Recording: Sick Boss & Co.

Artist: Sick Boss with Peggy Lee, Josh Zubot & JP Carter

Song: Useless Genius 2

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (TONE Festival), June 16, 2022.

Sick Boss with Peggy Lee, Josh Zubot & JP Carter - Useless Genius 2

This superb evening at the TONE Festival saw Sick Boss expanded from its core trio (Cole Schmidt, guitar; James Meger, bass; and Dan Gaucher, percussion) to include friends Peggy Lee (viola), Josh Zubot (violin), and JP Carter (trumpet) — a true Vancouver all-star troupe. The extra hands allowed the group to explore a lot of new terrain over a bunch of new music (including the three-part suite heard in part here) that moved from shifty prog-rock rhythms to sweeping GYBE-esque swells. Big band, big sounds.

Recording: Gaucher/Zubot/Carter/SlowPitchSound

Artist: Dan Gaucher/Josh Zubot/JP Carter/SlowPitchSound

Song: [3rd section]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (TONE Festival), June 16, 2022.

Dan Gaucher/Josh Zubot/JP Carter/SlowPitchSound - [3rd section]

This superb evening at the TONE Festival saw Vancouver's expanded Sick Boss joined by locals Tania Gill and SlowPitchSound as well as Berlin-based Samuel Hall. In lieu if an opening act, the latter were scattered amongst redistributed members of the band for two sets of improvised encounters. With turntablist SlowPitchSound joining sound processors Josh Zubot (violin) and JP Carter (trumpet), there were textures aplenty in this set, but drummer Dan Gaucher (himself a freqent Tranzac player back in his Toronto days) managed to find a chance to drive things along (and even get in some air drumming as leaking sound from the Main Hall reached a crescendo).

Recording: JP Carter & Friends

Artist: JP Carter & Friends

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #60), March 3, 2020.

JP Carter & Friends - [excerpt]

With a night off from Destroyer's tour (where he was once more a part of Dan Bejar's backing band), Vancouver's JP Carter was looking for a local improvised music gig. He got in touch with drummer Joe Sorbara (himself still relatively recently-returned from the West Coast) who put together this group, which also included Aline Homzy (violin) and Ashley Urquhart (piano). Although Carter is often heard extending his trumpet sounds with electronics, this was an all-acoustic session, working up to some pleasing scrape/skronk — and, briefly, towards the end, even some double trumpet action from Carter.

[Track Could Bend's previously-planned fifth anniversary celebration will obviously not be happening. Keep an eye out at the series' FB page for news of things re-emerging when the gathering-together status has changed.]