Recording: Kayla Grant

Artist: Kayla Grant

Song: [excerpt]^*

Recorded at Array Space (Solonation), June 25, 2016.

Kayla Grant - [excerpt]

Planned as an ongoing semi-annual series, this night was the brainchild of Audiopollination's Mike Lynn. Whereas that series is centred around the idea of small-group spontaneous improvisation, this night was more about celebrating a wider range of creative musical practices in a quintet of short solo sets.

One of two song-based sets of the night, Kayla Grant presented an extended piece that revolved around the use of her voice, looped in the background into percussive murmurs and pitch-split in the foreground to present her own voice as a multiplicity.

The show was also livestreamed and has been archived on youtube. You can check out the full set here:

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

Recording: Zach Clark/Kayla Grant/Pedro Ferreira

Artist: Zach Clark/Kayla Grant/Pedro Ferreira

Song: [excerpt from an improvisation]

Recorded at Array Space ("Audiopollination 32.2"), July 14, 2015.

Zach Clark/Kayla Grant/Pedro Ferreira - [excerpt from an improvisation]

This was the first night in this year's series of Audiopollination's "self-curation" project, where musicians are welcomed to sign up and improvise in a trio for a short set with... well, whoever else signs up. The format encourages wacky and counter-intuitive combinations, and a chance for musicians to experiment in directions they might not have otherwise explored. The series continues monthly until December.

The night ended with this electronic exploration, with Mirrors bandmates Grant (vocal manipulations) and Clark (laptop) joined by Ferreira (laptop) for some oozing digital drift, sounding a bit like Blind Willie Johnson getting lost in cyberspace.

[As always, you can hear full recordings from the night over at Audiopollination's bandcamp. The self-curation project continues at Array on Tuesday, August 11th, and Audiopollination also has a couple other gigs coming up: this Thursday (July 30th) at The Tranzac, as well as on Sunday, August 30th, with Montréal visitors Geraldine Eguiluz and Stéphane Diamantakiou.]

Recording: M+M+M+

Artist: M+M+M+ [Mirrors + Manticore + Moonwood]

Song: [edited excerpt]

Recorded at Ratio, May 29, 2015.

M+M+M+ - [edited excerpt]

What started off as a casual aside ("You could slot Mirrors between Manticore and Moonwood") ended up being the impetus for this gig, gathering all three bands together for a night of drone-influenced pop (pop-influenced drones?) at Ratio.

Jakob from Moonwood was the first one to suggest that the night should end with an all-hands-on-deck improvisation, but all the musicians were quickly on board with the idea. Putting nine people together on stage at once could be a recipe for cacophony, but everyone played with admirable restraint, extending the spare, droney sounds from their own sets to create a loosely-woven sonic tapestry where fragments of each of the band's styles had chances to bubble to the surface.

Recording: Mirrors

Artist: Mirrors

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Ratio, May 29, 2015.

Mirrors - [excerpt]

What started off as a casual aside ("You could slot Mirrors between Manticore and Moonwood") ended up being the impetus for this gig, gathering all three bands together for a night of drone-influenced pop (pop-influenced drones?) at Ratio.

Still not playing a lot of gigs, this trio led off with a mix of live percussion, laptop-processed sounds and vocals, building up to a whitenoise thrum before collapsing into shards of radio soundbursts.

Recording: Mirrors

Artist: Mirrors

Song: [excerpt from an improvisation]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), December 28, 2014.

Mirrors - [excerpt from an improvisation]

This was only the second gig for these self-declared "electric dialectic monist acousticians", but they played nearly an hour of improvised material with a self-assured patience, letting musical themes develop at their own pace. The sound is basically trance-y hypnagogic dreamscapes, with Kayla Grant intoning passages from the Book of the Dead (and processing ver vocals) while Zach Clark provided drones and flutters (on Moog, shruti box and sundry electronics) while Liam Cole pulled the abstractions together with his non-invasive percussion. You could slot this (and not just alphabetically!) between Manticore and Moonwood.