As of 2026, there are something like 250 million songs available to the streaming music services. How do we even begin to wrap our heads around a number like that? Well, the first thing we do is attempt to put things in some kind of order.

That begins by sorting things into piles. Everything in each pile has something in common when it comes to sound, aesthetic, style, feel, and so on. [e’ve just taken our first step toward classifying songs into genres.

These piles are still too big. Each pile itself needs to be sorted into smaller sub-piles as our organization project continues. Then those smaller piles need to become even smaller, and more targeted and specific. Rinse, repeat until we have thousands of piles. We can get infinitely granular.

There’s a website called “Every Noise at Once” that tried to do this with a scatterplot diagram. It was created by a former employee at Spotify named Glenn McDonald, using all the names Spotify gave to songs to educate its music recommendation algorithm.

Glenn was laid off from Spotify at the end of 2023, so he no longer has access to Spotify’s classifications. But the site is active, featuring somewhere around 6,500 different individual and specific genres of music from around the planet.

I love these names. Truck-driving country. Swamp pop. Cantautor (no idea what that is, but it’s something Latin). Cavernous death metal. Finnish tango.

I was poking around “Every Noise at Once” the other day. You know, just looking for something interesting.

Buried in the upper third of this amazing website is trip-hop. It’s next to Indonesian hyperpop, Cape Town indie, and C-pop girl group. Click on the arrow next to it, and another scatterplot opens up, featuring an array of artists who have been tagged as being part of the trip-hop universe. Portishead was here, of course. So was Massive Attack.

But the more I looked around, the more I realized that there was more to this genre than I thought. This deserves some exploration.

Welcome to the story of trip-hop.

Songs heard on this show:

• Portishead, Glory Box
• Afrika Bambaataa, Planet Rock
• Massive, Any Love
• Massive Attack, Unfinished Sympathy
• DJ Shadow, In/Flux
• Tricky, Aftermath
• Portishead, Sour Times
• DJ Shadow, Best Foot Forward
• Massive Attack, Angel
• Massive Attack, Teardrop

Here’s Eric Wilhite’s playlist.

The Ongoing History of New Music can be heard on these stations:

• 102.1 The Edge/Toronto – Sunday night at 7 p.m.
• Q107/Toronto – Sunday night at 9 p.m.
• Live 88-5/Ottawa – Saturdays at 9am and Sundays at 6 p.m.
• 107.5 Dave-FM/Kitchener – Sunday nights at 11 p.m.
• FM96/London – Sunday nights at 8 p.m.
• Power 97/Winnipeg – Sunday nights at 10 a.m. and 10 pm..
• 107-3 The Edge/Calgary – Sundays at 10 am. and 10 p.m.
• Sonic 102.9/Edmonton – Sunday at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
• The Zone/Victoria – Sunday at 9 a.m. and  9 p.m.
• The Fox/Vancouver – Sundays at 10 a.m. and 10 p.m.
• The Goat Network/Interior BC
• WAPS/WKTL The Summit/Arkon, Canton, Cleveland, Youngstown – Mon-Fri at 9 p.m.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

In January 1996, Bono and his family were on vacation as guests of fellow musician Jimmy Buffett. Buffett had been extolling the awesomeness of genuine Jamaican jerk chicken, so the decision was made to pick some up.

The fact they were in Miami was no problem because Buffett had a Grumman HU-16 Albatross flying boat he called Hemisphere Dancer. He got it cheap from the US Navy and could fly it himself.

Buffett, Bono, his family, Island Records head Chris Blackwell, and a co-pilot piled into the plane and set course for Montego Bay. But once they arrived, the water was too rough to land, so they diverted to Negril.

However, this diversion was unannounced and when local authorities saw the plane, they assumed it belonged to another drug runner. So they opened fire. More than 100 rounds were fired at the plane with several hitting the fuselage and shattering the windscreen. Fortunately, no one was hurt, no one was charged, and everyone soon hightailed it back to Miami.

There’s no word on whether Bono got his jerk chicken.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

The early days of punk were anything-goes times. The idea was to do virtually everything differently, especially you could be extra strange and provocative.

Enter The Cramps, a New York-based band that was a regular at the legendary CBGB. But their most famous show was with a San Franciso band called The Mutants. In 1978, the two of them journeyed to Napa to play a free show for the psychiatric patients at the Napa State Hospital.

The whole thing was captured on film and released as a 27-minute documentary called, We Were There to Be There. Why did they do it? To bring attention to government efforts to defund and privatize mental healthcare.

© 2026 Corus Radio, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

A Quebec Superior Court judge has ordered Élections Québec to mail voting reminder cards in both French and English.

This was the first year the elections authority sent out voter guides in French only, to comply with new provincial language legislation.

Groups representing anglophones in the province heavily criticized the move, saying it infringes on the right to vote.

Justice Sylvain Lussier wrote in his 23-page decision that there is serious concern that a large number of English-speaking seniors could be unable to exercise their right to vote due to a lack of understandable information.

