Gig: Against Life II

Against Life II: Against Love (feat. Anagram / Young Mother / Toddler Body / Bill Bill)

Bridge under Strachan Av. @ Gardiner Expressway. Saturday, July 3, 2010.

Perhaps the true rebels and rock'n'rollers are more keenly aware of it from moment to moment, but most of the time, we're oblivious to the weave and weft of formal and informal rules that surround and constrain us. Sometimes, we notice when authority steps beyond the normal limits and shows how casually it can impose its force on protesting bodies or on the body politic. If the bulk of life is dealing with all of that subtly deadening crap, then Against Life is the antidote. Sometimes we realize the limits of the usual when the constraints are pulled back and there's a space to act outside of authority or outside of capitalistic exchange.

This series of, well, call 'em "events" more than "concerts" is a successor to the famous series of Extermination Music Nights, which installed music-and-art happenings in unsanctioned, reclaimed spaces. There is, so far as I know, no manifesto or statement of purpose from the organizers, just an invitation to a location that is revealed not long before the show's midnight starting time. The events draw a diverse audience, from lovers of "weird" music, to principled DIY'ers to those who just want a BYOB sort of party.

Now me, I'm no radical in word or deed. I have — perhaps to an unhealthy degree — a quiet sort of belief in rules-based systems and an irrational attachment to propriety, making me, to some extent, an apollonian celebrant at a dionysian gig. But we're none of us any one thing, I guess, and after a corporate gig that was in almost every way the opposite of this, I was certainly looking for something "outside".

And so, headed out towards the Exhibition grounds — one of those Saturday Night Special streetcar rides where there's a guy slumped over, hurling out the narrow window opening — and walking up to find the parking lot identified in the invitation. Down the semi-muddy embankment and found myself under a bridge — an amazingly secluded spot with the ground banking up against one concrete wall, creating a quick sort of amphitheatre effect. Illumination was provided by a series of tiki torches lining the "stage" area, where the microphones and amps were clustered together, the generator off a bit to one side and a cardboard DJ shed on the other. Once the generator was cranked up, there was enough for the amps and PA plus a projector throwing up images on the wall above the embankment, mostly a loop of a guy climbing a ladder.

There was a small fire-based art installation, like a little pagan prayer circle, being set up, but otherwise, when I got there not long past midnight it was pretty quiet, with a sense of finishing touches being applied. There was a steady trickle of people showing up, peering around in the dark for friends and making their way over the rutted, somewhat uneven ground. The unofficial culture smells like lighter fluid, or paraffin or whatever it is keeping the torches burning.

Things got started about quarter to one with the experimental sounds of Bill Bill. The first selection was a sort of instrumental-type track, with a keening two-note synth riff and bird-noise like sounds. As the set continued, there was increasingly a "tribal" sort of feel, with two vocalists adding wordless sounds on top of a variety of distorted keyb noises. Someone beat on a drum. The group's myspace is pretty spare on more details about them, which seems befitting. As an element in this particular environment, the sounds filled the space well enough — I wasn't bored or turned off while they were playing, but qua music, it was kinda too formless for my liking.

Peering around as their set finished, I estimated there were maybe a couple hundred people about — given the nature of the event, people were coming and going throughout, and the crowd actually got denser as the night progressed. As the day's heat dissipated, the night temperature dropped ten or fifteen degrees and suddenly it was feeling chilly. Folks were drinking and hanging out, having a good time. There were some downsides to operating outside the regular strictures — people were smoking freely. And, sadly, in a sign of failed self-governance, littering.

As Toddler Body began playing, at first it seemed like this might be a more-straightforward musical experience — during their first song they sounded a bit like some sort of unholy alliance between Skinny Puppy and Bernie Worrell. The rest of the set was largely more "implied" than that and more decidedly on the "experimental" side of the ledger, although they brought more of a melodic sense to the table, mostly in the form of more regular drum-machine beats and squidgy synths. A musical partnership of Randall Gagne and Greydyn Gatti, the band came quipped with a keyboard and a table full of electronics.

The second piece featured a long, slow quieting fade, until it sounded like a muffled ringtone being played two rooms over. And after that there was more ambiance, with squiggles of sound hugging the fuzzy edges of ghosts of songs. Once again, this worked in context, even if it might not translate to something I'd want to hear in the light of day.

As it got later, the early, here-to-check-it-out crowd was increasingly supplemented by the more heavily drinking party crowd, and the shift to some less environmental music was achieved with Young Mother. "We're going to play some songs and shit", said bandleader Jesse James Laderoute as they started — songs being the exception so far in the night.

