Monday Roundup #293

Community notes:

• The 2026 Musicworks Electronic Music Composition Contest is now open. "Compose/submit an experimental piece in any electronic-music genre — acousmatic, electroacoustic, glitch, soundscape, intelligent dance music (IDM), turntable art, video music et. al. The contest is open to entries from anyone located anywhere in the world and from artists at any age or stage of career. Pieces must be previously unpublished, i.e. not released on a commercially available recording at the time of submission." Maximum length is 10 minutes. Contest entry fee is $30, and entrants receive a free one-year subscription to the print edition of Musicworks. Get all the information you need here.

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Concert announcements:

Altered States Artist Showcase (feat. Rebecca Hennessy/Michael Herring/Tim Shia) / Water to Wine 2026-09-02 (Wednesday). $pwyc. [more info]

the grandson [album release show] [Yoshi Maclear Wall/Ezra Schell/Lee Rosensweet] (Genre Fiction [Ben Culver/Alex McPherson/Miles Cakebread-Kraus/Ali Rashid]) / Burdock Music Hall 2026-09-02 (Wednesday). $10. [more info]

ESP Free Jazz Thursdays (feat Brent Tanemura/Jake Bikay/Diana Piruzevska/Gloria Ksimuniv) / Water to Wine 2026-09-03 (Thursday). $pwyc. [more info]

Ministry of Phonic Services presents: Back to School Field Trip ["a festival of outdoor experimental sounds and actions"] (feat. Germaine Liu / Fossils / Day of Niagara) / "River" 2026-09-05 (Saturday). $pwyc. [more info]

Adjacent Spheres ["performing original music inspired by and composed by Dean Veneruz"] (feat. Village [Michael Davidson/Joel Bracken/Aline Homzy/Jen Lo/Hiro Tanaka/Mateo Mancuso]) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2026-09-06 (Sunday)

Ministry of Phonic Services presents: Back to School Field Trip ["a festival of outdoor experimental sounds and actions"] (feat. Vampire John Coltrane / Bee Solomon / Cows in Rain) / "Porch" 2026-09-07 (Monday). $pwyc. [more info]

Ministry of Phonic Services presents: Back to School Field Trip ["a festival of outdoor experimental sounds and actions"] (feat. J.Vulgare / Colby Richardson / Fan Wu / Mariana Medellin) / "Mall" 2026-09-09 (Wednesday). $pwyc. [more info]

Ministry of Phonic Services presents: Back to School Field Trip ["a festival of outdoor experimental sounds and actions"] (feat. Brian Abbott's Tone Cathedral / Mani Mazinani & Marilyn Yogarajah / Bea Labikova) / "Creek" 2026-09-11 (Friday). $pwyc. [more info]

Elastic Recordings Presents: Inhabiting & Releasing Spontaneous Structures – A Concert & Workshop (feat. The Plastic Waste Band / Michael Davidson & Bjorn Kriel / Aline Homzy) / Annette Studios 2026-09-13 (Sunday – workshop @ 3:00 p.m., concert @ 8:00 p.m.). $20-$25 concert only (advance), $25-$40 concert + workshop (advance), $free (kids 12 + under). [more info]

Ministry of Phonic Services presents Back to School Field Trip: Installation Garden ["a festival of outdoor experimental sounds and actions"] (feat. various artists) / "Ravine" 2026-09-13 (Sunday). $pwyc. [more info]

Ministry of Phonic Services presents Back to School Field Trip: BPM (Big Percussion Meeting) ["a festival of outdoor experimental sounds and actions"] (feat. Amiel Ang / Brian Ruryk / Raf Wilcot / Victor O / Caleb Clawson) / "Playground" 2026-09-15 (Tuesday). $pwyc. [more info]

Green-House (Masahiro Takahashi) / The Baby G 2026-09-16 (Wednesday). $25.03, 19+. [FB event]

Ministry of Phonic Services presents: Back to School Field Trip ["a festival of outdoor experimental sounds and actions"] (feat. HAHAHAHAHAHA / shemona / quivering / Emergency Euphoria) / "Highway" 2026-09-23 (Wednesday). $pwyc. [more info]

