With the release of the single "Play Me A Christmas Song", Stephen Dowd manages to bottle the very specific, blue-hued silence that falls over a living room once the wrapping paper has been cleared away. It is a curious thing, really, how a melody can act less like a sound wave and more like the smell of a candle that was blown out five...

It takes a peculiar kind of endurance for Raw Soul to release "Still High...", an album that acts as a profound dissertation on life, mental health, and the sheer audacity of survival. By day, he is a practicing lawyer in Vancouver; by night, he operates as a fiercely independent hip-hop architect, handling every single step of the writing, mixing, and mastering process himself. He...