WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7TH @ The Great Hall (1087 Queen St. West) - 7:30pm - $25 Adv / $30 Door
MARC RIBOT'S CERAMIC DOG (https://marcribot.bandcamp.com/album/connection)
Veteran guitarist / provocateur Marc Ribot returns to Toronto with his abrasive and eclectic funk-punk-jazz-whatever trio Ceramic Dog featuring bassist Shahzad Ismaily (Laurie Anderson, Bonnie Prince Billy, John Zorn, Secret Chiefs 3) and percussionist Ches Smith (Xiu Xiu, Secret Chiefs 3, Good For Cow, Tim Berne's Snakeoil). Ribot's weaves politically absurdist lyrics and stories around carefully placed guitar riffs, while Ismaily and Smith effortlessly fill in the mix. The comfort and seamless level of communication these 3 longtime collaborators have is palpable. Gentle begins grow into jazz infused noise punk ragers. Ribot's virtuosic playing tears through rollicking percussion without ever feeling to overbearing. A rock band at that borrows from a vast musical encyclopedia. This trio is not to be missed!
ANDY MOOR (https://unsounds.bandcamp.com/album/marker)
The Ex guitarist Andy Moor’s ‘live’ solo performance “Intense Sound Signal Operates Without Warning” is a relatively new project. It is accompanied by projections of photos taken by himself over the last 30 years. The photos are in black and white and have a strong visual connection to the sounds that Andy produces from his unusual guitar work. Pylons, overhead telephone and electric cables, cityscapes, and industrial landscapes that are mostly absent of any human presence. A half hour of intense improvisation using no pedals or effects working with found objects and the raw sound of the electric guitar, with a wide palate of sound ranging from crackling noise, dark textures, sonic drone-like soundscapes and hidden melodies and chords. A solo guitar performance with not one guitar solo in sight.
ADVERSARIAL NETWORKS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1s&v=iw_91X8qlEk)
Adeversarial Networks is a 4-piece multi-media project created by Caleb Klager, consisting of modular synthesizer/drum machines (Caleb Klager), keyed-synthesizers (Chris Pruden), electric guitar (Luan Phung), and audio-reactive projections (David Lipson). Borrowing elements of Techno, Noise, Punk, and DnB, performances are completely improvised. The project explores the interdependence of organic and digital improvisation and memory - where choices and consequences made by the performers are catalogued and mediated by the translation and reconfiguration of data. Various aural aspects of the performance such as volume, timbre, pitch, rhythm, or harmony is all data that can be processed to manipulate the projection output - creating an assemblage of gestural and evocative audio-visual environments.
$25 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
Veteran guitarist / provocateur Marc Ribot returns to Toronto with his abrasive and eclectic funk-punk-jazz-whatever trio Ceramic Dog featuring bassist Shahzad Ismaily (Laurie Anderson, Bonnie Prince Billy, John Zorn, Secret Chiefs 3) and percussionist Ches Smith (Xiu Xiu, Secret Chiefs 3, Good For Cow, Tim Berne's Snakeoil). Ribot's weaves politically absurdist lyrics and stories around carefully placed guitar riffs, while Ismaily and Smith effortlessly fill in the mix. The comfort and seamless level of communication these 3 longtime collaborators have is palpable. Gentle begins grow into jazz infused noise punk ragers. Ribot's virtuosic playing tears through rollicking percussion without ever feeling to overbearing. A rock band at that borrows from a vast musical encyclopedia. This trio is not to be missed!
ANDY MOOR (https://unsounds.bandcamp.com/album/marker)
The Ex guitarist Andy Moor’s ‘live’ solo performance “Intense Sound Signal Operates Without Warning” is a relatively new project. It is accompanied by projections of photos taken by himself over the last 30 years. The photos are in black and white and have a strong visual connection to the sounds that Andy produces from his unusual guitar work. Pylons, overhead telephone and electric cables, cityscapes, and industrial landscapes that are mostly absent of any human presence. A half hour of intense improvisation using no pedals or effects working with found objects and the raw sound of the electric guitar, with a wide palate of sound ranging from crackling noise, dark textures, sonic drone-like soundscapes and hidden melodies and chords. A solo guitar performance with not one guitar solo in sight.
ADVERSARIAL NETWORKS (https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=1s&v=iw_91X8qlEk)
Adeversarial Networks is a 4-piece multi-media project created by Caleb Klager, consisting of modular synthesizer/drum machines (Caleb Klager), keyed-synthesizers (Chris Pruden), electric guitar (Luan Phung), and audio-reactive projections (David Lipson). Borrowing elements of Techno, Noise, Punk, and DnB, performances are completely improvised. The project explores the interdependence of organic and digital improvisation and memory - where choices and consequences made by the performers are catalogued and mediated by the translation and reconfiguration of data. Various aural aspects of the performance such as volume, timbre, pitch, rhythm, or harmony is all data that can be processed to manipulate the projection output - creating an assemblage of gestural and evocative audio-visual environments.
