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Better Know Your 2010 Jury #29: Dimitri Nasralla June 28 2010
Name: Dimitri Nasrallah (Toronto)
Frequencies Editor,Exclaim!
Polaris Jury Member since: 2007

Please share the Top 5 Canadian albums you put on your first ballot.

Guillaume & the Coutu Dumonts Breaking The Fourth Wall
Poirier Running High
Caribou Swim
Cobblestone Jazz The Modern Deep Left Quartet
catl With the Lord for Cowards, You WIll FInd No Place

Tell us about your top ranked choice. Why #1?

Guillaume & the Coutu Dumonts' Breaking the Fourth Wall landed as my #1 choice because it's simply the most complex, most ambitious, and most compelling dance album from start to end that I heard from a Canadian producer this past year. Granted, I'm working from a steadfastly purists' idea of dance music that doesn't take on the usual pop/rock signifiers that tend to open the music up to a larger audience, but oftentimes it's in these fringe pockets of experimentation where the most interesting music happens. But this was an album that certainly had the potential to reach more people on its own terms if an infrastructure existed here to get behind it in some way. Sadly, though, it belongs to a type of music that gets routinely ignored in this country while being simultaneously celebrated elsewhere.

Guillaume Coutu-Dumont is a Montrealer who tried to get a career going in music here for many years before finally deciding to head off to Europe, where he has since built himself into one of the most interesting and critically acclaimed figures in a new generation of house music producers. I was fully aware that it stood no chance of making the Long List, as proved to be the case with 4 out of my 5 choices (though Poirier was a surprising omission), so the vote was more about personal taste than anything more strategic.

What record that's perhaps local or under the radar did you suggest to the jury and/or would like to plug here to the whole world?

The record that I just described above.

Describe the state of the Canadian music industry in five words or less.

Much too enamored with singer-songwriters.

Imagine the tables are turned and you are the nominee: What would you do with the $20,000 prize money?

I would disappear for a while to a place where the internet doesn't yet
have a strong hold over people's lives and $20,000 CDN converts to millions
of whatever constitutes the local currency. After that while is over, I
would come back and use the internet more than ever!

Related Link: Exclaim!

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