Artist: Bachelard
Song: [excerpt]
Recorded at The Music Gallery (X Avant XVI – Night 3), October 16, 2021.
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.
Heidi Chan's solo modular synth project can sometimes extend into a pricky bit-crushed haze (as excellently demonstrated on the recent Sprawls album), but this set saw her stretching with her flute. Sometimes that moved into purely atmospheric territory, such as when the flute was stretched out into creamy, cello-like tones — but this section saw a flute loop being chopped and resequenced and spread around the four corners of the room.
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