$25 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
FRIDAY, JUNE 9TH @ Nineteen Seventy Eight (1978 Dundas St. West) - 8pm - $20 Adv . $25 Door
BADGE ÉPOQUE ENSEMBLE (https://badgeepoque.bandcamp.com)
Badge Époque Ensemble is a group of eclectic Toronto musicians, recruited by bandleader Maximilian Turnbull to play original compositions. Over the course of 3 albums, an EP, and a few compilation/archival releases (mostly on Toronto’s Telephone Explosion label) the scope of their work has come to include contemporary updates to library music, 70’s style jazz-funk, psych’d out soul, prog and esoterica. They have also released collage works, constructed by Turnbull (as well as a remix album in collaboration with Lammping) out of refashioned stems and loops of their own previous recordings. Taken as a whole, their catalog bears reference to a master beat digger’s crate of funky oddities. Fittingly, BÉE most recently collaborated with the rappers Boldy James & O.C. Other vocalists they have collaborated with include Jennifer Castle, Meg Remy & Dorothea Paas & James Baley. They have toured with artists such as Bill Callahan & U.S Girls, and have been longlisted for a Polaris Prize.
BEN LAMAR GAY’S CERTAIN REVERIES (https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/certain-reveries)
Ben LaMar Gay is an interdisciplinary composer who moves sound, color, and space components through folkloric filters producing brilliant electro-acoustic collages. An explorer of many mediums called a “visionary musician” by the New York Times; Gay has found a form of creative expression that begins with improvisation and expands beyond the limits of any single genre.
With more than 20 years in vibrant experimental music scenes, Gay’s talents have earned him residencies globally, most recently as a Mellon Foundation Archival Fellow, and is a member of the Association of the Advancement of Creative Musicians since 2010. Gay is a highly sought-after talent by some of the industry's most influential figures; he’s collaborated with George E. Lewis, Itibere Zwarg, Theaster Gates, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, and Jeff Parker, to name a few.
Gay earned a B.A. from Northeastern Illinois in Music Education. A worldwide performer, Gay’s creative projects are embraced by communities in the Netherlands, Brazil, Italy, France, Japan, Nigeria, Poland, Rwanda, Germany, Cuba, and more. He is adopting global visions while remaining true to his roots as a South-Side native of Chicago.
MASAHIRO TAKAHASHI (https://masahirotakahashi.bandcamp.com/album/humid-sun)
Toronto-based Japanese composer-musician Masahiro Takahashi has been crafting gently spellbinding pieces that simultaneously embrace electronic abstraction and a palpable, even brittle, humanity. His delicate and evocative landscapes always seem to be illuminated in vibrant magic hour tones as golden synth lines emanate from between soft flickers of acoustic instrumentation. He has released music on an array of labels, such as Not Not Fun, Jj Funhouse, Slow Editions and his most recent record Humid Sun on Telephone Explosion Records.
$20 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
Badge Époque Ensemble is a group of eclectic Toronto musicians, recruited by bandleader Maximilian Turnbull to play original compositions. Over the course of 3 albums, an EP, and a few compilation/archival releases (mostly on Toronto’s Telephone Explosion label) the scope of their work has come to include contemporary updates to library music, 70’s style jazz-funk, psych’d out soul, prog and esoterica. They have also released collage works, constructed by Turnbull (as well as a remix album in collaboration with Lammping) out of refashioned stems and loops of their own previous recordings. Taken as a whole, their catalog bears reference to a master beat digger’s crate of funky oddities. Fittingly, BÉE most recently collaborated with the rappers Boldy James & O.C. Other vocalists they have collaborated with include Jennifer Castle, Meg Remy & Dorothea Paas & James Baley. They have toured with artists such as Bill Callahan & U.S Girls, and have been longlisted for a Polaris Prize.
BEN LAMAR GAY’S CERTAIN REVERIES (https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/certain-reveries)
Ben LaMar Gay is an interdisciplinary composer who moves sound, color, and space components through folkloric filters producing brilliant electro-acoustic collages. An explorer of many mediums called a “visionary musician” by the New York Times; Gay has found a form of creative expression that begins with improvisation and expands beyond the limits of any single genre.
With more than 20 years in vibrant experimental music scenes, Gay’s talents have earned him residencies globally, most recently as a Mellon Foundation Archival Fellow, and is a member of the Association of the Advancement of Creative Musicians since 2010. Gay is a highly sought-after talent by some of the industry's most influential figures; he’s collaborated with George E. Lewis, Itibere Zwarg, Theaster Gates, Nicole Mitchell, Tomeka Reid, and Jeff Parker, to name a few.
Gay earned a B.A. from Northeastern Illinois in Music Education. A worldwide performer, Gay’s creative projects are embraced by communities in the Netherlands, Brazil, Italy, France, Japan, Nigeria, Poland, Rwanda, Germany, Cuba, and more. He is adopting global visions while remaining true to his roots as a South-Side native of Chicago.
