ELEVEN! Festival (Wavelength 515 – night 2) (feat. Not The Wind, Not The Flag / Gordon Grdina's East Van Strings / Eiyn Sof / Kite Hill)
The Music Gallery. Wednesday, February 17, 2011.
Feeling a bit like the quiet hangover recovery after the rockin' opening salvo, the second night of Wavelength's Eleventh Anniversary festival shifted to the more relaxed and meditative confines of The Music Gallery. Unlike the previous year's MG show, the sanctuary's pews were left in place — this would be a sit-down show, well-befitting the least rock'n'roll night of the festival. It was also the quietest, both in terms of sonics and the crowd on hand. Perhaps because of the lack of a relatively big-name headliner, there were only a couple dozen folks in the pews as things got going for what would turn out to be one of the best sets of the festival.
It was wonderful to see Not The Wind, Not The Flag, who are playing with such inspired purposefulness right now, in the confines of the Music Gallery. The improvising duo of Colin Fisher and Brandon Valdivia can scale their gear and set to fit in almost any environment, but it was a treat to see them more fully laid out than their "road" configuration, with a whole second set of instruments on hand, consisting of a set of bells, bowls and gongs off to one side of the stage, ready for a two-man gamelan ensemble. The only downside of having the large gong sitting there was the anticipation — I was nearly twitching as the set started, thinking how much I wanted see someone to hit the blasted thing.
NTW's sets aren't so much distinguished by songs — the commonality of each "method" that they employ can be found in the instruments they choose and a set of generative principles that make each performance a unique creation that still belongs to an identifiable genus. So, here the set started with Fisher on drums and Valdivia on mbira, a musical seam that they've been working for a little while now, finding interesting points of textual intersection as each gets further into their exploration of their instrument. Fisher, whose musical repertoire has only more recently included the drums, was doing well but has an occasional propensity to lose a drumstick, making for a different kind of improvisation as he hunted around for his spare — or in this case, covering until someone jumped up from the front row to pick it up for him.
After playing for almost fifteen minutes, the pair transitioned to the gongs, Fisher shaking a string of bells as he moved over to sit on the floor, Valdivia following him to a set of singing bowls. They gradually fell into a slow rhythm, with Valdivia playing a recurring figure on the small gongs and Fisher punctuating it with the low bonnnng of the large one. As the pair slowly built up a rhythmic interplay that kept coming back to that same repeating figure it was very zen and particularly gorgeous.1 General Chaos' lighting was particularly effective here, with big slow-moving blobs of colour on the brick walls behind the altar.
That transitioned into a closing phase, based around Fisher's wordless vocals, at first just backed by jingling bells, building a pleasing spaceout drift vibe with the lighting contributing to a Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite vibe as Fisher built loops of his voice while Valdivia took over the drumkit. The finale, a guitar/drum duo, couldn't match the serene heights of the gong segment, but closed out the journey with an adequate return-to-earth.
Listen to an excerpt from this set here.
The first out-of-town guests in the festival were soon setting up on the floor in front of the stage. Gordon Grdina's East Van Strings brought violin, viola and cello along with Grdina's guitar and oud. His singular status, both in gear and above-the-title billing outlined that was would be a rather unusual string quartet. Grdina has many different projects on the go, including several "jazz" ones (his trio has recently toured with saxophonist with Mats Gustafsson) and, interestingly, sideman duties with singer-songwriter Dan Mangan. But here he was presenting an intriguing sort of chamber music.
"Origin" (from the fine The Breathing of Statues album) contained, after the sweepingly dramatic head, room for improvisation in a quieter vein, pizzicato plunks working off the guitar. Grdina then switched to the oud for the extended "The Breathing of Statues", which gave the music a slightly more exotic cast (I think taqsim is the word I'm looking for here, but I'm verily in danger of getting out of my depth) with a delicious drone-y undercurrent to the oud picking, slowly morphing into a slightly more melodic structure in an expansive soundscape that lasted nearly fifteen minutes. Final selection "Webern" sounded more like the product of a "traditional" string quartet, albeit in a modernist Bartók-like vein.
Though we tend to think of music like this as being imbued with more "formality" than yr typical rock'n'roll, the musicians weren't too fusty about it — I don't think I'd ever heard a string quartet begin with a count in, for example. And it was really beautiful stuff, not to mention a demonstration of the variety within the Wavelength experience. I grabbed myself a copy of The Breathing of Statues right after the set, and I'd have to say this was one of the highlights of the festival for me.
Listen to a selection from this set here.
Heading into the night, I was most anticipating a too-rare appearance by Melissa Boraski, who releases music under the mystically-suggestive bandonym Eiyn Sof. Now based in Brantford, Boraski doesn't make it to town to play as much, but her restless creative spirit is kept busy with her recordings. The full-length Bloodstreams was one of my absolute favourite albums from last year2, creating a realm where rootsy shuffles and twitchy synthscapes effortlessly co-exist. It's a textured album that would take some effort to reproduce live, and indeed with just a duo on stage — Boraski on electric guit, backed by Katie Iarocci — things were stripped back to leave the focus on the well-written songs.
Iarocci's vibes still managed to add a nice touch of atmosphere to "Take By Storm" and "Found Myself Running". Although there were a couple new songs in the mix, most of the set was drawn from Bloodstreams, including a rearrangement of "Young Son", with Iarocci switching over to the sitar-like bulbul taraang. The set went only for a too-brief twenty-five minutes — I would have loved to hear the ethereal "Too Tall", but I'm willing to wait for the next opportunity.
Listen to a song from this set here.
I arguably don't have too much new to say about Kite Hill, who played a similar set to the last couple times I saw 'em. Caught in that moment between having an album's worth of material and being able to overcome the banalities involved in getting that released to the world, Ryan Carley's orch-pop project remains more in a consolidate-the-gains phase than a break-new-ground one. No matter, as the Music Gallery is a perfect environment for their sweeping, pastoral music, not in the least for having a stage where all eight members can stretch out a little. Plus, mainman Carley (also of Ohbijou) had a chance to settle in behind the grand piano, lending an ornate tone to his songs.
Kite Hill's music swells like a stately retelling of a rambling childhood adventure shot through with a sort of retrospective melancholy — there's heightened drama conveyed in the arrangements, but also some loneliness at the centre. And there were lots of little moments to pick up on here: Carley dedicating the resilient "Warm Winter" ("so – you won't give in / you won't give in / despite the way it's been") to host Doc Pickles; the martial drums of "Gathering"; and not-always-played initial salvo "Tom Thumbtack" (from the Friends in Bellwoods II collection).
It looks like there's progress towards the release the band's long-gestating Rest & Run, though now with Ohbijou starting a new album cycle, I'd imagine Kite Hill will have to work around that.3 But here it was a stirring conclusion to the night.
1 At the subsequent studio session, Fisher would describe this with the appropriately ambiguous "Javanese-ish".
2 I don't think this album has got its due yet, so let's just pause to say you should really check it out for yourself.
3 At least it looks like there's going to be the chance for a the band to piggyback on Ohbijou for some out-of-town live appearances, including an upcoming trip to Halifax's Long Live the Queen Festival.
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