Recording: Fat As Fuck

Artist: Fat As Fuck

Song: 1/E

Recorded at 159 Manning ("M For Manning"), June 19, 2015.

Fat As Fuck - 1/E

Once again Tim McCready turned his home into the city's coolest venue for a day, transforming living room, basement and backyard into performance spaces for a chill day-long party. A backyard stage under an arch of trees at the very far end of the lot made the show feel even more like it was taking place off in some friendly forest. The programming, thanks once again to an alliance with M for Montréal and an association with a large local corporate rock festival, mixed a few mostly-Montréal out-of-towners with local faces.

It's been quite some time since I first discovered this crew, playing a street corner guerrilla set, but I was glad to see they were still committed to their particular aesthethic — both visual (in masks and white coveralls) and musically (mixing party anthems with tricky prog song structures). The band's best trick is how effortlessly they can torque from the former to the latter while still keeping the crowd dancing and "woo"-ing enthusiastically. Not that there's an undue focus on chops here, as the band was also shamelessly going for some big rock moves, including synth-held-aloft flourishes and set-ending crowd invasions.

[Fat As Fuck will be celebrating the release of a new video with "an evening of absolute madness" on Wednesday, July 15th at The Rivoli, where they'll be joined by The Out Of Towners and Jobs.]

Recording: Fat As Fuck

Artist: Fat As Fuck

Song: Before The Alien Wars^*

Recorded at SE corner of Trinity-Bellwoods Park (corner of Queen St. W and Gore Vale Av.), Nuit Blanche 2012, September 29, 2012.

Fat As Fuck - Before The Alien Wars

Out of some pleasant late-hours Nuit Blanche wanderings, I'd say three things stick out in my mind: Planes, an "equipment piece" from 1968 with film projected against wall-climbing dancers was an uncanny, unsettling experience while Cent une tueries de zombies, an expertly-crafted montage of Zombie Death scenes showing at the TIFF Lightbox was splendid entertainment.

But the most fun came from this completely unofficial random encounter at the corner of Trinity-Belwoods. There was a decent ring of people when I stopped to listen to the psychedelic prog/funk sounds coming a group of masked, biohazard-suited men. By the time Fat As Fuck finished, there were a couple hundred people on hand, plus a lightshow provided by a visiting firetruck. Stirring stuff, and an excellently-executed intervention into the nuit. This is presented in full-spectrum nuit blanche fidelity, meaning you should be able to hear the screeching audience members, barking dogs and so on.

P.S.: The "Open Call" for Nuit Blanche 2013 begins today. This is where NB should go: there's a more-than-critical mass of people wandering around, so take whatever you do, and just go do it in public. If you're an artist, find a projector and a blank wall. If you have a band, get a generator and find a wide spot on the sidewalk. Create random encounters! Curate yourself!

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