Recording: Most People

Artist: Most People

Song: Telephone

Recorded at Pia Bouman School for Ballet and Creative Movement (SummerWorks Music Series: What Fate Awaits Them?), August 9, 2015.

Most People - Telephone

The SummerWorks Music series, evolving since its inception in 2008, feels to have really and truly settled into its identity both as another way for SummerWorks to celebrate its growing foregrounding of interdisciplinary art and as a unique feature of the city's live music scene. After a couple years of just stuffing some bands down in the basement to provide an après-play gathering space, 2010's Hidden Cameras spectacular (featuring a "dramatic retelling" their Origin: Orphan album) pointed the way forward — but it wasn't really until 2012 that the festival started to ramp up the practice of pairing musicians with artists from other disciplines to create unique, one-off events.

It was finally in 2013 that the "mature" music series fully emerged, with stand-out events from Maylee Todd, Snowblink, and The Bicycles. Since then, collaboration has moved to the centre. Last year saw the series' first visit to the Pia Bouman School at the edge of Parkdale, which became their home this year, giving the Series its own space (and a cool pop-up venue). Adam Bradley and the returning Andrew Pulsifer have played to the series' strengths with their musical curation, and all of the works this year felt like good additions to a series whose legacy includes the future memories of these one-of-a-kind shows.

The spectacle level of the series was cranked up a notch with this one, combining projections, puppetry, dancers and more to move the show beyond the stage. In one memorable sequence, a model of an undersea-exploring aquanaut was projected on the screen behind the band — and then its real-life equivalent appeared in the midst of the crowd, only to be attacked, and engage in a fight to the death with, a giant silvery eel. That was topped as the set ended with the emergence of a giant hooded puppet — like a blanket monster of a fevered childhood imagination brought to life — rising up behind the band. And just for a break, robot emissaries MATROX took over for a few songs mid-set.

[Most People will be playing a late-night set at Camp Wavelength, Saturday August 29th at Artscape Gibraltar Point.]