Tag Archives: Toronto

WL14 reviews: Colin Stetson @ Polish Combatants Hall – Feb. 15, 2014

Colin Stetson @ Polish Combatants Hall – Feb. 15, 2014. Photo: Tom Beedham

By Tom Beedham
Colin Stetson is well accustomed to tests of sheer endurance. The epic, elephantine sounds he conjures out of his alto and bass saxophones are demanding of not just a seemingly bottomless lung capacity; his avant-garde approach to saxophone sound—he straps a mic to his jugular to amplify a cross-section of his circular breathing (an eerie, atmospheric sound normally so subtle it goes unheard), while additional contact microphones are fitted to his instruments’ bodies to build the percussive sounds of the valve fluctuations into his compositions—further requires a frenetic fingering technique and an aptitude for multi-tasking. It is not a task for those lacking in physical nor mental stamina.

On Feb. 15, concertgoers at the Polish Combatants Hall were able to witness Stetson perform works from the two Polaris-shortlisted instalments of his New History Warfare trilogy, but with a further twist.

If blood rushing to his head and strategic hyperventilation wasn’t enough, the Wavelength fest upped the ante for Stetson in a way, coupling his literally breathtaking concert performances with another test of fortitude, blasting the overwhelmingly dizzying swirls of colour provided by General Chaos (a.k.a. Stephen Lindsey)—the fest’s go-to light projectionist for 14 years—so that they were cast all over his person and the surrounding stage for the entirety of his set. For any normal person, you’d think that would be a recipe for some kind of hypersensitive implosion, but Stetson was unfazed.

The musician churned out astonishing renditions of tracks like “Judges,” “To See More Light” and “Part Of Me Apart From You” that spread an infectious breathlessness, keeping the entirety of the hall’s audience at a stand still.

The audience hung on every note—making interruptive peeps only to cheer on the markedly technical moments of numbers like his set opening extended version of “Among the Sef”—until each song was closed, responding with uproariously jubilant furor when Stetson broke after each song to switch back and forth between sax rigs.

During those breaks, Stetson was offhand and casual with the audience, cracking wise about how about how it was nice to be back in the “so apologetic” Toronto. And while he didn’t acknowledge the General Chaos surrounding him, he was markedly thrown off when he noticed the live modular synth projection Hard Science had been shooting onto the adjacent wall, live streaming Stetson’s every move as though visualized by a colourfully scrambled cable channel.

“In what year did it become okay to put sax on a wall?!”

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Colin Stetson setlist
“Among The Sef”
“Judges”
“A Dream Of Water”
“High Above A Grey Green Sea”
“Who The Waves Are Roaring For”
“To See More Light” (alto)
“Part Of Me Apart From You”

Originally published by Aesthetic Magazine.

WL14 reviews: Biblical @ Polish Combatants Hall – Feb. 15, 2014

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By Tom Beedham

Biblical @ Polish Combatants Hall for WL14 – Feb. 15, 2014. Photo: Tom Beedham

When Nick Sewell declared multiple times throughout his band’s set that “We are Biblical,” the bass wielding frontman seemed to do so not just as a means of informing the audience whom to ask about at the merch table, but also as an adjective for the group’s grandiose approach to the aggressive technical riffage it clearly prides itself on. He might have had better luck elsewhere, however.

Although Biblical had amassed a small contingent of head banging listeners at the front of the crowd partway through its set, the band seemed to turn more away than it attracted. Performing on a bill featuring projects more inclined towards challenging traditionalized modes of musical and social conduct, perhaps the macho coding Biblical routes the aesthetic of both its live posturing and its muscly take on stoner rock and face melting “metal” was what did it, but it wasn’t long into the band’s set that interest (and the audience with it) waned.

It’s not as though Sewell was oblivious to the situation, though. He baited the eye rollers with a claim halfway through his set with a statement jesting that the band would have just two more 25-minute songs and then it would be over. It was still hard to tell if he was just joking or exaggerating the reality of the situation.

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Originally published by Aesthetic Magazine.

