Recording: Matt Nish-Lapidus

Artist: Matt Nish-Lapidus

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #70), August 2, 2022.

Matt Nish-Lapidus - [excerpt]

Capable of manipilating sounds in a variety of styles — synthesized and not, Matt Nish-Lapidus opted to bring a laptop-based set-up for this performance, creating an improvised collage of pre-recorded tracks (voice, guitar, field recordings) run through SuperCollider and tuned resonators.

You can also check out the full set over on TCB's youtube playlist:

Recording: Matt Nish-Lapidus & Karen Ng

Artist: Matt Nish-Lapidus & Karen Ng

Song: [excerpt from first piece]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #55), October 1, 2019.

Matt Nish-Lapidus & Karen Ng - [excerpt from first piece]

It's always exciting when past performers pitch something different for a return to the series — I never would have thought to combine Matt Nish-Lapidus' warped electronics with Karen Ng's saxophone. It turned out to be a canny juxtaposition, though, with each capable of excited squawk-bursts and stretched-out drones.

[Track Could Bend will be back at Wenona on Tuesday, December 3rd, with sets from Daniel Pencer, No Angels Dancing, and Patrick O'Reilly.]

Recording: Franklin/Sheahan/N-L

Artist: Michael Franklin/Danny Sheahan/Matt N-L

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Array Space (Track Could Bend #49: Fourth Anniversary All-Star Spectacular!), April 2, 2019.

Michael Franklin/Danny Sheahan/Matt N-L - [excerpt]

For its fourth anniversary, Track Could Bend once more invited back all of the past year's performers to partake in some instant bands, with names being drawn from a hat before each set. A dozen musicians took up the challenge, divided into four trios. Unexpected connections emerged — there were more violins than usual, for example — and once more the results were highly satisfying. There was actually no violin in the last set, but its place was admirably filled by Michael Franklin's hurdy-gurdy. Matt N-L's modular moans and blips were an unexpected companion, but fit in quite wonderfully while Danny Sheahan completed the atmospheres on voice and piano.

[Track Could Bend is back at its Wenona home base tonight (Tuesday, June 4th) offering sets from Mike Barber, Ashley Urquhart and Friends plus Pete Johnston's Bog Standards.]

Recording: New Tendencies

Artist: New Tendencies

Song: [last section]

Recorded at Handlebar, January 31, 2019.

New Tendencies - [last section]

A frigid Sunday night was the scene for a night of electronic experimentations, anchored by the celebration of Matt Nish-Lapidus's new Batch 0008 album, out on London's SM-LL label. Finding the best way to engage the crowd for a set of modular live-patching, Nish-Lapidus set up of the floor facing the stage, giving the audience a full view of his impressive rack.

[A version of my full recording of this set is now available over at the New Tendencies bandcamp.]

Recording: Blank Nurse/No Light

Artist: Blank Nurse/No Light

Song: unknown^*

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #45), December 4, 2018.

Blank Nurse/No Light - unknown

This experimental electronic project sees Evan Davies coming out from behind the drumkit to explore some metallic gothnoise. While the project is grounded in ideas of "sonic rituals", that was brought to the forefront in this set that was performed as an extended candlelit rite, four segments each facing a cardinal direction and with their own ritual steps, seemingly purging fear and anger.

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

[Track Could Bend is back at Wenona on Tuesday, February 5th with sets from Meg Remy's Last Tape, William Davison & Bob Vespaziani plus the T.O. debut of Hamilton's all-star Freaky Boos.]

Recording: Patrick O'Reilly & New Tendencies

Artist: Patrick O'Reilly & New Tendencies

Songs: [excerpt, in two parts]

Recorded at Array Space (Audiopollination 60), March 10, 2018.

Patrick O'Reilly & New Tendencies - [excerpt, part 1]

Patrick O'Reilly & New Tendencies - [excerpt, part 2]

This tasty night of self-curated sounds saw four different ensembles take the floor, backed by visuals generated by Kelley Mitchell. This pairing led things off, mixing Matt Nish-Lapidus' bricolage of analog synth toys with Patrick O'Reilly's 16 Second Delay abstractions and finding some complementary sonic zones to linger in by the time the processed vox and music boxes showed up.

Recording: New Tendencies

Artist: New Tendencies

Song: [third section]

Recorded at The Baby G, February 22, 2018.

