Wavelength 512 (feat. Modernboys Moderngirls / HUT / John Kameel Farah / Bryan W. Bray & Chris Worden / Taylor Patterson)
The Garrison. Sunday, December 26, 2010.
If ever there's a day I want to stay in, it'd probably be Boxing Day. When you add dreary winter cold and consumerist zombie hordes to the post-turkey hangover1 it's a recipe for settling in on the couch, pulling up a quilt and considering what to watch after re-filing Bad Santa for the year. But such is the call of Wavelength that I heroically took a swig or two of xmas brandy2 and headed down to The Garrison, managing to sprain my ankle on Ossington after dismounting the bus. Part of a week-long spate of post-xmas food drive shows, I wasn't here for any of the bands in particular — which is often a good sort of way to approach things with Beginner's Mind. Brandy helps.
I limped in just as Taylor Patterson was beginning his set. One guy in a hoodie, playing guitar with implied shredding at the outset — my first impression was that this was going to be some sort of thinking man's hard rock. But with each fresh song-sized nugget, Patterson explored different ideas arising from a widening set of tools. For the second song, Patterson created a guitar loop, played over that for a spell, then moved over to the drum kit. The next one expanded on that more, bringing in a laptop and some vocal loops. And then the guitar was removed entirely from the proceedings, leaving the sound mostly tasty 8-bit synth loops and drums before finishing off like it had started with some precision guitar playing. So ultimately there was quite a range in the set, but there was a unified feel under it all.
Listen to a song from this set here.
It was a Sunday night-esque crowd, maybe twenty or thirty people on hand. Some wandering in and out, mostly here to have a space to hang around with some music in the background. I drank a shot with the always-admirable Wavelength crew, quietly toasting my own health as I took tentative steps on my ankle. And after a quick changeover, MC Duncan "Doc Pickles" MacDonell took to the stage to begin his next introspective introduction, becoming — as is his wont — distracted upon bringing up Rob Ford, repeating his name over and over, like he was chewing some sort of unpleasantly-textured candy that was stuck to his teeth: "Rob Ford. Wow.... Rob Ford. Rob Ford. Rob Ford. That's crazy, that's nuttier than Mel Lastman. I can't believe it. Rob Ford — damn."
Soon enough, he managed to regain his train of thought to introduce Bryan W. Bray & Chris Worden, bringing detuned and abstracted "environmental" guitar sculptures. Cresting and receding in distended echoing waves, the guitars were set against occasional sharp zzzt noises, like stray sparks arcing from an electrical wire. The vibe was hazy and glacial, the entire twenty-five minute melding into one continuous slow drift. I can't say with too much assurance who was doing what, as I was mostly just soaking it in.3
A lot of the crowd on hand moved toward the back of the room to chat, but I was totally absorbed, in the sense that I sorta wanted to fall over backwards and lay on the floor for awhile. In a room like The Garrison, when this kind of music is delivered with volume you can feel it seep into your body as it reverberates around the room. "Goddam superb," reads my notepad — this is why it's worth going to Wavelength to listen to people you've never heard of.
Listen to an excerpt from this set here.
The avant tilt of the night continued with John Kameel Farah, who was armed with laptop and keyboard. After a quiet introduction, his first piece built up to chord clusters jousting with breakbeats and a stop-start bassline, the ground under its feet shifting constantly — this was far from one loop just playing over and over. It seemed pretty clear that Farah was a superior keyboard player, showing off skills in jazzy improvisation and classical chops. That varied style followed quite a lot of variation within his set — one song had Eastern European folk flourishes, while the last track (from a still-forthcoming new album) sprawled over nine minutes, mixing romantic piano, driving beats and eastern flutes. Heady stuff.4
Listen to a track from this set here.
And then, the night moved into what Doc Pickles described as the "user-friendly" part of the show. Taking a much more in-your-face approach, HUT set up on the floor in front of the stage, more or less encouraging the thinnest possible separation between performer and crowd. The five musicians more or less set up in a row, with Daniel Woodhead's minimalist drumkit in the centre. There were no keyboards this time out, but that was made up for with some extra guitar work from Alex Laurence (ex-The Miles).
Daniel Lee (vocals, also of Hooded Fang) brings a frenzied, slightly sloppy, new-wave sensibility to this unit, delivering a goodtime cacophony. And unlike earlier in the night there was a nice crowd of folks paying attention, some even dancing their way right through the band's zone. While the next band were up on the stage starting to set up, I recognized the catchy "Droppers", which I remembered from their Korova set. And meanwhile Woodhead (playing standing up) was rotating through 360 degrees, trying to catch up to drums that weren't staying in place. By the set's last song, the cymbal ended up a couple feet away beyond his reach. He grabbed his snare and started wandering through the crowd, playing as he walked a lap around the room and settling back beside the errant cymbal. An energetic, bouncy close. Saying this was sloppy is like saying hummus is garlicky — that's what makes it good.5
Listen to a song from this set here.
Having gotten ready while Hut were playing, it was a quick turnover for Modernboys Moderngirls, a young garage-y trio who hint at a soulful undercurrent. But their sound is more rough than smooth, with a heavy, thumping beat from drummer Brett Millius.6 Guitarist Akira Alemany was more of a howler than a finesse vocalist, but he had the right sort of energy for the uptempo stuff. After three ragers to start, the band took their foot off the accelerator with "My Baby Says Boy, Don't You Ever Go", though that was a less convincing mode for them.
They tore through songs from their self-released long player as well as both sides of a recent 7" ("Last Song the Jukebox Played"/"Hot Blaze of Happiness"). It had been a fairly long night, so it might have been me wearing down as much as anything that after about a half hour, I was feeling diminishing returns from the band — "I Can Hardly Stand" was perhaps an apt description. But the band's energy helped pull me through, so I have that to admire in 'em, even if I was left with more a sense of potential than a notion that the band had really nailed it yet.7
Listen to a song from this set here.
1 Attempted cure: leftover turkey. Snowflake becomes blizzard, etc. etc.
2 This is like regular brandy, but you can have a candy cane after. [n.b.: candy cane is optional.]
3 Bray also releases music as Gates in collaboration with Worden — there's some tasty stuff at their bandcamp. He's also worked with Nick Storring in Gardenia. Besides being involved with the Electric Eclectics Festival, Worden also plays with El Desierto Ondulado and Knurl, amongst others.
4 Farah will be playing a solo piano show on Friday, June 24, 2011 at Arraymusic.
5 The band has a tape for sale at shows, but you can also download/stream it over at their soundcloud — it tones down the action chaos of the live shows and accentuates the underlying tunefulness. Hut will be playing tonight (Friday, June 10, 2011) at The Garage and next week (Thursday, June 16, 2011) with Maylee Todd at Duffy's.
6 Rock t-shirt: The Doors.
7 MBMG will be playing NXNE on Friday, June 17, 2011 at El Mocambo (Upstairs) at 9 P.M.
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