Toronto’s Rat-Drifting label has long been committed to releasing sneakily hybridized and organically concept-informed music. Work that is deliciously fraught with odd details and the idiosyncrasies of the community from which it springs. Cameron’s compositional and improvisatory styles are highly compatible with the label’s balance of diversity and a particular aesthetic focus. She has longContinue reading “The Allison Cameron Band. The Allison Cameron Band.”
Genre Archives
Ross Bolleter. Night Kitchen: An Hour of Ruined Piano.
Australian Ross Bolleter has devoted himself to ruined pianos: instruments found exposed—in different degrees—to the elements, having in that exposure developed a quirky originality, radically at odds with the piano’s usual ideal of uniformity. Cracked soundboards vibrate with strings that have wandered wildly out of tune, a string resonates, sounding through different pitches, seemingly atContinue reading “Ross Bolleter. Night Kitchen: An Hour of Ruined Piano.”
Joëlle Léandre
For Joëlle Léandre it all begins and ends with the double bass. After playing the often unwieldy bull fiddle from the age of nine and carefully studying its intricacies, she creates with it sounds so personal that defining them as free music, new music. or anything else, is beside the point. Since the late 1970s, Paris-basedContinue reading “Joëlle Léandre”
Scott Thomson
Among bike bells, olives, and music maps, Scott Thomson lounges in his Montreal apartment, seeming to enjoy a relaxed summer evening. Later, the sight of his trombone—on a stand nearby—will remind him he has a lot of work to do. Scott is working on new piece to take place at the Art Gallery of OntarioContinue reading “Scott Thomson”
Paul Walde Subverts Nature as Culture
The column of light is beamed directly into the sky. As if intended to summon some celestial visitor, the beam of photons is emitted from a circle of glowing discs, placed in the most unassuming place imaginable—a farmer’s field (don’t ET’s always land there?). This, however, isn’t some outtake from Close Encounters of the ThirdContinue reading “Paul Walde Subverts Nature as Culture”
Kyle Brenders
It’s 1999. The millennium is approaching, and Kyle Brenders, teenage saxophonist, is living the small-town Ontario version of the jazz life. He’s a member of the Bill Sherry Big Band, playing vintage swing tunes for dancers in the St. Thomas municipal arena, decades-old tunes echoing around the rafters. Brenders, who will ten years later jokeContinue reading “Kyle Brenders”
Eve Egoyan and David Rokeby’s Surface Tension
Surface Tension is a thirty-five-minute collaborative interarts work that the two of us (pianist Eve Egoyan and installation artist David Rokeby) created for Disklavier piano and interactive video. The piece explores the relationship between what we do separately in our respective creative practises. It is an exploration of possibility, of ways to integrate our two very different approachesContinue reading “Eve Egoyan and David Rokeby’s Surface Tension”
Extermination Music Night
It’s quarter past midnight in late May 2008. Storm clouds loom but hold, on this surprisingly humid night. I open the garage, grab my bike and check my backpack: flashlight, five cans of beer, five-dollar donation, notepad and pen. I recheck the instructions I printed from an online forum: “Do not be seen entering theContinue reading “Extermination Music Night”
Spring 2012
Cathy Lane, ed. Playing With Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice.
“There are no more powerful things in the world than words,” says Laurie Anderson in an interview with editor Cathy Lane in Playing With Words, where the primacy of language in art and politics is discussed in a clear and compelling manner. With over thirty-five artist contributors at various stages in their careers, Playing WithContinue reading “Cathy Lane, ed. Playing With Words: The Spoken Word in Artistic Practice.”