MASAHIRO TAKAHASHI (https://masahirotakahashi.bandcamp.com/album/humid-sun)
Toronto-based Japanese composer-musician Masahiro Takahashi has been crafting gently spellbinding pieces that simultaneously embrace electronic abstraction and a palpable, even brittle, humanity. His delicate and evocative landscapes always seem to be illuminated in vibrant magic hour tones as golden synth lines emanate from between soft flickers of acoustic instrumentation. He has released music on an array of labels, such as Not Not Fun, Jj Funhouse, Slow Editions and his most recent record Humid Sun on Telephone Explosion Records.
$20 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
TUESDAY, JUNE 13th @ Bar Orwell (1595 Dundas St. West) - 8pm - $12 Adv / $15 Door
NEW YORK REVIEW OF COCKSUCKING (https://michaelfoster.bandcamp.com/album/total-cruise-worship)
NYC queer noise duo of Michael Foster (saxophone / electronics) and Richard Kamerman (text / electronics) create blistering harsh noise with a dynamic undercurrent. Horn notes are morphed into a caustic wild of swirling distortion amidst decaying electronic squalls. Snippets of spoken word erotic emissions escape from this curdling cacophony only to be swallowed up again as duo's sonic output vacillates from scorched whispers before swinging around to the other end of the spectrum with piercing trebbled notes and what sounds like scrap metal getting whipped around in the pacific trash vortex.
LAURA SWANKEY & PATRICK O'REILLY (https://lauraswankey.bandcamp.com)
Vocalist, composer, and improviser, Laura Swankey (she/her) is known for her artistry, versatility, vocal aptitude, creative spirit, and compassionate approach to collaboration and education. n mid-2023, Laura will be releasing an album of improvised music with long-time collaborator and friend, guitarist Patrick O’Reilly (W/DRWN Records). This music was captured by engineer, Mike Romaniak over two days in the winter of 2019 in a snowy cottage outside Meaford, ON.
Laura has worked with artists such as Juno award-winner Mike Murley, Poet Laureate Dennis Lee, Christine Duncan, Mark Feldman, and Ralph Alessi, and has premiered works by Juliet Palmer, Germaine Liu, Lieke van der Voort, Tova Kardonne, Elio Villafranca, and Mike McCormick. Along with her solo project for voice and electronics, Laura has extensively collaborated and toured throughout Canada, Scandinavia and the United States with Parade, Elisa Thorn’s HUE, Plastic Babies, Mike McCormick’s Proxemics, Jazz Bras Dot Com, Dr. Purgatory, and Star Triptych. In 2018, Laura joined the University of Toronto and Humber College as an instructor in their respective music departments.
As an active member of the Canadian music community, Laura continues to focus on exploring her voice; to exploit its full capacity in both live and studio settings, as a solo singer and collaborator. In addition to her teaching and creative work, Laura is currently completing a MA in counselling psychology.
DEL STEPHEN (https://delstephen.bandcamp.com)
Del Stephen is an exploratory artist and organizer who creates music that often blends spontaneous composition with a carefully crafted collaging of cassette-tape field recordings, experimental movement, and translation-emotion-express poetry. His vast collection of self-produced albums and constantly evolving live performance projects throughout the past decade, both on his own as well as with an artistically diverse range of collaborators, not only suggest a certain devotion to a life of creative action and persistent art, but also a desire to carry on exploring his ever unfolding relationship with sound, language, and the world around him.
$12 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
NYC queer noise duo of Michael Foster (saxophone / electronics) and Richard Kamerman (text / electronics) create blistering harsh noise with a dynamic undercurrent. Horn notes are morphed into a caustic wild of swirling distortion amidst decaying electronic squalls. Snippets of spoken word erotic emissions escape from this curdling cacophony only to be swallowed up again as duo's sonic output vacillates from scorched whispers before swinging around to the other end of the spectrum with piercing trebbled notes and what sounds like scrap metal getting whipped around in the pacific trash vortex.
LAURA SWANKEY & PATRICK O'REILLY (https://lauraswankey.bandcamp.com)
Vocalist, composer, and improviser, Laura Swankey (she/her) is known for her artistry, versatility, vocal aptitude, creative spirit, and compassionate approach to collaboration and education. n mid-2023, Laura will be releasing an album of improvised music with long-time collaborator and friend, guitarist Patrick O’Reilly (W/DRWN Records). This music was captured by engineer, Mike Romaniak over two days in the winter of 2019 in a snowy cottage outside Meaford, ON.
Laura has worked with artists such as Juno award-winner Mike Murley, Poet Laureate Dennis Lee, Christine Duncan, Mark Feldman, and Ralph Alessi, and has premiered works by Juliet Palmer, Germaine Liu, Lieke van der Voort, Tova Kardonne, Elio Villafranca, and Mike McCormick. Along with her solo project for voice and electronics, Laura has extensively collaborated and toured throughout Canada, Scandinavia and the United States with Parade, Elisa Thorn’s HUE, Plastic Babies, Mike McCormick’s Proxemics, Jazz Bras Dot Com, Dr. Purgatory, and Star Triptych. In 2018, Laura joined the University of Toronto and Humber College as an instructor in their respective music departments.
