Festival: Toronto New Music Marathon

Toronto New Music Marathon

Yonge-Dundas Square. Saturday, September 25, 2010.

A cool afternoon, with big breezy gusts of wind and little interludes of warmth as the sun made occasional appearances. As a prelude to a day of puttering around, popped into Yonge-Dundas Square to catch the first part of a whole day's worth of programming at the third annual "New Music Marathon". An audacious bit of work to put some decidedly non-pop musics in front of the great unwashed, it was fairly quiet in the early going. Besides the usual supply of gawkers and passers-by, there were just a handful of hardy souls dragging metal chairs from the edge of the square over to spots in front of the stage, where the day's first ensemble was soundchecking. A few stalls at the back of the square contributed to the festival atmosphere.

First up on the day, and the thing I'd come by to check out was a performance of Terry Riley's "In C". One of the foundational pieces of minimalist music, "In C" is based on a flexible score — 53 "cells" that range from one to several bars of music. There is no fixed rule as to the number of repetitions a pattern may have — the musicians are to play as they see fit, listening carefully to their neighbours to not move too far ahead or behind. In this way, a delicate mesh of patterns moves in and out of focus, chance harmonies and counterpoints floating to the surface and dissipating. It's beautiful stuff.

As to how that would play in an uncontrolled environment, Contact Contemporary Music's Jerry Pergolesi sounded a bit unsure. After explaining the nature of the composition, he commented, "hopefully people will get into that." He also provided the "pulse", playing metronomic octave C notes on the marimba as a guide for all the other musicians. The ensemble was an ad hoc group of volunteers, with a dozen players including piano, toy pianos, marimba, accordion, hurdy gurdy and guitars — a smallish ensemble for "In C", although again, there's no predefined notion of what sort of ensemble this is designed for.

Once everyone on stage was settled in, the piece began in general unison before individual players started to feel their way along. After a couple minutes, the sax separated a bit and found some space and for a moment almost felt like it was soloing before ducking back into the surrounding instruments. The toy pianos on stage lent the proceedings a tinkly chiming sort of feel. Meanwhile, people walked by, a few stopping to check it out, some just perplexedly hurrying along. Wandering children improvised their own vocal contributions to the score, pitching in along to the whoosh of traffic and the occasional distant siren. And there amongst the to-ings and fro-ings of the square, there were a couple delicious moments of delicate beauty coming in and out of focus as the performers moved through the piece.

At about twenty-five minutes, it was actually turned out to be rather on the short side — a performance can last forty-five to ninety minutes. As far as these things go, this was a decent rendition, but not the most polished — the minimalist equivalent of a hearty pick-up basketball game. With the need for a quick setup and having the performers stretched out across the big outdoor stage, it looked like one result was that the players weren't hearing each other very well, which is crucial for this piece. But still, quite nice to close one's eyes, lean back and let this drift past like the cool September breeze.

Listen to an excerpt from this performance here.

After that, the between-set gap was filled in with some real-time found-sound sonic installation work by New Adventures in Sound Art. This involved mixing live input feeds from around the square into an ambient soup — soon the "walk sign is on in all directions!" announcement from the pedestrian scramble was being looped in around traffic noise and little snatches of conversation as Wallace Halladay began soundchecking on stage. Pretty cool — for my money, they could be doing this 24/7 in the square.

On the recommendation of Jonny Dovercourt (who had played guitar with the "In C" ensemble and would later take the stage for his own Hybrid Moments project), I stuck around to check out Wallace Halladay¹ playing "Grab It" by Jacob ter Veldhuis. The melodic core was based on taped voices of death row prisoners, sometimes cut down to individual syllables, with the sax playing along to the melodies of the voice. As might be expected, this was not calm and mellifluous — more of an angry shout, words thrusting out like the quick stab of a spoon sharpened into a shiv.

Given the method, this brought to mind Charles Spearin's Happiness Project, which also explored the musicality of the human voice — but besides employing more of a cut-and-paste sensibility, the source material here gave this a different, angrier vibe. The whole piece ran just under ten minutes, and it was kinda awesome to hear the repeating tape loop of "grab it, motherfucker!" echoing through the square. Easy to relate to and entertaining — a perfect mix of avant-garde and accessible for an event like this.

Grab a sample of this performance here.