Ministry of Phonic Services presents: Back to School Field Trip ["a festival of outdoor experimental sounds and actions"] (feat. SlowPitchSound / Fleshtone Aura & Sandro Perri / Gayle Young & Reinhard Reitzenstein / tête à tête [Philippe Melanson & Matthew Pencer]) / "UFO" 2026-09-25 (Friday). $pwyc. [more info]

Soundstreams Encounters: Nagoya Marimbas [featuring Steve Reich’s "Mallet Quartet" and "Nagoya Marimbas", plus works by Ann Southam and Juri Seo] (feat. Kairos Percussion Quartet with Aerin Cho) / Hugh's Room 2026-09-29 (Tuesday). $free with reservation. [more info]

Soundstreams Encounters: Violins Unbound [works by André Ristic, John Beckwith, Chris Paul Harman, Parisa Sabet, Ana Sokolović] (feat. Judith Fliedl & Roan Ma) / Hugh's Room 2026-11-02 (Monday). $free with reservation. [more info]

Soundstreams Encounters: Orison [a new music theatre work-in-progress featuring the ondes Martenot] (feat. Daniel Áñez & James O’Callaghan) / Hugh's Room 2026-11-30 (Monday). $free with reservation. [more info]

Soundstreams Encounters: Hua ["an immersive audiovisual collaboration"] (feat. Margie Kelk & Alison Yun-Fei Jiang) / Paradise Theatre 2027-04-13 (Monday). $free with reservation. [more info]

Is your show missing from this list? Submit it via this form!

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Shows this week:

Strings & Spirits presents [live score of indie game "A Short Hike", featuring composer Mark Sparling & developer Adam Robinson-Yu, along with special drinks & surprises!] (feat. Render File) / Canadian Music Centre 2026-08-24 (Monday). $PWYC, suggested minimum $10. [tickets + more info]

The AMBiENT PiNG & Imaginary North present: 27 Years of Ambient Love! (feat. Cheryl O / Nanotopia / Jim Field) / Handlebar 2026-08-24 (Monday). $PWYC. [more info]

Jazz Rat Mondays (feat. Patrick Smith/Anthony D'Alessandro/Chris Banks/Ernesto Cervini) / Dina's Tavern 2026-08-24 (Monday). $pwyc. [more info]

Nick Fraser presents (feat. BLOOP-tanium Riot with Christine Duncan [Christine Duncan/Mike Smith/Rob Clutton/Nick Fraser/Ryan Driver]) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2026-08-25 (Tuesday) [more info]

ESP Free Jazz Thursdays (feat. Brent Tanemura/Lauchlin Wood/Brodie West/Mateos Labbé-Phelan) / Water to Wine 2026-08-27 (Thursday). $pwyc. [more info]

Hieronymus Harry (Isla Craig / Jack Pine) / Pamenar (back patio) 2026-08-27 (Thursday). $15 or PWYC. [more info]

Caution Wet Floor Signs [Yoshi Maclear Wall/Garret Hildebrandt/Dame Cook/Will Hunt/fossa séu] / The Emmet Ray 2026-08-27 (Thursday). $12. [more info]

Karen Ng presents (feat. Rob Clutton ‘Scrapples’ Quartet [Rob Clutton/Kevin Turcotte/Tania Gill/Mackenzie Longpré]) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2026-08-27 (Thursday). [more info]

Army Girls (By Divine Right / Amelia Maxwell) / The Drake Underground 2026-08-28 (Friday). $22.63, 19+. [more info]

Exit Points #75 (feat. Julie Lassonde/Lisa Santoprete/Yvan Sheremetieff/Andrew Chiappetta/Woolworm, Ontario / Kavi/Roa Lee/Sahil Gopal/Michael Palumbo/Awstad Afraaz Adam Mulji) / Array Space 2026-08-28 (Friday). $15-20 advance, $20 door. [more info]

The Ryan Driver Quintet [Ryan Driver/Martin Arnold/Rob Clutton/Brodie West/Mateos Labbé-Phelan] / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2026-08-28 (Friday). $pwyw. [FB event]

The Silt [Doug Tielli/Ryan Driver/Marcus Quin] / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2026-08-29 (Saturday – early)

