Category Archives: Burden of Salt

Burden of Salt was an arts and culture blog I operated from 2010 through 2014. Don’t ask me about the name. This also served as an online portfolio for some of the work I contributed as a volunteer (2009-2011), Arts and Culture Editor (2011/2012), and Editor-in-Chief (2012/2013) to The Ontarion (the University of Guelph’s independent student newspaper) as well some reviews and interviews for Aesthetic Magazine and Truth Explosion Magazine.

Q&A: Andreas Buchwaldt talks construction, art, music, and community

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Visual artist Andreas Buchwaldt models a yet unnamed wood-and-cardboard mobile accordion outside of his studio in Toronto’s Junction Triangle. He will display the new piece to the public at the Great Hall on Dec. 13 for the second of this season’s Long Winter events. Photo: Tom Beedham

[Monthly community arts event Long Winter recently signed me on to provide their website with blog content, so for the past week or so I’ve been keeping busy getting in touch with artists set to feature on their December 13 program. (Here’s my review of last month’s instalment and the shifted brand focus the series has adopted for this season.) Below is a chunk of the first of my Long Winter blog contributions: an interview I conducted with Andreas Buchwaldt, an artist who’s work usually focuses on architectural structure but is adapting his style to respond to the music that has been a constant at the monthly events with a wood-and-cardboard mobile accordion requiring the cooperation of three people to pump and play it.. You can read the full Q&A here.]

Tom Beedham: For the most part architecture weighs pretty heavy in your work – you’ve got blueprints, housing frames, lots of pieces that look like skeletons of structures that we’re used to seeing. How do you arrive at your subjects?
Andreas Buchwaldt: A lot of it’s architecturally based. So starting with blueprints or floor plans and it’s also exploring materials like Expandex and weird stretchy materials. I think I’m just trying to reimagine different ways of building structures you’d see in the everyday. I’m trying to imagine what a building would look like if it were made out of something completely different and how that material could change the way it functions – like how it would resist entropy. When a building crumbles because it gets old and worn out, if it was made out of rubber, what would happen? I’m just kind of posing those questions.

A lot of the most recent stuff is just from coming to Toronto. Condo towers just kind of crept into my art and the downtown core. It’s just kind of a general view of the skyline, just to try and take in all of the city at once. And then something we don’t have in Saskatoon – well we do have it but it’s predominate here, especially in the art scene – are all of these two-floor business-on-the-bottom/someone-lives-upstairs sort of things. That way of living – that two-storey, split purpose architecture – was just something that was kind of new to me.

TB: How about the blueprint pieces? Are you focusing on specific buildings?
AB: I found them online. I didn’t really feel like 3-D modeling my own things. But I like generalized architecture. Something that’s not too specific, but suggests a whole neighbourhood could be represented. Specifics get into the history of a certain building; I’m interested in the history of the city.

TB: What I take away from your pieces are these commentaries on space and perception that are delivered as kind of cheeky, mechanical distortions of architecture and how our structured realities are put together. Is there an intended humour to your work?
AB: Absolutely. I haven’t thoroughly studied the way Toronto’s been designed and constructed, but from what I can see just walking down the street, I think it’s incredibly idiotic the way things are torn down and then we build something up. It doesn’t solve the problem. Every time I see a new project being built in Toronto I’m never happy. It’s always a disaster. Like right behind you. Right behind my studio is this beautiful park that people would walk their dogs in, and now the space is being filled by… not condos, but these townhouse things. And now there’s nowhere in this area that’s worth hanging out at. I have to go to Trinity Bellwoods to go drink a beer with my friends in the park. There’s nowhere here to do that. This city is not well planned.

TB: How do you approach a topic like gentrification?
AB: That’s totally an interesting topic. I’m having to understand that as an artist, you’re like a foot soldier for gentrification whether you like it or not. You can say you’re against it, but you’re helping to gentrify an area. I think the problem is just taking up space with new gentrification. Like repurposing the street for Starbucks: whatever. But I think when you take new land – like the precious land that we have in Toronto – and then do something to propagate more of that shit just drives me crazy. [Read the rest over at torontolongwinter.com]

Download a Toronto tribute concert in honour of Lou Reed

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Toronto bands and artists new and old come together to pay respects to Lou Reed
Tom Beedham

Tribute events in honour of Lou Reed’s life have been various and plenty since his death on Oct. 27, including a number in his longtime home base, New York City.

The outpour of public emotion has been indicative of an extensive and textured community that found inspiration in the artist, but on Thursday, Nov. 21, Toronto concert promoter Dan Burke gathered a studded lineup consisting solely of Toronto artists wishing to pay respect to their deceased influencer at the Silver Dollar.

Now, thanks to live recordings blog Mechanical Forest Sound, you can download the entire concert.

Spending the entire night playing songs from Reed and The Velvet Underground’s catalogs, there were performances from The Autumn Stones, Blonde Elvis, Broken Bricks, By Divine Right, Patti Cake, Lily Frost, Mike Mikocic, Suitcase Sam, and Dave Schoonderbeek, and while former Deadly Snakes guitarist/vocalist Andre Ethier joined the Flowers of Hell, Steven Leckie (of Toronto punk veterans The Viletones) joined TO drone squad Ostrich Tuning – who owe their very name to Reed, who once coined the phrase to describe a trivial guitar tuning he used.

