Recording: magiceyeimage

Artist: magiceyeimage

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at at Gerrard Art Space (FASTER Presents), September 15, 2018.

magiceyeimage - [excerpt 1]

magiceyeimage - [excerpt 2]

A cozy art gallery, walls lined with a lifetime's worth of prints, was an excellent space for a night of listening. If I'd thought that the quietness of the previous time I saw this trio was striking, I was soon to discover that that was like an arena show compared to the spare stillness on display here. Playing totally acoustically, the trio's gestures included near-silent bass-bowing, e-bow whispers on an acoustic guitar, a ball clacking against rotating tiles and so on. As always with material this quiet, my mics don't do it justice at all, but hopefully they give some flavour of what was going on.

Recording: magiceyeimage

Artist: magiceyeimage

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at The Emmet Ray, May 21, 2018.

magiceyeimage - [excerpt]

magiceyeimage and friends - [excerpt]

Well, it had been no slight amount of time since I had last seen this trio in action, back before percussionist Phil Melanson was such a fixture in these parts. Shifting his base of action to T.O. has made this unit (alongside Gabriel Drolet on double bass and Simon Labbé on guit) less active, so it was a real treat to lean back and soak up their slow momentum. Close in spirit to locals Aurochs (and further afield, The Necks), there's a joy here of exploring gestures and slowly-transforming textures more than any sort of melodic structures. As the evening glow from the skylight began to fade, everything seemed in place in the dusky gloom — as if the musicians were feeling their way through unseen terrain, never too forcefully loud as the roar of trucks and other streetsounds occasionally overwhelmed their sounds.

After a break, the trio were joined for a second set by a couchful of singers. (If my notes are correct, they were: Alex Samaras, Frederique Roy, Felicity Williams, Robin Dann and Eugénie Jobin Tremblay.) With occasional Victoria Day fireworks snapping in the background, this felt like a long-weekend cottage-y soundscape, like you could open your eyes and catch the last glimmers of the sunset over the lake.

Recording: MagicEyeImage

Artist: MagicEyeImage

Song: Ode to The Universe [Part I]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), July 16, 2013.

MagicEyeImage - Ode to The Universe [Part I]

Full review to follow. Last-minute word of an early gig in the Tranzac's front room gave me someplace to duck into to escape the pervasive heat. Thom Gill pulled this show together for some visiting Montréal friends and played in a triple-various quiet/noise trio with Allison Cameron and Ryan Driver. That, plus a dial-twisting solo guitar set from Colin Fisher were apt bookends for the main set.

The band's band might seem a little goofy at first, but they did show a talent in moving from something abstract (such as in the stretch reproduced here) to a more focused, nearly post-rock sound, before untethering back into strands of component noise — not at all unlike the titular picture springing out of the frame once you relax your eyes in the right way, only to have it disappear again. N.B.: like this music, sometimes the pictures are most interesting just before they cohere into something easily recognizable. There's not a lot of information out there on this trio of Gabriel Drolet (bass), Simon Labbé (guit) and Philippe Melanson (percussion), but they do have music available on their Bandcamp and Soundcloud.