4 Weeks for Sonny Rollins (feat. The Bridge Quartet [Shawn Nykwist/Lee Wallace/Chris Banks/Mark Hundevad]) / CONTXT by Trane 2026-08-29 (Saturday). $30.79 advance, $40 door. [FB event]

Devin Patten trio [Dan Pitt/Devin Patten/Aaron Blewett] / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2026-08-29 (Saturday). [more info]

Joni Void ["two sets of improvised electronics and sample-based soundscapes, merging into an exclusive collaborative finale between both acts"] (Liz Hysen) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2026-08-30 (Sunday – noon). [more info]

Cosmic Homeostasis XXXIII / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2026-08-30 (Sunday – 2:30 p.m.). $pwyc, all-ages + family-friendly. [FB event]

Amrita [Anita Katakkar & Kayla Milmine] / DROM Taberna 2026-08-30 (Sunday – 5:30 p.m.). $pwyc. [FB event]

Sympathetic String Band & Friends (feat. Sympathetic String Band / Andrew Timar) / The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge) 2026-08-30 (Sunday – early). $pwyc. [more info]

Mifune Moods presents: Akira [live score] (feat. Mifune Moods [Ali Rashid/Annie Elgie/Fionn Ling/Luke Nickel/Sarah Laur/Keon Narinesingh/Yoshi Maclear Wall/Ezra Schell]) / Bampot 2026-08-30 (Sunday). $pwyc/$10, all ages. [tickets + more info]

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Bandcamp corner:

• There have been a variety of various sonic experiments and presentations in the past while, but it's exciting to see a new song — portending a new album of same — from Lisa Conway.

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It happened this week...

• ...on August 28, 2010 at The Shop under Parts & Labour.

Little Girls - Youth Tunes

Procedure Club - Feel Sorry for Me

[Do remember that you can click on the tags below to go back and find the original posts (and often, more stuff) from these artists.]

Recording: Procedure Club

Artist: Procedure Club

Song: Feel Sorry for Me

Recorded at The Shop under Parts & Labour, August 28, 2010.

Procedure Club - Feel Sorry for Me

My notes for this set can be found here.

Gig: Bishop Morocco

Bishop Morocco (Procedure Club / Little Girls)

The Shop under Parts & Labour. Saturday, August 28, 2010.

"Due to the nature of lemon-flavoured rum," as my notes indicate, my memories of this night are a little fragmented. A delightful summer evening of backyard hanging out and barbeque had me sipping beverages since late afternoon, so I was pretty wobbly by the time I headed off to the gig. Which put me in a hyper-observant and obsessively documentary frame of mind. My notepad has page after page of observations from this night — a good chunk of them from before I even got to the gig, as I was apparently trying to tease out mystical signifiers on the Lansdowne bus ("this is the holy route into Parkdale") and considering the virtues of "fake mental text messages" (?!). Unsurprisingly, of course, even when my scribbles were legible, it was mostly drunken woo-hah.¹

Though I was slow in getting down to Parts & Labour, I had the drunkard's serene egotistical belief that they wouldn't start without me, and as I stepped in I indeed had time to grab a drink — oops — as Little Girls finished setting up. It'd been awhile since I'd seen Josh McIntyre's combo — in fact, all the way back to their fourth show, just as the project was transforming from bedroom-based recording project to buzz band. As that bubble of hype was waxed and waned, there's been the full-length Concepts and a pretty regular slate of local shows. And, beyond the momentary flash of hype, some genuine forward movement.

Live, the quartet created a murky, underwater sort of vibe. After an opening instrumental, the remaining songs featured McIntyre's deeply buried vocals mired in layers of reverb, sometimes sounding like they might belong in a slower song entirely than the rest of the surrounding band. Generally speaking, the music was spiky two-guitar stuff. There were some points where the guitars got muddled like the vocals, but there was still room for the band to get catchy on songs like the jaunty "Youth Tunes". It all created a somewhat dissociating vibe ("this is happening," my notebook reads, as if I was trying to reassure myself) but there was a more consistent sound than I remember, and some moments where it all blurred together rather deliciously.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Slotted in the middle was the band that I had come down to see: Procedure Club, a two-piece out of New Haven, Connecticut with Adam Malec on guitar and Andrea Belair on keybs and vocals, with the drum machine sitting on a stool beside her. I'd rather enjoyed their Doomed Forever album² on Slumberland — one of the best labels going right now. With their hazy bedroom pop offering flashes of Black Tambourine via the Jesus and Mary Chain, Procedure Club fit well on the Slumberland roster, and I definitely wanted to show my support on their first visit to these parts, even if I was vaguely worried about how the lo-fi duo were going to pull it off as a live unit.

