Canada’s 2010 JUNO Award nominations were announced yesterday and we’re proud to report that Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society is nominated in the Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year category for its 2009 debut, Infernal Machines (New Amsterdam Records). The record has already appeared on over 70 best-of-the-year lists around the industry and earned Best Debut honors in the prestigious Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll. Winners will be announced at the JUNO Gala Dinner and Awards ceremony on Saturday, April 17th.

Critics called Infernal Machines “a seven-track marvel of imagination” (David R. Adler, Time Out New York), “a fully integrated sound world as current as it is timeless” (Troy Collins, AllAboutJazz.com), “a nearly perfect creative synthesis between tradition and innovation” (John Eyles, BBC) and “a wickedly intelligent dispatch from the fading border between orchestral jazz and post-rock and classical minimalism” (Nate Chinen, New York Times). JazzTimes‘ Michael J. West adds, “With their haunting compositions and imaginative experiments, Argue’s Secret Society might do for jazz what Radiohead did for rock—and poach some of its audience, too.”

Secret Society’s next performance is at New York’s Jazz Standard on March 23rd, and George Wein’s New Festival Productions recently announced the band will be part of the line-ups for both the CareFusion Jazz Festival New York and the CareFusion Newport Jazz Festival this summer.