I think it’s time to dust off the old cassette player, advance the tape to the magnetic strip using a Bic™ pen, pop in a few compact discs and get ready to pound out another Bergtrax 4000 mixtape.

It’s been 8 months since volume 5 was released, and for that I apologize. The benefit? I’ve got a ridiculous amount of new music to introduce everyone to. Also, where possible I’m going to start linking everyone to the artist’s CBC Radio 3 page (obviously just for the Canadian artists) or to a Bandcamp profile. I’m beginning to hate Myspace.

I know I usually rant for a few paragraphs before I let you actually start listening to the mixtape but I think you’ve all waited long enough.

If you’re reading this on Facebook, look for the “View original post” link near the bottom of the page to be directed to my website so you can listen to the actual mixtape.

Tracklisting:

1. Minus The Bear – My Time (Seattle, WA) #
2. Frightened Rabbit – Swim Until You Can’t See Land (Glasgow, Scotland) #
3. Jason Collett – Love Is A Dirty Word (Toronto, ON) CBCR3
4. Hollerado – Juliette (Manotick, ON) CBCR3
5. Zeus – How Does It Feel? (Toronto, ON) CBCR3
6. Said The Whale – Camillo (The Magician) (Vancouver, BC) CBCR3
7. Michael Bublé – Haven’t Met You Yet (Vancouver, BC) #
8. Matthew Barber – I Think You’re Gonna Feel My Love (Toronto, ON) CBCR3
9. Broken Social Scene – Forced to Love (Toronto, ON) CBCR3
10. Treelines – Young Man (Kelowna, BC) CBCR3
11. Stars – Fixed (Montreal, QC CBCR3

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This edition of Bergtrax 4000 was a lot easier to put together than the last. Again, this is thanks to eMusic and all of the wonderful indie music with which I’m now filling my iTunes library. 8 of the 9 songs featured here were purchased (as part of full abums) from eMusic.

As much as I’m in love with CBC Radio 3, last month I started to feel that my musical mind might be becoming a bit too closed. That’s not to say that I am going to completely forget or even stop listening to Canadian music for any period of time. No no, I just felt like I needed to expand a little bit and maybe find a few international artists (American or otherwise) to broaden my musical horizons.

I decided to post a request for musical suggestions on Twitter:

To which I got exactly zero replies. Go Twitter! Luckily I found a few on my own, but in an unlikely place. A movie blog who’s RSS feed I subscribe to in Google Reader.

Although I think I’d heard of them prior to this, I was watching the trailer for New York, I Love You and fell in love with the song in the trailer. I tried using Shazam on my Android but it couldn’t recognize it with all the talking over top of the music. Luckily the site I watched the trailer at, FirstShowing.net, has great commenters who had already mentioned what the track was. I immediately added it to my Save For Later list on eMusic and downloaded it once I was at home.

This is also how I discovered Zooey Deschanel‘s band She & Him. FirstShowing.net put up a music video that Zooey and Joseph Gordon-Levitt made for the song I’m featuring in the playlist. The two actors are currently starring in the indie film (500) Days of Summer. I’ve been meaning to go see this while it’s in Edmonton but it doesn’t look like I’ll make it. Guess I’ll have to wait for the DVD.

If you’ve got any bands you think I’d be down with please leave me some links in the comments. I’m fairly open to suggestions.

Ok, here’s the playlist:

1. Phoenix – 1901 (Versailles, France) #
2. She & Him – Why Do You Let Me Stay Here? (Portland, OR) #
3. The Rural Alberta Advantage – Don’t Haunt This Place (Toronto, ON) #
4. Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglová – When Your Mind’s Made Up (Dublin, IR & Valašské Meziříčí, CZ) #
5. Reverie Sound Revue – An Anniversary Away (Calgary, AB) #
6. Paper Moon – Say It’s All Over (Winnipeg, MB) #
7. The Most Serene Republic – Heavens To Purgatory (Milton, ON) #
8. Tegan and Sara – Call It Off (Vancouver, BC/Montreal, QC) #
9. Metric – Gimme Sympathy (Toronto, ON) #

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Location: Kelowna, BC
Genre: Indie / Pop / Rock
Website: treelinesmusic.com
Links:

I’m having a love affair with this band. If you’ve checked out the new Bergtrax 4000 mixtape I posted yesterday Vol 04: You’re The Man Now, Dog you’ll notice that this band got the coveted #1 spot. This player below is from their page on bandcamp (which I mentioned in my Indie Artists: Beginner’s Guide to the Internet tutorial) where you can download this entire album for a very fair price of a minimum of 8USD (you can offer to pay more if you’d like). Please enjoy the fruits of their labour.

Pressing play will play the entire album through.