The Marathon went on all day til 10 p.m., and looking back over the programme now, there's some stuff that I would have really enjoyed hearing. But shopping and other wanderings beckoned, and I headed off. Anyone interested in a casual encounter with "new music" would do well to wander by themselves.²

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¹ The name didn't ring any bells with me, but it turns out I had seen Halladay playing previously at the fondly-remembered "Concrete Toronto Music" concert in 2008.

² Those who dig getting things down in their daytimers well in advance should note that the next Marathon is scheduled for Saturday, September 3, 2011.

NXNE 2010: Saturday (Part 1)

NXNE — North by Northeast Festival, Toronto, 2010.

Saturday, June 19, 2010. Featuring: The Soft Pack, PC Worship, The Grates, Jane Vain, The D'Urbervilles

4 p.m.: The Soft Pack @ Yonge-Dundas Square

Taking an early start on a trip out to meet with some friends, headed down for my only exposure to the big outdoor stage at Yonge-Dundas Square.¹ I figured this early in the day it wouldn't be too crowded, which turned out to be correct. On a hot and blindingly bright afternoon, there were clumps of people standing around to take in The Soft Pack, but lots of elbow room at hand. I'd enjoyed the band enough the night before to warrant an encore, and it's always interesting to see how music that sounded great in a crowded club translates in such a different environment. As I came up from the subway, the band was rocking out an extended groove, and at the song's close vocalist Matt Lamkin joked to the crowd, "Thank you guys very much! We're Iggy Pop and the Stooges." In fact, looking around the square, one could see that there were already people in attendance waiting out all the early bands for the night's much-hyped headliner.

But in the meantime, The Soft Pack did a good job — the bigger stage and sound system gave their music a bit of expansiveness. "Bright Side" felt perfectly right in the open air. The band played from a nearly-identical setlist to what they'd done the night before, down to that set-ending "Gagdad", though here it didn't get to simmer for quite as long. And as always, it was amusing to take this in against all the indeterminacies of playing in the open square, with lots of people with only the most tangential interest in the band on the stage wandering around. Someone was getting into the World Cup spirit, tooting a vuvuzela between songs.

Next up were local spazz-rock explorers DD/MM/YYYY but, in deference to the crazy heat, I retreated to the beer garden and found a relatively shady spot. Not having seen them for a couple years, I've been meaning to catch the Daymonths to get a grip on how their sound is progressing, but this wasn't the day for it. After that, headed uptown for some quality patio time. My friends there were intent on checking out the Stooges, so I came back down with them a while later, but mostly just to check out the now-gigantic crowd before retreating to less packed surroundings.

9:15 p.m.: PC Worship @ The Garrison

I figured that wherever I found myself in the earlier hours of the night I'd have some elbow room, given that there was not only the huge draw of the Stooges gig at the Square, but also the BSS/Pavement show on the island. But still, it was a bit surprising to walk into the back room of The Garrison a few minutes past the hour and see no one else in sight. Mildly eerie.

Brooklyn's PC Worship had gotten the bad luck of the draw to be going head-to-head with Iggy Pop and it looked like they were delaying their start as much as possible on the hope of having any sort of audience to play to. By the time they roused themselves on stage, it was a quarter past the hour and there was a small handful of people around. Their timeslot wasn't the only bit of bad luck that the band was up against — the bass that was being passed back and forth on the stage between songs was explained by vocalist Justin Frye to be a result of the the regular bassist sustaining a nasty hand injury.

But, despite all of that, once the band got going, things were fairly interesting. At the outset the band sounded not unlike Woods, sporting a twisty, lo-fi psychedelic sensibility. Of the five members on stage, the two front-and-centre were both seated and switching between instruments — one playing saxophone and lap-style slide guitar (plus handling some of the rotation bass duties) and the other played violin and did sound manipulations on a rig that included a turntable and a pair of old tape decks. With all of these tools at their disposal, the band was equally capable of spazzing out or hitting a few poptones.

The latter tendency came to the fore on "Staring at the Sun", a woozy pop gem with a Pixies-like bassline and little squelchy bursts of tape-rewinding noise. "Wake Up in the Dark" was, in contrast, a sloggy, druggy ode to monotone inertia that built to a no-wave skronkfest, Frye tugging at the bass strings like he was trying to tear them off.