The ruling temporarily suspends provisions of the Charter of the French Language.

Quebec voters go to the polls on Oct. 5.

© 2026 The Canadian Press

A woman has been arrested as police in Montreal investigate the vandalism of an office of the Quebec artificial intelligence institute Mila, with authorities saying it appears 10 people were involved.

The SPVM said at about 11:45 p.m. Tuesday, police officers on patrol discovered a building had been vandalized on Saint-Urbain Street, near Saint-Zotique Street West, in the city’s Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie borough.

Initial findings found several windows of the building had been smashed and numerous graffiti tags were spray painted on the building’s walls, according to SPVM spokesperson Manuel Couture.

Through its investigation, police determined a group of about 10 individuals were involved in the vandalism.

Couture said a 25-year-old woman was arrested near the scene of the incident and taken to a detention centre where she will be interviewed to determine the extent of her involvement.

The investigation is ongoing and police will be attending the scene to check for any surveillance cameras and to collect relevant evidence.

Tuesday night’s vandalism comes as one of Canada’s largest AI and tech summits gets underway in the city.

Yoshua Bengio, the founder of Mila, is set to speak at the event Thursday.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Barely four months into the job, Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh is stuck between two strong and opposing forces: Financial markets that anticipate the central bank will raise interest rates, and President Donald Trump, who wants the Fed to cut them or leave them unchanged.

Economists expect that on Wednesday, Warsh and his fellow policymakers will side with the markets.

Warsh, economists say, has largely boxed himself into a rate hike after delivering a high-profile speech last month warning that inflation remains too far above the Fed’s two per cent target and might require higher borrowing costs to bring it down.

A report last week showing inflation is still stubbornly high largely sealed investors’ expectations.

Warsh has faced this dilemma before. Soon after becoming chair May 22, he delivered tough rhetoric on inflation, but in late July the central bank left its key rate unchanged. After he provided little explanation for his decision at a press conference, investors pushed up longer-term interest rates, accelerating a process that is still ongoing.

This week, the rate on the 10-year Treasury bond reached five per cent for the first time in three years. Mortgage rates, which closely follow the 10-year Treasury, have also risen.

If the Fed doesn’t hike its key rate Wednesday, it risks a replay of what happened in late July, economists say. When investors expect inflation to stay high, they demand higher interest rates on government and corporate bonds to compensate.

“That is the paradox: A hike now could lower long-term rates later,” Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, wrote in an email. “Restore faith in the two per cent target, then the inflation premium can fall.

Fail, and markets will tighten instead through higher mortgage rates, business borrowing costs and interest on the debt.”

A quarter-point rate increase would be the first in three years and push the Fed’s benchmark rate to about 3.9 per cent.

While campaigning for the top job last year, Warsh said the Fed could lower interest rates. But since getting the nod, the Iran war has sharply raised gas prices, lifting inflation to 3.7 per cent in July, according to the Fed’s preferred measure. In April 2025, before Trump’s tariffs, it had fallen to 2.3 per cent.

Core inflation, which excludes the volatile food and energy categories, was 3.3 per cent in July, up from three per cent just before the Iran war.

If the Fed forgoes a rate hike, it would risk being seen as giving in to pressure from the White House, which could undercut its credibility with financial markets.

“Kevin cares about his legacy,” said Kristin Forbes, an economics professor at MIT’s Sloan School and former policymaker at the Bank of England. “And he knows that Fed chairs who follow political pressure instead of the economy do not go down well in the annals of history.”

Trump harshly criticized Warsh’s predecessor, Jerome Powell, for not cutting rates quickly enough. His Justice Department even launched a criminal investigation into Powell over brief testimony he delivered to Congress last year, though that probe was eventually dropped.

Kevin Hassett, Trump’s top economic adviser, was asked in an interview with Fox News on Sunday how Trump might react to a rate hike.

“I’m sure he’s not going to be super happy about it, but he will defend the independence of Kevin Warsh above all,” Hassett said.

Warsh might also have a measure of protection from the fact that his father-in-law is Ronald Lauder, a friend of Trump’s and a billionaire donor to his campaigns.

Even if Warsh decides to support a rate hike, it’s not clear how many more will follow. It’s unusual for the Fed to change rates just once. Typically the central bank embarks on a series of hikes or rate cuts to push the economy in the direction it seeks.

There is one precedent for a single hike: In 1997, former chair Alan Greenspan lifted rates by a quarter-point in March of that year. Yet a financial crisis ignited in Asia that July, prompting the Fed to remain on hold. When the crisis worsened in 1998, the Fed ultimately cut rates three times that fall.

For now, Wall Street investors anticipate the Fed will hike three times, with additional increases in December and March.

But Jonathan Pingle, an economist at UBS, said it is possible that if future inflation data showed price increases cooling, the Fed could forgo more hikes.

“They don’t have to follow through on that if the data goes their way,” Pingle said.

On Wednesday, the Fed will provide some hints about its next moves when it releases its quarterly economic projections, which will include a forecast of where its benchmark rate will be at the end of this year and next.

