In her spellbinding live show, Montreal-based multi-instrumentalist Eliza Kavtion twists threads from documentary films, punk-rock distortion, and hip-hop innovation together with her wailing, virtuosic guitar playing. She and guitar become one: a fury of fuzzy drones, rhythmic sputters, and menacing loops, out of which emerge soaring melodies and defiant roars. Off the stage, Kavtion considersContinue reading “Eliza Kavtion’s Call and Response”
Article Type Archives
Backxwash—The Healing Music of Productive Rage
If you want to win over rapper and producer Backxwash (Ashanti Mutinta), start a conversation with her by talking about the outlier sounds of American rapper–producers Missy Elliot and Timbaland. I’m speaking with her a couple of days after she fired up audiences at her first-ever Toronto show—the February edition of the eighth annual LongContinue reading “Backxwash—The Healing Music of Productive Rage”
Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi is just scratching the surface
“My relationship to sound is [an] obsession with texture and how sounds affect each other, and also [with] playing with the human psyche.” Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi then bursts out laughing, saying, “That’s a lot in one sentence.” Koochakzadeh-Yazdi is very funny, and she’s also very focused. The Iranian-Canadian Simon Fraser University student is just twenty-one yearsContinue reading “Kimia Koochakzadeh-Yazdi is just scratching the surface”
Sami Blanco’s Experimental Atmospheres
Yellowknife-based experimental electronic-music artist Sami Blanco plays me a snippet of a soundbank he made for late-night broadcast on Yellowknife’s francophone radio station, CIVR-FM, familiarly known as Radio Taïga. Emerging from a Korg MS2000—the virtual analog synthesizer Blanco dreamed about owning since he was sixteen—is a dazzling sequence that twinkles like stars on a clearContinue reading “Sami Blanco’s Experimental Atmospheres”
The Quiet Waves of Silla and Rise
In early 2016 Ottawa-based DJ, producer, and dancer Eric Vani, aka Rise, was hired to create music to be played at the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Nature Nocturne—a themed-evening series that Vani describes as a “rave in the middle of dinosaur skeletons.” “They hired me to remix a bunch of music from around the circumpolar—differentContinue reading “The Quiet Waves of Silla and Rise”
Manuella Blackburn’s Landline
In the pantheon of sounds, the tone, whirr, and ring of the rotary phone belong in the “gone but not forgotten” gallery. If someone’s mobile phone rings à la Ma Bell—as opposed to the usual pulsating buzz, pop-tune riff, or synthesized animal sound—we might get nostalgic and think something like, How quaint . . . that is,Continue reading “Manuella Blackburn’s Landline”
Raven Chacon’s Harmonious Language
“I loved the Beatles so much that I totally exhausted listening to their music. I wanted more.” For Raven Chacon, the answer was easy. “I recorded all of their albums on cassette, then took the tape out of the shell and flipped it so I could have all the albums in reverse. So I hadContinue reading “Raven Chacon’s Harmonious Language”
Joseph Shabason’s patient unravelling
When we listen to music, are we meant to enter the hearts and minds of those who’ve created it? Or is listening more of an interior experience—of turning inwards and creating space to experience our own feelings? For Joseph Shabason, the answer to both questions is yes. The Toronto-based saxophone player and new-jazz composer hasContinue reading “Joseph Shabason’s patient unravelling”
Muxubo Mohamed Dares to Represent
Compromise? What is compromising? Compromising for what? Compromising for what reason? . . . What is compromise? —Eartha Kitt That emphatic excerpt from a 1982 documentary is sampled at the start of “He(r)story,” the opening track on Obuxum’s beat-laden EP H.E.R. While Kitt is alluding to compromising with a man, Obuxum is zooming out further, asking whyContinue reading “Muxubo Mohamed Dares to Represent”
Lea Bertucci composes time and space
As I sit here listening to Metal Aether, the most recent full-length release from New York composer and performer Lea Bertucci, the difficulty of locating this music’s boundaries becomes increasingly clear. Bertucci’s compositions balance minimalist saxophone patterns with field recordings collected in places as disparate as New York City and ancient regions of Mexico. TheContinue reading “Lea Bertucci composes time and space”
Wow & Flutter make breathing room
The phrase “wow and flutter” typically refers to flawed analog recordings—ones with imperfections that cause the pitch to oscillate, either slowly or quickly. When Toronto-based wind players Bea Labikova, Kayla Milmine, and Sarah Peebles decided to form an improvising trio together in late 2017, Wow & Flutter felt like the natural name choice: it’s exactlyContinue reading “Wow & Flutter make breathing room”
Bug Incision: Calgary’s Cross-Pollination Buzz
The world of free improvisation is like a parallel universe, a global underground community of nonidiomatic soundmakers, recording with each other in every imaginable permutation, connected via a proliferation of text- and link-heavy Web 1.0 sites, DIY venues, and CD-R labels, with a passionately devoted audience consisting of— in large part, if not exclusively—improvisers themselves,Continue reading “Bug Incision: Calgary’s Cross-Pollination Buzz”
Julia Mermelstein’s “wonted II-III”