As an active member of the Canadian music community, Laura continues to focus on exploring her voice; to exploit its full capacity in both live and studio settings, as a solo singer and collaborator. In addition to her teaching and creative work, Laura is currently completing a MA in counselling psychology.
DEL STEPHEN (https://delstephen.bandcamp.com)
Del Stephen is an exploratory artist and organizer who creates music that often blends spontaneous composition with a carefully crafted collaging of cassette-tape field recordings, experimental movement, and translation-emotion-express poetry. His vast collection of self-produced albums and constantly evolving live performance projects throughout the past decade, both on his own as well as with an artistically diverse range of collaborators, not only suggest a certain devotion to a life of creative action and persistent art, but also a desire to carry on exploring his ever unfolding relationship with sound, language, and the world around him.
$12 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
SUNDAY, JUNE 18TH @ Array Space (155 Walnut Ave.) - 8pm - $12 Adv / $15 Door - All Ages
JASON DOELL (https://jasondoell.bandcamp.com/album/becoming-in-shadows-of-being-touched)
Drifting across aesthetic, poetic, and political dimensions, Jason’s musical practice is a type of experimentalism, where to experiment operates as reverie—dreaming through potentials and lingering on what emerges amidst a kaleidoscope of diversions, discrepancies, references, reflections, shadows, spirits, translations, & transformations. Jason engages with experimentation as a wildly inclusive and pluralized collection of practices, often with interdisciplinary collaborators - allowing for unpredictable potentials that can meander, intermingle, and circulate without being codified.
NEW HERMITAGE (https://newhermitage.bandcamp.com/)
Ambient chamber ensemble New Hermitage is comprised of Andrew MacKelvie on woodwinds, Ellen Gibling on harp, India Gailey on cello, and Ross Burns on guitar. Their improvisations evolve with intentionality, given shape by the environment as the environment is shaped by the music. Inspired by the ethos of listening practices from their collective teacher Jerry Granelli and sonic pioneer Pauline Oliveros, New Hermitage dismantles hierarchical systems of harmony, form, and orchestration within their music. The result is an indiscernible sound, the aggregate, constantly moving forward.
MEIMEI (https://ananyaganesh.bandcamp.com / http://www.amirthakidambi.com)
meimei (மெய்மெய்) is a misspelled Tamil doublet that evokes manifold meanings of consonance, truth, soul, and coming into corporeality. The duo of vocalist Amirtha Kidambi and pianist Ananya Ganesh sonically realizes this concept of embodied becoming, through unfurling emergent forms. Their initial collaboration began through mutual aid organizing around the Covid crisis in South Asia, within a community of diaspora artists in New York City. From this wellspring of political work, Ganesh and Kidambi eventually explored their musical connection through free improvisation, finding a unique common connection in their shared mother tongue of Tamil.
Using seeds from Ganesh’s solo work and Kidambi’s unrealized duo compositions, they shared and cultivated a set of music which was first presented in Kochi and Kolkata, India. The modular and fluid permeable structures of these ecological song forms allow for organic unfolding and growth in shifting environments. Their dual voices weave melodies and textures in timbral contrast, between lyricism and abstract expression, conveying micro and macro levels of personal and systemic loss. The resulting body of work dynamically navigates freeness and sculpture, manifesting as rhythmic complexity, polyphony, and open ended exploration.
While there may not be obvious musical antecedents, the ethos of voice and piano explorations by elders Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake, experimental song forms of Erykah Badu and Annette Peacock, and the formative aesthetics and form of Carnatic music from their upbringing are points of departure. This duo is a unique collaboration for Kidambi who works regularly with musicians including Mary Halvorson, Darius Jones, Luke Stewart, William Parker and others, in addition to leading her incendiary punk free jazz outfit Elder Ones. Ganesh’s solo work, simultaneously improvised voice/piano, grew from their study with John McDonald and Warren Senders. This duo is a new singular outgrowth of that and is set apart from their improvised double piano duo Mme Sand and cello duo Zeitoon.
$12 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
Drifting across aesthetic, poetic, and political dimensions, Jason’s musical practice is a type of experimentalism, where to experiment operates as reverie—dreaming through potentials and lingering on what emerges amidst a kaleidoscope of diversions, discrepancies, references, reflections, shadows, spirits, translations, & transformations. Jason engages with experimentation as a wildly inclusive and pluralized collection of practices, often with interdisciplinary collaborators - allowing for unpredictable potentials that can meander, intermingle, and circulate without being codified.
NEW HERMITAGE (https://newhermitage.bandcamp.com/)
Ambient chamber ensemble New Hermitage is comprised of Andrew MacKelvie on woodwinds, Ellen Gibling on harp, India Gailey on cello, and Ross Burns on guitar. Their improvisations evolve with intentionality, given shape by the environment as the environment is shaped by the music. Inspired by the ethos of listening practices from their collective teacher Jerry Granelli and sonic pioneer Pauline Oliveros, New Hermitage dismantles hierarchical systems of harmony, form, and orchestration within their music. The result is an indiscernible sound, the aggregate, constantly moving forward.