RELATED:

Memebers of Arcade Fire and Sonic Youth perform The Velvet Underground & Nico’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties”

Concert review: Elsa, Smartboys, and Wish @ The Piston | Nov. 21, 2013

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Elsa and Smartboys give four long-incubated records a hometown release
Tom Beedham

Elsa’s Jonathan Rogers (left) and Matthew Goldman (right) playing their band’s Toronto EP release show at The Piston on November 21, 2013. Smartboys also released three seven-inch records at the concert. Photo: Tom Beedham

Although it soft released at a support appearance for Lee Ranaldo & The Dust at the beginning of October, Toronto dream-pop quartet Elsa slept on giving their debut EP I Do a proper hometown release until it could play the intimate stage at the back of The Piston on Nov. 21 – a month after it dropped officially on Oct. 22.

In the same spirit, glam-punk revival act Smartboys brought three long-uncelebrated seven-inches that helped earn the concert the title of a “quadruple record release show.” A project from Fucked Up’s Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk that began writing amid recording sessions for Hidden World (2006), Smartboys never really found the personnel it needed to reify what was on paper until it acquired vocalist Tim Westberg (U.S. Girls), Molested Youth’s Warren Calbeck on guitar, and Steven Foster (Omhouse, Snowblink, Moon King, Donlands and Mortimer) on bass. That happened in Spring 2012, and their “RSVP b/w Cutting Through Life,” “Receiving the Bribe b/w The Wrench of Recollection,” and “A Different World Now b/w Stacked” seven-inches followed this year in May, July, and September, respectively, but between its members fulfilling various commitments to other bands and projects, Nov. 21 was the first concert they had to vend their records to a public it could interact with.

So when the two bands finally brought their multi-release gig to The Piston, it seemed appropriate that their records were given a show that upheld the casual promoting they received.

(review continues after photo thumbnails)

Opening things up was Toronto dream-pop outfit Wish, who – after all is said and done – deserved a bigger audience. A foursome featuring Kyle Connolly and Josh Korody of Toronto shoegaze contingent Beliefs on guitars (Connolly also provides lead vocals), Emily Frances of Milk Lines on bass and backing vocals, and Peter Gosling of Decades on drums, Wish is a Toronto supergroup, and one that resists domination by any of its already respectable parts. While Connolly and Korody and their offset-body Fenders are at the front of it, the noise collages of their other project are kept to a minimum here and instead the band focuses on crafting a neo-psychedelia with a softer touch.

Then Smartboys took the stage. Driven by Falco’s kit, textured with Haliechuk’s angular guitar melodies, and finding a theatrical voice in frontman Westberg (aided by some often-present gang vocals), the group pounded through a set that made rousing pop-punk anthems of slice of life proletariat defenses. And while it was curious seeing this group wedged between a couple of dream-pop acts, the still growing audience didn’t seem to mind.

The band’s set went well beyond the offerings of the six songs spread across the 45s it released that night, so perhaps we can expect a full album (or at least some more 45s) soon.

By the end of the night, the small venue at the back of The Piston was filled up mostly by acknowledged friends and family that came out to support Elsa, and for songwriter Jonathan Rogers, the familiar faces solicited a candour that couldn’t have been found (or called for, really) at the band’s Ranaldo gig.

“Let’s get this done so I can get more drunk,” Rogers exclaimed.

But the celebratory cheek wasn’t without an acknowledgement of the significance of the night through some humour: “Hey this is the first time I’ve said this, but now I can, so – buy a record?”

And I’m sure many did.

Although the band played through the entirety of its four-track debut as well as some newer, yet-to-be-released material, the audience made it audible that it wanted more, only to hear that the fuzzy cover they were given of Guided By Voices’ “Game of Pricks” at the end of the set “was the encore.”

Mazzy Star fades into view four times at Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall

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Good behaviour earns fans three encores when Mazzy Star pulls into Toronto with a phone ban
Tom Beedham

Mazzy Star's candlelit stage setup at the Danforth permeated an intimate atmosphere made only more intimate by a strict phone ban at Toronto's Danforth Music Hall on Nov. 16. Photo: Tom Beedham

Mazzy Star’s candlelit stage setup permeated an intimate atmosphere made only more intimate by a strict ban on phone use throughout the concert at Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall on Nov. 16. Photo: Tom Beedham

The triple-encored, 100-minute concert Mazzy Star gave Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall on Nov. 16 was definitely one it will have to live up to next time (and Hope Sandoval sort of promised a next time).

The first audiences that received Mazzy Star in the late 1980s and throughout the ’90s met it as a band that wed the devices of alternative rock’s then-contemporary vanguards with a minimalist version of psychedelic rock and the longstanding traditions of folk and bluegrass. They were champions of a gaping melting pot, and that melting pot sounded sweet – pun intended.

