Gig: Redwirearchangel

Redwirearchangel

The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge). Saturday, November 20, 2010.

I was down at The Tranzac to take in Ohbijou's fundraising show in the big hall, but arriving with some time to spare, I wandered a bit and caught a couple songs at the end of a set by "freelance vibraphonist" Michael Davidson. A busy collaborator in the local improvised music scene, Davidson can be seen working with a lot of different artists around town, but his own projects make regular stops in the cozy Southern Cross lounge. Here, a trio was doing some standards — I recall "Evidence" and "Monk's Mood". I was just chillin' while waiting for my other show to start, so I didn't take down many other details than that, though my notepad states that this was "very good shit".

Anyway, as Ohbijou let out, I cast my gaze back into the smaller room, and it looked like things were perfectly timed for me to slip in and grab a spot between bands. This would be the night's last set in a show under the aegis of the 416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival — in its tenth year, apparently, but not hitherto on my radar. But I'd had Redwirearchangel recommended to me previously, and this seemed like a good chance to check them out.

The band takes as its basic musical terrain the hazy atmosphere of Miles Davis' wild electric period, especially Bitches Brew, and its improvisory approach is cut with further slices of funk power. There were some familiar faces getting ready to play as I came in, including Nicole Rampersaud (trumpet) and Jeremy Strachan (saxophone). There was also Jesse Levine (keyb and Rhodes), Simeon Abbott (keyb and effects), Ian deSouza (bass) and dual drummers (Germaine Liu, Mark Zurawinski) — nine core members all told, under the leadership of guitarist Nilan Perera. Perera, wearing something that looked like a psychedelic snakeskin vest, conducted the proceedings, occasionally ducking out into the crowd to see how the horns sounded or wandering over to the other side of the band to listen and give directions. He was prone to occasional cryptic statements (after one horn solo, he commented, "that's one way to kill yourself with food poisoning, I think") and, overall, gave the aura of a guy well-suited to be leading a free-ranging psychedelic-funk improvising orchestra.

The set began with a rockin' take on Miles Davis' "Directions", powered by the simmering bass line, with keyb and guit both coming in at angles to the horns blasting away. Powerful stuff. That segued through a slower dub-influenced section and into the punchy pop-meets-free-jazz "Theme de Yoyo" (originally by The Art Ensemble of Chicago) with Ronley Teper taking the vocals. The whole opening suite ran more than twenty-five minutes before the band stopped to catch their breath.

That was followed by Funkadelic's "Cosmic Slop", the Miles-ian murk displaced by the P-Funk glow, the song also including a ripping guitar solo from Perera, who also added growly harmony vocals behind Teper. That might seem like a stylistic shift from the previous material, but here it felt like a fairly close point on a continuum. Demonstrating their elasticity, that was followed by "Ife", another Miles Davis composition, which was powered by some extra horns (Steve Ward, Dan Gooch and Tom McCammon). This went the furthest away from funk and deeper into improvisation. There were a couple spots of wayward coherence, but the band managed to keep the thread — these are, after all, musicians with serious chops. But for those whose eyes glaze over at the mention of improvised music, it has to be underlined how fun this was. And showing how un-highbrow they were, they closed out with and extended "Low Rider", the horns again blasting away.

The hour-long set fairly zipped by. This is a unit that's totally worth catching, though they don't play too regularly.¹ Astute observers will be able to find many of these musicians around town on a regular basis, though.

Listen to a song from this set here.

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¹ Although I do note it appears they'll be playing at The Silver Dollar with The Thing Is on Saturday April 23, 2011.