MEIMEI (https://ananyaganesh.bandcamp.com / http://www.amirthakidambi.com)
meimei (மெய்மெய்) is a misspelled Tamil doublet that evokes manifold meanings of consonance, truth, soul, and coming into corporeality. The duo of vocalist Amirtha Kidambi and pianist Ananya Ganesh sonically realizes this concept of embodied becoming, through unfurling emergent forms. Their initial collaboration began through mutual aid organizing around the Covid crisis in South Asia, within a community of diaspora artists in New York City. From this wellspring of political work, Ganesh and Kidambi eventually explored their musical connection through free improvisation, finding a unique common connection in their shared mother tongue of Tamil.
Using seeds from Ganesh’s solo work and Kidambi’s unrealized duo compositions, they shared and cultivated a set of music which was first presented in Kochi and Kolkata, India. The modular and fluid permeable structures of these ecological song forms allow for organic unfolding and growth in shifting environments. Their dual voices weave melodies and textures in timbral contrast, between lyricism and abstract expression, conveying micro and macro levels of personal and systemic loss. The resulting body of work dynamically navigates freeness and sculpture, manifesting as rhythmic complexity, polyphony, and open ended exploration.
While there may not be obvious musical antecedents, the ethos of voice and piano explorations by elders Jeanne Lee and Ran Blake, experimental song forms of Erykah Badu and Annette Peacock, and the formative aesthetics and form of Carnatic music from their upbringing are points of departure. This duo is a unique collaboration for Kidambi who works regularly with musicians including Mary Halvorson, Darius Jones, Luke Stewart, William Parker and others, in addition to leading her incendiary punk free jazz outfit Elder Ones. Ganesh’s solo work, simultaneously improvised voice/piano, grew from their study with John McDonald and Warren Senders. This duo is a new singular outgrowth of that and is set apart from their improvised double piano duo Mme Sand and cello duo Zeitoon.
$12 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 21ST @ Tranzac (292 Brunswick Ave.) - 8pm - $15 Adv / $20 Door - All Ages
ZOH AMA & CHRIS CORSANO (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhQokctiEY4)
Saxophonist / flautist / composer Zoh Amba (Tzadik Records) bring a fresh voice to the world of avant jazz, mixing heavy free jazz with folk melodies and circular refrains. Teaming up with one of the best free drummer around, Chris Corsano (Bjork, Bill Orcutt, Sir Richard Bishop, Paul Flaherty, Joe McPhee, etc) this duo moves from noisey improvisations to slow sombre moments full of beautiful sorrow. Corsano moves about the drum kit as if it's an extension of his body, attaching hits together like they are rolling waves. Zoh's gnarled sax notes grow into a melodic dance hidden within a amped up face ripper or a jam. This duo flows between moods on instinct, never flinching for a moment.
FARIDA AMADOU (https://farida-amadou.bandcamp.com/album/reading-eyes-and-facial-expressions-ii)
Belgium self taught electric bassist Farida Amadou creates drone influenced landscapes where notes ripple under their own weight, either getting crushed by others or slowly dying out. Farida twists and mutates heavy bass tones into baths of distorted dust. Glitched soundscapes of angular chunks bounce against each other in a confined low frequency zone. Her compositions have an organic texture to them, meditative with an underlying punk energy. She has collaborated with the likes of Thurston Moore & Peter Brotzmann, along with many others in the European avant-garde scene.
WAYS (https://www.brodiewest.com/ways/)
Saxophonist Brodie West (Eucalyptus) teams up with percussionist Evan Cartwright (Eucalyptus, Tasseomancy, Alex Lukashevsky, etc). In this thoughtful duo both West & Cartwright play with the rhythm, they pass notes back & forth in a playful yes cautious way. Their music is full of space, letting each note truly absorb into the air before veering from it. Saxophone phrases wander over sparse minimalist percussion. Like old friends playing an elongated game of chess their interactions are curt and full of intent. The bare minimum says the most.
$15 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
Saxophonist / flautist / composer Zoh Amba (Tzadik Records) bring a fresh voice to the world of avant jazz, mixing heavy free jazz with folk melodies and circular refrains. Teaming up with one of the best free drummer around, Chris Corsano (Bjork, Bill Orcutt, Sir Richard Bishop, Paul Flaherty, Joe McPhee, etc) this duo moves from noisey improvisations to slow sombre moments full of beautiful sorrow. Corsano moves about the drum kit as if it's an extension of his body, attaching hits together like they are rolling waves. Zoh's gnarled sax notes grow into a melodic dance hidden within a amped up face ripper or a jam. This duo flows between moods on instinct, never flinching for a moment.
FARIDA AMADOU (https://farida-amadou.bandcamp.com/album/reading-eyes-and-facial-expressions-ii)
Belgium self taught electric bassist Farida Amadou creates drone influenced landscapes where notes ripple under their own weight, either getting crushed by others or slowly dying out. Farida twists and mutates heavy bass tones into baths of distorted dust. Glitched soundscapes of angular chunks bounce against each other in a confined low frequency zone. Her compositions have an organic texture to them, meditative with an underlying punk energy. She has collaborated with the likes of Thurston Moore & Peter Brotzmann, along with many others in the European avant-garde scene.
