Reviews
Philippe Battikha. Invisible Backgrounds. Balance and variety are the keys to Montreal trumpet player Philippe Battikha’s latest release, on which he avoids the flashy displays of technical virtuosity evident on many solo instrumental albums. Best known for his work in noisy ensembles such as La Part Maudite and Corse and as a[...] Read more
APA / JØ. Der Stromausfall / Cloudbursting. For the first half of this collaborative noise performance that took place in a pop-up storefront gallery in the Dundas West area of Toronto, JØ (Johann Diedrick, NYC) and APA (A Pure Apparatus, aka Xuan Ye, Toronto) perform entirely without electrical power. An outage during Diedrick[...] Read more
Linda Catlin Smith. Thought and Desire. In his “Sonnet 45” William Shakespeare muses on thought and desire as “present-absent” qualities. Both testify to a bond with the loved one, but they speak also of distance. Pianist Eve Egoyan sings the words of this sonnet as she plays Linda Catlin Smith’s[...] Read more
Jerusalem In My Heart. If He Dies, If If If If If If. Jerusalem In My Heart’s second album bristles with all the forward momentum that was lurking just below the surface of its debut release. Noted producer Radwan Ghazi Moumneh is in charge of the sonic aspect of the Montreal-based[...] Read more
Yves Bouliane. Champ (10 Opérations). Tenzier’s hunt for the lost treasures of Quebec avant-garde music history is as relentless as the music on this album of Yves Bouliane cello solos, originally released in 1977 in an ultra-limited edition of ten cassettes. Aside from a brief stint in Le quatuor de jazz libre du Qu[...] Read more
Manticore. Universal Time / Nebulous Pink Cloud. On its second EP, Toronto duo Manticore continues its exploration of song on the cusp of improvisation and utterances verging on language. The duo’s rather commonplace instrumentation (you guessed it: guitar and voice) may offer a certain familiarity, but its[...] Read more
Ken Aldcroft. Mister, Mister. There’s something special about fully realized solo improvisation. Layers of consciousness, kinds of memory, and impulses of intent impinge on one another, revealing fresh possibilities and meaning, as if improvisation, in the absence of an immediate community of players, begins to[...] Read more
Apocalypsis I ATTENDED A PERFORMANCE of the Luminato Festival’s production of R. Murray Schafer’s Apocalypsis not knowing what to expect; the full version of this work had only been produced once, thirty-five years ago. After the performance, I obtained the scores for its two acts[...] Read more
Tony Wilson. A Day's Life; A Bowl of Sixty Taxidermists. Tony Wilson is both a versatile and distinctive guitarist. While he’s played across a spectrum of idioms—from jazz-rock fusion to folk and free improvisation—he’s maintained his own voice, a forceful, lyrical style filled with subtle nuances. As a composer, he’s[...] Read more
Anna Webber’s Percussive Mechanics. Refraction. Audaciously extending her conceptual chops, avant-jazz reedist and composer Anna Webber creates a suite, of sorts, with Refraction, bookending the program with a prelude and postlude sonically coordinated but not copied, all seven tracks on the album subtly reflecting motifs that swirl[...] Read more
Ulrich Krieger / Trio Kobayashi. Winters in the Abyss. From George Frideric Handel’s Water Music to Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s “Surf’s Up,” water and its properties have long fascinated prominent composers and been reflected in their work. In Winters in the Abyss, German-born, Los Angeles-based Ulrich Krieger has[...] Read more
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