Recording: Lydia Ainsworth

Artist: Lydia Ainsworth

Song: Hologram

Recorded at Artscape Gibraltar Point (Camp Wavelength), August 21, 2016.

Lydia Ainsworth - Hologram

Following and expanding on the template of last year's successful festival, Wavelength returned to the island with a meticulously-executed event that included an exciting range of music and a beach full of art beside festival headliner Lake Ontario. It also managed to be a stress-reducing rather than a stress-inducing time — rather like a weekend at the cottage, even if the city was just out of view.

Unlike last time I saw her, Lydia Ainsworth didn't bring out a string section to adorn her atmospheric synth jams. But she did have some dancers on stage and materializing in the crowd — totally on point, as this is the sort of music that makes you want to put on an old wedding dress and drift moodily through a forest. It almost sounds too perfect to note that as the set wound down, a huge double rainbow arced across the sky opposite of the stage.

Recording: Lydia Ainsworth

Artist: Lydia Ainsworth

Song: Moonstone

Recorded at Smiling Buddha (Silent Shout Festival – Night 1), December 4, 2014.

Lydia Ainsworth - Moonstone

Although they'd stepped away from presenting live music, Silent Shout returned for a two-night celebration to mark their fifth anniversary. Taking over the Smiling Buddha for two nights gave the site's designer Roxanne Ignatius a chance to re-imagine the space, with a deconstructed disco ball twirling above clouds and webby fabric tendrils. Plus, downstairs there was a gallery of her consistently-excellent show posters, going right back to the series' beginning when it had to spell out its mandate of "EVIL DISCO / GLOOMY ELECTRO / DEATHLY SYNTHPOP". And though there was a retrospective element to the whole affair, the music was decisively forward-looking, including a couple bands making their debuts.

The night's biggest draw, Lydia Ainsworth (a local artist on the Arbutus Records roster) came backed by a string trio to present the songs from last year's Right From Real album. Ainsworth's vocal presence and art imperative bring Kate Bush's progressive pop to mind — based in atmospheric electronic sounds, this was the least dancefloor-worthy set of the night, though a few songs here were accompanied by a pair of masked dancers adding to the swooning mystical undercurrent in the music.

[Lydia Ainsworth will be headlining Long Winter at The Great Hall on Saturday night (December 12th). She plays at midnight, but you'll need to arrive early (or grab an advance ticket) to get in — there's a rather stacked lineup that you oughtta be there for anyway.]