Recording: Cousins

Artist: Cousins

Song: Thunder

Recorded at The Garrison ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 4), February 16, 2014.

Cousins - Thunder

You can read my notes for this show here.

Recording: Greys

Artist: Greys

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at The Garrison ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 4), February 16, 2014.

Greys - unknown

You can read my notes for this show here.

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

Recording: The Wet Secrets

Artist: The Wet Secrets

Song: Get Your Shit Together

Recorded at The Garrison ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 4), February 16, 2014.

The Wet Secrets - Get Your Shit Together

You can read my notes for this show here.

Recording: Lido Pimienta

Artist: Lido Pimienta

Song: Agua

Recorded at The Garrison ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 4), February 16, 2014.

Lido Pimienta - Agua

You can read my notes for this show here.

Recording: Elaquent

Artist: Elaquent

Song: excerpt^*

Recorded at The Garrison ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 4), February 16, 2014.

Elaquent - excerpt

You can read my notes for this show here.

^* I think this contains three separate tracks, though everything came nicely mixed together. Does anyone know the titles to these? Please leave a comment!

Currente calamo: Wavelength FOURTEEN Festival (Night 4)

FOURTEEN: The Wavelength 14th Anniversary Festival

While it's all fresh in my mind, a few notes from this year's WL Fest. Longer, more comprehensive reviews will follow down the road a piece in some far, theoretical future.

Wavelength's annual February festival was a window to the change and continuity from the evolving institution, whose adolescent years are seeing it shift from volunteer collective to professional non-profit organization. The months following last summer's final ALL CAPS! festival saw some long-time organizers stepping back from the group while co-founder Jonny Dovercourt (thanks to a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation) remains to steer the ship in a full-time capacity.

The extra resources mean that the festival was a smooth-running affair, though at a few points I mised the rough-around-the edges scrappy spirit of the series' DIY days. (Where have you gone, Doc Pickles? Wavelength nation turns its lonely eyes to you, ooh-woo-woo.) But this was still an essential weekend of presenting some of the city's best emerging talent to a larger audience.

Night 4 — Sunday, February 16, 2014

The Garrison — feat. Cousins / Greys / The Wet Secrets / Lido Pimienta / Elaquent

The Venue & the vibe: Home sweet home! The Garrison — the last stopping point for Wavelength while it was a weekly series — still feels like the proper place for the festival to wind up. Like the other nights of the festival, this got started on time and moved with such quick efficiency, there was hardly any time to wade to the back of the room, grab a drink and say hello to whoever you ran into before the next band was ready to go. If there was anything to criticize about this show, it might be that instead of giving a full-on clash of musical styles, it felt a bit more like the "other stuff" got shoved to the start to be gotten out of the way before the part with rock bands started. But some of the best moments came early on, natch.

The show:

Guelph-based hip-hop instrumentalist Elaquent got the night started and probably deserved a bigger crowd for his chilled-out Dilla-esque grooves. Not too demonstrative on stage, Elaquent was largely content to close his eyes and nod to the beats, but there was a lotta inneresting stuff going on here. Quick beatscapes segued into one another showing of a range of textures, though it was mostly on the mellow side. A prolific producer with a stacked bandcamp page, this wasn't he most dynamic set of the night, presentation-wise, but certainly contained some of the deepest grooves.

Listen to a segment of this set here.

There's generally no complaints about a lack of energy when Lido Pimienta takes the stage, and this set would prove to be a memorable addition to her penchant for creating a bit of spectacle. Taking a shot at over-the-top Olympic rah-rah patriotism, Pimienta (alongside art-crew Tough Guy Mountain) covered the stage in Maple Leaf paraphernalia (because nothing shows devotion to your country like a trip to the dollar store) before starting the set with an "O K-K-K Canada" rendition of the national anthem. Trying to get across the messages in her Spanish-language songs, her outspoken and in-your-face outbursts on stage never feel didactic — and in the end, it's her talents as a musician that make her one to watch. (And for those who didn't seem to comprehend the critique in play here, Pimienta expanded in a tumblr post.)

