Recording: Xicada

Artist: Xicada

Song: [last section]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (TONE Festival), June 16, 2024.

Xicada - [last section]

This night out at the TONE Festival reached back for some strong Healing Power vibes: not only had that scene/label issued some essential music (together and individually) from the night's co-headliners, but it was also a treat to hear HP co-principal DJ SlightBreezy (aka Wolf Nessel) slingin' and manipulating tunes between sets.

And manipulating sounds on stage, Ilyse Krivel lead off the night mixing harsher textures and spattered samples in a customarily-succinct set.

Recording: Cxicada

Artist: Cxicada

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Ayal Senior & Friends), March 12, 2023.

Cxicada - [excerpt]

Hewing a bit more to the ambient side of things, Ilyse Krivel brought a compact set for some afternoon listening.

You can also see the full set over on youtube:

Recording: Xicada

Artist: Xicada

Song: [second section]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #76), February 7, 2023.

Xicada - [second section]

A long-awaited visitation to TCB (that was originally being planned pre-pandemic), Ilyse Krivel brought some hypnotic, dark ambient sounds, which are now emerging under the name Xicada (and pushed their way into some propulsive zones as heard here). The high-tech, ableton-based sonics matched well with some lower-tech visuals from Escote, deploying some old-fashioned liquid displacement swirls on a slide projector.

You can check out some footage from this set over on youtube:

[Track Could Bend is back at Wenona on Tuesday, March 7th, with two amazing trios: international sensations Jasper Stadhouders/Lori Freedman/Allison Cameron, plus Marilyn Yogarajah's Tree-Oh with Steve Dillon (Lovewizard) + Lucas Finkeldey.]

Bumping into... Ilyse Krivel

Bumping Into... is a series of mini-chats with a variety of peeps that you might run into in some of our local music communities. (There's a bit of an intro and my thoughts behind the series here.)

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How are you? Where are you?

I'm pretty good! I'm in Toronto but still dreaming of escaping to some forest or mountain somewhere.

What have you been up to since March or so?

I've actually been super creative which feels great. Once the initial anxiety settled down a little I've basically just been hunkering down and making stuff. I've been making lots of music, doing various photography and video projects. I had two albums come out, one for my solo project eternalrealworld and one for my project with Colin Fisher, Indweller. I also released a couple more tracks on bandcamp. Other than that, as many hikes as possible.

Have you found any new ways to do old things? How are you feeling about the shifts in how music is being made/shared/listened to?

I've tried to get into the livestream thing but to be honest I'm not really into it. I really miss live shows more than anything else from The Before Time.

Any works of art that have been a light for you in these times? Anything that's just been a good diversion?

For whatever reason I've noticed I haven't been listening to as much music this year. Podcasts have kind of replaced a lot of that down-time aural space. My desire to ingest information has been pretty insatiable, and I guess it has kind of replaced some sense of socializing. At the start of the lockdown we watched every episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm from start to finish which was a pretty pretty good distraction from the stress.

How are you feeling about 2021?

What the world will look like feels like a pretty big question mark. But I'm feeling very inspired creatively so I'm excited about that.

Anything else we'd chat about if we bumped into each other?

We'd probably talk about what we think the music /art scene will look like after all this is (if it ever will be?) over. That this city feels less and less like a place for dreamers everyday, and that we all need to band together and take over some abandoned town and just forage, farm, and make art.