WL14 reviews: Gambletron @ Polish Combatants Hall – Feb. 15, 2014

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Gambletron @ Polish Combatants Hall for WL14 – Feb. 15, 2014. Photo: Tom Beedham

By Tom Beedham
When Lisa Gamble first addressed those gathered at the Polish Combatants Hall on Saturday it made for what was likely the only moment throughout the artist’s entire set that made immediate sense to everyone in attendance.

“Hi, I’m Gambletron, and I’m gonna do this backwards and thank you before I do anything,” said Gamble, her voice crinkled by the static of the portable P.A. system she spoke through.

Backwards indeed. The way Gamble approaches music with her Gambletron project is less as a musician and more as an explorer of the relationship shared between space and sound. In fact, “backwards” might be too linear a descriptor for what Gambletron is.

As it was presented to Wavelength Music Festival, Gamble’s setup was an interactive noise environment that forced people to reconsider the conventional notions of a concert setting. Positioned on the floor of the hall itself, Gamble had arranged a myriad of boom boxes, a table of modified electronic toys, and even a knitted wire structure somehow modelled into an effective theremin of sorts.

Beginning as a screaming wall of discordant noise and feedback, the long-form improvised piece later evolved into a dance party-ready jam that, ahem, climaxed with a pretty selective sample of Azealia Banks’s “212.”

As curious as it was to most in the ranks, all the analogue electronic experimenting seemed to make a convincing argument suggesting a return to a world of rabbit ears—though alien and technologically “regressive”—might not be so bad.

Originally published by Aesthetic Magazine.

WL14 reviews: DIANA @ Adelaide Hall – Feb. 14, 2014

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DIANA @ Adelaide Hall for WL14 – Feb. 14, 2014. Photo: Tom Beedham

By Tom Beedham
“We come from here, which is nice,” DIANA frontwoman Carmen Elle told the crowd at Adelaide Hall in earnest on Feb. 14. She went on to explain she finds herself bragging about the city’s music scene when the band is abroad.

DIANA has had some time off from hometown gigs since an extensive international tour bracketing the release of its 2013 debut Perpetual Surrender brought it back to Toronto Sept. 26, so there was no surprise to see plenty of smiling faces awaiting the band’s Wavelength performance. The band didn’t come to Wavelength bearing any new material, and they weren’t without their flaws—a miscued sample fully derailed “That Feeling” mid-song, leading Elle to declare, “This is Y2K, people. This is not an exercise. It is not a drill. Stock up on bottled water,” before the problem was resolved and the band could run through the track from the bridge onwards—but no one seemed irked by any of this.

Instead, the audience was content to celebrate an album it’s had proper time to process, a sentiment made clear by plenty of listeners caught singing along at any given point in the set. Or maybe—as Elle suggested they do at the show—they just wanted to “get desperately drunk on music. And then puke in the cab on the way home. Musical puking.” But either way, they all seemed confident DIANA would deliver. And they did.

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DIANA setlist:
“Strange Attraction”
“Perpetual Surrender”
“Anna”
“That Feeling”
[Instrumental interlude]
“Foreign Installation”
“New House”
“Born Again”

Originally published by Aesthetic Magazine.

WL14 reviews: Odonis Odonis @ Adelaide Hall – Feb. 14, 2014

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Odonis Odonis @ Adelaide Hall for WL14 – Feb. 14, 2014. Photo: Tom Beedham

By Tom Beedham
Following Weaves was another pick from the Buzz Records stable, Odonis Odonis.

Although they played without the projections usually supplied by band leader Dean Tzenos, it’s not exactly as if the audiences at Odonis Odonis gigs are starved for stimulation in the first place. If the collided influences of post-punk, shoegaze, surf, and industrial aren’t enough for you to wrap your head around at a live Odonis Odonis gig, there’s always the thick and sludgy layer of fuzz it’s all filtered through— albeit this time that grime was more like a Vaseline smear, and not to the performance’s detriment.

