Recording: Bodies That Matter

Artist: Bodies That Matter

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at the basement auditorium of Toronto Public Library – Parkdale Branch (SHHHH! – Year 2, Show 2), May 6, 2017.

Bodies That Matter - unknown

Kudos to Kyle Knapp (of the band Deliluh and the Raw Materials label/collective) for keeping going the community initiative he started a year ago, bringing strange and wonderful sounds to the library's Parkdale branch. I missed the previous evening's show up in the stacks, but made it down for this Saturday matinée, mixing up a variety of artists to entice patrons and passers-by to join the crowd in the wonderfully-retro basement auditorium. Seeing Phil Hamilton setting up alongside Ian McPhedran, one might have concluded that this was a different band playing, but it turns out that the former had been drafted to fill out the latter's solo sound. Clutching an oscillating noise-box and playing some of the wettest drum sounds imaginable, Hamilton's distortions worked in the service of Bodies That Matter's core aesthetic: burying pop hooks under layers of murk. The echoes of their work in Determinist? were even more pronounced in a set-closing white-noise crescendo, hinting at how there are many roads to that same sonic zone.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one? Please leave a comment!