Now fully into it, Frye announced, "we're going to do a cover song", only to be told by a NXNE apparatchik that it would be their last. Frye reconsidered, and sounding wounded said, "we're not gonna play a cover song, we're gonna play 'Sittin' in My Car' — which is what I'm gonna be doing after this." Signing up for things like NXNE is a bit of a crapshoot for a band, and Frye sounded pretty bummed out, getting to shout out his frustration a bit in the song — "come on, man!"

Making his own mini-revolt at the end, he commented, "it looks like we still have thirty seconds left!" as he tore into a punkrock rant, "I'm so fucked! Every day!" whether it was one of their own songs or a remembered hardcore burst, that ended the set. A tough night for the band, and they obviously didn't reach the sort of audience they were hoping for, which is a shame, as there's definitely a local audience for stuff like this.

Listen to a track from this set here.

10 p.m.: The Grates @ Wrongbar

Headed down to Wrongbar, catching Australian trio The Grates just getting on stage. The band has a couple albums out, but seemed to be sporting a lot of new material. It was hard to make out many of the lyrics, but it didn't seem to matter that much — this was happy bop-along music, with sub-three-minute songs, appealing to those who might find Metric too staid and self-serious. Which is to say, very "pop". The band featured vocalist Patience Hodgson backed with live guitar and drums with some backing tracks supplementing things. But, in a sense, everything was window-dressing for the frenetic Hodgson, who was constant explosive energy in motion. Wearing duck-adorned brass knuckles around her neck, she expounded on the Batusi between songs ("sexiest dance ever invented!") and got involved with the audience when the music was playing. Not content to just ruffle the hair of the patrons up front, soon she was sitting on an audience member's shoulders to sing a slower-paced number.

Musically, it wasn't highly memorable. Closer "19 20 20" (from their 2006 debut album) had a bit of an appealing rough edge recalling Be Your Own Pet, but that edge wasn't there for most of the set, and may more indicate what they're moving beyond. The entertaining Hodgson aside, not much to recommend the band. They felt something like the musical equivalent of a vodka cooler — sweet, fizzy and full of empty calories. Pleasant enough while it's in front of you, but nothing you'd remember the next day.

11 p.m.: Jane Vain @ The Drake Underground

With nothing insisting itself on me in this timeslot, I again perched myself where I'd want to be later on, heading back east down Queen to the Drake Underground. Passed some time with Jane Vain who turned out to be a band, not a person. Formerly Jane Vain and the Dark Matter, the frontwoman is in fact Jamie Fooks, originally from Calgary, now based in Montréal. With their second album just out, the band already gave the sense of being comfortably in their tour groove, from the drummer's inside-out t-shirt to the inside jokes flying back and forth on stage. Guitarist Nathan Curry kept drawing scandalized looks from Fooks by making a series of increasingly-outlandish claims after each song ("This song has the devil's chord in it", "this next song is about having sex with someone while they're asleep").

Musically, the band's main gear was slightly-gloomy indie rock. Fooks, a pleasant singer with a smoky voice, started off on keybs, and moved later to guitar, which made for some nice intertwining parts with Curry. "The Solution" had some interesting atmospherics, but didn't totally hold my attention. That largely extrapolated to the rest of the set — nothing wrong with any of this, and there were some good moments, but it didn't really win me over. A few people up front were into this, but the smallish crowd on hand was generally indifferent, and as the crowd began to swell towards the set's end, it was clear they were waiting on someone else.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Midnight: The D'Urbervilles @ The Drake Underground

Perhaps, like myself, the crowd had heard some of the carefully-dropped hints here-and-there that this might be be The D'Urbervilles' last show. The fact that they were selling off their stock of t-shirts at fire-sale prices was a sign that something was afoot. Not having any solid information, I didn't know what to think, but I was here just in case. Plus, and more pragmatically, one could look ahead and guess that there might be less shows for The D'Urbs on the horizon, when you consider the explosive response to John O'Regan's Diamond Rings project, plus the prospect of a new album from Forest City Lovers, of which Tim Bruton and Kyle Donnelly are members. That's enough to give one the notion that the D'Urbs might get shifted to the backburner, putting that long-awaited second album on hold.²

O'Regan's purple strat no longer has the word "YAA(!)" in taped letters, but he was adorned, as frequently in the past, in a vintage logo Blue Jays t-shirt and cap — appropriate for the set-opening "Cito G" ("back to back/ we're bringing it back"), which segued into "Boys To Men". A quick dip into the older stuff for "Hot Tips", the guitars buzzing hungrily. A couple more new songs followed, and it's all really good stuff — having heard most of these live two or three times now, I'm totally convinced that the band has topped their previous work. Ultimately, there would only be two We Are the Hunters tracks, though to close things out, the band reached back even further for "Shout It Out! (Organ Song)" from their debut EP.