New Tendencies - [third section]

This cozy night at The Baby G featured mostly leftfield electronic experimentation, including a series of buzzes and drones from Matt Nish-Lapidus (who also wrangled this night together), wringing admirably-disreputable sounds from his modular synth setup.

Recording: New Tendencies & Priya Thomas

Artist: New Tendencies & Priya Thomas

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at The Steady Café (Track Could Bend #31), October 3, 2017.

New Tendencies & Priya Thomas - [excerpt 1]

New Tendencies & Priya Thomas - [excerpt 2]

This was, as usual, a joyful night of acoustic and electronic sounds that was rendered a little bittersweet in retrospect with news of The Steady's closing. This pair brought some weird synths, pickup mics and a violin to create some spiky/menacing sounds whose genre tag might be "Cthulhu love themes".

[These two will be making some rather different sounds as members of Paul Lawton's new band Don't Bother, who are making their live debut tonight (November 9th) with Grids and Our Father Star at the Smiling Buddha. You'll be able to find Track Could Bend at The Belljar Café on Tuesday, December the 5th.]

Recording: New Tendencies

Artist: New Tendencies

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Handlebar, June 18, 2017.

New Tendencies - [excerpt]

Billed as "a quiet night" by organizer Matt Nish-Lapidus, this evening featured plenty of patchcords and three different flavours of electronic experimentalism. Nish-Lapidus brought his own New Tendencies project to the night as well, creating some slowly-morphing purps and sputter-rhythms that looped into themselves just like the circle in the generative video being projected behind him.

[New Tendencies will be celebrating new album Missed Month with a release show, Wednesday, July 19th at The Baby G with support from Dirty Inputs and Doom Tickler.]

Recording: New Tendencies

Artist: New Tendencies

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at The Steady Café, April 23, 2017.

New Tendencies - [excerpt]

This project from Matt Nish-Lapidus (who also serves as guitar-wrangler in post-punkers Several Futures) began as an experiment in treating field recordings with various post-ambient effects, but has tranformed from a software to a hardware project for live performance. Working with a modular synth, the m.o. for this set seemed to be to twist knobs 'til everything got complicated.

[There will probably be some different tones generated on Sunday, June 18th at Handlebar, at a gig billed as "A Quiet Night", with Matt N-L being joined by Heraclitus Akimbo and Bachelard.]

Recording: Several Futures

Artist: Several Futures

Song: A New Place To Dwell [excerpt]

Recorded at Array Space, September 13, 2016.

Several Futures - A New Place To Dwell [excerpt]

An audacious tangent from this post-punk trio, A New Place To Dwell sees the group performing semi-improvised music driven by reactions to film loops projected by Jonathan Culp. The images formed their own improvising trio, with three projectors rotating through various bits of 8mm detritus (home movies, nature films, travelogues, educational shorts) that often commented or reflected on each other in wry ways.

Musically, this could be seen as the direct descendant of Matt Nish-Lapidus and Jonny Dovercourt's previous work in Hybrid Moments as much as an extension of their current, more tuneful work. Coming just a few months after the release of their Before You Forget album, this show celebrated the digital release of their first collaboration with Culp. Possibly doomed to be seen as too "rock" for the improvised music crowd and too much like "improvised music" for the rock crowd, this might fall in the cracks between categories, but shows that the band isn't going to be satisfied by sticking to their setlist. Expect to see some more experimental forays from this crew — and probably some new songs, too, inspired by the riffs dredged up in moments of exploration like this.

Recording: Several Futures

Artist: Several Futures

Song: Further Out

Recorded at CineCycle, February 6, 2016.

Several Futures - Further Out

Several Futures have increased the scope of their ambition with the release of Before You Forget, their first full-length. The entirety of the album's second side is filled by "Lost Dreams", a four-part "Trilogy"-styled suite. This song is the quadrilogy's closer, and served as the capper to the band's album release show.

[Several Futures are playing tonight (February 17, 2016), opening things up at the Garrison for Chicago's Disappears.]

Recording: Several Futures

Artist: Several Futures

Song: Before You Forget^*

Recorded at The Great Hall's Conversation Room ("Long Winter: Year 3, Volume 5"), March 13, 2015.

