Recording: Odradek

Artist: Odradek

Song: [excerpt from 1st piece]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), November 30, 2019.

Odradek - [excerpt from 1st piece]

This trio of Andy Yue, Michelangelo Iaffaldano, and James Bailey were regulars on the local improvised music circuit a few years back, but hadn't played a gig together for five or six years. Unsurprisingly for a grouping with some voracious sonic explorers, there was no attempt made to play what/how they used to play, so this set saw Yue on keyb, Bailey on trumpet and saxophone and Iaffaldano on a delicate construction of SK-1 and phone samples — at least until something went sideways there, forcing him to improvise with voice and whatever else could be found near at hand.

Recording: Deenzi

Artist: Deenzi

Song: [excerpt from 1st piece]

Recorded at Yonge-Dundas Square (Intersection Day 2), September 1, 2018.

Deenzi - [excerpt from 1st piece]

Another interesting day in Yonge-Dundas Square for Intersection, once again excellently curated by Burn Down the Capital's Tad Michalak. Mixing in some abrasive sounds with lots of accessible experimentation, there was a pleasing range of mostly-local talent spread out through the square, animated between sets by the whispersounds of Tina Pearson's installation piece. The sun broke through a layer of clouds to start baking the zone's unsheltered denizens just as this re-emergence from Heidi Chan (flute, modular synth) and Andy Yue (synth) conjured up some froopy grooves, at some times sounding like off-kilter acid-jazz/trip-hop and at others (as heard here) like robot love ballads.

[Deenzi's Heidi Chan will be performing solo and in an improvising duo with Nic Murray at the next SynapticCircus event, Sunday, October 28th at The Tranzac.]

Recording: Deenzi

Artist: Deenzi

Song: [excerpt]

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

Deenzi - [excerpt]

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. The afternoon was lead off by this duo, with Andy Yue pinning things down with keyboard percussion and melodic glue while Heidi Chan pulled at the seams with radio interference bursts and decomposing flute loops.

[Deenzi are playing tonight (Friday, June 9th) as part of It's Not U It's Me's "NANO MUTEK T.O." event. Deenzi's Heidi Chan will also be playing a solo set as Bachelard at "A Quiet Night" at Handlebar on Sunday, June 18th alongside New Tendencies and Heraclitus Akimbo.]

Recording: Deenzi

Artist: Deenzi

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at Gerrard Art Space (Faster Presents: Spring Sounds), March 25, 2017.

Deenzi - [excerpt 1]

Deenzi - [excerpt 2]

This collaboration between Heidi Chan (flute, modular synth) and Andy Yue (MIDI keyb) is simultaneously finding its own musical space while expanding perpendicularly into new zones. That means there's sonic surprises in every set, even as they continue to define their core musical territory. Yue often provides structure on keyb percussion or electric piano sounds while Chan is slicing and dicing her own sampled instruments or adding radio noise-drifts. The tense they speak in is future abstract.

[The next Faster Presents show at G.A.S. is on Saturday, May 20th and includes a make-up for the Faster set that was postponed at this show alongside a solo outing from Matt Miller and an appearance by the Four Shadows Quartet (Zach Clark/Paul Newman/Brian Abbott/Kayla Milmine).]

Recording: Deenzi

Artist: Deenzi

Song: [excerpt from first piece]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival – Night 2), November 3, 2016.

Deenzi - [excerpt from first piece]

When I was asked to present a night at the 416 festival, I knew I wanted to present a range of different sounds. I think it was right after seeing her play an excellent modular synth solo set that I asked Heidi Chan to come perform, and when she said she wanted to do a Deenzi set with Andy Yue, and I was totally enthusiastic. There was a lot of ground covered in their set, from groovy diversions to electroacoustic drift. There's a core to the sound-word that the pair are exploring, but plenty of zones off to the edges to keep the developing picture really interesting.

Recording: Deenzi

Artist: Deenzi

Song: [second piece]

Recorded at The Music Gallery (X Avant XI – Night 1), October 13, 2016.

Deenzi - [second piece]

This year's X Avant festival began with a future-focused night that hewed toward electronic music, leading off with some sci-fi/wuxia improvised soundscapes from Heidi Chan and Andy Yue. Mixing Chan's flutes and modular synth with Yue's electronics, there's some really fascinating textures here — and a keep-'em-guessing approach for anyone trying to reverse-engineer these sounds after the fact. Parts that might sound looped (like Yue's percussion lines) were, in fact, played live on a MIDI keyb, meaning that pattern variations could suddenly creep in at unexpected places. And in this piece, Chan added some impromptu electroacoustic found-sound elements by scratching a finger on her microphone to add to a little bit of electro-frisson.

