Recording: Sarah and Rob

Artist: Sarah and Rob

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #111), December 2, 2025.

Sarah and Rob - [excerpt]

A rare duo appearance from Sarah Peebles (shō, monotron, cracklebox) and Rob Cruickshank (electronics, circular saw blade) provided some sinusoidal vibrational therapy, served up with homemade cookies. The latter were apparently not prepared on the cookie sheet hung from a frame like a gong and serving as a DIY resonator and part of Peebles' sonic arsenal.

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

[Track Could Bend returns to Wenona on Tuesday (January 6th) with sets from Duo BEAK (Bea Labikova and Kayla Milmine) and Vividness Trio (Laura Gillis, Lorne Shapiro, Hildegard von Bingo). A sweet way to start the year if you've been resolving to get out to more shows!]

Recording: Peebles/Estacio/Alexander

Artist: Sarah Peebles/Kat Estacio/Danny Alexander

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at 918 Bathurst (Track Could Bend #100), February 16, 2025.

Sarah Peebles/Kat Estacio/Danny Alexander - [excerpt]

Track Could Bend will be having its tenth anniversary in April — although given how time got weird for a while there and the series took fourteen months off, it seems like a slightly ambiguous mark for celebration. This big round number, however, felt like the right opportunity to mark a special occasion. In the beforetimes, TCB marked its anniversaries with special events, gathering the folks who had played over the previous year and drawing names from a hat to construct some spontaneous new combos. I had the notion to scale that up and duly invited back everyone who had ever played the series — over three hundred performers! — for an afternoon and evening of fun.

As fate would have it, the long-planned-for day came with a monumental snowstorm, so the inability to get around kept some folks at home. And yet, this event still saw twenty-one performers take the stage, duly selected from the hat and sorted into seven trios. As is often the case, these instant bands made some gorgeous sounds, showing off the ability of TCB's community to adapt, co-operate and thrive. A fun time had was had by many — a fitting launch to the next ten years.

Scratchy and percussive and teasing out feedback just under the surface, this trio was nicely sympatico. Sitting on a row on the stage floor, Danny Alexander's (MFS#89) guitar moved alongside Kat Estacio's (MFS#32, 86) gongs and Sarah Peebles' (MFS debut) cracklebox and hand percussion.

You can check out the full set over on youtube:

[Track Could Bend will be back at Wenona Lodge, its usual home, on April 1st in a special co-presentation with Ministry of Phonic Services presenting sets from Mira Martin-Gray & Sierra Weston and Wilderness Adventure Ride.]

Recording: Rob Cruickshank & Sarah Peebles

Artist: Rob Cruickshank & Sarah Peebles

Song: [improvisation for Ted]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (Ted Phillips Memorial Concert), September 17, 2023.

Rob Cruickshank & Sarah Peebles - [improvisation for Ted]

As families and communities do, kinfolk and friends gathered together to mark the loss of Ted Phillips. There was a chance to share memories while a whole bunch of the local musicians that Ted enjoyed played short solo or duo sets.

A too-rare chance to see this pair performing together offered a pleasing mix of Cruickshank's oscillations with Peebles' shō drones.

You can check out footage of all the music from the event's first half over on youtube:

Recording: Peebles/Story/Saneinejad

Artist: Sarah Peebles/David Story/Saba Saneinejad

Song: [excerpt from an improvisation]

Recorded December 4, 2022 at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Audiopollination 10th Anniversary Bash).

Sarah Peebles/David Story/Saba Saneinejad - [excerpt]

A round number anniversary is always worth celebrating, and more so for this labour of love devoted to creative expression and community building. Kudos to Mike Lynn for putting in the work to keep Audiopollination going for a decade — definitely worth celebrating with a slice of pie and a crowded room in the Southern Cross.

David Story (keyb) and Saba Saneinejad (flute) provided the vibes here, while Sarah Peebles first ran interference on a resonator bowl before gliding in on shō.

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

[Audiopollination is back at Array Space on Friday, January 13th with sets by Mike Barber/Daisy Betlej/Tegan Dietsch / Kousha Nakhaei/Owen Kurtz / Jamie Eriksen/Adrian Russouw/Bri Clarke and Kimberly Ivany/Katheryn Merriam.]

Recording: Microtonal Gong Sho

Artist: Microtonal Gong Sho

Songs: [excerpts from two improvisations]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Octopus Presents), January 15, 2020.

Microtonal Gong Sho - [excerpt from 1st piece]

Microtonal Gong Sho - [excerpt from 3rd piece]

The group name for this ad hoc ensemble was both whimsical and an on-point description. Field-testing a recently-acquired set of homemade gongs (spread out in front of them like a picnic blanket), Germaine Liu and Mark Zurawinski sounded out some traditional gong-bongs but also just as many unorthodox rubbings and clankings. They were flanked on one side by Brian Abbott (adding feedback swoops and phase shifter tickbursts on his microtonal guitar) and Sarah Peebles (on shō and cracklebox) on the other.

