Sinewave, the one-man studio project of Vancouver’s Mark Wiebe, has been on the cutting edge of underground Canadian electronic music since the 2001 launch of Interplanetary Ridicule, an album of "weird space lounge", b-movie samples and finely diced drum-and-bass beats. It caused an instant sensation on campus radio stations across the country, closing out the year as the number one album of 2001 at University of Manitoba's UMFM, placing eighteenth on !earshot's top 200 of 2001 and receiving airplay around the globe on Solid Steel Radio. After a four-and-a-half year hiatus between albums and a move from Winnipeg to Vancouver Sinewave re-emerged in February 2006 with the critically acclaimed Unity Gain (Vinyl Republik/Maximum Music Group). The songs on Unity Gain are a departure from the frenetic beats of Ridicule, with cinematic soundscapes, acoustic guitars and breathy vocoder vocals, that wouldn't sound out of place on a mixtape with the likes of Air, Boards of Canada, and Ulrich Schnauss. The album made an impression on campus and community radio listeners, climbing to number eight on the !earshot top fifty and number one on the electronic chart. On the live front, Sinewave has been playing shows all over Canada, including showcase gigs at Canadian Music Week in Toronto and New Music West in Vancouver. To turn Sinewave from a studio-only recording project into a viable live entity, Wiebe recruited long-time friend and collaborator Jeremy Unrau for bass and keyboard duties, with Wiebe on guitar, keyboards and vocals. To add to the fun, a mélange of visual weirdness compiled by Wiebe and Unrau is projected and synchronized along with the set. Besides producing as Sinewave, Wiebe writes and performs with Vancouver shoegazers Guitaro (guitaro.ca), live electronic duo Helpcomputer (helpcomputer.ca) and his electro-pop alter-ego Markattack (markattack.ca). He has also ventured into the realm of music-for-picture, making his debut as a film composer in 2004 on the Leo Award winning documentary, Wrestling With The North, and has since had songs featured on shows and movies in the US and Canada, including The L-Word, Godiva’s, Trump Unauthorized and Murder in the Hamptons. For more information and the latest news check out sinewavemusic.ca and vinylrepublik.com.