WAYS (https://www.brodiewest.com/ways/)
Saxophonist Brodie West (Eucalyptus) teams up with percussionist Evan Cartwright (Eucalyptus, Tasseomancy, Alex Lukashevsky, etc). In this thoughtful duo both West & Cartwright play with the rhythm, they pass notes back & forth in a playful yes cautious way. Their music is full of space, letting each note truly absorb into the air before veering from it. Saxophone phrases wander over sparse minimalist percussion. Like old friends playing an elongated game of chess their interactions are curt and full of intent. The bare minimum says the most.
$15 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
SATURDAY, JUNE 24TH @ Tranzac (292 Brunswick Ave.) - 8pm - $15 Adv / $20 Door - All Ages
WHITE PEOPLE KILLED THEM (https://sigerecords.bandcamp.com/album/white-people-killed-them)
Experimental free improv noise rock trio of electronic noise artist Raven Chacon (Postcommodity, Wolf Eye's Difficult Messages Band), guitarist John Dieterich (Deerhoof) and percussionist Marshall Trammell arrive in Toronto behind their 2021 self titled record on Faith Coloccia and Aaron Turner's Sige Records. The trio has a natural synergy as Raven's electronics do acrobatics around Dieterich's toasted and mangled guitar notes. Trammell's drum patterns seem to bounce around as if trying to collect the sonic fragments Chacon & Dieterich are expelling. The chaos settles into brooding angular riffage with squealing buzzsaw notes taking up the dialogue. Drum hits remain buoyant amidst the sonic dissonance. The rhythmic core of this trio's persuasion really shines through keeping the music swinging no matter how each member decides to writhe in their own sonic machinations. One of the freshest crews creating noise driven anti-rock avant shred music these days! Don't miss this face & mind ripper!
ANIMATIST (https://animatist.bandcamp.com)
Animatist is a four piece experimental rock band from Toronto, Ontario led by guitarist Brent O’Toole. The rhythm section, comprised of Steve Cook on bass and Ian Hinds on drums, form the driving foundation of the band’s powerful sound. The picture is completed by the angular melodies and ambient textures of saxophonist and synth player, Danielle Fernandes. Together they perform rhythmically deft compositions that evoke equal parts math, post, and progressive rock.
NOT A BAND (https://hiwerenotaband.bandcamp.com)
What started as a carpe diem home-recording project for a duo in quarantine, quickly ballooned into a cast of friends from different disciplines and perspectives, building on a communal spirit of we'll try everything once. Not A Band has developed a sound and a performance with no internal hierarchies where each of the six members brings forward ideas and contributions. Their music is chaos, energy, and play. They draw on their backgrounds in new wave, spoken word, free improvisation, sound installation, jazz, grunge, funk, kazoo. They are not a band, yea?
$15 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
Experimental free improv noise rock trio of electronic noise artist Raven Chacon (Postcommodity, Wolf Eye's Difficult Messages Band), guitarist John Dieterich (Deerhoof) and percussionist Marshall Trammell arrive in Toronto behind their 2021 self titled record on Faith Coloccia and Aaron Turner's Sige Records. The trio has a natural synergy as Raven's electronics do acrobatics around Dieterich's toasted and mangled guitar notes. Trammell's drum patterns seem to bounce around as if trying to collect the sonic fragments Chacon & Dieterich are expelling. The chaos settles into brooding angular riffage with squealing buzzsaw notes taking up the dialogue. Drum hits remain buoyant amidst the sonic dissonance. The rhythmic core of this trio's persuasion really shines through keeping the music swinging no matter how each member decides to writhe in their own sonic machinations. One of the freshest crews creating noise driven anti-rock avant shred music these days! Don't miss this face & mind ripper!
ANIMATIST (https://animatist.bandcamp.com)
Animatist is a four piece experimental rock band from Toronto, Ontario led by guitarist Brent O’Toole. The rhythm section, comprised of Steve Cook on bass and Ian Hinds on drums, form the driving foundation of the band’s powerful sound. The picture is completed by the angular melodies and ambient textures of saxophonist and synth player, Danielle Fernandes. Together they perform rhythmically deft compositions that evoke equal parts math, post, and progressive rock.
NOT A BAND (https://hiwerenotaband.bandcamp.com)
What started as a carpe diem home-recording project for a duo in quarantine, quickly ballooned into a cast of friends from different disciplines and perspectives, building on a communal spirit of we'll try everything once. Not A Band has developed a sound and a performance with no internal hierarchies where each of the six members brings forward ideas and contributions. Their music is chaos, energy, and play. They draw on their backgrounds in new wave, spoken word, free improvisation, sound installation, jazz, grunge, funk, kazoo. They are not a band, yea?
