Recording: Short Bloom

Artist: Short Bloom

Song: Untitled

Recorded at The Music Gallery (X Avant XVI – Night 3), October 16, 2021.

Short Bloom - Untitled

The Music Gallery's annual X Avant Festival felt like a return and a renewal in all the right ways. Although these weren't the first events presented by new-ish Artistic Director Sanjeet Takhar, they were the first ones in person, with performers and audience sharing space — a long-awaited return from all sides. Each of the nights played off the festival theme "You in Mind", looking for ways to amplify and support the overlapping communities being drawn together. Day Three ("Process") was "dedicated to the global thread of sustained tone as a healing modality" — by way of an eight-hour drone zone, letting the audience lay back on 918 Bathurst's sanctuary floor and watch projections planetarium-style on the high-arched ceiling.

This artist was one on the new discoveries for me at this show, and a perusal of his soundcloud indicates that his sonic zone extends into more beat-driven house and synth-pop territory. This set showed admirable restraint, however, stripping things back into meticulous ambient oases. There were some guitar-driven melodic sections, but this opening salvo just used a two-note riff to create some gliding Enoesque atmospherics.