Listen to a song from this set here.

the fact that the festival brought in artists from Alberta and Nova Scotia shows the ambitious reach of Wavelength nation. Edmonton's The Wet Secrets represented the west, taking the stage in matching marching band uniforms and looking like they would have been right at home as the band in a 60's frat party in a direct-to-video Animal House knockoff. Not taking themselves too seriously, they proceeded to create a frothy party atmosphere, filled with tales of the nightlife and knife fights in the City of Champions. With a pair of horn-playing backing vocalists enhancing the guitar-less bass/drums/keybs lineup, the focus was on the garage-y groove here. It's hard to argue with an easy visual hook like this and the band were certainly got the crowd worked up, implying there may well be some substance behind the gimmick.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Returning to a local stage after a few months' layoff, grungecore noise-rockers Greys were quickly bouncing around like the last popcorn kernels in the pot frustrated at their inability to explode. They also got a respectable moshpit going in the crowd as they previewed a few new songs from their forthcoming album. Loud, bracing stuff.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Closing out the festival was Halifax guit/drums duo Cousins, and it was interesting to observe how their non-stop road regimen has built them quite a devoted following. On the surface, Aaron Mangle (guitar) and Leigh Dotey (drums) aren't doing anything fancy or inventive — yet they present their minimalist take on classic rock with such convention that it manages to transcend itself in some sneaky way. Well, that's the spark that constantly reanimates rock'n'roll right there. When you see it, you don't doubt it — you just try and pull it into you.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Bonus! Check out some more photos from the festival over at the MFS Facebook page.

Recording: Ark Analog

Artist: Ark Analog

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Sonic Boom Records ("The Toronto Music Moment" talk + event – Wavelength FOURTEEN), February 16, 2014.

Ark Analog - unknown

Full review to follow. The second in-store event of the Wavelength FOURTEEN festival took over Sonic Boom's stage for an afternoon, presenting a talk called "The Toronto Music Moment" that looked at problems and opportunities in conceiving of T.O. as a "music city". And, surrounding that were three entirely diverse sets of music.

Dan Werb and Maylee Todd weren't too thrown off their game when some of their gear started acting up. Instead, they simple extended their grooves and let the music's groove imperative overpower the need for pop perfection while also finding some new knobs to twist, weirding things up with live remix versions. This song takes a couple minutes to find its footing, but really gets cooking once Todd and Werb start messing with it.

^* Does anyone know the title to this one and/or the name of the MC who hopped up on stage to add some verses? Please leave a comment!

Bonus! Check out some more photos from the festival over at the MFS Facebook page.

Recording: Mexican Slang

Artist: Mexican Slang

Song: Blisters

Recorded at Sonic Boom Records ("The Toronto Music Moment" talk + event – Wavelength FOURTEEN), February 16, 2014.

Mexican Slang - Blisters

Full review to follow. The second in-store event of the Wavelength FOURTEEN festival took over Sonic Boom's stage for an afternoon, presenting a talk called "The Toronto Music Moment" that looked at problems and opportunities in conceiving of T.O. as a "music city". And, surrounding that were three entirely diverse sets of music.

Fighting against technical gremlins (and a vocal mic that seemed intent on shocking vocalist/guitarist Annabelle Lee), Mexican Slang (now down to a trio) were fierce and focused in delivering their fuzz-pop blasts. The vocals are pretty low here, but the music has a pretty good punch.

Bonus! Check out some more photos from the festival over at the MFS Facebook page.

Recording: Evelyn Mukwedeya & Memory Makuri

Artist: Evelyn Mukwedeya & Memory Makuri

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Sonic Boom Records ("The Toronto Music Moment" talk + event – Wavelength FOURTEEN), February 16, 2014.

Evelyn Mukwedeya & Memory Makuri - unknown

Full review to follow. The second in-store event of the Wavelength FOURTEEN festival took over Sonic Boom's stage for an afternoon, presenting a talk called "The Toronto Music Moment" that looked at problems and opportunities in conceiving of T.O. as a "music city". And, surrounding that were three entirely diverse sets of music.

Evelyn Mukwedeya & Memory Makuri filled the store with their contemporary Canadian take on traditional Zimbabwean music, the bounce of the mbira radiating a joyful energy. This set really brought home the point that our stages and our festivals need to reflect the real range of music that's out there in Toronto — not just to check off some "diversity" box, but so that we're not missing out on some of the best stuff that's out there.