[Coming up on Wednesday (February 19th), Octopus will be presenting two different trios, each with Allison Cameron — the first set will see her being joined by Mira Martin-Gray and Mark Zurawinski while Germaine Liu and Laura Swankey will be featured in the second.]

Recording: Wow and Flutter

Artist: Wow and Flutter

Song: [first section]

Recorded at The Music Gallery @ 918 Bathurst, September 21, 2018.

Wow and Flutter - [first section]

Plenty of intriguing sounds on tap from this new-ish trio bringing together Kayla Milmine (soprano sax), Bea Labikova (fujara, alto sax) and Sarah Peebles (shō, cracklebox). Moving from keening, reedy soundscapes to extended technique noisebursts the sounds filled up the space quite nicely — especially Peebles' shō, which hovered around the rafters quite satisfactorily in the large hall.

Recording: Cosmic Homeostasis

Artist: Cosmic Homeostasis

Song: Dammit, all the shrapnels exhaled all at once [excerpt]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Southern Cross Lounge (Cosmic Homeostasis V), October 29, 2017.

Cosmic Homeostasis - Dammit, all the shrapnels exhaled all at once [excerpt]

Another fifth-Sunday-of-the-month gathering brought together eleven musicians to listen to whispers from space and collectively compose some slowly-moving sounds. The sound palette was a bit more buzzingly electronic this time, finding a humming field for the players to tap into. Some gong-sounds shook that up in the second set, but didn't interrupt the pleasing drift. The performers this time 'round were {AN} EeL, Rob Cruickshank, Kristina Guison, Mira Martin-Gray, Ronnie Blake, Kat Estacio, Syd Ortega, Sarah Peebles, Mehrnaz Rohbakhsh, Johan Seaton, and Joe Strutt.

You can listen to the whole session over at bandcamp:

[Cosmic Homeostasis will reconvene at the end of April, once recent return messages from recent space transmissions are received.]

Recording: Heidi Chan & Sarah Peebles

Artist: Heidi Chan & Sarah Peebles

Song: [edited excerpt]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (Somewhere There Creative Music Festival – Show 5), February 26, 2017.

Heidi Chan & Sarah Peebles - [edited excerpt]

The festival's final show opened with a series of short duo encounters, seguing quickly from one to the next within one set. Some ancient sounds lead things off, with Sarah Peebles' shō-drone providing a landscape for Heidi Chan's flute to float above.

Recording: Jeff Roberts and co.

Artist: Jeff Roberts/ Sarah Peebles/Shahriyar Jamshidi + Jeff Roberts/Branko Džinovic/Heidi Chan

Songs: [excerpts from two improvisations]

Recorded at Array Space (Somewhere There Presents), March 6, 2016.

Jeff Roberts/ Sarah Peebles/Shahriyar Jamshidi - [excerpt from first piece]

Jeff Roberts/Branko Džinovic/Heidi Chan - [edited excerpt]

Following on an event at the CMC showcasing Jeff Roberts' work as a composer, this Somewhere There-hosted night focused on improvisation. His work with guqin follows both traditional and modern paths — the latter deploying a motion-sensing MIDI controller to trigger samples that extend the instrument's sound. Besides examining that sonic range in a solo set that mixed traditional tunes with improvisations, the night also began with two rather-different trios. The first, joined by Sarah Peebles' shō and Shahriyar Jamshidi's kamanche was mostly quiet and still, like nature's ancient ambient music found beside a stream. The second, with Branko Džinovic's extended-technique accordion and Heidi Chan's effect-chain xiao, moved things into the digital age, but still remained rooted in thumping, clacking, plucking tactility.

Recording: Sarah Peebles/Nilan Perera/Ted Phillips

Artist: Sarah Peebles/Nilan Perera/Ted Phillips

Song: [third piece]

Recorded at Array Space ("Audiopollination 15"), February 11, 2014.

Sarah Peebles/Nilan Perera/Ted Phillips - [third piece]

Full review to follow. Some cool, collaborative soundscapes here, with Sarah Peebles' shō and Nilan Perera's treated guitar accompanied by Ted Phillips' live sound processing. From what I gathered, his algorithms sought out sympathetic sounds from a bank of samples (that included deconstructed fragments of a Bob Dylan harmonica solo) and they matched the tone of the other musicians so well that it became unclear who was making which sound!

As always, you can revisit the entire night on Audiopollination's bandcamp archive.