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!