Parker Thiessen and Ian Rowley have developed their Edmonton-based Pseudo Laboratories imprint—which recently marked its fiftieth cassette release—into the centre of a thriving regional community of experimentalists. “Right now, my main goal with Pseudo Labs is to connect the Prairies better,” Thiessen tells me as we sit on a pub patio on an unseasonably warm October afternoon. “I can’t speak for other Prairie zones, but there’s this idea in Edmonton that one day you’ll get to play Toronto or Vancouver. But I’d love to have a touring circuit that’s like Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton, Calgary, and Regina. Stuff happens in each of those places that isn’t recognized by the rest of the country.” The recent compilation Canadian Prairie Underground, Volume 1 (available on three cassettes or digital download) reflects the urgency and power of this regional community.
Rowley and Thiessen began Pseudo Laboratories with the modest goal of releasing their own music. Thiessen was well-connected within Edmonton’s growing scene, having previously organized the monthly series Ramshackle Day Parade, which included an open input session for experimentalists: “a low-pressure way to break from playing in your basement to playing live.” He and Rowley soon began drawing upon their experience as designers, the efficiency of tape duplicators, and the availability of cheap cassette tapes from a religious supplies company. “You had to be a religious organization to buy stuff there, but I went to bible school, so I knew the lingo and stuff to say, and we’d get tapes for like an eighth of the price you can get them for now.”
Tapes remain the centre of the label’s ethos and aesthetic. Though most sales are Bandcamp downloads, the label’s sonic tendency toward ambient, noise, and drone music proves ideal for cassettes, and the physical objects are compellingly designed. The tapes are usually directly duplicated in small pressings and mailed from Edmonton. Most releases sell in the dozens—generally evenly split between the Prairies and globally—though a few have been standout successes. The releases from Rowley’s duo Rhythm of Cruelty, which makes goth-tinged music with electronic danceability, can sell in the hundreds. Most are recorded by the artists at home, with the label arranging the physical production, design, and promotion work. The main goal of each release is to pay for the next one.
When I moved to Edmonton in 2022, I found a lively experimentalist community. Performances occur regularly around town at venues like the Aviary and Co-Lab. In September 2023, a sizeable crowd—undeterred by the heavy wildfire smoke—turned out for a quartet of performances at the Lowlands Project Space. The evening included a performance by Takleef Ensemble, a group featured on Canadian Prairie Underground, Vol. 1 (July 2023); at one point, the ensemble shook tiny percussive instruments to support guitarist Mustafa Rafiq’s improvisations at a firepit set up near the outdoor stage.
Pseudo Laboratories’ releases range from complex, short offerings of spacy or noisy electronic textures to sonic experimentation, including ambient work by artists like k. burwash, Nathaniel Sutton, and Psychic Chamber. On If I Were a Dance (April 2021), Rafiq provides droning soundscapes alongside the bracing poetry of Edmonton poet laureate Shima Aisha Robinson (aka Dwennimmen). Dancer, technologist, and sound artist Eryn Tempest’s (aka erΨn temp3st) Parallax (April 2023, PL-048) is a wildly inventive work that also exists as a dance installation and online video. On Burden’s Let Vibrate (February 2019, PL-035), two performers floss lengths of string between piano wires, creating a slowed-down album of rich, ambient piano music reminiscent of foghorns.
Irradiated Carbons (December 2020) by OAS brings vocal effects to compete with Frippertronic guitars over what nevertheless remain—in the sense of the Residents—catchy songs. On K Points (2015, PL008), Max Uhlich’s folk guitar and voice recall Jim O’Rourke at his songful best. These songs from Uhlich and OAS are beautiful and weird and seem almost out of place. But ambient music is folk music with more synthesizers, Thiessen says: “It’s one person. It’s storytelling. [It is] is more abstract in ambient [but] the outcome is the same, so they pair well.” The statement succinctly sums up Thiessen and Rowley’s curatorial ambitions. People may not want to hear five harsh noise acts in a row; similarly, a show featuring three singer-songwriters performing back to back may not be thrilling. Though there are more noise, drone, and ambient artists than singer-songwriters on the label, Pseudo Laboratories has developed into a home for experimentalists of all stripes to build and recognize community across the Prairies.
PATRICK NICKLESON is an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on authorship, collaboration, and dispossession in experimental and popular music. His 2023 book The Names of Minimalism: Authorship, Art Music, and Historiography in Dispute was published by the University of Michigan Press. He is the editor of a forthcoming, posthumous manuscript by Tony Conrad called “What Music Did: The Story of Numerocracy in the West.”