But in spite of the darling status Mazzy Star’s music earned, it wasn’t long after the band drifted into the public arena (and arenas) when audiences could decipher how the engrossing atmospheres the band was concerned with producing sonically didn’t make accommodations for rabid fans or snap-happy photographers. While Hope Sandoval’s narcotic pouts are prominent across the band’s catalogue, the singer displayed an early aversion to the spotlight: notoriously introverted onstage, Sandoval would rarely interact with fans, and the band responded to her hesitancies by playing in near-darkness.

successful concerts ride on so much more than physical presentation. And that is especially true for reactivated bands bringing new albums in tow.

So when security warned Toronto fans lined up early for the concert of a strict policy against camera and cell phone use in effect for the night (they instructed fans that simply must send text messages do so from the hall’s lobby), most accepted the band’s negotiation of modern “Instagram everything” concert culture as par for the course.

But clichéd discussions describing Mazzy Star’s set as “a blast from the past” or “an indication that absence makes the heart grow fonder” would fail to recognize that what Mazzy Star brought to the table was so much more than a validation of long-whetted nostalgia.

Candlelit and flanked by a wash of purple backlights, the intimate stage awaiting fans inside the Danforth was enchantingly reminiscent of the MTV Unplugged concerts other bands played in Mazzy Star’s heyday (especially Nirvana’s, which turns 20 this week) – another thing the cell phone ban helped facilitate – but successful concerts ride on so much more than physical presentation. And that is especially true for reactivated bands bringing new albums in tow.

Although they held off on revealing any proof of it until two years after Hope Sandoval teased it to Rolling Stone in 2009 when doing press behind her solo project with The Warm Inventions, Mazzy Star and its Sept. 24-released Seasons of Your Day has been in gestation since 1997.

Even if you walked into the show knowing this and you hadn’t heard any of Seasons of Your Day (which would be your own fault, given that almost a third of it was issued ahead of the album over the double A-side “Common Burn” / “Lay Myself Down” single in 2011 and then the video for “California” in August this year), you might have been surprised by how well the new material works with the old.

In fact, you were sort of forced to realize it when Mazzy Star opened with successive double representations of the releases that chronologically bracket their 2000-interrupted 1997-2010 hiatus: “Look on Down from the Bridge” and “Cry, Cry” from Among My Swan, and Seasons of Your Day cuts “In the Kingdom” and “Lay Myself Down.” (Full setlist below.) Placing these specific selections at the top of the setlist was actually sort of genius, really. It meant that in the first 15 minutes, Mazzy Star played the final song on Among My Swan and the opening track on Seasons of Your day, effectually serving fans a naked reminder of (first) exactly where they left off, and (second) how the band’s general dedication to continuity shines through from the very beginning of its new record.

It also made fans take in the shear cohesion of Mazzy Star’s musicianship.

The organ-prominent “Look on Down from the Bridge” and “In the Kingdom” forced fans to soak in perhaps-underappreciated keyboardist Suki Ewers’s skills, while the chord-restrained minimalism of “Cry, Cry” and “Lay Myself Down” might have persuaded guitar geeks craving the incendiary impressionism of psychedelic rabbit holes like “She Hangs Brightly” to turn their intention instead to pedal steel player Josh Yenne and his mournful bottleneck gliding.

And if you weren’t close enough to take in the finer details of the stage’s goings-on, there were always the projections of starry skies, stormy seas, and vintage photos to feast your eyes on as Mazzy Star cranked out its smoldering themes for lucid somnambulism all night long.

The whole set was a thing of delicate balance, with an especially memorable presentation of “Into Dust” at its centerpiece. Personnelled just by Sandoval on vocals, Roback on an acoustic guitar, and the bassist for the night (Seasons of Your Day features My Bloody Valentine drummer and Hope Sandoval’s Warm Inventions bandmate Colm Ó Cíosóig on bass and Cíosóig continues to receive credit as the band’s bassist, but MBV’s recently concluded tour and Mazzy Star’s current one overlapped significantly, so who this was is anyone’s guess [update: Mazzy Star drummer Keith Mitchell has confirmed the bassist and violist for the night was his son, Paul Mitchell]) on violin, it permeated ambience so still you could hear whispered interactions from the Danforth’s bar. The intimate performance – and the night in general – was arguably made even better by the general respect fans demonstrated by heeding to the band’s wishes surrounding photography.

The band certainly seemed to appreciate it, too.

Although they denied fans a performance of Seasons of Your Day closer “Flying Low” – a track that’s closed the regular set portions of most of this tour’s recent setlists – what the band provided in the aftermath did more than make up for it, returning for not one, not two, but three encores.

Fans got the seemingly planned encore of Keith Mitchell’s hand drummed “California” and Sandoval’s witchy conjuring “So Tonight That I Might See,” and then, after the band returned from offstage for a second time, the reluctantly optimistic “I’ve Been Let Down.”

But the biggest payoff fans got for their behaviour easily came when the band returned for a third time and delivered a jammed out cover of The Colours Out of Time’s 1981-recorded “Rock Section,” which was a significant milestone. Infamously recorded in 1993 in front of a live audience as a “Black Session” for the C’est Lenoir show on French radio station France Inter, the band is rumoured to have played this song live even as far back as 1988 – the year in which Hope Sandoval joined David Roback in Opal before it was later renamed Mazzy Star – and has turned it into something of its own, but the band hasn’t been reported as having played it live since 1997 – the year of its break up. (So Toronto, feel lucky.)