^* Evelyn calls out the title of this traditional number at the top, but I don't think I can render it correctly. Anyone know the proper title?

Bonus! Check out some more photos from the festival over at the MFS Facebook page.

Recording: Colin Stetson

Artist: Colin Stetson

Song: Part Of Me Apart From You

Recorded at SPK Polish Combatants Hall ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 3), February 15, 2014.

Colin Stetson - Part Of Me Apart From You

You can read my notes for this show here.

Recording: U.S. Girls

Artist: U.S. Girls

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at SPK Polish Combatants Hall ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 3), February 15, 2014.

U.S. Girls - unknown

You can read my notes for this show here.

^* Admittedly, I couldn't track down the name of this cover. Please leave a comment if you know it!

Recording: Biblical

Artist: Biblical

Song: Monsoon Season

Recorded at SPK Polish Combatants Hall ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 3), February 15, 2014.

Biblical - Monsoon Season

You can read my notes for this show here.

Recording: Petra Glynt

Artist: Petra Glynt

Song: Of This Land

Recorded at SPK Polish Combatants Hall ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 3), February 15, 2014.

Petra Glynt - Of This Land

You can read my notes for this show here.

Recording: Gambletron

Artist: Gambletron

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at SPK Polish Combatants Hall ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 3), February 15, 2014.

Gambletron - [excerpt]

You can read my notes for this show here.

Currente calamo: Wavelength FOURTEEN Festival (Night 3)

FOURTEEN: The Wavelength 14th Anniversary Festival

While it's all fresh in my mind, a few notes from this year's WL Fest. Longer, more comprehensive reviews will follow down the road a piece in some far, theoretical future.

Wavelength's annual February festival was a window to the change and continuity from the evolving institution, whose adolescent years are seeing it shift from volunteer collective to professional non-profit organization. The months following last summer's final ALL CAPS! festival saw some long-time organizers stepping back from the group while co-founder Jonny Dovercourt (thanks to a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation) remains to steer the ship in a full-time capacity.

The extra resources mean that the festival was a smooth-running affair, though at a few points I missed the rough-around-the edges scrappy spirit of the series' DIY days. (Where have you gone, Doc Pickles? Wavelength nation turns its lonely eyes to you, ooh-woo-woo.) But this was still an essential weekend of presenting some of the city's best emerging talent to a larger audience.

Night 3 — Saturday, February 15, 2014

SPK Polish Combatants Hall — feat. Colin Stetson / US Girls / Biblical / Petra Glynt / Gambletron

The Venue & the vibe: After the vague discomfort I'd felt throughout the night before down in the club district, the concrete bunker at Beverley Street felt like a sweet homecoming. There's just something comforting about a place where you can tell old men gather together to drink. And though there was a full house, it never felt crowded, with little nooks and crannies that people could retreat to to hang out if they didn't want to be near the stage. Without a PA system of its own (though Wavelength set up an excellent one for the night), this is probably fated to remain an underused venue, which is just too damn bad — this was my favourite night of the festival.

The show:

I came in without having done any research on Montréal's Gambletron, so I pleased to get something a bit weirder than I was expecting. Taking over a semi-circle on the floor in front of the stage was a table full of electronic gear, plus radios, antennas extended to the sky. More radios littered the floor, and as the set started, Gamble walked around, turning them on and unleashing a humming drone as she chatted through a mic hooked to a portable radio slung over her shoulder. The set would consist of noise from motion-activated sensors (one concealed in a crocheted statue near the audience), something that sounded like a colecovision in its death throes, those radios on the table converted to homemade theremins, and occasional distorted beats. All of which was joined by Johnny Fever's video installation, with images (a shimmying woman; the full moon; twisting yarn) that hinted at themes without needing to connect the dots too explicitly. All told, it was experimental, arty and abrasive — maybe not entirely user-friendly to those uninitiated to this sort of stuff, but I'm glad that there's room for noise at Wavelength.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Alexandra MacKenzie, who performs as Petra Glynt also brought a strong visual element to her set, thanks to Steve Reaume's generative visuals. Beaming up on her from below, they not only created intricate features on her face and dress, but created striking giant silhouettes on the screen behind her. MacKenzie, meanwhile, sounded as good as I've ever heard her, presenting the tunes from her Of This Land tape with casual ease. There was even the début of an ace new song that augurs well for her forthcoming album.