$15 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
SUNDAY, JUNE 25TH @ The Rex (194 Queen St. West) - 8pm - $10/$15/$20
CAROLINE DAVIS' ALULA (https://carolinedavismusic.bandcamp.com/album/alula)
Caroline Davis created the band, Alula, to seek out electronic components in her performances and compositions. On their first album, released in 2019 on New Amsterdam Records, the trio included synthesizer contributions from Matt Mitchell (Linda Oh, Dave Douglas, Tim Berne, Fiction) and the drum and percussion voice of Greg Saunier (Deerhoof, Dal Niente, Mystical Weapons). Davis’ first compositions arose after a stimulating read of The Sibley Guide to Birds, where she learned about “...this magical structure on bird wings that appeared during moments of take off, flight, and landing” was immediately drawn to it. Of her first release, The New York Times remarked, "you can hear Ms. Davis's talent for deriving long, dizzying motifs from smaller melodic cells." A forthcoming album will present a similar balance of improvised and composed material amongst electronic samples from freedom fighters held in captivity for wrongful convictions. Alula’s current lineup features Chris Tordini (electric bass) and Kate Gentile (drums).
MADELEINE ERTEL TRIO
Madeleine Ertel (trumpet) will be joined by Steven Noronha (piano) and Jonathan Chapman (bass) to play a set of her original music for the first time as a trio. Her music has been described as hopeful, honest, and melancholic, blending contrapuntal melodies with elements of free improvisation, jazz, and pop music.
$10/$15/$20 Adv at The Rex Website
Facebook Event
Caroline Davis created the band, Alula, to seek out electronic components in her performances and compositions. On their first album, released in 2019 on New Amsterdam Records, the trio included synthesizer contributions from Matt Mitchell (Linda Oh, Dave Douglas, Tim Berne, Fiction) and the drum and percussion voice of Greg Saunier (Deerhoof, Dal Niente, Mystical Weapons). Davis’ first compositions arose after a stimulating read of The Sibley Guide to Birds, where she learned about “...this magical structure on bird wings that appeared during moments of take off, flight, and landing” was immediately drawn to it. Of her first release, The New York Times remarked, "you can hear Ms. Davis's talent for deriving long, dizzying motifs from smaller melodic cells." A forthcoming album will present a similar balance of improvised and composed material amongst electronic samples from freedom fighters held in captivity for wrongful convictions. Alula’s current lineup features Chris Tordini (electric bass) and Kate Gentile (drums).
MADELEINE ERTEL TRIO
Madeleine Ertel (trumpet) will be joined by Steven Noronha (piano) and Jonathan Chapman (bass) to play a set of her original music for the first time as a trio. Her music has been described as hopeful, honest, and melancholic, blending contrapuntal melodies with elements of free improvisation, jazz, and pop music.
$10/$15/$20 Adv at The Rex Website
Facebook Event
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28TH @ The Great Hall (1087 Queen St. West) - 7:30pm - $40 Adv / $50 Door
SUN RA ARKESTRA (https://sunrastrut.bandcamp.com/album/living-sky)
Sun Ra founded the Sun Ra Arkestra in Chicago in 1955. He was among the earliest pioneers of the synthesizer and the free jazz revolution of the 1960's. Sun Ra sent a strong spiritual and musical message to his musicians and they are devoted to it. When he added more and more members they went from band to big band to ARKESTRA.
The Sun Ra Arkestra are known for their live performances that combine big-band swing, space-age jazz, singing, dancing, chanting, bright colors and Afro-pageantry. The Arkestra has been at the forefront of Afro-futurism since their inception.
The Arkestra's 2020 album "Swirling" was nominated for a Grammy Award for best big band jazz ensemble recording. The Arkestra continue to travel the globe on their Inter-Galactic tour. Recent highlights include the Kennedy Center with Solange, the Berlin Opera House and New York City shows at Radio City Music Hall and a Christmas night benefit with Yo La Tengo.
TENDER BUTTONS (https://soundcloud.com/akash-bansal)
Akash Bansal is a writer, filmmaker, DJ and programmer based in Toronto. Over the past 8 years they have hosted radio residencies on the Lot Radio, n10as, TRP and CHRY. They have co-organized Pillow Talk, an experimental dance party since 2016. They are currently developing an avant-turntablism score in collaboration with Christopher Willes that will be performed at the Music Gallery's upcoming X Avant Festival.
$40 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
Sun Ra founded the Sun Ra Arkestra in Chicago in 1955. He was among the earliest pioneers of the synthesizer and the free jazz revolution of the 1960's. Sun Ra sent a strong spiritual and musical message to his musicians and they are devoted to it. When he added more and more members they went from band to big band to ARKESTRA.
The Sun Ra Arkestra are known for their live performances that combine big-band swing, space-age jazz, singing, dancing, chanting, bright colors and Afro-pageantry. The Arkestra has been at the forefront of Afro-futurism since their inception.
The Arkestra's 2020 album "Swirling" was nominated for a Grammy Award for best big band jazz ensemble recording. The Arkestra continue to travel the globe on their Inter-Galactic tour. Recent highlights include the Kennedy Center with Solange, the Berlin Opera House and New York City shows at Radio City Music Hall and a Christmas night benefit with Yo La Tengo.