Several Futures - Before You Forget

This post-punk trio is pushing past the songs on their debut tape, with co-vocalists Jonny Dovercourt and Matt Nish-Lapidus working off each other in some more elaborate ways. This older crew (dare one say "grizzled veterans"?) also managed to hold the attention of the young crowd of the room, even in the spaces before the kinetic collisions where their songs simmer with patient potential energy.

[Several Futures will be playing alongside Champion Lover, The Two Koreas and Kurt Marble at The Magpie Taproom on Friday April 17th.]

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

Recording: Several Futures

Artist: Several Futures

Song: Heroic Phase^*

Recorded at Smiling Buddha, June 28, 2014.

Several Futures - Heroic Phase

Full review to follow. Seeing the kids taking their first kick at the can and re-inventing rock'n'roll by sheer dint of their enthusiasm is great, but I'm also a fan of seeing old hands reassemble in new forms to create something that's informed both by past experience and new enthusiasm. This debut performance by Several Futures was a hit in that regard, taking some ingredients familiar to the musicians here but torquing things into a new topology.

Jonny Dovercourt (bass/vox) and Matt Nish-Lapidus (guit/vox) played together in the more experimental Hybrid Moments, but the improvisatory postpunk shifts on the shred/drone continuum that they explored there have now been sublimated to a more song-based template. Dovercourt also previously played with drummer Evan Davies in Republic of Safety¹, so there was no lack of familiarity and easy interplay on stage, even if this material was getting its first public airing. There were short songs and a couple longer ones, plus places where hardcore-esque jousting shifted into jagged Slint-offs. The band already has a couple tracks up on their soundcloud, so they're definitely hitting the ground running.

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

---

¹ Careful observers would have noted that they were greeted at the door of this gig by another former member of Republic of Safety as well!

Recording: This Mess

Artist: This Mess

Songs: Lost in Space + [segue supercut] + [ambient version]

Recorded at The White House, March 30, 2013.

This Mess - Lost in Space

This Mess - [segue supercut]

This Mess - [ambient version]

Full review to follow. A night to celebrate the release of States, This Mess' first album (available on tape and at bandcamp) was also a sad occasion, as it also served as a going-away party for drummer Adham, who is heading out of town for a while. Hopefully all the what-if's surrounding the band will someday find pleasant resolutions. Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, there's probably a version of the band that's more interested in the post-punkish textural bits between the songs than in the songs themselves, so I did a little reconstruction to think on what that might be like. And in some even stranger universe, mad scientists are wondering what they'd sound like as glacial feedback sculptors. Or maybe that's just me.

Recording: This Mess

Artist: This Mess

Song: Stuck in the Cracks

Recorded at The Shop under Parts & Labour (Wavelength THIRTEEN – Night 1), February 14, 2013.

This Mess - Stuck in the Cracks

My quick notes for this set can be found here.

LMA: This Mess @ Wavelength 531

In collaboration with This Mess, I have uploaded their entire set (and first show!) from Wavelength 531 to the Live Music Archive. You can stream the whole thing, or download it in the format of your choice, including lossless FLAC files.

This Mess, Live at The Garrison (Wavelength 531) 2011-12-29

The band's next show is gonna be this Thursday (January 26, 2012) at the Silver Dollar, alongside Hussy, Ostrich Tuning and Mazola. Come check 'em out!

P.S. Any artists with whom I've shared recordings previously — if this looks like a cool idea to you, please get in touch with me and we can get something of yours up on the Archive!

Recording: Hybrid Moments

Artist: Hybrid Moments

Song: [excerpt from an improvisation]^*

Recorded at 918 Bathurst (Wavelength 516), March 13, 2011.

Hybrid Moments - [excerpt from an improvisation]

My notes for this set can be found here.

^* So far as I know, anyway. However, it's not impossible that this piece has a title.

Recording: This Mess

Artist: This Mess

Song: ½ Steps^*

Recorded at The Garrison (Wavelength 531), December 29, 2011.

This Mess - ½ Steps

Review to follow.

^* Thanks to my source who has passed the title of this along to me.

Recording: Hybrid Moments

Artist: Hybrid Moments

Song: Untitled Structured Improvisation 1 [excerpt]

Recorded at The Garrison, October 24, 2010.

Hybrid Moments - Untitled Structured Improvisation 1 [excerpt]

My notes for this set can be found here.