Recording: Intérro

Artist: Kaie Kellough/Tanya Evanson/Jason Sharp/Kevin Lo

Song: Intérro [excerpt]

Recorded at 918 Bathurst (The Music Gallery's X AVANT XII – Night 3), October 13, 2017.

Kaie Kellough/Tanya Evanson/Jason Sharp/Kevin Lo - Intérro [excerpt]

After an off-season of uncertainty and exiled from its home at St. George The Martyr Church, The Music Gallery has found refuge at 918 Bathurst. Vibewise, this has kept things in the same ballpark, with the new space sharing churchy origins and a wood-y acoustic space. The X Avant Festival was first big test for this arrangement of things, presenting four nights of shows there. More than ever, the linkages between the Festival's performances was in the overarching theme of "Resistance", rather than tracking any musical throughline.

The last-minute cancellation of Chino Amobi left a gap in the night's lineup, and moved this babelogue into the headliner slot. Given the intensity of the piece, it's hard to imagine slotting anything after it. Based on crowdsourced reports of interactions with border guards, this made the power imbalance-induced anxiety of these liminal experiences into a palpable, physical thing. Jason Sharp's ominous synth washes, sax blasts and elevated heartbeat rhythm bumps created a soundscape for poets Kaie Kellough and Tanya Evanson to build up from confused phonemes to disorienting sentence fragments to barked commands. Kevin Lo's visuals, presenting the word-fragments in another way, added to the sensory overload. Intense and harrowing, and a reminder that these tensions are not distributed equally to all border-crossers.

Recording: Sharp-Allemano-Clutton-Driver

Artist: Jason Sharp/Lina Allemano/Rob Clutton/Ryan Driver

Song: [excerpt from first piece]

Recorded at Huntclub Studio/#WL15 Pop Up Gallery ("Wavelength 635"), January 25, 2015.

Sharp-Allemano-Clutton-Driver - [excerpt from first piece]

After his solo excursion, Montréal's Jason Sharp (on baritone and bass sax) was joined by locals Lina Allemano (trumpet), Rob Clutton (double bass) and Ryan Driver (synth) for a set of sonic terrain explorations.

[Allemano, Clutton and Driver (a/k/a the "N" trio) will be playing at The Tranzac a week from tonight (Sunday, February 8th), which also serves as a send-off party for Allemano, who is Europe-bound. Meanwhile, there's a bunch more talks, workshops and shows in the pop-up space over the next two weeks, leading right into Wavelength's fifteenth anniversary festival.]

Recording: Jason Sharp

Artist: Jason Sharp

Songs: [two fragments from an improvisation]

Recorded at Huntclub Studio/#WL15 Pop Up Gallery (Wavelength 635), January 25, 2015.

Jason Sharp - [first piece, fragment 1]

Jason Sharp - [first piece, fragment 2]

A cozy night at Wavelength's pop-up venue in Little Italy was also a chance to make the musical acquaintance of Montréal's Jason Sharp, improvising on baritone and bass saxophones. He also has a cool noise element worked out, playing into a mic that runs through a pedal and then a left/right pair of mini amps generating small squalls of feedback. You can hear that in play for these clips on the bari.

[There's a bunch more talks, workshops and shows in the pop-up space over the next two weeks, leading right into Wavelength's fifteenth anniversary festival.]