When the band reached the coda of the heavily improvised, Richard Wright-like keyboarded rendition of the song, Sandoval approached the mic to give what was perhaps the most stage banter she’s ever given.

“See you guys later.”

Regardless of whether or not that’s true, I hope she follows up on it.

Setlist
“Look On Down From The Bridge”
“Cry, Cry”
“In The Kingdom”
“Lay Myself Down”
“Ride It On”
“Does Someone Have Your Baby Now”
“Into Dust”
“She Hangs Brightly”
“Halah”
“Fade Into You”
“Blue Flower” (Slap Happy)
“Disappear”
Encore 1
“California”
“So Tonight That I Might See”
Encore 2
“I’ve Been Let Down”
Encore 3
“Rock Section” (The Colours Out Of Time)

Another Long Winter

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Inauguration of Long Winter’s second year hints at a less Fucked Up forecast
Words and photos by Tom Beedham

Doomsquad performing in the Samuel J. Moore restaurant on the main floor of The Great Hall on Nov. 8. November 8 marked the first time Long Winter used the restaurant as a venue for its programming. Photo: Tom Beedham

When Long Winter returned to The Great Hall on Nov. 8, it came too with the suggestion that audiences would receive a different version of the monthly melting pot-facilitating evenings than they might have come to expect from it last year.

To wit, the one reliable feature Long Winter regulars have become familiar with is the dependable lack of predictability tied to each night of the season spanning (and extending) arts and culture community event, but the first night of this season came with a significant rebranding.

The cover of Long Winter’s program for Nov. 8. Noticeably absent is mention of Fucked Up, the band slated as the presenters of last year’s Long Winter events. Photo: Tom Beedham

Ushered into fruition just one year ago by Mike Haliechuk and Josh Zucker of ever-enterprising Toronto punk outfit Fucked Up, the monthly night of music, art, food, film, poetry, photography, dance, speakers, and (eventually) video games began as something that would allow Haliechuk and Zucker to program a local event. Throwing each of the nights to impressively broadened masses as all-ages, pay-what-you-can affairs, Long Winter established itself as a beacon for fairly accessible multi-media entertainment programming (unfortunately the Great Hall is only accessible by stairs; there is no elevator service), and as the events snowballed in scope as well as popularity, its varied offerings came to tessellate more and more of the rooms and hallways that make up the building accordingly.

The events relied on the somewhat small community of connections their band had both established and immersed itself in, and Fucked Up headlined most of the five shows, appropriately cited on Long Winter programs, posters, and online event pages as the force that “presented” each of the series’ instalments.

But as it returned this year with the support of the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, although Haliechuk and Zucker continue to run the show, Fucked Up’s name was nowhere to be found.

Speculation could go on forever as to why the band’s pedigree has been removed from the ephemera surrounding the series, but in terms of the void they left to be filled by another headliner – this time a slot arguably shared by psychedelic Guelph rock veterans King Cobb Steelie in the main hall and siblinged Toronto/Montréal darkwave trio Doomsquad in the newly Long Winter-dominated Samuel J. Moore restaurant on The Great Hall’s ground level – it’s worth noting that the series’ website includes a statement from Haliechuk boasting a commitment to diverse programming and calling for outside submissions.

“Everyone is welcome, and everyone who attended last year should feel as much a part of this event as we do. We aim to be a reflection of all the great things that people do in Toronto,” Haliechuk says – emphasis on the “all,” no doubt. It would be no great surprise if Fucked Up’s reduced identity were implemented in favour of that virtue.

The first of a series of split seven-inch records Scion Sessions is giving Long Winter audiences for free upon entry to the monthly event this season. Photo: Tom Beedham

The first 350 patrons entering November 8’s Long Winter would have immediately noticed one other big change as they passed through the doors, each of them granted a free split seven-inch featuring Doomsquad and Lido Pimienta, whom also performed that night. Contributed by the Hand Drawn Dracula-courting Scion Sessions, the record was the first of a series of Long Winter artist-featuring splits slated to be offered to guests for each of this year’s instalments.

From there on, though, it was mostly business as usual for one of Toronto’s most immersive entertainment programming series: there was music, there was art, there was food, there was theatre, there was comedy, there were video games, and there was music. Did I say there was music?

If guests ventured further upstairs to the hall’s balcony level and coat check, they would have approached and become a part of Steve Reaume’s art/light installation projecting some truly debilitating algorithmic patterns into a corner, and once they’d recovered from the dizzying effects of that, there was William Andrew Finlay Stewart’s “Fall” – a looping video project – waiting for them on the ground.

If you skipped dinner to get there early or just wanted some late night munchies, the main hall hosted all-vegan food offerings from Windowshade Delicatessen, who’s reuben sandwich variant will certainly earn their west College street location a personal visit from myself and everyone else I successfully peddle it on.

At any given point throughout the night you could also fill your time by drawing on (and having your picture taken with) one of 1078 disposed coffee cups with “Disposable,” a consumption-considering interactive installation from Anrea Wrobel and Brian Cauley.