Listen to a song from this set here.

House visualist General Chaos finally took centre stage behind Biblical, and his abstract swirling light painting projections fit right in with the quartet's hard rock psych choogles. It's fairly amusing to note that at Wavelength a band channelling classic rock is the outsiders — but even if the band (whose forthcoming Monsoon Season album seems destined for big things) is keeping different company lately (they've been playing with Death From Above 1979 and Monster Truck, for example), these guys are all Wavelength vets many times over.

Listen to a track from this set here.

I was expecting that it would be a ninety-degree musical turn from Biblical to U.S. Girls, but Meg Remy defied expectations by bringing a new incarnation of her live unit and a sound laced with unexpected heaviousity. (Simone TB's drums and Tim Westberg's driving bass were the main ingredients there.) Organized around the theme of "love songs", Remy performed an all-new set of covers, but pretty much none of it was obvious selections. (Wings' album track "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five" was maybe the least obscure thing here.) The set might have lacked the "hits" from Remy's own catalogue, but the set certainly showed off the creative restlessness that's going to keep pushing her forward.

Listen to a song from this set here.

When Colin Stetson took the stage and picked up his bass saxophone, there were a few audible gasps in the crowd. That thing is so massive, it really does take one by surprise the first time around. The sheer physical fact of his live presentation, with its marathons of circular breathing driving the continuous wall of sound, generates a sense of spectacle that almost distracts from the actual music. But close your eyes and feel it pulse over you and it remains powerful stuff. Stetson occupies a place similar to the night's opener (and, it turns out him and Gamble have played together) in that he's perceived as far too weird for the pop crowd while experimental musicians look at his stuff like some sort of lowest common denominator party trick, too reliant on conventional melodic song structures to be truly interesting. But this stuff has the capability to expand people's perceptions of what music can be — and if one person out a hundred who is hearing Stetson becomes curious enough to explore music at the further fringes, then that's a net victory, and the exact sort of thing that Wavelength is all about.

Listen to a song from this set here.

Bonus! Check out some more photos from the festival over at the MFS Facebook page.

Recording: Carl Didur

Artist: Carl Didur

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at June Records ("Wavelength FOURTEEN"/Weird Canada's "Wyrd Distro" Launch), February 15, 2014.

Carl Didur - unknown

As part of the Wavelength FOURTEEN celebrations, the first of two afternoon in-store events found the festival teamed up with Weird Canada, who were having a big celebration of their own. Wyrd Distro is billed as "Canada's first non-profit distribution service", giving musicians a centralized depot to get their wares into the hands of fans across Canada and beyond. Marie Claire Flanagan and Aaron Levin were using June's backroom as their base to do video hangouts with a series of similar parties in every province and territory — and having been up for who knows how long gettings things ready to launch they looked triumphantly exhausted. They stared the event off with a brief talk (triumphantly "rambling towards coherence", as one friend commented) not focusing so much on the distro as the community spirit that animates everything that WC does. And then there was a set from Carl Didur, his tape loop/echo/keyboard compositions as wonderful as ever.

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

Recording: DIANA

Artist: DIANA

Song: Born Again

Recorded at Adelaide Hall ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 2), February 14, 2014.

DIANA - Born Again

You can read my notes for this show here.

Recording: Odonis Odonis

Artist: Odonis Odonis

Song: Muscle^*

Recorded at Adelaide Hall ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 2), February 14, 2014.

Odonis Odonis - Muscle

You can read my notes for this show here.

^* Thanks to Dean for passing along the title to this one!

Recording: Weaves

Artist: Weaves

Song: Know About It

Recorded at Adelaide Hall ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 2), February 14, 2014.

Weaves - Know About It

You can read my notes for this show here.

Recording: Most People

Artist: Most People

Song: Release^*

Recorded at Adelaide Hall ("Wavelength FOURTEEN" – Night 2), February 14, 2014.

Most People - Release

You can read my notes for this show here.

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