Recording: Foisy/Furlong/Ng/Bennett

Artist: Raphaël Foisy/Andrew Furlong/Karen Ng/Ben Bennett

Song: [excerpt, in two parts]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Living Room (f u zZ f es t 2.0), December 12, 2024.

Raphaël Foisy/Andrew Furlong/Karen Ng/Ben Bennett - [excerpt, part 1]

Raphaël Foisy/Andrew Furlong/Karen Ng/Ben Bennett - [excerpt, part 2]

A one-off touring-friends-meet-the-locals ensemble, this set featured Montréal's Raphaël Foisy (guitar) and Philadelphia's Ben Bennett (musical saw, floor percussion) joined by Karen Ng (alto sax) and Andrew Furlong (double bass) for some scratchy, crunchy freakouts and rumbly textures.

You can check out the full set over on youtube:

Monday Roundup #32

In the absence of concert listings, my regular Monday dispatches have fallen off. After bringing some life to the blog with the "bumping into" series, I figure I should get back in the groove. I'm guessing that this will be a bit like what used to get shoved into the end of the post when I was doing listings — some bandcamp suggestions, nods to a few livestreams, and sundry community notes (email me if you have anything that needs broadcast in the latter category!). Plus maybe a look back through the MFS archives.

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Community notes:

• There remains a lack of clarity on the "what's happening with concerts?" front. COVID numbers are shooting back up, and if you do the math on the numbers being posted every day you might see that something like twenty per cent of cases are in double-vaxxed people. And even if only miniscule numbers from that subset are getting sick enough to need hospitalization, it's unclear how sick people are getting. But: how sick do you want to get? It also means more unknowingly-infected people out and about in situations where they can pass it along. All of which makes gatherings (especially indoors) still feel tentative, despite all the cool shows being announced. Even with a patchwork of self-imposed regulations it seems like outbreaks are imminent. Meanwhile, musicians and venues alike are trying to navigate the landscape to find a balance between viable and fair ways of holding shows. I remain completely unclear as to how things will look, oh, say, two or four or eight weeks from now.

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Concert listings:

• Pamenar Sessions (feat. members of the Labyrinth Ensemble) / Café Pamenar [back patio] 2021-08-29 (Sunday). $pwyc. [FB event]

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Livestream nation:

• Exit Points #18 returns on Wednesday (August 25th) with sonic and visual inventions for synths and more.

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It happened this week...

• ...on August 27, 2016 at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge.

Raphael Foisy/Vicky Mettler/Colin Fisher - [second piece, part 1]

[Do remember that you can click on the tags below to go back and find the original posts (and often, more stuff) from these artists.]

Recording: All Ears, All Thumbs

Artist: All Ears, All Thumbs

Song: [excerpt from first piece]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (416 Toronto Creative Improvisers Festival – Night 2), November 3, 2016.

All Ears, All Thumbs - [excerpt from first piece]

When I was asked to present a night at the 416 festival, I wanted try and bring in some guests from further afield than I might normally do, so I was pleased that bassist Raphael Foisy-Couture agreed to come down the 401 from Montréal. Given the chance to put together a 416-meets-514 ensemble, he brought along guitarist Vicky Mettler to face off with Colin Fisher (playing drums) and Karen Ng on alto. (He also brought the festival's best band name.) I had seen thee of these four (minus Ng) playing together a couple months previously, so I kinda knew that I was expecting a bit of a shredfest. And indeed there was no shortage of that, but also some nice moments of holding back between bursts of sweet tumult.

Recording: Raphael Foisy/Vicky Mettler/Colin Fisher

Artist: Raphael Foisy/Vicky Mettler/Colin Fisher

Songs: [second piece, in two parts]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), August 27, 2016.

Raphael Foisy/Vicky Mettler/Colin Fisher - [second piece, part 1]

Raphael Foisy/Vicky Mettler/Colin Fisher - [second piece, part 2]

Although there were a few Rush jokes being tossed back and forth as this superpower trio set up, it was probably more apt when they sent out one piece as a tribute to the late Sonny Sharrock on his birthday. Colin Fisher is on drums here, and Montréal's Vicky Mettler is handling the guitar-scraping while Raph Foisy provides the bass rumbulations.