Wake Island’s Philippe M at Long Winter in The Great Hall’s main hall on Nov. 8. PhotoL Tom Beedham

Things really got rolling with Wake Island, though. Opening up the multi-stationed concert portion of the night in the main hall, the Montreal rock foursome hammered things home with some expert delivery, cementing its set as something other performers should have worried about following with guitarist Nadim M’s final tooth-picked solo.

Nevertheless, performer Ben Kamino took the stage once they’d finished, instructing the main hall to slow-dance eyes shut in a herd, urging participants to touch each other – not just with their hands but with all parts of their bodies – and by extension, “everyone in the universe.” You can imagine how that went. It was awkward. Kamino repeated this experiment twice more following bands in the main hall.

Esther Grey at Long Winter in The Great Hall’s Conversation Room on Nov. 8. Photo: Tom Beedham

Next was Guelph garage rock act Esther Grey, warming up the Conversation Room. Bringing sometimes-member and saxophonist Dan Paille in tow, guitarist Steph Yates and bassist Nathan Campagnero’s plodding progressions were juxtaposed with some extra texture that I didn’t get to hear when I last reviewed them for their Kazoo! Fest show back in April. Paille’s sax is presented pretty sparingly in comparison to the core group’s output, so it works with the group’s minimalist explorations of instrumental spacing.

From Ben Kamino and Matt Kelly’s “Conflict. Resolution. Conflict,” an absurdist Beckettian skit performed in front of the crowd dissipating after Esther Grey’s set in the Conversation Room at The Great Hall for Long Winter. Photo: Tom Beedham

Fixed with elongated cardboard masks, Ben Kamino and Matt Kelly ambushed the crowd remaining in the room at the end of Esther Grey’s set with a guerilla theatre performance called “Conflict. Resolution. Conflict.” Their characters mostly just argued over an onion, but eventually they made up with a sweet(?) embrace that saw them sharing bites out of the very real, very potent vegetable and then scuttled out of the room.

Recovering from Kamino and Kelly’s adventure in Beckettian theatre and wandering back into the main hall, Rheostatics founder Dave Bidini’s new group Bidiniband guided audience through a literary-minded tour of rock history, only playing four stream-of-conscience-y “long ones” to negotiate the restraints of their set time.

If you rushed from Bidini’s set to the conversation hall, you would have caught a very confrontational Abyss, whose frontman spent the majority of the group’s grindcore assaults sharing the mic with one listener’s face, whether he liked it or not.

Lido Pimienta performing in The Great Hall’s main hall on Nov. 8 for Long Winter. Photo: Tom Beedham

Next up in the main hall was Lido Pimienta, who should really get props for exacting some very hands-on parenting all while singing and dancing onstage.

“Single mothers in this city are gangster, y’all,” Pimienta said. She proved she wasn’t wrong with her highly danceable genre-benders.

Vish Khanna (right) interviews 2013 Polaris Music Prize nominee Zaki Ibrahim as Exclaim! Editor-in-Chief James Keast (left) sits in for additional perspective during ‘Late Night with Vish Khanna,’ a new talk show addition to Long Winter’s monthly programming. Photo: Tom Beedham

Meanwhile in the basement, the last really big new thing for Long Winter was in full sway with former Long Winter MC Vish Khanna hosting his own late night talk show Long Night with Vish Khanna in the BLK BOX theatre. Complete with the house band stylings of The Bicycles and Light Fires’ Regina Thegentlelady wandering onstage to the show featured talk show style interviews with guests including musicians Lou Barlow (Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh) and 2013 Polaris Music Prize-nominated Zaki Abraham, as well as author and The Grid Senior Editor Edward Keenan, and Exclaim! Editor-in-Chief James Keast. While I missed Barlow entirely and only just made it downstairs in time for the tail end of Keenan’s portion of the show discussing his new Toronto political history Some Great Idea and recent developments involving Mayor Rob Ford, I did get to sit through Zaki Ibrahim, who also offered insight on the mayor, but more interestingly, her take on Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s treatment of its Polaris prize win. (“I felt like I had egg on my face,” Ibrahim said, after commenting that GYBE’s treatment of the prize and the gala was “cool.” Ibrahim also related GYBE to the Grateful Dead, provoking some (not very successfully) suppressed laughter from Keast.)

Doomsquad performing in the Samuel J. Moore restaurant as part of Long Winter on Nov. 8. Photo: Tom Beedham

Last for me were Doomsquad – giving the Samuel J. Moore restaurant its first Long Winter performance – playing their new age-evocative electronic music in some cavernous darkness (save for a salt lamp affixed to guitarist Trevor Blumas’ sampling table). The Blumas siblings challenged the physical resilience of the restaurant’s wall-to-wall window with crippling bass, offering only the soft textures of a pan flutes as a possible remedy.

From everything I was able to take in before calling it a night, The Great Hall seems properly primed for another season of Long Winter, even with the SJM restaurant added into the chaos (despite the potential for sonic disaster in the new venue, only some quickly resolved mixing issues that initially placed Trevor Blumas’ sampler way too low in the mix presented themselves over the course of the set). And from what I could make of the faces I saw on Friday, I think audiences are ready, too.