In the three months since the last Bergtrax 4000 I’ve been racking my brain to come up with a great mixtape. I wrestled with a few but wasn’t ever completely satisfied with any of them. But I recently signed up for eMusic and as such have been downloading albums (I tend to shy away from buying singles as albums truly showcase a band’s talent) which has given me more motivation to put this mixtape together; that, and the fact that mixtape.me switched from SeeqPod to Skreemr to fetch their mp3s (meaning more mp3s are available).

I don’t know exactly what it was that convinced me I should start buying music again. I’ve always been a large proponent of downloading music from torrents or from message boards (ie. theboreds.com), but now that I’m listening to more Canadian independent music, I feel I owe it to my countrymen to pay for the music they worked so hard to create. This, however, does not mean I’m above downloading music, just that I’m more conscious of my decision to leech music as opposed to legally purchase it.

As far as the music goes in this volume, here are the stats:

• 10 songs
• 8 Canadian artists
• 2 bands from Massachusetts
• 2 artists have been shortlisted for the 2009 Polaris Music Prize -link-
• 2 bands were shortlisted (but lost) for the 2008 Polaris Music Prize
• In the last 3 months these artists attribute for 703 scrobbles (my guess is that the play count is actually higher)
• The oldest band formed in 1984
• Number of these artists I listened to on a regular basis at this time last year: 0

And now the tracklisting (clicking on the # will take you to their myspace page):

1. Treelines – Burned Up Hands (Kelowna, BC) #
2. Dinosaur Jr. – I Want You To Know (Amherst, Mass.) #
3. Passion Pit – Sleepyhead (Cambridge, Mass.) #
4. Hey Rosetta! – I’ve Been Asleep For A Long, Long Time (St. John’s, NFLD) #
5. Ohbijou – Black Ice (Toronto, ON) #
6. Dan Mangan – Robots (Vancouver, BC) #
7. Plants and Animals – Bye Bye Bye (Montreal, QC) #
8. Winter Gloves – Factories (Montreal, QC) #
9. Two Hours Traffic – Stuck For The Summer (Charlottetown, PEI) #
10. Joel Plaskett – Through & Through & Through (Dartmouth, NS) #

There will be an iMix available tonight. I have double checked that all of the songs work, so if you notice it skip a song, try double clicking it again.
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You’re probably wondering what type of qualifications this guy, on a random blog, has to talk about getting an indie band some exposure on the internet? The short answer is none. The long answer is… very little. I used to run this little site called Punkcanada.net, which then became Canadanoise.com. Don’t bother trying to check them out, I didn’t link them for a reason: they no longer exist. You might be able to use archive.org to check them out, but do so at your own risk. It started out as a Punknews.org clone, but specifically for Canadian punk bands, then became Canadanoise, which never went anywhere before dying a slow, relatively painless death.

None of that, however, is relevant. Now, I’m just a fan. A fan who loves to discover new music of all kinds, whether it’s an established artist I just haven’t heard of yet, or a new and upcoming band just getting their feet under them. There are lots of avenues to discover new music, but lately I’m finding some of the up and coming artists aren’t putting it all together in order to help people, like myself, discover their music. This is a simple list of things a band can do on the internet to help people find their music and get some much needed exposure. And not to toot my own horn, but if you’re missing something on this list, you’re really only limiting yourself.
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It’s a fairly safe bet that most people have gone through some heavy musical tastes progressions in their lives. From the time you actually started really listening to your own music to whatever point you’re at in your life, chances are the styles and artists aren’t the same now as then.

I can remember the point in my life when I started to listen to my own music. It was no longer Eric Clapton, Elton John and Rick Astley (no, I’m not kidding), which was the music my parents listened to. It grew from what I heard my older sister, Kristin, listening to, most notably at that point in time it was The Smashing Pumpkins, right around when the single “Today” came out but before Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was released, which would put me around 10 or 11 years old. I started watching a lot of Much Music and over the next few years bought the cassettes of Bush X, Smashing Pumpkins, The Presidents of the United States of America, and I believe at one time I purchased the Mortal Kombat soundtrack.
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Inspired by the postings by the Gizmodo writers explaining their first album purchases, I figured I would chime in.

I remember picking up Bush X’s Sixteen Stone on cassette after seeing the video for “Glycerine” on MuchMusic. “Glycerine” was, astoundingly, the 4th single from Sixteen Stone following “Everything Zen”, “Little Things”, and “Comedown” and preceded “Machinehead”. I can remember throwing this my Panasonic Shockwave walkmen and piping it through the Shockwave headphones, feeling badass because I could listen to it with the volume turned all the way up. Perhaps I regret this now when I can barely hear someone across the table, or when I find myself shouting to be heard in a quiet room or car. In retrospect I have more to blame than my Shockwave headphones for my lack of hearing abilities.