December 2003

TETREZENE
THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL
THE SILENT FILM SOUNDTRACK
POLMO POLPO
HARRIS NEWMAN
KIDS THESE DAYS
NINJA HIGH SCHOOL
THE BOSTON LETTER
THE BARCELONA PAVILION
THE BLOW
SHOTGUN AND JAYBIRD

TETREZENE
WAVELENGTH 191 — Sunday Nov. 30, 12am

Purveyors of: Trance-pop with lapsteel
www.newgluerecords.com

Tetrezene are a four-piece atmospheric trance-pop band from the T.dot and have been making music since 1997. They've just released a new full-length, What Once Was, on their own label New Glue Records. Kristine K corresponds with the band through email:

Please introduce yourselves and if it's not too painful, say a few words about the music you make. We are: Shannon du Hasky - Guitar + Vocals, Camille Gratton - Bass + Vocals, Ben Boles - Lapsteel Guitar, Ryder Graham - Keys. We make music that makes us happy!

With a band that has evolved over the course of six years, how are songs currently written in the band? Songs are currently constructed in a variety of ways. Most often one player will show up with a musical motif that the other instruments are then free to build upon. Sometimes someone will come in with a fully formed song. Still there exists the freedom for the other players to create their own parts and to create vocals overtop. Then there are the creations that are pulled from jams and just free flow together with everyone simultaneously.
Having moved on from creating pop-structured tunes and playing more atmospheric-type music, does this allow for a lot of improvisation when performing? Over the years we have been moving towards more improvisation within the band. After the first album we always started our practice sessions together by warming up with jamming — so that approach has been in place for us for a long time. When you have a group of people who have been playing together as long as we have, improvisation becomes easy and natural just from knowing each other musically as we do. What Once Was is a soundtrack album, so by its nature it was created to be atmospheric and open ended. However the pop-structured stuff is still there and will always be. Our freshest songs are very structured, but I feel that we have headed towards a place where now we have room to do both. In fact, some of the newest material is combining both elements of structure and improvisation within one song.

What should people be doing when they listen to your music? A soundtrack to what? Please play our album in your cars — crank the volume knob till the windows threaten to blow and your ears are bleeding from the bass rumble. (Suddenly, the type face on the email becomes very large) You know what? I don't know why the font suddenly went this big and I can't seem to turn it down! This isn't on purpose. Ha! The soundtrack to the movies in your mind!

What's in Tetrezene's cards for 2004? Breaking up!

-- Kristine K

photo: Kevin Shutterbug

THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL
WAVELENGTH 191 — Sunday Nov. 30, 11pm

Purveyors of: Ambient dub deconstructed
http://tenseforms.com/tones/v1/feb03/

The Frankfurt School: Adorno, Marcuse, Benjamin, meet Crowe & Dovercourt. The two-man Bloorcourt home-rec sound system has gone massive in recent months, turning what started as a one-off collaboration for tenseforms.com's Muted Tones series into a bonafide band. Craig Fraid caught the busy bass-and-beats team in the midst of finishing their debut CD, 100: The Chattering Classes, and preparing for a weekend Midwest tour.

So, how many shows have you done so far, two? One here and one in Hamilton, right?

Jonny Dovercourt: You got it.

How were they received?

JD: Well, I had a lot of people after the second show tell me that it was pretty intense. The bass cabinets seemed to be rattling pretty heavily, so I think they meant it was intense in terms of the subsonics.

On your side of things, Brad, are your samples and processing fairly jarring and spooky, too?

Brad Crowe: It's pretty grating and, well, subsonic.

Writing-wise, I assume that the songs came in two waves, then, first with the Muted Tones commission and then with the new batch of songs after booking these shows?

JD: The main difference is that the newer tunes are more structured around what we can do live, so things are stretched out a bit more as a result, with less happening at once, seeing as I can't play melodica, bass and sleighbells on top of each other like on the recordings.

Did that help, having to write under pressure?

BC: Yeah. We forced ourselves to write new songs by making these deadlines in booking these shows. We've decided that deadlines are a good thing.

JD: It's the only way we can work, and we've really got a time-crunch going on here, seeing as how we want to get our record recorded, mixed, mastered, pressed and assembled before we go on the road in...eight days!

I imagine when planning these upcoming shows in the States, then, the portability of your setup has got to be an asset, seeing as you guys don't really have that much gear to stash, especially if Jonny can borrow a bass amp...

JD: I was actually just thinking of going through one of Brad's preamps directly into the P.A., even. We're a sedan band!

It'll be good for crossing the border, being able to tuck everything away a little better than it'd typically be. JD: Exactly. C'mon, ask us about our aesthetic agenda!

