Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Recording: Aalborg Group

Artist: Aalborg Group / John Gregg & Tiina Kiik / Maxwell Boecker & William Davison

Songs: [excerpts from improved sets]

Recorded at Array Space ("Audiopollination 28.3"), March 16, 2014.

Aalborg Group - [excerpt]

John Gregg & Tiina Kiik - [excerpt from an improvisation]

Maxwell Boecker & William Davison - [excerpt from an improvisation]

Aalborg Group (the Atlanta duo of drummer John Gregg and bassist Maxwell Boecker) look like they'd be right at home in a basement punk show, so it was interesting to see them arrive in Toronto to play an improvised music series. The duo play with a certain heaviness that their setup would imply, but without the power sauce or grind, there's room for them to explore in those grey areas between rock'n'roll jamming and free improvisation. (You can check out their tape on their bandcamp.)

In proper Audiopollination fashion, after they played a short set together, the pair were split up for sets with some local guests, with drummer Gregg playing with accordionist Tiina Kiik while bassist Boecker was matched with noise-generationist William Davison. Both of the guests ended up playing a bit of follow-the-leader with their experienced partners, but pulled off fully-satisfactory performances. Kudos to the band for letting themselves being tossed in the deep end in such a manner — I'd love to see more exploratory "rock" bands dare to take this sort of plunge. Kudos also to Audiopollination's Mike Lynn for curating a evening that was a bit outside the series' usual zone — caught between the cracks of scenes and genres, this gig deserved a bigger audience than it got.

[As is always the case, you can hear a full recording of the night's music in the Audiopollination archives.]

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