Toronto-based composer Julia Mermelstein creates music focused on detailed tone, colour, textures, and gestural movement that reveal evocative, immersive, and subtly changing soundscapes. Her work aims to blend acoustic and electronic sound worlds in seamless interactions. Drawing inspiration from Buddhist philosophy, psychology, and ritual, as well as her extensive background in ballet, Mermelstein blends multipleContinue reading “Julia Mermelstein’s “wonted II-III””
First-place winner, Musicworks’ 2017 Electronic Music Composition contest
The glitchy, vaguely dystopian composition constructed from manipulated vocals is almost widespread enough now to warrant its own genre tag. Laurie Anderson is, of course, its foremother. Recent interesting entries include Holly Herndon’s Platform, Katie Gately’s Pipes, and Giant Claw’s Soft Channel. All of them delight in detaching signifier from signified, building up intricate, oftenContinue reading “First-place winner, Musicworks’ 2017 Electronic Music Composition contest”
Kamancello explores a new duo dimension
“Kamanche means little bow in Kurdish and Farsi,” says Shahriyar Jamshidi, the kamanche player in Kamancello, his Toronto-based duo with cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne. The pair marry rich lyricism and microtonal ornamentation, influenced by Iranian, classical, and metal musics, in fully improvised performances that feel their way forward from quiet drones to chugging, propulsive rhythms, andContinue reading “Kamancello explores a new duo dimension”
Senyawa plays the music of the universe
On a chilly, rainy Thursday May night, a crowd of sixty or so people, spread unevenly around the pews of Halifax’s Fort Massey United Church, is waiting. OBEY Convention creative director Andrew Patterson has just introduced Indonesian “doom folk” duo Senyawa, but after the applause has faded they have still not appeared. Finally, two diminutiveContinue reading “Senyawa plays the music of the universe”
Bekah Simms’ Music of Discomfort
Bekah Simms likes music that challenges. “I don’t want to ever get too comfortable,” she tells me, as we sit down to talk about her work. “I don’t want it ever to be super easy to write a piece, because I feel like then I won’t be a better composer when I’m done it.” It’sContinue reading “Bekah Simms’ Music of Discomfort”
Sarah Davachi flies into psychoacoustic space
One could say that Sarah Davachi’s drone-based music is all about meditative states, or texture, or duration. But more than anything else, it’s about balance—between the theoretical and the practical, the material and the cerebral, the antique and the avant-garde, the electronic and the purely acoustic. Barons Court (Students of Decay), Davachi’s first vinyl release,Continue reading “Sarah Davachi flies into psychoacoustic space”
Craig Aalders’ el8dEra 3m
Ice cracking and melting; a forest by the coast; a dream; breath lingering in the cold air—these are some of the images that come to mind when listening to Vancouver composer Craig Aalders’ el8dEra 3m, the first-prize-winning composition in Musicworks’ 2016 annual Electronic Music Composition contest. An absorbing, ethereal work of shimmering organic tones andContinue reading “Craig Aalders’ el8dEra 3m”
Between Folklore and the Future: The Music of Heidi Chan
Heidi Chan began combining her passions for arranging, technology, and traditional instruments when her father gave her a demo version of the music software program Cakewalk. “Because it was a demo version, I couldn’t save anything,” she recalls. “So I had to leave the computer on for, like, months and months to keep working onContinue reading “Between Folklore and the Future: The Music of Heidi Chan”
Ayo Leilani Interrogates the Beats
“Eh Yo! Eh Yo, Leilani!,” she heard as she walked down a bustling New York City street. Turning around to see a friend calling out to greet her in the way that only the hip-hop generation can, Leilani (Hawaiian for “gift from the heavens”) realized she’d just found a captivating addition to her current name:Continue reading “Ayo Leilani Interrogates the Beats”
Aaron Oppenheim’s October 12, 2014 (excerpt)
October 12, 2014 (excerpt) is a recording of a live performance held in New York City on October 12, 2014 as part of ABC No Rio’s COMA Series, which presents experimental and improvised music. “This piece uses samples of voice for all of its material, manipulated in real time using my custom Max/MSP live instrument,”Continue reading “Aaron Oppenheim’s October 12, 2014 (excerpt)”
Juan Camilo Vásquez’ Calíope (canto de las abejas)
YOU DON’T HAVE TO KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT MATHEMATICAL HYPERSURFACES or guitar architecture to enjoy the dense sparkle, relentless energy, and intelligent swarm behaviour of Juan Camilo Vásquez’ Calíope (canto de las abejas) for guitar and electronics—but it definitely enhances the listening experience if you know a little. The Colombian composer’s 2014 work, winner of Musicworks’Continue reading “Juan Camilo Vásquez’ Calíope (canto de las abejas)”
Tenzier: History Outside the Margins
“There’s a group of students who used a term I really liked: countermemory,” Tenzier founder Eric Fillion tells me over Skype from Montreal. “I almost like that better than counterculture.” He’s talking about Tenzier, the avant-garde label which has put out five critically acclaimed vinyl releases in as many years, as well as Tenzier theContinue reading “Tenzier: History Outside the Margins”