Recording: Freaky Boos

Artist: Freaky Boos

Song: [first section]^*

Recorded at The Tranzac (Tiki Room), February 5, 2020.

Freaky Boos - [first section]

Touring up and down the 401 to celebrate the release of their debut full-length, Becky Katz, Aaron Hutchinson and Jackson Darby once again explored the chaos and community that comes in working together to tear things apart. Always joyfully askew, this set was also incredibly dense and action-paced, with co-ordinated sonic attacks imploding into moments of solo exploration. Unified by a projection of a ticking countdown clock, this set both had a loosely-choreographed structure and a building dramatic tension: something is gonna happen, so you better sit back and try and get comfortable while you try and figure out what.

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

Recording: Freaky Boos

Artist: Freaky Boos

Song: Kind of Truth + unknown^*

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #47), February 5, 2019.

Freaky Boos - Kind of Truth

Freaky Boos - unknown

When I booked this project to play Track Could Band, it was because it was made up of three community-minded peeps from Hamilton — I had no idea what they were going to be playing. Comprised of three musicians with different soundworlds, my first guess is that might have been a party groove band, à la Jackson Darby's PERSONS. A couple songs on a lathe-cut single hinted otherwise and in person, it turned out to be an interesting answer to the question of how different musical approaches could share the same stage.

One approach (as heard in the first piece here) was simply taking long breaths together, but the other was simply to give space and break out into a series of solo spots within the trio. That created room not only for Darby's laptop manipulations, but also Becky Katz's conversational samples and collage snippets as well as Aaron Hutchinson's synth and trumpet textures. If there's a thesis here, it's maybe that being in a community can help amplify our individual voices — a useful reminder in these astonishing times.

[Track Could Bend is back at Wenona Lodge on Tuesday, May 7th!]

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

Recording: SourPussy

Artist: SourPussy

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Owl's Club (basement), January 25, 2019.

SourPussy - [excerpt]

Another set of liberation sounds from these Hamilton Women Who Run With the Wolves, broadcasting a set of old-school free improvisation, creating a realtime sonic collage, and acting like human samplers, sometimes bringing back spoken snatches to reconnect with newly-emerging sounds. There's still plenty of pass-the-brass instrument swapping and a sense of barely-organized coherence — rather than getting the sense that they're following a rulebook, it feels like it holds together because these are ongoing conversations in which the audience are temporarily included.

Recording: Man Made Hill & Friends

Artist: Man Made Hill & Friends

Song: [excerpt, in two parts]

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

Man Made Hill & Friends - [excerpt, part 1]

Man Made Hill & Friends - [excerpt, part 2]

When I was asked to present a night at the 416 festival, I considered it a part of my remit to bring something that might not otherwise be considered for the festival. Randy Gagne, best known for his work as Man Made Hill, puts himself into a lot of inventive situations, but they usually fall outside the "formal" spheres of what gets called creative or improvised music. So I invited him to put himself in that headspace — and to bring along whatever sort of ensemble he wanted.

I couldn't have been more pleased with the collaborators he brought, including Zoë Alexis-Abrams (of Manticore, on keyb and vox), Becky Katz (of Hamilton's Sourpussy, on vox, percussion, clarinet and more) and Jeremy Dennis (on sax and vox). I had no idea how this was going to hash out on stage — musically, it turned out, this was somewhat "outside": sonic dank memes, if you will. Rather than focusing on the formalities of musical exchange, there was a strong sense of play, especially from Katz, who had a whole bevy of tricks on hand, including readings from the Guinness Book of World Records and an occasionally confrontational relationship to her drums, stopping and declaring, "it's not... it's not doing what it's supposed to do!" And in that might be captured the anarchic joy of the whole enterprise.

Recording: Sourpussy

Artist: Sourpussy

Song: A Song for Leah Jean^*

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (WET TECH), August 27, 2016.

Sourpussy - A Song for Leah Jean

WET TECH was an night-long product demonstration from the XHE corporation in the Tranzac's main hall, showing off some of the newest advances in sweat-harvesting technology. Between the executive massages, aerobics demonstrations and free Intelli-Gel® samples there was also some musical entertainment. Stay tuned for further secretions developments from these exciting new frontiers.

I believe this was the first T.O appearance for this Hamilton-based group, but I'd already had a couple people recommend them to me. As much a guerrilla feminist art performance as a "band", their set was filled with anarchic play. There was a kinship to, say, The Raincoats or New Fries — but untethered from any fealty to song structure. Instead, pieces would unfold like a comedy sketch (or a Negativland free-form radio broadcast) with phrases being tossed back and forth, sung, shouted or chanted. There were instruments in play (including an accordion that was the subject of an onstage tug of war) and a siren-noise coming and going in the background. There was a method here, but nothing they did felt like it had become rote or ritualized.

^* The band has suggested this as an appropriate title.