The band had totally impressed me the first time I saw 'em, when they stretched out one song over a fifteen minute set. This time, the band led off with a concise ninety-second burst — but it still had all the same elements in place, including the squealing sax and the locked-in rhythm section providing a nodding relationship with the melodic underpinnings of rock music. Their lean, slightly menacing undertow kept things steady while Laderoute sang, both in rapid wordbursts and occasionally in a more relaxed sing-speak. That one song I'd heard before ("I saw it coming a million miles away") was reprised, but here down to about a third of its former length. The last song of the set was the most prolonged, stretching out around nine minutes and was quite good stuff, with a high, spidery guitar line playing off the low-range thrum of everything else, as it built into a chaotic finale. By the end, someone was pouring liquor down the bass player's throat and then using the bottle as a slide on the neck while he continued playing. Some stirring music — Young Mother have some inneresting ideas and stay on my list of bands to see more of.

Listen to a track from this set here.

And then — at about a quarter-to-three — the mighty Anagram to close things out. All things considered, this felt like a perfect environment for their music. The band is in their element when there's no separation between themselves and the audience — despite a misanthropic lyrical outlook and a dark-edged musical attack, they are commendably community-minded when it comes to the sort of shows they play. Leading off with "Evil" — also the first track to their long-awaited new album Majewski¹ — perhaps the most noteworthy thing about an Anagram show is that there's no downshifting. "We're going to slow it down for a few minutes" isn't something you're going to hear.

Plus, the jostling-body chaos that comes with the territory always means that each show is going to be unique. At this one, to keep clear of bouncing bodies, I slid around from in front of the band, and ended up almost all the way over beside the bass amp. And when PA was knocked askew it ended up being pointed away from me. The guitar amp was way around on the other side of the band from me, which might be for the best as there was some piercing bursts of feedback coming from that direction.

"How It Seems" was suddenly cut shout by vocalist Matt Mason's shouts — "Kill the lights! Kill the fire! Get rid of the fucking fire now! Right now!" At the moment I thought it was a bit of dramatic posturing, but it turns out that the fire department were dropping by, and the open flame was their main concern. "Is anybody passed out? Does anybody need medical attention?" Apparently satisfied, the fire dept. went on their way, to cheers from the crowd and the band started back up. All of this I learned after that fact — from where I was standing, it was so dark that I couldn't actually see the firemen. And that was before the torches were extinguished. After that, things got murkier.

There was an undertow of frenzy building in the crowd. Not particularly in a dangerously violent sense so much as guttural debauchery. At some point the cardboard DJ booth was pulled down and was being passed around the crowd like a bodysurfer. There was the sense that it could all fall apart at any moment. The band was playing "Leads to Nowhere"² and it was feeling like it was all coming apart — that things were getting unplugged and increasingly ragged. The band was playing inside an increasingly smaller space as the crowd pushed in towards them.

And then the generator died. Some people further back in the crowd didn't pick up on that, calling out for an encore, as if that was the way the band had planned to end their set. The organizers were running around, trying to get the generator re-started, leading to about five unsettled minutes of standing around, when, anticlimactically, the police showed up to break things up.³

I'm sure there was antsiness on all sides, given the frayed nerves from the very-fresh memories of the G8 clampdown. As people started streaming away I wasn't worried I was going to end up in the hoosegow or anything, but I was feeling a plucky sense of occasion, so I followed some slightly-nervous younger folks leaving by the back door, which turned out to be the embankment leading back up to Strachan. After watching the tableau of folks scurrying out from under the bridge for a bit, I headed off, just a pedestrian making my way home in the late night.

Listen to a track from this set here — and enjoy an audio vérité recording of the night's end here.

There's a lot to praise the organizers for here. My sense is that they are, if not observing the official niceties of how one is supposed to hold an event, all the more principled and careful for it. The not-in-someone's-backyard locations are scouted so as not to interfere with other people's quiet enjoyment of the night. And there is a principled libertarian argument here, of self-determination and self-regulation — we choose to operate outside the Fire Code and the noise bylaw, so therefore we will be responsible for governing ourselves. Of course, when you add large numbers of drunken/stoned people to the mix, there are worries about, like, who needs that nanny state looking out for them, given the worst-case-scenario sort of things that could go wrong. I know it ain't likely, but these things always flash through my brain at events like this.

Still, I'm glad that events like this exist — I think it's more than just, like, a show at a venue where people can drink hooch straight from the bottle. In art, no less so than in our social interactions, we consciously and unconsciously subject ourselves to the limitation of what is "allowed". Exploring the liminal spaces — musical, artistic, social — serves to make us aware of the limited space we usually inhabit. And if the music or forms of interaction that are generated aren't all the best, such is the price of trying. So I'm glad that the people behind this are trying.

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¹ The album is now available and is getting a launch party in town tonight at Parts & Labour, and in Oshawa on November 6.

² Although the words were an almost-unintelligible mush heard live, the song has some entirely apropos lyrics abut darkness and lights crashing down.

³ Amusingly, given how much confusion about everything else going on, word of the police's arrival flashed through the crowd pretty quickly and effectively. To mix metaphors, it appears that even a broken telephone can be right once a night.