Recording: Circuits Bending Frames Ensembles

Artists: Circuits Bending Frames Ensembles (Christine Duncan/Paul Dutton/Laura Swankey + Jonathan Adjemian/Ryan Driver/Tiina Kiik/Laura Swankey + Christine Duncan/John Oswald/SlowPitchSound + Paul Dutton/Tiina Kiik/Wes Neal + Ryan Driver/Jonathan Adjemian/Mani Mazinani/Tiina Kiik/John Oswald)

Songs: [various improvisations]

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (Somewhere There Creative Music Festival – Show 3: Circuits Bending Frames), February 24, 2018.

Christine Duncan/Paul Dutton/Laura Swankey - [improvisation]

Jonathan Adjemian/Ryan Driver/Tiina Kiik/Laura Swankey - [improvisation]

Christine Duncan/John Oswald/SlowPitchSound - [improvisation]

Paul Dutton/Tiina Kiik/Wes Neal - [improvisation]

Ryan Driver/Jonathan Adjemian/Mani Mazinani/Tiina Kiik/John Oswald - [improvisation]

The Somewhere There Festival's Saturday night show was an ambitious multimedia undertaking, with live performances responding to the films of Laurie Kwasnik. Kwasnik is a familiar face at improvised music shows, especially anything in the orbit of Michael Snow (she's been collecting footage for her documentary Fields of Snow for many years now). It was a treat to get a glimpse into her archives, especially to see some of her artfully-arranged works responding to the music with their own visual improvisations. In between filmed snippets (and some visual mashups mixing together music from a wide range of performances) a group of improvisers recombined into a series of small ensembles for miniature performances.

The second half turned to cymatic visualisations, driven by a trio of synth players (Jonathan Adjemian, Ryan Driver, and Mani Mazinani), whose oscillations set pans of water and salt wiggling — which was then live-mixed on the big screen. There were a few technical difficulties along the way, but it was on the whole a pleasing and unique evening.

Recording: Aalborg Group

Artist: Aalborg Group / John Gregg & Tiina Kiik / Maxwell Boecker & William Davison

Songs: [excerpts from improved sets]

Recorded at Array Space ("Audiopollination 28.3"), March 16, 2014.

Aalborg Group - [excerpt]

John Gregg & Tiina Kiik - [excerpt from an improvisation]

Maxwell Boecker & William Davison - [excerpt from an improvisation]

Aalborg Group (the Atlanta duo of drummer John Gregg and bassist Maxwell Boecker) look like they'd be right at home in a basement punk show, so it was interesting to see them arrive in Toronto to play an improvised music series. The duo play with a certain heaviness that their setup would imply, but without the power sauce or grind, there's room for them to explore in those grey areas between rock'n'roll jamming and free improvisation. (You can check out their tape on their bandcamp.)

In proper Audiopollination fashion, after they played a short set together, the pair were split up for sets with some local guests, with drummer Gregg playing with accordionist Tiina Kiik while bassist Boecker was matched with noise-generationist William Davison. Both of the guests ended up playing a bit of follow-the-leader with their experienced partners, but pulled off fully-satisfactory performances. Kudos to the band for letting themselves being tossed in the deep end in such a manner — I'd love to see more exploratory "rock" bands dare to take this sort of plunge. Kudos also to Audiopollination's Mike Lynn for curating a evening that was a bit outside the series' usual zone — caught between the cracks of scenes and genres, this gig deserved a bigger audience than it got.

[As is always the case, you can hear a full recording of the night's music in the Audiopollination archives.]