Recording: Temporary Ensembles

Artist: Temporary Ensembles, composed of Emily Denison, Ben Grossman, Eric Hofbauer, Daniel Kruger, Matt Miller, Jason Robinson, Joe Sorbara, Kristen Theriault, and Paul Newman.

Songs: [excerpts form various improvisations]

Recorded at Array Space (Somewhere There's Second Sunday Series), March 11, 2018.

Daniel Kruger/Ben Grossman/Kristen Theriault/Matt Miller - [excerpt from temporary ensemble #1]

Paul Newman & Joe Sorbara - [temporary ensemble #2]

Emily Denison/Jason Robinson/Eric Hofbauer - [temporary ensemble #3]

Daniel Kruger & Eric Hofbauer - [excerpt from temporary ensemble #4]

Kristen Theriault/Paul Newman/Jason Robinson - [temporary ensemble #5]

Ben Grossman/Joe Sorbara/Matt Miller - [temporary ensemble #7]

Jason Robinson & Ben Grossman - [temporary ensemble #8]

Kristen Theriault - [temporary ensemble #13]

Emily Denison & Joe Sorbara - [fragment from temporary ensemble #14]

"Temporary Ensembles are born, live short and potentially magical musical lives, and then sublimate into thin air." Once again, Joe Sorbara's dice determined the size and composition of a series of recombinant brief encounters, giving each of these musicians several chances to interact with different musical conceptions and textures.

[This month's Second Sunday (May 13th) offers two sets of improvised music, one from Bea Labikova, Kayla Milmine, Diane Roblin and cheryl o, followed by a (possibly quiet) pairing of Brian Abbott and Tomasz Krakowiak]

Recording: Matt Miller

Artist: Matt Miller

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge ("416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival" – Night 3), November 4, 2016.

Matt Miller - unknown

A unique "re-remix" project, these sounds originally derived from field recordings collected in Morocco in the late 90's. They were later used as the seeds for a number of dance remixes, which were revisited, revised and re-versioned with live techniques for this set. (Miller has also presented a more ambient take on some of his Morocco recordings over at his bandcamp.)

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

Recording: Heidi Chan + Matt Miller

Artist: Heidi Chan + Matt Miller

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Array Space (Audiopollination 44.2), July 24, 2016.

Heidi Chan + Matt Miller - [excerpt]

Launching a night of electroacoustic explorations with visiting guests Elizabeth Millar and Craig Pederson, this pairing matched laptopist Matt Miller with sound sculptor Heidi Chan, here playing Chinese flute and a bit of thumb piano through her effects chain. Excellent work, with some nice textures throughout and occasional stereophonic yawing and other sonic interventions.

[As always, you can check out the documentation of the whole night over at Audiopollination's bandcamp. Audiopollination is back with some awesome musicians (including a kick-ass combo of SlowPitchSound, Germaine Liu and Nilan Perera) on Saturday night.]

Recording: Castor & Compagnie et amis

Artist: Phill Albert + Heather Saumer + Diane Labrosse / Joane Hétu + Pierre Tanguay + Paul Newman + Matt Miller / Pierre-Yves Martel + Jean Derome + Noah Sherman

Songs: [excerpts from group improvisations]

Recorded at Array Space (Somewhere There presents), June 19, 2016.

Phill Albert/Heather Saumer/Diane Labrosse - [excerpt]

Joane Hétu/Pierre Tanguay/Paul Newman/Matt Miller - [excerpt]

Pierre-Yves Martel/Jean Derome/Noah Sherman - [edited excerpt]

To start off this evening of musique actuelle with the reactivated Castor & Co., the group's members were first split up and recombined with some local players for some off-the-cuff improvisations. That lead to some interesting sonic nudges and musical conversations: Diane Labrosse conducting static-bursts with a wave of her hand in the first set to guide the drift of the acoustic elements; Matt Miller returning the electroacoustic favour in the second as Joane Hétu and Paul Newman's gliding saxophones merged in space; and Pierre-Yves Martel's bass-synth rumbulations building a floor for a free-jazz excursion.