Concert review: Yamantaka // Sonic Titan @ The Garrison – Toronto, ON | Nov. 6, 2013

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YT//ST’s UZU release party an immersive, media synthesizing experience
Tom Beedham

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan singer Ange Loft wears a large head ornament for a theatrical portion of the group’s ‘UZU’ release show at The Garrison in Toronto on Nov. 6. Photo: Tom Beedham

Having satisfied the first half of its split residency’s homecoming in Montreal on Oct. 29 – the same day its sophomore LP UZU dropped via Paper Bag/Suicide Squeeze – Yamantaka // Sonic Titan (YT//ST) staved off some of its other hometown’s jealousy Nov. 6 when it face-painted its way onto the stage at Dundas West volume den The Garrison.

Concert photos (story continues below):

And if fans were expecting a “safe” set devoted to the collective’s (sort of) eponymous 2012 Polaris-shortlisted debut, only peppered with glimpses of their new album, they were sorely mistaken. November 6 was for UZU, and that album first. So much so, that they played it all front-to-back. The only exception was the album’s late act instrumental “Bring Me The Hand of Bloody Benzaiten,” positioned instead as the night’s lower stage-personneled set intro, which served the dual purposes of ushering singers Ange Loft and Ruby Kato Attwood through the crowd and onto the stage and whisking the audience away to another place entirely.

The group’s debut album still got some play through, though – YT//ST gave fans “Queens,” “Hoshi Neko,” and “A Star Over Pureland” in the encore (full setlist below). But the concentration on the newer work was anything but rejected. Following YT//ST, UZU sees the band embarking on another adventure of “other” (emphasis on those quotes, dammit) worldly proportions, and one that deserves to get the spotlight just as much as its precursor did when that was all the rock group iteration of YT//ST had.

It’s not like YT//ST sprung the newer material on its audiences out of nowhere, either. The group has worked at making cuts contained on UZU staples of its live performances since at least January of this year.

No one (save YT//ST, presumably) seemed to mind that some literal forces were working against the band that night, either.

Admitting to having a cold early on in the set, Attwood sipped on a 7/11 tea all night – poorly executed “product placement,” drummer Alaska B suggested, jesting they’d get bigger money for bringing taquitos onstage – but the singer’s vocals never seemed to fail, and when it finally came to UZU’s fragile closer “Saturn’s Return” (made all the more penetrating following the surreally raging “One”) Attwood had the room spellbound.

Pulling out all of the stops, the entire night was executed with the DIY media synthesizing grin YT//ST has become known for – we got the pre- and mid-set theatrical portions (the latter featuring Ange Loft wearing a black costume with a large head ornament while miming Attwood’s words to part of “Seasickness”), a special light show, and several black and white anime-referencing set decorations – but that quiet and minimal moment explained how even when the (sometimes literally) frilly Gesamtkuntswerk of a YT//ST concert is stripped away, the music is the most enchanting stuff.

Setlist
“Bring Me The Hand of Bloody Benzaiten”
“Atlanta”
“Whale Song”
“Lamia”
“Windflower”
“Hall of Mirrors”
“Sea Sickness (pts 1 and 2)”
“One”
“Saturn’s Return”
Encore
“Queens”
“Hoshi Neko”
“A Star Over Pureland”

Decades later, The Cure give live premiere of “Burn” (VIDEO)

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The Cure plays 1994 track from cult film The Crow live for the first time ever

The Cure performing live at Osheaga in Montreal, QC on Aug, 2013. Robert Smith (left) led the band into its first-ever live performance of "Burn" Nov. 3 at Voodoo Music & Arts Experience. Cure bassist Simon Gallup (right) has in the past shot down fans' requests for the song by feigning ignorance and saying, “Did we do that one for a soundtrack? I don't remember it.” Photo: Tom Beedham

The Cure performing live at Osheaga music festival in Montreal, Que. on Aug. 2 2013. Frontman Robert Smith (left) led the band into its first-ever live performance of “Burn” Nov. 3 at annual New Orleans festival Voodoo Music & Arts Experience. Cure bassist Simon Gallup (right) has in the past shot down fans’ requests for the song by feigning ignorance and saying, “Did we do that one for a soundtrack? I don’t remember it.” Photo: Tom Beedham

All of those desperate trench-belted fan cries for b-sides and rarities do not fall on deaf ears, it appears.

The Cure made that apparent Nov. 3 at annual New Orleans, La. festival Voodoo Music & Arts Experience when they gave the first known live performance of “Burn.”

After opening their headlining set with a run of tracks including “Shake Dog Shake,” “Fascination Street,” “From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea,” “The End of the World,” “Lovesong,” and “Just Like Heaven,” frontman Robert Smith introduced the song.

“Here’s another song about New Orleans. One we’ve never played,” said Smith, according to a tweet from Cure fan blog Chain of Flowers author Craig Parker.

The live debut comes almost 20 years after releasing “Burn” originally through the soundtrack to 1994 cult classic The Crow, starring the late Brandon Lee.

