Gig: Khôra

Khôra (Not the Wind, Not the Flag)

The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge). Wednesday, February 2, 2011

It was the day of the False Snowpocalypse. We'd had a decent snowfall, but not the doomsayers' world-stopper that had been predicted. Ended up being not too bad to get around the city. Still, I was glad my activities were clustered close enough together, and after a Doc Soup screening, I walked over to The Tranzac. The previous folk show had wound up, but the last musician was still picking away. He started up a version of Springsteen's "Atlantic City" with an ad hoc pickup band that would include some of the avantists that would be playing later on in the evening — a Tranzac-y moment right there.

The evening was billed as the local release show for Constellation Records' quite excellent Musique Fragile set, a nicely crafted thing compiling three albums of textured/ambient sounds.¹ In celebration, two of the performers were to appear, but the threat of massive blizzards meant that Nick Kuepfer was unable to venture down the 401 from Montreal.

That disappointment aside, we still got two excellent sets, with Khôra, also known as Matthew Ramolo, leading off. As he began, I could hear vague traces of Sarah Greene drifting over from the Main Hall, but soon I was pulled into Ramolo's sound-world. His bandonym is quite aptly-chosen, as the connotations of a semi-mystical space/non-space of pure otherness² — mysterious, lurking — fits right into his sound.

Armed with an acoustic guitar, an analog synth, and a large rack of pedals and electronics, Ramolo began with picked strings ringing against slow-motion looped backdrops. Soon, he was creating ghostly undulations with an ebow and a large screwdriver on the guitar strings, building more and more layers of sound. With all of those loops still going, he turned to the synth and added a different set of layers — more square-waved but still mostly gentle — not upsetting the state of ambient drift.

And by then, I was enjoying it enough not to worry much about closer analysis — this is the sort of stuff where you just kinda step in and let it wash over you. The first piece was filled with quiet beauty, and was followed by a second composition that was less languid, but was still mostly based around a simple, repeating guitar motif. After that, the set closed with a ten-minute long improvisation. It worked on the same principles as the "composed" music, building to the loudest part of the set, with zwippling keyboard squeaks building up into an unsettled nest of sound for the guitar to return and bed down upon. Lovely stuff.

Listen to an excerpt from this set here.

I'd said in the past that you could get almost anything at a Not the Wind, Not the Flag gig, given the different instruments and moods that Brandon Valdivia and Colin Fisher can bring along to improvise with. In their current phase, though, they are limiting their palette somewhat — you won't likely see Fisher with his saxophone, for example. In fact, he's more likely to be seen behind the drum kit while usually-the-drummer Valdivia plays kalimba. And, in fact, after some cheerful talk, making dedications to set up a good vibe, there was a percussive feel to start, with Fisher playing drums while Valdivia rattled shells and suchlike as well as flute before finding a thumb-piano groove. From the initial gentle tinkling, he slowly added pedal effects to give it a more robust tone, matching the louder roiling of the drums, before collapsing back into quiet and ending with kalimba and jingling percussion.

The kalimba piece lasted almost a quarter hour, and then a switchover for a second and slightly longer exploration, with Valdivia behind the kit and Fisher on guitar — call it the "classic" Not the Wind sound, though there was a changeup with Fisher throwing in some ghostly, treated vox before the whole thing caught fire and accelerated to the finish.

Fully satisfying, as always — it's always a treat to see one of the best bands around.³

Listen to an excerpt from one of these pieces here.

---

¹ The CD version of the set comes in a hand-constructed record-sized sleeve that seems designed to slowly and elegantly pull itself apart in an explosion of the ephemera (hand-crafted screenprinted cards and so on) stuffed inside it.

² χώρα was, also, I believe, the interval where Plato thought the forms were located.

³ I don't see any NTW,NTF shows listed right now, but both Fisher and Valdivia are busy musicians working in a whole bunch of intriguing groups, so keep an eye out for 'em. If you dig around through Healing Power Records' soundcloud — lotsa good stuff there, by the way — you'll find some froopy NTW material.