Recording: Michelle McAdorey

Artist: Michelle McAdorey

Song: The Remainder [Lake Ontario mix]^*

Recorded at Artscape Gibraltar Point (Camp Wavelength), August 21, 2016.

Michelle McAdorey - The Remainder [Lake Ontario mix]

Following and expanding on the template of last year's successful festival, Wavelength returned to the island with a meticulously-executed event that included an exciting range of music and a beach full of art beside festival headliner Lake Ontario. It also managed to be a stress-reducing rather than a stress-inducing time — rather like a weekend at the cottage, even if the city was just out of view.

For a peaceful sit-on-the-lawn Sunday set, Michelle McAdorey was without her ace band, instead playing alongside Will Kidman, who added subtle electric guitar licks and vocal support. The recurring image here of a kite tossed around in the wind — tethered to something, but not fully under anyone's control — felt just right for a breezy island day, where it was calm up by the stage protected by the surrounding trees, but quite choppy down by the water.

^* Inspired by a similar still-ish Sunday moment from the previous year's festival, I elected to mix in some sounds from the lake that I'd recorded before the set. As I noted last year, in the live-music-recording game, this is known as "cheating", but it felt proper somehow.