Recording: Bit Reduction

Artist: Bit Reduction

Song: [edited excerpt from second piece]

Recorded at Belljar Café (T.O. Noise #4), January 20, 2017.

Bit Reduction - [edited excerpt from second piece]

Amongst the stories of venues closing and DIY spaces under threat, there are slivers of good news to be found, such as this coffee-shop-by-day/bar-by-night turning into a friendly hub for loud and user-unfriendly musics. Located on Dundas Street West right opposite that nifty radial intersection with Howard Park that that sees a near-steady stream of streetcars merging in and out, the Belljar is a small-ish space, but quite adequate to the needs of several flavours of noise music. This series comes more from the punk end of the harsh-noise scene, but there are signs that there's an effort being made to book from a wider spectrum and let different sounds rub up against one another.

This project from the stylishly-turned-out Craig Renaud included inputs such as cheese grater, bass-string-sawing-block and raw-shouting-into-audio-cable, all processed through a menacing-looking pedal rack of implements. A bow was shredded, then shattered, and then the fragments used to stab at the string box, and the set ended when there were no longer enough things plugged into other things to send a signal. Yet despite the make-me-bleed harshness (dollar store cheese graters should come with an operators' caution) there was an underlying elegance hinting at carefully-plotted chaos — and possibly even restraint.

[The series returns to The Belljar on Saturday, March 11th, with a night that will include Beard Closet's noise refraction Samesex, plus sets from Marion, Excrement Binge and Corrodesion.]