Recording: Baby Cages

Artist: Baby Cages

Song: Dark Arts

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet (SummerWorks: Sound Circuitz), August 12, 2016.

Baby Cages - Dark Arts

Sometimes, a single moment of flotsam on the pop-culture sea can get lodged in the back of your head and become a personal beacon that endures for years. Like, say, the image of a bird and fish falling in love in an early computer-animation clip. That scene, and others from the Mind's Eye computer animation demos that were repackaged for a generation of Canadian teens as YTV's Short Circutz, was the inspiration for Basement Studio Project (Halloway Jones, Natalie Logan and Heather Rappard), who turned the theatre space into an analogue reconstruction of a computer animated landscape. Giving a huge amount of depth to the room, the audience were welcomed to wander (or dance) around the performers.

Besides contributing to the visual concept, Halloway Jones also performed, fronting her band Baby Cages in a set of ruminative guitar pop. This was the first time I managed to catch Katie Jensen's keyb work with the band, which added some welcome extra textures. Jeremy Costello, a longtime collaborator who also played with his project Special Costello, also adds some backing vox here.