite an interesting interactive experience. So far, there have been tens of thousands of votes cast by users, some blindly, and some with clear favorites. Just check out the results page to see some of the recent patterns.

We've made some changes in order to allow all the artists and equal chance at being heard and voted for. By limiting the number of songs in rotation to 2 per aritst, we're sure to see more balanced results and a better diversity in the top 20. We've also made a Facebook application to help you spend even more time sifting through the pop.

Here are some of the more recent top 20 artists. There have been some shifts in opinion since the last tally a few weeks ago. Keep an eye on the results page to see new tracks appear, and older ones creep up closer to the top!

	Rachel Margaret, San Francisco, CA Imagine a gene lab accident. Beakers holding the DNA of Bob Mould, Elisabeth Fraser and David Lynch crash to the floor, their contents mixing and recombining... She calls it Acoustic/Synth Pop. Emo/HyperHookHop, Marge, whatever it's called, Rachel Margaret's music is supercharged and gift-twisted.
	The Superfantastics, Halifax, NS The Superfantastics are the Alex P. Keaton of the indie-pop scene. Small in size, big in heart and adorable in a sweater-vest.
	Elastocitizens, Toronto, ON Hard Rock/Heavy Funk, hot wild theatrical show that will set your endorphins soaring, making you dance, sweat and feel alive.
	The Pack, Vancouver, BC Holding the torch high in today's garage rock revival, Vancouver duo The Pack strike with a raw, hell-torn, blues-rock swagger that is equally contemplative and unflinching.
	Sunshine State, Toronto, ON Sunshine State is two friends trying to make sense of life and love in the city . It's fresh acoustic pop with bossa nova , jazz , and soul influences that will make you laugh , cry , and be glad you're alive .