The band used the opportunity to play through some of the picks from their forthcoming follow-up to 2011’s Hollandaze LP, Hard Boiled, Soft Boiled (due April 15), and if the production quality of this gig should serve as any indication of what that might sound like, it’s going to be a hell of a release.

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Originally published by Aesthetic Magazine.

WL14 reviews: Weaves @ Adelaide Hall – Feb. 14, 2014

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Weaves @ Adelaide Hall for WL14 – Feb. 14, 2014. Photo: Tom Beedham

By Tom Beedham
Having released just four recorded tracks so far, Buzz Records rookie act Weaves are already gaining attention for their singular live gigs. Their WL14 performance was no exception.

Forced to take the stage without drummer Spencer Cole for the evening, the remaining trio of singer Jasmyn Burke, guitarist Morgan Waters, and bassist Zach Bines was forced to tie together the loose ends with a drum sampler, but the playful improvising that was conducive to made it all the more interesting to watch go down.

For those that don’t know, Weaves is a psychedelically bubbling bog of a band that makes impressionistic sound paintings out of what some might call songs. As far as their singles are concerned, “Motorcycle” is a gasoline chugging journey into the sunset; on “Hulahoop” Waters keeps Burke’s wavering vocals in orbit with strategically leaned noise flourishes, and like all too many failed attempts at hoop records, it comes to an abrupt and screaming halt when Burke and Waters get out of synch.

They brought four new songs—“Buttercup,” “Sunshine Road,” “Candy,” and “Know About It”—to Adelaide Hall, so expect more recordings in the near future.

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Weaves setlist:
“Crumble”
“Buttercup”
“Sunshine road”
“Candy”
“Know About It”
“Take A Dip”
“Hulahoop”
“Motorcycle”

Originally published by Aesthetic Magazine.

WL14 reviews: Most People @ Adelaide Hall – Feb. 14, 2014

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By Tom Beedham

Most People filled in lineup space left empty when originally scheduled headliner Marnie Stern was forced to cancel her Wavelength Music Festival appearance due to the snow storm in New York. Photo: Tom Beedham

After Matrox unsuccessfully ordered the audience to disperse, Wavelength 2013 Artist Incubator participant Most People subbed in to fill a set gap left by originally headlining but New York-snowbound Marnie Stern.

For the most part, their turn at the stage saw them breathing new life into tracks from their 2012 self-titled debut, taking the hushed pop psychedelia and pumping it full of percussive enthusiasm, guitarist Paul McEachern and bassist Brandon Gibson-DeGroote seeding the stage with their fair share of drumstick shrapnel as they traded off drum duties and with them their turns at bringing physically and technically aggressive wails to all sides of their floor toms.

The heavier take on the older material might have something to do with a new direction the band’s been exploring. Most People revealed two new songs to the Wavelength audience, one of them a darker new wave listening experience for which Gibson-DeGroote requested the audience recall the opening scene of the film that heavily inspired it, The Terminator. But as to whether the harder hitting feel of the band’s live performance at Wavelength is something we’ll see carrying over to future recordings or if it’s something they’re reserving strictly for concerts is ultimately something we’ll have to wait and hear on, well, recordings.

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Originally published by Aesthetic Magazine.

WL14 reviews: Phèdre @ The Silver Dollar Room – Feb 13, 2014

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Phèdre @ The Silver Dollar Room for WL14 – Feb. 13, 2014. Photo: Tom Beedham

By Tom Beedham
For what was once referred to pretty unanimously as Daniel Lee and April Aliermo’s Hooded Fang side project, oddball party powerhouse Phèdre has absorbed plenty of its own attention. The group’s already followed up its February 2012 self-titled debut LP with another—Golden Age—recorded in Berlin, and when the group headlined the opening night of WL14, there was a devoted fanbase packed into the Silver Dollar to sing along to its happily weird and mind-bending anthems.

