wavelength

	February 2001 The Ivy League The Constantines Detective Kalita Aaron Booth Resinators reelaudiowavetransfer
	THE IVY LEAGUE WAVELENGTH #49: SUNDAY FEBRUARY 4, 10pm Purveyors of: TUNEFUL EPIC MATH-RAWK Email: theivyleague@hotmail.com Music From Open Windows is the name of your first CD. Describe it, what it means to you and tell us where it can be found. Music From Open Windows is our first release recorded in London, Ont. by Andy Magoffin (Two Minute Miracles) at the House Of Miracles. Influenced by a wide range of music, our sound essentially consists of intricate melodies, dynamic time changes and distinct rhythms. It can be described as hypnotic, aggressive and gentle all at once. The sound is complex, with a profound emotional element which is constantly evolving. It is available through us at shows as well as Record Peddler. Are there any plans to diverge from the initial blueprint? We tend to write songs based on feeling more than formula. They usually have a starting point and from there they can go in various directions with no definite ending in mind. It seems a lot more interesting as well as natural writing that way. It seems difficult to pinpoint our sound and we enjoy descriptions from others. As far as a blueprint, the only "outline" we might follow is to try and write something interesting and challenging to play and we try not to repeat ourselves in the process. A lot of the titles and lyrics seem to have to do with nature and tension. Is this intentional? How much thought goes into the lyrics? What is the meaning of Music From Open Windows? What is the meaning of the Ivy League? The lyrics are almost always written separately from the music. I will write whenever I feel inspired by something. It could be an event that has taken place, it could be purely fictional. Sometimes it's random thoughts. I write lyrics like poetry. I consider certain sounds of words and maybe play with the meaning. It's very similar to the way we write music. Things might just pop into my head and I have to scratch it down onto a piece of napkin or something before I forget it. It's very random and sometimes the meaning that I tried to capture at the time might change when I come back to them. Certainly nature and landscapes are good ways to describe feelings and they paint a picture. I hope the listeners can interpret them individually and maybe get something out of it differently than even myself. Music From Open Windows came from when we were living in London, Ont. We used to practice in a second storey apartment and it used to get quite hot in the summer. We resorted to opening the windows. We started to notice people walking by and looking up to see what was going on. Some people would stand around and listen for a few minutes, and other times the police would drop by and issue warnings. We thought it was a fitting title because we recorded the album shortly after. The name The Ivy League isn't meant to be pretentious, but is simply an expression of our self confidence and integrity we have as musicians. What is next for the band? Our future plans consist of playing more shows in Toronto and surrounding areas and getting back into a studio to record new material with new member Scott Farmer. Enjoy the silence! - interview by Paddy O'Donnell
	THE CONSTANTINES WAVELENGTH #49: SUNDAY FEB. 4, 11pm Purveyors of: HARDCORE GONE MOTOWN! Email: cradlerock1@hotmail.com Web: www.uoguelph.ca/~slambke Howdy... I don't know who from the Constantines I'm writing to, but Jonny Bunce asked me to get in touch with you guys to get something together for the February issue of the Wavelength series 'zine... I was supposed to do an interview with y'all, but am kinda reticent to do so since all I know about you guys is based on watching you give Rockets Red Glare a tough act to follow at the J.C.C. show that Jim from Bene Gesserit put on earlier this month (which isn't just sucking up... it was probably the most fun I've had watching a local band rock out since seeing The End play at Who's Emma)... Anyways, I'm thinking it might be a little less awkward if instead of doing an ill-informed/floundering interview, you guys could maybe write a little blurb with as much/little info as you want the unsuspecting masses t' know... - Craig Fraid Dunsmuir Hey/Howdy. This is the Constantines' statement of intent. Thanks a lot for helping us out. Let me know if there's anything else you need. Our website might be of some interest, too. Righteous. - Bry/The Cons "I wanna be a pirate. I wanna live by pirate rules. Desperate men in search of desperate fortune? You bet." - David Lee Roth, Crazy From The Heat The Constantines are a four-part operation based out of Guelph, Ontario. The music is electric; no synthesizers or ulterior motives. Doug MacGregor plays the drums. Steve Lambke and Bry Webb play electric guitars. Dallas Wehrle plays bass guitar. There is rock'n'roll, punk-rock and soul in this music. There is a D.I.Y. aesthetic behind The Cons. We will play anywhere that supplies a three-prong outlet. Recordings will be made at home and will employ various levels of fidelity. We will be physically involved in the visual element of the band, utilizing home-made silkscreens and cardboard. The Cons have just made a 13-song LP with Andy Magoffin at his home (The House of Miracles) in London. Last autumn, a home recording of six songs, titled Fits And Starts 1999, was given away in a limited fashion. The band is interested in playing different sorts of buildings, anywhere and everywhere. These are four fellows who want to teach the world to sing. And to dance. Desperate men in search of desperate fortune, indeed.
