Artist: Yang Chen & co.
Song: [excerpt]
Recorded at the Bata Shoe Museum (Track Could Bend @ X Avant XVIII – Neeeerrrrddddssss: shoe horn), October 12, 2023.
I'm still not entirely sure what I did to deserve such an honour, but somehow I ended up curating a night of this year's X Avant Festival. And not just any ol' night as we were invited to conspire a musical takeover of the Bata Shoe Museum. Thanks to the amazing powers and positive energy of Artistic Director Sanjeet Takhar, we were able to fill the building with creativity, bringing a grouping of nine musicians to first enfold some sounds in the museum's galleries, then gather them all together for a collaborative improvisation. Best of all, though it was on a grander scale than I'd usually allow myself to imagine, it really felt like it was all done in the spirit of Track Could Bend. And were there shoes? Oh yes, there were shoes.
I've seen percussionist Yang Chen in a variety of settings and I knew they could provide some musical secret sauce in an adventure like this. Setting up shop in the upper part of the permanent collection (dedicated to giving a "Glimpse into Artefact Storage") they were at a crossroads for audience members and other wandering performers, generating a variety of close-mic'ed textures and subtle feedback (feet-back?) hums — plus, you can hear some sonic bleed from Why Be Normal on the lower level and some passing horns here.
You can check out some other zones from this set's conclusion over on youtube:
[The Bata's new exhibition Dressed to Impress: Footwear and Consumerism in the 1980's is now open. Track Could Bend will be back in its regular first-Tuesday-of-the-month incarnation at Wenona Lodge on December 5th, with sets from kat estacio and Alma.]
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