O'Regan's recent persona makeover as Diamond Rings doesn't explicitly carry over to his work here, except perhaps in a more relaxed and extroverted demeanour as he carries himself with a bit more brashness. Meanwhile, The D'Urbervilles remain a formidable unit — still one of the city's best live bands — so we can only hope that success elsewhere doesn't leave a band as good as this as a mere stepping stone.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ In and of itself, the free shows at YDS have been a big plus for the festival. They certainly get people who aren't running out to get a wristband — or maybe to otherwise take in a show at all — excited about NXNE and add a layer of "event-ness" to the proceedings that can get lost in the whole meticulous process of dealing with all the showcases. And anything that gets bands out of the bars and playing in the daytime during the festival is also positive. That said, other things being equal, I'm generally content to situate myself where the crowds aren't, so I wasn't exactly in a rush to see a lot of stuff there.

² As of this writing, things have been quiet in the D'Urbs' online presence, but they are playing Pop Montreal this weekend.

Gig: Daniel Lanois / The Campbell Brothers Band

The World of Slide Guitar (feat. Sonny Landreth Band with Cindy Cashdollar / The Campbell Brothers Band / Daniel Lanois)

Luminato Festival. Yonge-Dundas Square. June 7, 2009.

On J.'s suggestion, decided to head down to Dundas Square to check out Daniel Lanois. Looking up what else was on offer at the "World of Slide Guitar", thought that The Campbell Brothers might be worth checking out, do went on down a little early. For some reason, things were running an hour behind the posted schedule, so I ended up catching pretty much all of the Sonny Landreth Band with Cindy Cashdollar. Which, observed from the edge of the square, was pleasant in that bar-band rockin' kind of way.

Met up with J. & J. just as The Campbell Brothers Band were taking the stage, and we moved in for a slightly closer look. Billed as exponents of the "sacred steel" style, combining gospel songs within a bluesy musical framework, the band were certainly virtuosos. All of their selections were given extended treatments, with scorching solos aplenty, including guest appearances from the musicians that had already been on the stage. This was all slickly enjoyable, and wildly popular with the crowd. Perhaps it was just that I was feeling mildly under-caffeinated that it didn't make that much of an impact on me — but it may also have been the fact that I was kinda hoping for more sacred and less steel. The final number, with a jump-out-of-your-seat-and-testify vibe, put things closer to the mark I'd been seeking. More "rock" than "Rock of Ages" in the final analysis, but I guess that's okay too.

After that, Daniel Lanois was a shot of something else. Taking to the stage only with the accompaniment of a bassist to begin with, they settled into a lengthy improvised piece that would have sat well alongside, say, something from Kranky Records. After the feel-good populism of the previous acts, this felt really different and exciting. The piece lasted for about twenty-five minutes before Lanois moved over to the pedal steel and did a couple ambient/country pieces evoking with work with Eno on the Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks album. Well-suited for the cement moonscape of Dundas Square, and as he was crouched over his pedal steel, barely visible past the crowd, it felt like the concert had collapsed into something more like an audio installation on a massive scale, and, for a brief moment, everything felt a little bit serenely altered. Very nicely done.

The second half was more conventionally "rock", and while good stuff, didn't have that same pleasantly dislocating quality, aiming more towards ragged glory. Bringing out a drummer to accompany him, Lanois started with a casual, slowly-unfolding take on "The Maker" and moved on through a few more of his own compositions. The Square, which had been pretty full at the end of the Campbell Brothers, had cleared out a fair amount by the end of Lanois' seventy-five minutes, but that probably had as much to do with a dour grey sky and bitingly cold wind as much as his sounds. I thought it was a real treat — that first half moreso, but still left a warm glow against the cold evening as we fled the square before the free country line dance lessons could begin.