Recording: Kee Avil

Artist: Kee Avil

Song: See, my shadow

Recorded at CineCycle (TONE Festival), June 10, 2022.

Kee Avil - See, my shadow

After an appetite-whetting preview last month, the TONE Festival kicked off in earnest with this night out, leading off a frenzy of activity that'll see the bulk of the festival's shows clustered over the next couple weeks.

It's quite satisfying to see the strides that Vicky Mettler's project has made since last playing this festival — not only in terms of gaining some wider recognition, but also in how she has shifted from building dense sound-worlds to more actively inhabiting them. Helping with the layers was percussionist Samuel Gougoux, deploying tiny close-mic'd gestrures that were amplified into widescreen textures.

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: Kee Avil

Artist: Kee Avil

Song: thinkstill

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Somewhere There presents: Solos), December 3, 2018.

Kee Avil - thinkstill

This evening of four solo performances (two local, two visiting from Montréal) was engineered by Somewhere There's Peter Gough. At the end of one last tour in support of her experimental song project's excellent EP, Vicky Mettler was fully zoned in on the material. There'll probably be a new batch of songs the next time she's in town, but they'll probably build from the canny loop-sense and electroacoustic-jumble-as-pop-textures explored in this set.

[That "next time in town" will be coming up on Friday, March 1st, when Mettler will be serving as support for Marc Ribot at Burn Down the Capital's Jam Factory show.]

Recording: Kee Avil

Artist: Kee Avil

Song: Space 1.5

Recorded at The Baby G (TONE Festival and Mechanical Forest Sound present), June 3, 2018.

Kee Avil - Space 1.5

It was a real honour to have a chance to co-present a show leading off the second incarnation of the wonderful TONE Festival. Even if there can be unexpected shifts in a lineup from planning to execution, I was very excited with the night that came together. It was our good luck that Vicky Mettler was in town working on music for a dance piece and was able to step in at the last minute. The first songs from this new solo endeavour that have emerged on her EP establish this as a project to keep an eye on — and seeing the gorgeous execution of the mangled loops and shifted textures in a live setting is thoroughly impressive. This music sounded so much bigger in this space than the last time I'd seen this project, so while this recording can't fully express that immensity, I'm happy that it at least offers a very clear rendering of the stereophonic sound space that Mettler constructed on the fly.

Recording: Kee Avil

Artist: Kee Avil

Song: Sponge

Recorded at Belljar Café (Track Could Bend #36), March 6, 2018.

Kee Avil - Sponge

It's always a happy occasion when you see an artist dazzle with an advanced grasp of a different vocabulary than you associate with them. Known as a talented avant guitar shredder on the Montréal scene, this project sees Vicky Mettler shifting into song mode. Her vox and guitar still boomerang into deconstructive adventures, but the whole thing is assembled into a deliberate form — even, as we hear here, the pieces stretch themselves out from their presentations on her excellent recent EP.

[Track Could Bend returns on Tuesday (May 1st) in a special "studio" edition featuring Jen Wardle & John Mark Sherlock, David Sait and Hank Powell (a.k.a. Karen Ng + D. Alex Meeks).]

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: Dust Scored Dark

Artist: Dust Scored Dark

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge), February 28, 2016.

Dust Scored Dark - [excerpt]

After a weekend of intensely-local action at the Somewhere There Festival, Sunday's unofficial wind-down in the Southern Cross featured some out-of-towners offering tasty Montréal-style improvisations. I was familiar with some of the members here (Craig Pedersen, trumpet; Vicky Mettler, guitar; Mark Molnar, cello; Bennett Bedoukian, drums) in other contexts; from what I can gather, this is a newer unit, but the players all had an easy familiarity as they ranged from scuttling atmospheric sounds to a clattering junkyard groove.

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.