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Music

Clashing in with the SoundClash Award

If you’ve ever played in an underage band, you know that battles-of-the-bands usually suck.

Essentially it’s a way for promoters to get young bands to sell tickets for them, and not have to actually pay them. The prizes often look decent on paper, but aren’t really impressive once you look closer.

Harbourfront’s new SoundClash Music Award takes a different angle though, and not just because it isn’t focused on teenage bands that can’t play anywhere else.

The award, presented in partnership with NOW, offers $5,000 to the winner, $3,000 to the runner-up and $2,000 to the band that comes in third, which isn’t exactly just a token award. Plus, the bands get lots of exposure from playing at Harbourfront over the summer, which is a lot different than begging all your friends to buy overpriced tickets to fill up a club.

Jurors, including yours truly, listened to over 250 entries to pare the list down to the top five, including Young Empires, Kids & Explosions,Saidah Baba Talibah, The Worst Pop Band Ever and Miles Jones.

By a happy accident, the bands represent a huge range of styles, and some very non-mainstream ones at that. Young Empires specializes in high-energy, hook-laden pop, and are the most conventional act on the shortlist (however, they’re very adept at that). Kids & Explosions, a solo act featuring John Raskin (also known as the Oscar-nominated directed of I Met The Walrus), chops up pop music and mangles it into hilariously bizarre new beats. Talibah treads a strange place between soul, rock and avant-pop, while The Worst Pop Band Ever are actually quite a good jazz band. Finally, Miles Jones brings on the laidback conscious hip-hop.

All five acts appear at Harbourfront’s West Jet Stage at free concerts slated through the month of July. The winner will be chosen from a combination of public votes and jury selection.

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