TENDER BUTTONS (https://soundcloud.com/akash-bansal)
Akash Bansal is a writer, filmmaker, DJ and programmer based in Toronto. Over the past 8 years they have hosted radio residencies on the Lot Radio, n10as, TRP and CHRY. They have co-organized Pillow Talk, an experimental dance party since 2016. They are currently developing an avant-turntablism score in collaboration with Christopher Willes that will be performed at the Music Gallery's upcoming X Avant Festival.
$40 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25TH @ Tranzac (292 Brunswick Ave.) - 8pm - $20 Adv / $25 Door
COLLEEN (https://colleencolleen.bandcamp.com)
French artist Cécile Schott aka Colleen (Thrill Jockey) is fearless in her willingness to explore new sounds and new ways of creating music as a solo performer. Over the course of seven critically acclaimed albums released between 2003 and 2021, Cécile Schott consistently reinvented herself, first by taking acoustic instruments out of their usual context and pushing the boundaries of their playability, then through avant-pop electronic explorations.
Colleen’s growing passion for synthesis, bolstered by her collaborations with synth manufacturer Moog, have led to her 8th album Le jour et la nuit du réel, to be released on Thrill Jockey on September 22nd, 2023. Built as a suite of songs, the artist’s first double album is also her first purely instrumental work since 2007, and aims to translate through a myriad of sound transformations the complexity of our relation to reality, and its psychological mutations through the cycles of day and night.
JONI VOID (https://jonivoid.bandcamp.com)
Joni Void is the persona of Jean Néant (he/them), a Montréal-based ‘shapeshifting artist’, with output and various projects showcasing a devotion to experimentation, improvisation, collaboration and multi-genre explorations. Self-described as ‘cinéma-tek / cameratronica’ music, the montage-based production of Joni Void incorporates elements of electronic and sample-based beats, rap/hip-hop, psychedelia, musique concrète & plunderphonics, ambient/drone, glitch, minimalism & electro-acoustic / improvised music.
A sound world initiated in their early teens and in outsider fashion with the predominantly online project ‘johnny_ripper’; Néant’s move to Montréal and involvement with the local music scenes and live performances, would lead to a spirited transformation into the current Joni Void moniker, with their 2017 label debut ‘Selfless’, and a second opus in 2019 ‘Mise en Abyme’ - demonstrating creative processes and production methods involving micro-sampling, aleatory composition, the techniques of foley and film sound editing; with albums constructed entirely from found sources rather than instrumental composition.
Néant returned in 2023 with the sound-poetry album ‘Everyday Is The Song’, a whimsical and contemplative voyage through Walkman field-recordings and collected tape and vinyl samples, as an ode to both the tangible and intangible forms of music and sound accumulated through one own’s life, and inherent experience of time, cycles and motion.
$20 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
French artist Cécile Schott aka Colleen (Thrill Jockey) is fearless in her willingness to explore new sounds and new ways of creating music as a solo performer. Over the course of seven critically acclaimed albums released between 2003 and 2021, Cécile Schott consistently reinvented herself, first by taking acoustic instruments out of their usual context and pushing the boundaries of their playability, then through avant-pop electronic explorations.
Colleen’s growing passion for synthesis, bolstered by her collaborations with synth manufacturer Moog, have led to her 8th album Le jour et la nuit du réel, to be released on Thrill Jockey on September 22nd, 2023. Built as a suite of songs, the artist’s first double album is also her first purely instrumental work since 2007, and aims to translate through a myriad of sound transformations the complexity of our relation to reality, and its psychological mutations through the cycles of day and night.
JONI VOID (https://jonivoid.bandcamp.com)
Joni Void is the persona of Jean Néant (he/them), a Montréal-based ‘shapeshifting artist’, with output and various projects showcasing a devotion to experimentation, improvisation, collaboration and multi-genre explorations. Self-described as ‘cinéma-tek / cameratronica’ music, the montage-based production of Joni Void incorporates elements of electronic and sample-based beats, rap/hip-hop, psychedelia, musique concrète & plunderphonics, ambient/drone, glitch, minimalism & electro-acoustic / improvised music.
A sound world initiated in their early teens and in outsider fashion with the predominantly online project ‘johnny_ripper’; Néant’s move to Montréal and involvement with the local music scenes and live performances, would lead to a spirited transformation into the current Joni Void moniker, with their 2017 label debut ‘Selfless’, and a second opus in 2019 ‘Mise en Abyme’ - demonstrating creative processes and production methods involving micro-sampling, aleatory composition, the techniques of foley and film sound editing; with albums constructed entirely from found sources rather than instrumental composition.
Néant returned in 2023 with the sound-poetry album ‘Everyday Is The Song’, a whimsical and contemplative voyage through Walkman field-recordings and collected tape and vinyl samples, as an ode to both the tangible and intangible forms of music and sound accumulated through one own’s life, and inherent experience of time, cycles and motion.
$20 Adv at TicketScene
Facebook Event