	DETECTIVE KALITA Purveyors of: "DIFFICULT" LO-FI POP WAVELENGTH #51: SUNDAY FEB. 18, 11pm Email: preppyrecords@hotmail.com Web: members.home.net/preppyrecords Police Captain Dovercourt: You're in too deep, Kalita. Do you even know which side you're working for? Detective Kalita: Any private eye wants to play ball with the police. Sometimes it's a little hard to find out who's making the rules of the ball game. Sometimes he just doesn't trust the police, and with just cause. Sometimes he just gets in a jam without meaning to and has to play his hand out the way it's dealt. He'd usually rather have a new deal. He'd like to keep on earning a living. Police Captain Dovercourt: I took a look at your website. A lotta slowwww-loading images. Preppy Records, sounds like a pretty cushy undercover assignment to me. How do you think the guys on the beat feel about that? Detective Kalita: What makes you Bay City cops so tough? You pickle your nuts in salt water or something? Police Captain Dovercourt: You better respect my authority, bucko. You wanna spend the rest of your career as a pencil pusher? Detective Kalita: It's like this with us, baby. We're coppers and everybody hates our guts. And as if we didn't have enough trouble, we have to have you. As if we didn't get pushed around enough by the guys in the corner offices, the City Hall gang, the day chief, the night chief, the Chamber of Commerce, His Honour the Mayor in his panelled office four times as big as the three lousy rooms the whole homicide staff has to work out of. As if we didn't have to handle 114 homicides last year out of three rooms that don't have enough chairs for the whole duty squad to sit down at once. We spend our lives turning over dirty underwear and sniffing rotten teeth. We go up dark stairways to get a gun punk with a skinful of hop and sometimes we don't get all the way up, and our wives wait on dinner that night and all other nights. We don't come home anymore. And nights we do come home, we come home so goddamn tired we can't eat or sleep or even read the lies the papers print about us. So we lie awake in the dark in a cheap house on a cheap street and listen to the drunks down the block having fun. And just about the time we drop off, the phone rings and we get up and start all over again. Nothing we do is right, not ever. Not once. If we get a confession, we beat it right out of the guy, they say, and some shyster calls us Gestapo in court and sneers at us when we muddle our grammar. If we make a mistake they put us back in uniform on skid row and we spend the nice cool summer evenings picking drunks out of the gutter and being yelled at by whores and taking knives away from greaseballs in zoot suits. But all that ain't enough to make us entirely happy. We got to have you. Police Captain Dovercourt: How about I take away your badge? Detective Kalita: You're a maneater tonight. You want to break me in half. But you want an excuse. And you want me to give it to you? Police Captain Dovercourt: Off the case, Kalita, off the case! You hear me??!! Detective Kalita: I'll see you again, sweetheart. In my town.
	AARON BOOTH Purveyor of: SWEET ACOUSTIC POP-O-RAMA WAVELENGTH #51: SUNDAY FEB. 18, 10pm Email: aaronbooth@hotmail.com There are times when coincidence appears more like fate. Like last summer on tour when my amp broke before the Calgary show and I had to ask to borrow one. The soundman recommended Aaron Booth, a name I recognized as I had just reviewed his solo CD and the band he also plays in (Shecky Forme) for another music paper. Luckily I gave both discs positive reviews, so the show could go on. I would later realize that even if I had panned them, he would have let me use the amp anyway, just 'cause he's such a nice guy. Besides sharing a love for well-crafted pop songs with absolutely beautiful harmonies, we also both love Vietnamese noodle soup, obviously a recipe for strengthening ties between Hogtown and Cowtown. - Nora Charles Nora: Why record yourself when there are perfectly good and sometimes very expensive studios for that very purpose? Aaron: Quality of recording does not depend wholly on the environment in which it is realized or the equipment used to capture and manipulate sound. It has more to do with understanding the features of the environment and equipment that are unique and exploiting them honestly, rather than attempting to veil their limitations. Are you really doing this tour by train? Choo! Choo! Describe the community of Canadian music as it is unfolding for you. On my first tour last summer, I noticed the number of touring indie bands in Canada is quite small, perhaps the size of a city's local music scene. Having so few degrees of separation between oneself and the rest of the country's touring bands creates a solid network of musicians looking out for each other. I find that very comforting. Why go solo? Recipe for becoming a solo musician: Thaw one whole band. Try to convince band to sacrifice steady paycheques and square meals in favour of traversing prairie wasteland, sleeping on the shoulders of highways, moistening rations of moldy pumpernickel with tears, performing for the applause of bar staff and maxing out credit cards in the process. Reluctantly place band back in freezer and become a solo musician. How easy is it to tell if someone is performing for the love of it or for the ego of it? People who perform music for the love of it will not make demands of their audience. Can the singer-songwriter survive the groove/sample domination of current musical trends? A pendulum can only swing so far on one direction... Who do you listen to when you're at home? As of late: Blonde Redhead, Lenny Breau, Ray-O-Vac, Vandermark 5, Town and Country, Bach. Any books that you've loved lately? Walkups by Lance Blomgren. Any last thoughts or pearls of wisdom that you'd like to share with the Wavelength punters? Calgary has a vibrant arts community and is not as honky tonk as the man wants us to believe...