Recording: Aldcroft/Lynn/Ng/Miller

Artist: Ken Aldcroft/Michael Lynn/Karen Ng/Matt Miller

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), June 8, 2016.

Aldcroft/Lynn/Ng/Miller - [set 1 excerpt]

Aldcroft/Lynn/Ng/Miller - [set 2 excerpt]

This night convened by guitarist Ken Aldcroft saw him joined by Michael Lynn (double bass), Karen Ng (alto sax + clarinet) and Matt Miller (laptop manipulations) — a crew and instrument mix well geared toward investigating musical textures more than melody-based jaunts. Aldcroft provided string skritchings and amp whirrings while Miller moved from quiz show buzzes to stereoscopic zworps to whummering bass rumbles, as he sampled and manipulated live sounds from the floor, helping to keep things cycling through musical interactions and sputtering electroacoustic outbursts over two sets.

Recording: Matt Miller/Ben Sirois/Leslie Predie/Minesh Mandoda

Artist: Matt Miller/Ben Sirois/Leslie Predie/Minesh Mandoda

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Dundas Video ("Track Could Bend #13"), April 5, 2016.

Matt Miller/Ben Sirois/Leslie Predie/Minesh Mandoda - [excerpt]

To my great surprise and delight, Track Could Bend has survived and thrived for a full year. To celebrate, I invited everyone who played the series' first twelve months (more than seventy people!) back for a birthday party. In the end, the night consisted of twenty-seven musicians collaborating over eight short sets, most of which were spontaneous "bands from a hat", drawn by lot before the set started. Given the wide range of musical practices and backgrounds, it was quite exciting to see how much coherence and excellence resulted.

The first "band from a hat" set the bar high with an eerie and atmospheric horror-movie soundtrack. Leslie Predie (who performed at TCB#4) set the tone here with her wordless feral vocalizations, but rather than Doom Ticker's hunting sprint, this was more of a sedate lope thanks to the glide of Minesh Mandoda's guitar (part of Ghostlight at TCB#5) and Ben Sirois' violin (part of Someflowers of Hell at TCB#3). Matt Miller (who had performed as part of Rub Out The Word at TCB#9) completed the vibe with his realtime ipad manipulations, adding static bursts and other unsettling noises.

[The next Track Could Bend will be at Dundas Video on Tuesday, May 3rd, featuring Kosher Dill Spears, Terms Of Venery (Mike Smith, solo electronics) and Glamour Nails (Lina Allemano + Justin Haynes).]

Recording: Rub Out The Word

Artist: The Penny Arcade Peep Show [text by William S. Burroughs] + Cut Up Stew

Songs:

Recorded at Dundas Video (Track Could Bend #9), December 1, 2015.

Rub Out The Word - The Penny Arcade Peep Show

Rub Out The Word - Cut Up Stew

When it made its debut, Glen Hall's Rub Out Out the Word project – conceptualized as a centenary tribute to William S. Burroughs — was a large-scale affair, with an eight-piece band and live-mixed visuals. This electroacoustic version stripped things down, with Hall on laptop and sax joined by Matt Miller (laptop + MIDI keyb) and Ted Phillips (cataRT synthesis) — plus the presence of Burroughs represented by Ron Gaskin's narration, facing the musicians as if subject to some sort of bureaucratic tribunal.

This gave a lot of different ways to cut up and reintegrate the source material, from the spoken word heard here in "Penny Arcade", to a immersive sound-trip to a Moroccan marketplace to the cut-up stew that shows the band's musical talents. (On the latter piece, Phillips' cataRT is responding in realtime to the other musicians by drawing from a collection of microsamples that include some Burroughs mutters as well as a few fragments of "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" and some shortwave noises.)

[The next Track Could Bend will be at Dundas Video on Tuesday, January 5th — more info coming soon!]

Recording: Rub Out The Word Ensemble

Artist: Rub Out The Word Ensemble

Song: Nova Express^* [words: William S. Burroughs / composition/conceptualization: Glen Hall]

Recorded at The Music Gallery, November 7, 2014.

