Showing posts with label ambrose veno. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ambrose veno. Show all posts

Sunday, October 12, 2025

Recording: Lavender Town

Artist: Lavender Town

Song: Song of Storms [composer: Koji Kondo]

Recorded at Sankofa Square (Intersection 2025: Day 2: All Day Music Marathon, August 30, 2025.

Lavender Town - Song of Storms

Back from a year's hiatus, the Intersection Festival was once again bringing some unconventional sounds to the unsuspecting public. The now formally-retitled Sankofa Square sports a decolonized name, but a slightly more carceral vibe — surrounded by metal fencing and closed off by gates right up 'til showtime, there was less of a random just-wander-through sense of invitation than there used to be.

There was also a slightly different curatorial vibe in effect. In the absence of Burn Down the Capital's Tad Michalak, Andrew Noseworthy stepped up as the main programmer, giving the day a flavour that'd be familiar to those following people | places | records, the "DIY genre-fluid 'zero profit' artists-first" label he is involved with.

"Jazz" has a long tradition of using popular forms as the frameworks for more exploratory musics, so it makes perfect sense that this twenty-first century band might be more drawn to, say, video game themes than Broadway numbers. The pieces they tackled were imbued with top-shelf musicianship, which might have helped to get the attention of passers-by (especially Luan Phung's guitar solos), but it was that populist material that helped gather a crowd in front of the stage.

Thursday, June 26, 2025

Recording: Carolina Lopez

Artist: Carolina Lopez

Song: unknown*

Recorded at The Tranzac (Main Hall), May 25, 2025.

Carolina Lopez - unknown

This opening set from Carolina Lopez put her songs and her voice at the centre of things, presented with atmospheric (but uncluttered) arrangements courtesy of a band with definite ties to the widescreen improvisation collective that would be following them. Samuel Laramee, who I've previously seen in action as a synth wiz, impressed on guitar here, adding both drift and frisson to the anchoring forces of Ambrose Veno (drums) and Bjorn Kriel (bass). There's an EP of tunes available on bandcamp, and, we were told, more (like this one) in the can.

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