	RESINATORS Purveyors of: MAXIMUM DUB Web: www.resinators.com you take a rhythm and you go from there interview by g* and j-bass, produced by doc pickles (there is a spiritual intent, the sound effects and special effects came later, but the initial intent of the music is to lift you up, there's a deep connection in it, that music is connected right through jamaica to africa, it relates a lot to the jamaican culture and what was going on politically, it wasn't just joke lyrics, that came later, it was political dub is x-ray music the engineer sifts through the music and highlights things in there, adding effects, it focuses you, and if you let yourself go a little further - but the telephone starts and the moment is over by the second ring - doc has fumbled for the off switch - this new connection seems so mundane next to where the music had just brought him, the telephone seems so inert, but it serves its purpose and connects three people to three spots in downtown toronto. doc on the phone with g, somebody who has never been to jamaica but he has musically, and with j-bass - they're two students of dub who love this music with all their hearts and souls.) resinators (born on the west coast and transplanted east, came by peterborough and hit t.o. about five years ago) resinators (that's the mission, at one in the morning when you got to cut through the haze, you've got to get through the energy) resinators (maybe you just need a fresh perspective, you need a shot of dub. it will chase the shitty winter away. the resinators sound does have that power. we're not the music of the ice and snow, we're not locked onto the sound. dub has that cold bleakness to inspire you) to do a live thing we have to make sure that it's the right step to take resinators ('tors 'tors 'tors 'tors) dub connects, there's a magical stuff a snippet of this and a snippet of that and you hear the birds other dubs bring you into the city a dark alleyway we're walking around soaking in it the modern soldiers in dub kingston must have been an incredible zoo life is remix, life is a dub experience i love the way that dub and life intersect (on many different levels) usually the title is all that's there and you just look at the title and you just look at the title and you just look and concentrate we won't do just some dub (so it's all about creating a "vibe"?) that's where the dub is, it's extra special, people would know the songs already, and they already would know the words, and that brought the power of the vocals out dub draws you into a subconscious trance just in the right zone can trip you out and sometimes you can get in tune to the greater one when we run it makes you see resinators **** Who are the Resinators? Mountain Dred (quote from j-bass: "he's our secret weapon on the soundboard, he's a genius, he has a special flavour and a special mix, he plays the soundboard according to how he's feeling at the moment") along with Jesta on the turntables, Raffa Dean on drums, j-bass on bass, g* plays the asterisk, I'saax plays horns and keys, and John Staanton plays the lights. What should all you fine Wavelength patrons expect? j-bass: In studio the musicians would play live and they'd record that, then they'd go back and remix the dub. We remix it right there on the stage. g*: No two mixes are the same and the key is to keep an open mind.
	reelaudiowavetransfer Purveyors of: SWELL AMBIENT ROCK WAVELENGTH #51: SUNDAY FEB. 18, 11pm Email: reelaudiomedia@hotmail.com Web: www.reelaudiomedia.com In their own words... reelaudiowavetransfer is not just a band. It's a media exposition. A representation of the amalgamation of the traditional instrument and the computer. John Hornak and Michael Owen twist the focus of the technological age into a concentrated method. Engineered in their computer studio network, based in Toronto. The recordings produced, titled EP1 and Edmund Burke, are a seamless segue from the ambience of airports to the calamity of the Concorde. Live reproduction is based on the random musical explorations defined by the distinct members taking part. That Lilt, Daniella Mansela, Brenndan MacGuire and Greg Wilkinson all committed to code for experiments based on the physics of audio and its relation to all areas of life. Results, premise and principles are posted and maintained at reelaudiomedia.com. The website serves as a tool to bring all ideas to fruition. Streaming audio-visual cues creates a continuous playlist of music interacting with animation while maintaining user site navigational comfort. Original video content produced to be linked with the music is available online as well as shown live. Reelaudiowavetransfer is a conceptual idea that is presented in a unique fashion. Unified media.