Rub Out The Word Ensemble - Nova Express

Opening the 416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival (the other events would take place at The Tranzac) was this ambitious music suite celebrating William Burroughs' centenary. The event was conceived by Burroughs scholar Glen Hall, who played and conducted as the piece's several parts worked off each other. Not only was there an eight-piece band (Bruce Cassidy, Jim Sexton, Chris Cawthray, Rakesh Tewari, Tom Richards, Heather Segger, John Gzowski, David Story), a pair of laptop soundscapists (Ted Phillips, Matt Miller) and live-processed visuals (John Creson, Adam Rosen) at the edge of things (behind a typewriter) sat Ron Gaskin in a rumpled fedora, reading/narrating parts of the proceedings with Burroughs' own words. There was a nice ebb and flow to it such that there was never too much going on at once, even as it built to a fever dream of warped reality.

^* I'm not sure of the formal structure of this piece, so I have named this extract after the Burroughs text that is read/invoked during it.

Recording: Bateman-Miller-Segger-Duncan

Artist: Victor Bateman/Matt Miller/Mark Segger/Christine Duncan

Song: "Playdate" [excerpt from an improvization]^*

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

Bateman-Miller-Segger-Duncan - Playdate

Victor Bateman (electric bass), Matt Miller (laptop) and Mark Segger (percussion) have played together a bit as a trio and at this Tranzac outing they were joined for much of the set by vocalist Christine Duncan. Duncan can captivate even when performing on her own, but the band's textures — touching on noise, ambient and glitch-groove — were a worthy foil. At some points they even approached a sort of no wave "Don't Worry, Kyoko" vibe which was very tasty. No word if these particular players will find themselves in the same room again any time soon, but you can catch them individually around town on the regular.

[You can see Christine Duncan, alongside veteran vocal improviser/sound poet Paul Dutton, at Audiopollination's special Long Winter event tomorrow (December 12).]

^* I'm not sure if this is a straight-up improvisation or if Duncan is working with prepared material here — I'm sure I've heard her riffing about playdates before, so she might have been a loose gameplan coming in. I'm throwing that up as a provisional title, but if anyone can clarify/confirm, please leave a comment!

Recording: Rob's Collision

Artist: Rob's Collision

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Imperial Pub, July 10, 2014.

Rob's Collision - unknown

Full review to follow. This group, convened by flautist Rob Piilonen to explore his compositions, is quite well named, given how he would, at some points, point out pairs of musicians to play duos before moving back into the more structured portions of the pieces. But even more striking were the different musical textures rubbing up against each other, with the gentler tones of flute, Mitchell Yolevsky's clarinet and Cheryl Ockrant's cello rubbing up against Andy Yue's analog synth and clattering percussion from Germaine Liu and Mark Zurawinski. And the real secret weapon was Matthew Miller, manipulating all of the above in realtime on his laptop. It all adds up to a sort of avant-smooth with occasional chunky digressions.

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

Recording: 5biTscience

Artist: 5biTscience

Song: The Book of Hours [excerpt 1] (composed by Bob Ostertag)

Recorded at The Music Gallery (X Avant VII), October 13, 2012.

5biTscience - The Book of Hours [excerpt 1]

Full review to follow. The centrepiece show for this year's X Avant festival gave a couple different perspectives on the work of composer (and this year's Artist In Residence) Bob Ostertag. His own set with animator Pierre Hébert presented his new work "Shadow Boxing", and it was quite the visual spectacle. Musically, though, I was especially struck by the opening set where some top-notch local improvisers (Wes Neal, Joe Sorbara, Jay Hay, Matt Miller) under the direction of Nilan Perera took AIM at Ostertag's "The Book of Hours". Originally primarily a vocal piece, it was presented here as arranged for electric guitar, sax, bass, drums, live samples — and silence.

X Avant will be continuing all this week, and there's a diverse range of shows that you should check out if you want to expand your circuits. You also still have some time to enter my contest to win tickets to a couple of the shows.