Steve Schmolaris's EP Review: Create Them

And there's never anyone around. Usually. Typically. Nearly always you're alone. Of course, when you're around the dead, is one ever truly alone? Their memories seep out of the ground like spores. Like a black mould. Ah, but it is peaceful to walk amongst their plumes. To re-create them in my mind. To re-animate them. To speak with them. To pull them back from beyond the grave, to thwart Death's policy, to reach into the wastelands of Hell. To reattach bone to bone to bone. To question them on what they remember. Sometimes, their advice is useful. But mostly they just tell stories. None remember having died and they talk and talk and talk about anything and everything on their decomposed minds. Their stories blend into one another. They forget the plot's path, but the journey through — its twists and turns — make it enjoyable nonetheless. Youthful adventures. First loves. Tales of danger and perseverance and triumph, of life's joys, of finding one's purpose (and how different they are from one skeleton to the next). • • • To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice . • • • Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, 'the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,' which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, 'the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,' left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists' songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.