Recording: Völur

Artist: Völur

Song: Fremdheit, Fremdheit

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (TONE Festival), July 3, 2022.

Völur - Fremdheit, Fremdheit

If you think of Völur as folk band, instead of getting caught up in dissecting metal subgenres, their willingness to engage in a wide variety of musical practices falls right into place. Part of a recent-ish collaborative EP, this piece sees bassist Lucas Gadke show off his developing tanbur skills (and also sees John D. Williams joining in on clarinet).

Recording: Tatsuya Nakatani

Artist: Tatsuya Nakatani / Tatsuya Nakatani Gong Orchestra

Songs: [two excerpts] / [excerpt, in two parts]

Recorded at The Music Gallery @ 918 Bathurst, May 26, 2018.

Tatsuya Nakatani - [excerpt 1]

Tatsuya Nakatani - [excerpt 2]

Tatsuya Nakatani Gong Orchestra - [excerpt, part 1]

Tatsuya Nakatani Gong Orchestra - [excerpt, part 2]

The past couple years have seen a series of visits from master percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani, each of which has seen him welcomed by an increasing crowd of astonished admirers. It was therefore fitting for the Music Gallery to provide the resources to take things up to the next level and host a manifestation of Nakatani's Gong Orchestra. Providing the beautiful percussive hardware, Nakatani relies on local programmers to create an ensemble, which then spends the day together learning his vocabulary before performing for the public. The instructions specify that the musicians can be at different levels of experience (and, in fact, do not even need a background in percussion) so it's no surprise that the MG was able to use its many connections into many different scenes to come up with a diverse ensemble. Members included: Brenda Joy Lem, Katie Jensen, Debashis Sinha, Charlotte Cornfield, Rupert Ojiji Harvey, Kristyn Gelfand, HanHan, Alex Punzalan, W. A. Davison, Tréson Alman, Jenn Kitagawa, Bryan W. Bray, Laura C. Bates and Raphael Roter.

Before starting the concert with a captivating solo set, Nakatani reminded the crowd that this isn't so much a musical undertaking as a "vibration project" so that should be kept in mind in listening to these artifacts here — it's nowhere near as wonderful as feeling the vibrations live and in person, where the listener gets to lean in closer to hear the tiniest bowed overtones before being bowled over by mallet-clanging thunderstorms. That feeling of vibration-over-sound was even more intense with the ensemble playing together, while Nakatani conducted the group to create intense phasing and other effects across the length of the churchlike hall.

Recording: Völur

Artist: Völur

Song: Psychopomp

Recorded at Jam Factory (Intersection – Day 2), September 1, 2017.

Völur - Psychopomp

In recent years, the Intersection Festival would normally consist of a paid concert, usually the night before the day-long extravaganza in Yonge-Dundas Square. This year, however, under the continued guidance of Burn Down The Capital's Tad Michalak the festival expanded to four events, including a pair of concerts at The Jam Factory.

The last time I saw this local doom-folk group play, violinist Laura C. Bates claimed it was their "first and last sit-down show" — but this time even she was sitting down. Playing as a stripped-down acoustic duo (drummer Jimmy P. Lightning was absent for this one) the pair zoned in even further in the folky drone at the heart of their songs. This piece was essayed on a recent cassette single with guest vocals from Ivy Mairi, but they were ably handled here by bassist Lucas Gadke (also showing off his banjo skills).

[You can see some footage from this set over at Brandon Caswell Douglas' Intersection playlist.]

Recording: Völur

Artist: Völur

Songs: Idisemorgen (reduction)^* + Es wächst aus seinem Grab

Recorded at The Music Gallery (Emergents I), November 17, 2016.

Völur - Idisemorgen (reduction)

Völur - Es wächst aus seinem Grab

A slightly audacious pick to headline the season's first Emergents show, this demonstrated some out-of-the-box thinking from curator Chelsea Shanoff. As loud as openers Wapiti were quiet, this cowled trio's doom-ish metal rumbled the sanctuary's walls a little. This trio sees Lucas Gadke (bass) and Laura C. Bates (violin) — who I also recently saw as part of Gates — joined by Do Make Say Think drummer Jimmy P. Lightning.

Giving a sense of occasion to what they called their "first and last sit-down show", they lead off with the acoustic drone/chamber piece heard here before cranking things up with songs from their recent tape (google translate helpfully tells me that "Es wächst aus seinem Grab" can be rendered as something like "it grows out of its grave") plus some new material. Far more "metal" than a typical night at The Music Gallery, this brought out a somewhat atypical crowd for the venue — hopefully a few of them will be inspired to come back and experience some other unlikely music there.

^* Thanks to the band for passing along the proper title to this piece!

Recording: Gates

Artist: Gates

Songs: Lacunae + Woven Into Parchments [chamber mix]

Recorded at Yonge-Dundas Square (Intersection Festival – Day 2), September 3, 2016.

Gates - Lacunae [chamber mix]

Gates - Woven Into Parchments [chamber mix]

A lovely day, warm in the sun with a cool breeze, the Intersection Festival once again filled Dundas Square with music of all kinds, offering a counterpoint to business at usual in the ad-basked concrete canyon. With Tad Michalak (of Burn Down the Capital/Feast in the East) again taking a leading role in curating the day, the music had nods to the festival's more chamber music-intensive past while upping the noise and weirdness reverberating off the surrounding walls. That had a sort of push-pull effect on the passers-by, sometimes drawing them in, sometimes causing evident confusion and moving along.

Experimental metallists Gates have fluctuated in size in the past, but this festival appearance gave the none-more-black crew a chance to double its size from its currently-customary quartet, seeing core members Bryan W. Bray (guitar), Joel Beauchamp (percussion & synth), Lucas Gadke (bass) and Laura C. Bates (violin) augmented with Raphael Weinroth-Browne (cello), James Beardmore (synth & electronics) Karen Ng (tenor sax & clarinet) & Nick Buligan (trumpet). That gave the crew a chance to present some of the pieces from their forthcoming Vas album in a sort of musical widescreen, embroidering the underlying doom drones with rich ambient builds and freeform freakouts. Like a batsignal shining in the sky, the first rumbling notes sent out some sort of metal alarm, and suddenly a small horde of jean-jacketed, fist-pumping enthusiasts materialized in front of the stage. As "composerly" as anything you might have ever seen at Intersection, this comes from somewhere entirely different than New Music orthodoxy, but it's heading to the same destination. (Via Hell, of course.) [Do note that my recording here, with the guitar and bass not present in the soundboard feed, is gonna have a whole bunch less menacing rumble than what's going to eventually emerge — let's call this alternative consideration of these pieces a "chamber mix" in honour of all those extra elements that really get to stand out here.]

Recording: The Lady Hedonism Consort of Toronto

Artist: The Lady Hedonism Consort of Toronto

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at Array Space (Audiopollination #42.2), May 22, 2016.

The Lady Hedonism Consort of Toronto - [excerpt 1]

The Lady Hedonism Consort of Toronto - [excerpt 2, part 1]

The Lady Hedonism Consort of Toronto - [excerpt 2, part 2]

This large improvising ensemble was convened by Nilan Perera, who added some electric bass to an opening drone section but otherwise primarily conducted. Using some basic hand signs (and occasional vocal instruction) he built up series of loops and competing riffs that tended more toward sympathetic juxtapositions rather than abrasiveness. The members of the ensemble were: Heather Saumer, Bea Labikova, Alexandra Spence, Laura Swankey, Ilana Waniuk, Laura Bates, Aline Homzy and Sanaz Nakhjavani.