As they got going, the potential frailties of their setup were evident, but more than overwhelmed by the pop sensibility behind it all. The songs were generally built up from a steady drum machine beat, rhythm guitar and fuzzy keyboards which sometimes sounded like there was a loose connection somewhere, with Belair's vocals tying it all together, even when they were the lowest thing in the mix.

It was a largely stripped-down sound — a bit too so much at times — though the economic virtues of not adding any extra hands to tour with are pretty clear. It did make it a little harder for the pair to break through to a non-rapt, semi-chatty room but I was taken with the uncluttered sound. Songs sometimes came off a bit more straightahead than on the album versions, as on "Feel Sorry for Me" with one less layer of haze to draw attention away from the popnugget underneath. That didn't always work as well — the ridiculously wonderful "Rather", slowed down from its album incarnation, didn't quite capture the magic.³

If there's a criticism to be made here it's that the songs are sometimes a little indistinguishable. But I really love the sound so that doesn't matter so much to me. And there is a bit of a limit to what two people and a drum machine can replicate live. But if you thought labelmates Pains of Being Pure at Heart were getting too commercial, this is a band worth checking out.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Having gotten what I came for, seeing the night's actual headliners was just gravy, although I was curious to see Bishop Morocco — mostly to see what kind of musical common ground had been negotiated between the band's two principles. A partnership between Jake Fairley (ex-Uncut, though also with some solo work to his name — most notably his big beat album Touch Not the Cat⁴) and Jim Sayce (ex-Deadly Snakes as well as co-founder of the late Tangiers), long-time friends whose music to date has not been particularly overlapping.

The upshot of their collaboration was something that initially sounded closer to what I would have expected from Fairley, inasmuch as there was a synth-y sensibility to the whole thing with beats a few steps closer to the dancefloor than the garage. Along those lines, the first song featured atmospheric synths over a metronome drum machine beat. The tempo picked up after that, but the material was still synth-heavy in a dark disco kind of mode — my overall first impression was that for them "Last Year's Disco Guitars" wasn't just a song title so much as a statement of purpose.

Starting as more of a studio project, the pair played everything themselves on the tracks that'd become their self-titled album, but live have grown into a four-piece. Even then, it wasn't until a half-dozen songs in that the drummer joined the fray, which added a bit more of a "rock" sound — though at a few places that was rock in the manner that, oh, New Order was rock. Sayce and Fairley traded off vocals from song to song, but there was a unified underlying vision.

Ultimately, the vibe was plastic permagrim, and it was okay to listen to, but nothing in the set really reached out and grabbed me. Mind you, I'm not sure if the muffled sound they were getting here helped. And, to be sure, I was sobering up by this point — my notes by this point are more focused on the vast number of pedals in the band's employ than in the deeper meaning of what they were doing — so that might have something to do with their music affecting me differently than the preceding bands.

They played an eleven song, forty-minute set which pretty much represented their entire output so far. I wasn't won over, but I wouldn't say I was turned off. If we manage to cross paths again, I'd give 'em another go.

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¹ Perhaps all-too-aptly, I made some breathless notes about being on the verge of aphasia, though in retrospect I'm really sure I meant synesthesia.

² You can download two of the best songs from the album over at Slumberland's website.

³ I don't know whether to be sad or relieved that the band didn't attempt "Seventh Circle of Hell", another of my faves, which sounds like the work of someone attempting to write an ABBA song where their only point of reference was a slightly warped cassette copy of The 6ths' Wasps' Nests album.

⁴ I note that Fairley was a couple years ahead of the curve in the indie rock cat sweepstakes.