Recording: Freak Heat Waves

Artist: Freak Heat Waves

Song: In the Dip of the Night

Recorded at The Garrison (Wavelength Winter Festival 18 – Night 2), February 17, 2018.

Freak Heat Waves - In the Dip of the Night

This year's Wavelength birthday celebration was more restrained than usual, sticking to one venue for three nights and having no extra daytime activities. That left the work to transforming the events to something more than just a "regular" night at a show to scene-setters like General Chaos and Roxanne Ignatius. Night 2 was nominally the "rock" night, with electronics giving ways to amps and drumkits — though the night's final two acts each tugged at those distinctions in their own ways.

Victoria's Freak Heat Waves have virtually been a different band each time I've seen them, so it wasn't a total shock to see that a taut postpunk unit had been reduced to a Suicide-esque duo for this show. Witnessing Thomas Alfred Di Ninno operating his MPC2000XL in realtime was amusingly akin to watching someone sending a fax, so it was left to Steven Raymond Lind's looming presence to keep the audience focused. Their brand new Beyond XXXL is just out on Telephone Explosion.

[Freak Heat Waves will be playing Telephone Explosion's "Year Ten" celebration, Friday, June 8th at Lee's Palace. The next Wavelength Festival is already on the distant horizon, with Camp Wavelength once more contained to the mainland and landing at Garrison Common on August 18th and 19th. Meanwhile, the next few monthly shows, co-productions (as well as a cool Toronto Post-Punk in the Early ‘80s Music Talk) are all announced.]