Fans have long begged the band to play the song live to no avail, except for provoking bassist Simon Gallup to respond with mock-ignorance at live concerts.

“Did we do that one for a soundtrack? I don’t remember it,” Gallup’s quoted.

Watch raw footage of The Cure performing “Burn” live below.

Concert review: Not The Wind, Not The Flag feat. William Parker (X Avant New Music Festival) @The Music Gallery | Oct. 17, 2013

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Local improv duo team up with New York free jazz bassist for 75-minute concert jam

Not the Wind, Not The Flag’s Colin Fisher at the Music Gallery as part of X Avant New Music Festival on Oct. 17, 2013. Photo: Tom Beedham

As an improvisational duo, Colin Fisher and Brandon Valdivia have been pacing out a new sonic universe and a new sonic history for years. In Not The Wind, Not The Flag (NTWNTF), their flirting with music styles and instruments from around the globe is exceedingly involved in destabilizing the structural compartmentalizing of our lifeworld, consistently blurring the lines between genres as well as geographical and temporal frames with every performance. But on Oct. 8, the pair took things a leap further in an X Avant New Music Festival-curated coupling with New York free jazz double bassist William Parker for a special performance at the Music Gallery.

While NTWNTF has gained a reverent following in the Toronto underground improv community and Parker is a legend to a much larger (if still wittingly esoteric) circle of listeners, some might have suspected this collaboration to play out as a first thought, best thought inflation of the latter’s freestyling. Rather, the collaborators opted for NTWNTF’s working formula, with all three building off of each other in a constant, 75-minute dialectical improv journey.

With the repeated sounding of a gong, Fisher initiated the process as if it were a sacred ritual. Valdivia chimed in on his kit cymbals, and Parker responded with some bent notes on his double bass.

While Parker stuck to his bass for the night, bending notes while walking and sliding up and down its neck and even breaking out his bow for some arco play, the night saw the trio delve into spacey atmospheres, noisy discord, and even virtuoso rock solos as Fisher used whistles, his pedal-jacked guitar, and even a hulusi while Valdivia sat consistently behind his kit.

The climax of the performance saw Fisher pick up his sax as a guitar effect played on into what seemed like infinity. Meanwhile, Parker bowed his bass while Valdivia played a shakahuchi flute. Soon Fisher knelt down to eliminate the effect mid-sax drone. What followed was a sax solo that blossomed into some real cushiony stuff that Parker returned with some pretty bass harmonics.

Wandering off into an overwhelming drone, Parker slapped his strings with some final breath bow strikes and Valdivia spun his sticks in spirals around his drum skins and cymbals. You could tell they were winding down, but it wasn’t any less mesmerizing.

For a second, Valdivia went silent, shaking his head as he watched Parker. He eventually got back into it with his cymbals, but in that brief moment, he mirrored everything the audience had felt the entire set: complete and utter awe.

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Concert review: Lee Ranaldo & The Dust and Elsa @Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, ON | Oct. 11, 2013

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There’s plenty of noise, but Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley’s new band doesn’t play Sonic Youth
Tom Beedham

Lee Ranaldo takes a cello bow to one of his infamously hot-rodded Fender “Jazzblaster” Jazzmasters during one of his mid-song noise jams with The Dust at Horseshoe Tavern on Oct. 11, 2013. Photo: Tom Beedham

Blame it all on the Thanksgiving gravy spilled this long weekend, but for a pair of acts sharing the Horseshoe’s stage Oct. 11 as a platform for the albums they’re each in the throes of sending off as their first official releases, it was easy to see Elsa and Lee Ranaldo & The Dust were pretty appreciative of the situations that brought them there.

Concert photos: Lee Ranaldo & The Dust and Elsa at Horseshoe Tavern

Sure to get some attention on “Local Bands to Watch” lists yet to come, it’s little surprise Elsa was called on by Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo to deliver some unbuttoned dreamgaze at the start of his show. And Elsa couldn’t have been more grateful for the opening set blessing imparted on them for the night; they made it known – both literally and figuratively – with some earnest stage thanks and a set fit for gifting.

Having evolved and quadrupled in size since songwriter and guitarist Jonathan Rogers brought the project into realization as a bedroom demo some time ago, Elsa now features second guitarist Matthew Goldman, bassist Jesse Mirsky, and drummer Angie Wong.

The band seized the exposure of their supporting slot and used the event to soft release their premiere 12” single, I Do (officially due Oct. 22 via Fucked Up guitarist Mike Haliechuck’s 12” singles boutique One Big Silence), but their set went well beyond the four-track listing on that EP, hinting it shoudn’t be long until Toronto hears a proper album from these folks.

If that follows, so might a sound that is markedly different from their EP preference.

While Jesse Mirsky’s bass has a subtle presence on most of I Do’s mix, emerging only at times from the lapping wash of hazy guitars provided by Rogers and Goldman – Rogers strums chords while singing, and Goldman demonstrates a strong right hand by plucking through whirling arpeggios on his Rickenbacker – at the Horseshoe, Mirsky was distinct and pervasive, his propulsive finger picking often evocative of a laid-back Peter Hook with a thing for disseminating Quaaludes.