© 2026 The Canadian Press

Eight people have been charged after police dismantled an illicit cannabis grow operation on Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory and seized almost $3 million worth of cannabis.

The investigation began in August, when the Tyendinaga Police Service began looking into a production site allegedly involving a non-Indigenous criminal network, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) said in a news release Wednesday.

A search warrant was executed at a property on the territory on Sept. 9 with assistance from several OPP units.

Police said officers seized approximately 5,560 cannabis plants valued at $2.78 million, along with 34 kilograms of cannabis shake valued at approximately $34,000.

Officers also seized $1,880 in Canadian currency and 10 cellphones.

Eight people ranging from 41 to 69 years of age, have each been charged under the Cannabis Act with cultivating cannabis and possession of cannabis for the purpose of distribution.

One of those charged is from Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory while the other seven are from Scarborough.

Police said the investigation remains ongoing.

© 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Canadian retailer Dollarama raised annual comparable sales growth forecast on Wednesday, as budget-conscious shoppers increasingly opted for its discount everyday products while contending with higher cost of living.

As consumers look for ways to stretch their budgets, many have shifted to affordable alternatives across categories ranging from pantry staples to personal-care products, boosting traffic at dollar stores such as Dollarama, which sells merchandise at price points of up to $5.

The discount retailer expects annual comparable sales in Canada to grow between four per cent and 4.5 per cent, compared with its previous forecast of a three to four per cent rise.

“At a time when households are making careful spending decisions, customers continued to count on Dollarama for dependable value,” CEO Neil Rossy said.

Comparable sales at its Canadian stores rose 5.4 per cent in the second quarter, driven by a 3.7 per cent increase in customer traffic. Average transaction size increased 1.7 per cent, from two per cent growth in the prior quarter.

Dollarama maintained its outlook for Australia and said it expects the segment to post a net loss in fiscal 2027 as it continues to invest in business transformation initiatives.

Renewed trade tensions have added another layer of uncertainty for retailers. After the U.S. imposed 50 per cent tariffs on $27.6 billion worth of Canadian goods in August, Canada hit back with 15, 25 and 50 per cent levies on $27.6 billion of U.S.-origin imports, including appliances, electronics, steel, dairy and agricultural equipment.

Dollarama sourced 54 per cent of its Canadian procurement volume from North American vendors in fiscal 2026, while directly importing the remaining 46 per cent from overseas suppliers, mostly in China, as of Feb. 1.

The company posted quarterly earnings per share of $1.29, while analysts estimated $1.25, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Its second-quarter sales of $2.03 billion were largely in line with the estimate.

© 2026 Reuters

Mounties east of Edmonton say a small plane made an emergency landing on a highway early Wednesday.

RCMP say the Cessna 172 was blocking southbound lanes of Highway 21, between Highway 16 and Baseline Road, in Strathcona County.

They say traffic was to be re-directed until emergency crews could clear the scene.

Police say two people were on board the aircraft at the time of the landing, but no injuries were reported.

The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has been notified.

The Cessna 172 Skyhawk is a popular single-engine aircraft commonly used to train student pilots.

© 2026 The Canadian Press

The boom in artificial intelligence has put Ontario municipalities on the front lines of a major debate over how to regulate a new wave of large, energy-hungry data centres.

Several municipalities have voted in recent months on temporary data centre moratoriums while they study possible guardrails, and at least one has amended its bylaws to specifically permit them on industrial lands.

Here’s a brief look at what some Ontario municipalities have done, and plan to do:

The city was the first in Canada to vote on a one-year data centre freeze, what’s called an interim control bylaw. The proposed moratorium easily cleared committee but was voted down by council in July after a closed-door session with the city’s legal team. City staff are still carrying out a data centre planning study to look at possible guardrails, from energy demand to noise pollution.

The town became the first in Ontario to get a moratorium past the finish line last month, while staff carry out a planning study. While Oakville officials said it had no formal data centre applications, developer Hive Digital Technologies in May announced plans for a 320-megawatt AI facility in the Greater Toronto Area targeted for the second half of 2027.

Council directed staff last month to draft a moratorium on data centres with energy demands over 50 megawatts. A vote on that moratorium is expected on Sept. 21.

The municipality in eastern Ontario passed a bylaw in February to include data centres as a permitted use in the town’s industrial lands.

Council directed staff in July to review the city’s planning policies around data centres and pressed the province to come up with an Ontario-wide framework. Staff were also told to alert city councillors about any large data centre applications.

City council directed staff last month to study and develop an assessment framework for data centres, including possible amendments to city policy. Until that framework is brought to council, staff were told to make council aware of any large-scale data centres to allow for the city to potentially consider case-by-case moratoriums to manage community impacts.

The town on Monday directed staff to study data centres, but voted down an interim control bylaw.

Council in July voted down a bid to pursue a temporary moratorium but directed staff to study the city’s rules around data centres.

The regional municipality in August directed staff to report back to council early next year on possible data centre development implications.

© 2026 The Canadian Press