Recording: Arrington de Dionyso

Artist: Arrington de Dionyso

Song: [excerpt from second piece]

Recorded at Array Space (Invocation Residency Series), August 26, 2016.

Arrington de Dionyso - [excerpt from second piece]

Arrington de Dionyso is based in the Pacific Northwest, but has been spending some time out NY way; this brief excursion into Canada saw him backed by an ad hoc Montréal quartet that included percussionist Pierre-Luc Simon (his foil on a new tape from Jeunesse Cosmique) as well as Raphael Foisy and Vicky Mettler. Especially with the latter pair on hand, things started in a cleansingly apocalyptic wall-of-noise zone before pulling back to explore some more subtle textures. De Dionyso played sax and bass clarinet as well as some homemade pvc pipe instuments that allowed interesting multiple voicings, while also offering some throat-singing mutter-howls (and occasionally pausing his playing for some tai chi-style moves). An hour of steady, kinetic energy and galloping creativity.

Recording: Bryan Qu Large Ensemble

Artist: Bryan Qu Large Ensemble

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Array Space (Somewhere There's Second Sunday Series), August 14, 2016.

Bryan Qu Large Ensemble - [excerpt]

Over the course of the summer, this agglomeration has convened a handful of times to experiment with large-group free improvisation. Under the nominal leadership of saxophonist Bryan Qu (another young player from the U of T crew that's seeping into the city's creative music scenes) there's no conducting or prearranged cues, which makes it somewhat surprising that the group approaches things with relative restraint. Although the music crests in a series of Ascensions, you can generally follow individual players without things getting lost in a clamourous blow-out. The group were eleven deep this time out, as as far as I can work out, the contingent included: David Baldry (trumpet), Mark Ballyk (percussion), Evan Cartwright (drywalling tools), Belinda Corpuz (voice), Brandon Davis (bass), Emily Denison (trumpet), Chris Pruden (keyb), Alexei Orechin (guitar) Raphael Foisy-Couture (electronics), Vicky Mettler (guitar), and Bryan Qu (saxophone).

Recording: BOBAN GrieviNg

Artist: BOBAN GrieviNg + the BOBAN GrieviNg Supergroup

Songs: [excerpt from first piece] + Boban is Just a Word

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), January 27, 2016.

BOBAN GrieviNg - [excerpt from first piece]

BOBAN GrieviNg Supergroup - Boban is Just a Word

Some things look quite straightforward on paper. This Wednesday evening show from Somewhere There was billed as a night with two duos — Logan Mills (piano) with Montréal's Raphael Foisy-Couture (bass) as BOBAN and Karen Ng (sax) with Robert Grieve (guitar) as GrieviNg — but things ended up being much less straightforward. Indeed, the night began with all four playing together in a sort of scuffling/banging skritchscratch clangcrunch before adding Paige Stewart for some recited wordtextures.

But then, after a break, all hell broke loose. Mills' skill-set includes an ability to draft collaborators as conspirators in anarchic free-form play and that might explain how suddenly there were nine performers on stage, including Laura Swankey (vox) and Emily Denison (trumpet) plus duelling percussionists Robert Diack and Andrew Miller facing off against each other. In the end a t-shirt was destroyed, dice were rolled, hats were exchanged, and an impromptu fire drill was narrowly avoided as a gleeful frenzy erupted — all while various members of the ensemble shouted inquiries about the true nature of Boban.

Recording: Brick Quartet + Joe Sorbara

Artist: Brick Quartet + Joe Sorbara

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Ratio, September 3, 2015.

Brick Quartet + Joe Sorbara - [excerpt]

On the first night of a tour, this group joins three Montréalers (Raphael Foisy, bass; Jacob Desjardins, drums; Vicky Mettler, guitar) with New Zealand saxophonist Jeff Henderson. The august name was derived from the slightly less decorous title — Built Like A Brick Shithouse — of a tape documenting a live session that three of them took part in last year. At this local show, they were joined by Joe Sorbara, adding an extra layer of percussion as the group ranged from from revved-up blastin' to shout-shrieks to rubber chicken mouth-to-mouth breakdowns.