They closed their set with a smoggy cover of lo-fi indie pioneers Guided By Voices track “Game of Pricks.”

Lee Ranaldo & The Dust didn’t forgo paying respects to their influences, either, cranking out covers of The Modern Lovers’s “She Cracked” and Neil Young’s “Revolution Blues” throughout the night.

The bulk of their hour-and-a-half-long set was otherwise a pretty even jumble of cuts from The Dust’s premiere, Oct. 8-released Last Night On Earth and Ranaldo’s last solo release, Between the Times and the Tides (full setlist below). That shouldn’t have come as a surprise, however. Although Ranaldo’s new group features bandmates from Sonic Youth and Text of Light – Steve Shelley on drums and Alan Licht on guitar, respectively – as well as jazz bassist Tim Lüntzel (Bright Eyes), The Dust is largely personelled by musicians that put in studio time on his last solo release, which distances itself from the guitarist’s previous noise-rock exploits with more conventional song-led structures in its sights.

Even when The Dust returned for an encore and a fan shouted a request for “Mote,” a Ranaldo-led cut from his and Shelley’s more avant-garde pinioned band’s 1990 album Goo, Ranaldo chuckled and dismissed it, citing its absence from the setlist for the night. But songs relying on such perpetual barbed clangour for escort don’t really come up in the guitarist’s new work, and as a result don’t find easy segues in the new material; it is a band more vocal about influences found in the contemplative folk rock ventures of songwriters like Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Neil Young (hence the covers). Besides, Ranaldo doesn’t need validation for work that’s already proven successful.

Still, The Dust sated Sonic Youth-bred noise fans’ thirsts for Ranaldo-brand pandemonium when it wandered into some spontaneous and resourceful noise jams during the heavier sections of a few of the new songs; Ranaldo took a bow to his guitars during “Xtina” and “Hammer Blows,” and even smashed a jumble of Tibetan bells against his axe during “Lecce, Leaving”; Licht spent the night reigning over the eleven pedals he had surrounding his space on the right side of the stage and even tested the stage’s light rigging and bulkhead as neck slide devices during “Key/Hole.”

Fans even glimpsed some classic Sonic Youth nostalgia onstage. In addition to a more recently acquired (remarkably pristine – for Ranaldo) purple Deimel Firestar (not to be confused with the green 12-string Deimel seen on the cover of the Corporate Ghost DVD) and Jarell JZH-1x, the guitarist’s artillery included the signature Jazzmaster model Fender consulted Ranaldo on and manufactured in his name, the Saul Koll custom-built cherry F-Hole Jazzblaster Ranaldo’s used since tours in 2000, the Telecaster Deluxe that Kurt Cobain once borrowed (even though he played right-handed) to perform a cover of Fang’s “The Money Will Roll Right In” live with Mudhoney (!), and a motley herd of “Jazzblaster” hot-rodded Jazzmasters – almost all slapped with labels for unconventional tunings – among the ranks.

While the press concerned with Ranaldo and the rest of his Sonic Youth bandmates’ various solo endeavours continues to flog the jilted relationship of former partners Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore and the resulting hiatus of their band, the new groups have so far proven to mean cities are seeing its members more often and, for longer combined periods of time. And with each of the members putting on different hats to explore and expand their separate careers, it’s worth noting that the time off to pursue other interests could result in stronger interests in Sonic Youth – so we can’t really complain, can we?

Sure, we’ll continue longing for a day when all members grace the same stage at the same time again, but until then, at the risk of sounding groaningly topical following Canadian Thanksgiving, we’re getting plenty to be happy about.

Ranaldo, at least, seemed content simply to air his satisfaction with hitting the Horseshoe’s long-lived stage at the end of his show.

“It’s nice to finally play this place.”

It was nice to have you, Lee.

Lee Ranaldo & The Dust setlist
“Tomorrow Never Comes”
“Ambulancer”
“Off The Wall”
“Angles”
“Last Night On Earth”
“Xtina”
“Key/Hole”
“Hammer Blows”
“Home Chds”
“The Rising Tide”
“Revolution Blues” (Neil Young)
“Lecce, Leaving”
Encore
“She Cracked” (The Modern Lovers)
“Fire Island (Phases)”
“Waiting On A Dream”

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Concert photos: Lee Ranaldo & The Dust w/ Elsa @Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto, ON – Oct. 11, 2013

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Lee Ranaldo at Horseshoe Tavern during one of the quieter parts of his set, which also saw him bow his guitar and smash it with Tibetan bells – also pictured in the photo gallery below. Photos: Tom Beedham

While Lee Ranaldo & The Dust (featuring Ranaldo’s previous Sonic Youth and Text of Light bandmates Steve Shelley and Alan Licht, respectively, as well as Tim Lüntzel) released their first official album as a band, Last Night On Earth, on Oct. 11 via Matador, local dream pop outfit Elsa used the opportunity to soft release their debut One Big Silence 12″ single, I Do (FULL CONCERT REVIEW AND LEE RANALDO & THE DUST SETLIST HERE). Below are links to images from the gig, which saw Ranaldo abuse his guitars in the ways Sonic Youth fans know him best for. Do the click thing.

Lee Ranaldo & The Dust