Decked out in all white hoodies that made perfect blank canvases they opened with a (presumed) hype speech delivered in German by impassioned, scarf-disguised Hooded Fang bandmate D. Alex Meeks (Holiday Rambler), who next theatrically tripped, fell, and lay on the stage floor for some time. The topple looked legitimate, though not severe enough to require any attention. Whatever the situation, Phèdre’s live performances seem to make striving for perfection less a virtue than they do letting loose and having fun. They took it all in stride and proceeded into the early hours of Valentine’s Day with Golden Age intro “Inifinity Chamber.”

That spirit seemed consistent throughout the sometimes wobbly, always danceable performance. Aliermo even commented on the title-referencing lyrics to “Atomic Love” mid-song: “what the fuck does that mean?!”

Even when technical difficulties required some waiting between tracks early in the set, Aliermo—ever the MC—used the space between “Supernatural” and “Aquarius” to wish frequent Phèdre dancer Leah Gold a Happy Birthday and suggested the crowd give her “hugs, kisses, birthday shots, licks, or whatever makes you feel happy.”

For the most part, the group stuck to cuts from Golden Age, but the band did forego a rendition of its “Death of Cupid” narrative. A happy night for Valentines indeed.

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Originally published by Aesthetic Magazine.

WL14 reviews: Zoo Owl @ The Silver Dollar Room – Feb. 13, 2014

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Zoo Owl at WL14. Photo: Tom Beedham

Tom Beedham

It was a setup that should have required advanced night vision to observe it properly.

The instruments on the stage were familiar enough—a sampling machine, effect pedals, and a floor tom all sat at the front of stage—but a black sheet was strewn across a drum kit in the background to make it less conspicuous, and the only light in the room came from a floor-placed desk lamp.

It was apparent to anyone in the audience unfamiliar with Bryan Sutherland’s psychedelic electronic act Zoo Owl that they were in for something special at WL14. But they couldn’t have seen this coming.

Sutherland kicked things off slow: an atmospheric buildup from the sampler; some skin beating on the tom.

But then things took a left turn. Sutherland started worshipping a tall glass of water, making motions requesting people to gaze upon it in its clear liquid form. Then the glass itself lit up. Sutherland drank, and what happened onstage was a descent into surrealist propaganda. Sutherland dipped below his sampler and reemerged with a light in his mouth, his head turning like a sentinel, casting light on parts of the audience as if searching for a transgressor to scold. In time, he descended again, returning this time with goggles that had LEDs for lenses.

To the crowd, Sutherland addressed the eyewear as possessing the power to do “the opposite of what your eyes do,” instead facilitating “inner vision.”

He pulled out a laser field projector, and from there, Zoo Owl had reign over the crowd with a control so total there was at once a dedicated crew dancing along to his echoing trance spell while others were content to let the laser beams shoot into their faces and engage the alpha waves in their brains.

No one could have been sure what Zoo Owl’s motivation was in all of this surreal theatre, but we can presume that, whatever he was going for, it worked.

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Originally published by Aesthetic Magazine.

WL14 Reviews: You’ll Never Get To Heaven @ The Silver Dollar Room – Feb. 13, 2014

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Tom Beedham

Chuck Blazevic and Alice Hansen’s sample-based dream pop project You’ll Never Get To Heaven performing at The Silver Dollar for Wavelength Music Festival on Feb. 13, 2014. Photo by Tom Beedham

One might not expect to find purveyors of a particularly narcoleptic dream pop—a label once typified by guitar music and its effect pedal-oriented (and derisively labeled) “shoegazing” forebears—to make a point of deploying sampled material in it’s enchantments, but partners Alice Hansen and Chuck Blazevic have figured out a way to make a gig of relying on that technology almost exclusively.

Across the partners’ material, the chilly downtempo beats and tone washes that Blazevic spends the sets eliciting from his sampling machines are enough to carry you off to another plane of awareness. Less consistently present (though always welcome), Hansen’s atmospheric vocals aren’t held back and “buried” by any genre tendencies, but instead emerge from Blazevic’s impressionistic sound paintings, bringing listeners back down to earth. And considering the pair were tasked with opening the first night of a four-night festival (and effectually WL14 as a whole), it was easy to appreciate an act that sedated its listeners without charging them to reach for their pillows.

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