Recording: E ADI

Artist: E ADI

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Smiling Buddha (Casual Drones 14), January 14, 2016.

E ADI - [excerpt]

Having outgrown the small-scale confines of its former home at Milk Glass, the Casual Drones music series has landed at Smiling Buddha. Shifting to the larger venue has come with a definite sense of scaling up, with the shows taking place between two stages upstairs and down and the visuals (always a big element of the series) getting amped up even further. The main floor saw most of the stage removed to make way for a large lighting rig that resembled a sort of post-apocalyptic tanning bed and gave Romar L. Johnson a huge range of luminosity to paint with. So, to the good, there's a definite sense of ambition here — and the full house that was on hand showed there's an audience for this kind of experimentation. To the bad, however, this night did manage to live up to the series' derisive nickname of "Casual Bromes", with seven sets (and, by my count, ten musicians) but no women on stage. (And, for my money, I'm not sure why a night with that many acts needed to wait 'til almost ten to get started.)

The least "drone" (and "casual"!) set of the night, this new pairing saw Elliot Jones (ex-Ell V Gore) exploring further directions in electronic music than yet seen with his recent synth-pop reinvention. Joined by drummer Rob Gordon, this started with the industrial-strength blurts heard here before pushing into straight-up dystopian dance territory — which was given a visceral push by the intense volume and near-physicality of the lighting design.

Recording: Les Mouches

Artist: Les Mouches

Songs: Carload of Whatever + Winter = Dead Time^*

Recorded at Double Double Land, November 30, 2015.

Les Mouches - Carload of Whatever

Les Mouches - Winter = Dead Time

Les Mouches is rather an odd band, with spindly, delicate finger-picked guitar figures suddenly giving way to panic attack noise outbursts and melodramatic pop confessions exploding into emotive shouts. All three of its members would go on to create bodies of fascinating music, but it's Owen Pallett's subsequent emergence as some manner of pop star that made the band an ongoing curiosity beyond the circle of Torontopia/Blocks Music Club enthusiasts. That interest has been stoked again with Warren Hildebrand (of Foxes in Fiction) re-issuing the band's You're Worth More To Me Than 1​,​000 Christians on his Orchid Tapes label. (Like all Orchid Tapes releases, you can grab it over at the Orchid Tapes bandcamp on a "name your price" basis.)

For a band that never toured (and barely played outside Toronto) it might make sense that the "release party" for the reissue came at this "secret" Orchid Tapes showcase at the rather-intimate Double Double Land. The fact that they played a well-rehearsed full-length set (including previously-unheard material, like the latter song here) might be a sign this wasn't meant as a one-off. And though Rob Gordon and Matt Smith are still working together as Pallet's backing unit on his solo material, the group seems pretty casual about the very idea of their re-emergence to dig out these youthful skeletons in their closets, so who's to say when there'll be another chance to see this material being performed?

^* Thanks to OP for passing along the title to this one.