Recording: Deenzi

Artist: Deenzi

Song: [excerpt from third segment]

Recorded at Dundas Video (Track Could Bend #11), February 2, 2016.

Deenzi - [excerpt from third segment]

Heidi Chan and Andy Yue have been exploring sounds together for a few months now, but this was the first public airing from this new project. Described as "the soundtrack to a Wuxia movie set on a space station orbiting a collapsing star", they covered a range of sounds, from folktronic glide to scratchy noise textures.

[Track Could Bend returns to Dundas Video on Tuesday, March 1st.]

Recording: Asiko Afrobeat Ensemble

Artist: Asiko Afrobeat Ensemble

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Christie Pits Park – Main Stage (Bloor Ossington Folk Festival V), September 19, 2015.

Asiko Afrobeat Ensemble - unknown

You can read my general notes on the festival here. After a brief but intense burst of rain caused some set-shuffling to keep things moving, Foly Kolade's eight-piece afrobeat unit brought the sun back out with their classic Fela-inspired jams. It was nice to see some familiar faces from T.O.'s creative music scenes in the backing band, helping stretch the liquid grooves along and getting a few members of the crowd up and dancing.

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

Recording: Ben Sirois/Andy Yue/Alex Fournier

Artist: Ben Sirois/Andy Yue/Alex Fournier

Song: [edited excerpt from first piece]

Recorded at Array Space ("Audiopollination 32.2"), July 14, 2015.

Ben Sirois/Andy Yue/Alex Fournier - [edited excerpt from first piece]

This was the first night in this year's series of Audiopollination's "self-curation" project, where musicians are welcomed to sign up and improvise in a trio for a short set with... well, whoever else signs up. The format encourages wacky and counter-intuitive combinations, and a chance for musicians to experiment in directions they might not have otherwise explored. The series continues monthly until December.

Perhaps the most "standard" of the night's sets, this saw Sirois' virtuosic violin playing set against Yue's piano explorations and Fournier's extended techniques for double bass.

[As always, you can hear full recordings from the night over at Audiopollination's bandcamp. The self-curation project continues at Array on Tuesday, August 11th, and Audiopollination also has a couple other gigs coming up: this Thursday (July 30th) at The Tranzac, as well as on Sunday, August 30th, with Montréal visitors Geraldine Eguiluz and Stéphane Diamantakiou.]

Recording: Alexis-Abrams/Yue/Fisher/Jones

Artist: Zoë Alexis-Abrams/Andy Yue/Colin Fisher/David Jones

Song: Underground Lake [musical excerpt]

Recorded at The Great Hall's Apartment ("Long Winter: Year 3, Volume 5"), March 13, 2015.

Alexis-Abrams + Yue + Fisher + Jones - Underground Lake [musical excerpt]

I get so busy at Long Winter running from one stage to the other that I don't have nearly enough time to catch all the installations and other art, but I was determined to make at least a little time to head to the top floor apartment to catch Zoë Alexis-Abrams' "Underground Lake". The piece transformed the room (with Natalie Logan's installation work) for a work incorporating video projections and voice to create a re-telling of the myth of Persephone and Hekate journeying to Hades. There was also music provided by Andy Yue (keyb), Colin Fisher (sax), and David Jones (electronics) and this short sample gives a taste of the droney soundscapes they generated to soundtrack Persephone's quest.

Recording: Rob's Collision

Artist: Rob's Collision

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Imperial Pub, July 10, 2014.

Rob's Collision - unknown

Full review to follow. This group, convened by flautist Rob Piilonen to explore his compositions, is quite well named, given how he would, at some points, point out pairs of musicians to play duos before moving back into the more structured portions of the pieces. But even more striking were the different musical textures rubbing up against each other, with the gentler tones of flute, Mitchell Yolevsky's clarinet and Cheryl Ockrant's cello rubbing up against Andy Yue's analog synth and clattering percussion from Germaine Liu and Mark Zurawinski. And the real secret weapon was Matthew Miller, manipulating all of the above in realtime on his laptop. It all adds up to a sort of avant-smooth with occasional chunky digressions.

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