Well, are there any tonal or rhythmic parameters that you keep finding yourselves coming back to, that you enjoy playing around in? BC: I don't know; I think the only thing that's really that set is the instrumentation, not so much the specific sound design or production. I think there's actually a lot of variety in our sound, in the beats and the sample sources.

JD: Yeah, to me it's been a surprising process, because we weren't working with any set notion of "let's make a song like this." For the most part, the beats are slow, but then again, we have one song to close off the set with that's really fast and short and house-y. We do tend to like the long, loping grooves, though — being ominous without being trip-hoppy about it.

I imagine then that you arrived at your sound through just playing, rather than needing to really talk about it...

BC: Jonny just brought his bass over one day and played along with some tracks I'd just sequenced, and, yeah, the sound just developed out of that. It wasn't consciously contrived or constructed beforehand or anything.

JD: I just wanted to have an outlet to pursue my more dubwise bass inclinations and find a collaborator who was sympathetic to that aesthetic. I liked Brad's Anorak and North stuff, not only the tonalities but also melodically, how it was eerie but still tuneful. I guess we're just trying to make 'intelligent' electronic pop music that's not cute, that doesn't necessarily have to be pretty.

-- Craig Fraid

THE SILENT FILM SOUNDTRACK
WAVELENGTH 191 — Sunday Nov. 30, 10pm

Purveyors of: Angular mood-rock
www.geocities.com/thesilentfilmsoundtrack

The Silent Film Soundtrack members include: RE:KRAP aka DARN WERE KRAP: guitar, voice, IBM END, OK? aka MIKEROWAVE: breaks, beats, loop samplers, bass, voice, INK SMUT aka DICK LUST: electone, bass, voice, tambourine. And they sound, well, just like that. You can put it together in your head, you can visit their website, or you just go out and see them! Somewolf chatted with "Mike" via Messenger, about the state of the Kitchener-Waterloo music scene and laughed about using the interweb as a communication device. We join that chat in progress:

11:26:12 PM. "It seems you are relentless in your music pursuits, there is always something brewing."

11:28:29 PM. "I love to play. That's what it boils down to, really. I've been through a number of projects simply trying to find where I fit in."

11:31:22 PM. "Well, I guess everyone is always trying to change things to feel comfortable. How comfortable is TSFS, because something really kewl is going on there..."

11:33:16 PM. "Quite comfortable. Everybody has fit into a role and is happy with the direction we are moving. As a band we are new, but it feels like we have been together for years."

11:36:36 PM. "What is happening in the local kdub (Kitchener-Waterloo) music scene these days? I haven't been home for a while, but I’ve been hearing good things."

11:38:51 PM. "Kdub is picking up. A lot of great bands are emerging and I can’t wait to see how the scene will progress."

11:39:02 PM. “Do you want me to name some bands?”

11:39:07 PM. “Ya.”

11:40:05 PM. "The Sourkeys, Missing Matter, The Fathoms, Humshuttle, K-Pet are a few great locals."

11:43:39 PM. "Well the city has two universities, it would make sense that there is an emerging scene, but do the uni kids even know about it? What has changed to make Waterloo's scene respectable?"

11:47:32 PM. "Well, perhaps I should rephrase my answer about the earlier 'local kdub music' question. A lot of great bands are emerging, but the turnouts at the shows could be better. There are two universities and I don't think that many of them even know about the great bands in K-W. It’s tough to find a way to get them interested and it’s also tough to figure out whose responsibility it is to promote these shows."

11:51:00 PM. "Well, I hear that the Jane Bond has purchased a new, bigger club space, Starlight on King. Might this space be the indie club that the city needed? Will they do all-ages events?"

11:52:31 PM. "I don’t think that they're interested in doing shows for local bands."

11:52:58 PM. "They're booking the larger touring bands. That being said, I’m looking forward to a lot of their upcoming shows."

11:54:31 PM. "Oh really, that's too bad to hear, but at least there might be some opening slots available if some good bands come through."

11:55:35 PM. "That would be amazing. However, at the present time they are not giving opening slots to local bands."

11:55:35 PM. "Is there a space for local shows, a basement where you can just play and have fun, and bring all the kids out?"

11:56:38 PM. "I wish. At this time I do not know of any all-ages spaces."

11:56:52 PM. "That's weird, that they don't want to promote their own, and give y'all a break."

11:57:04 PM. "Agreed."

-- Somewolf

POLMO POLPO
WAVELENGTH 192 — Sunday Dec. 7, 12am

Purveyor of: String-laden musique electronique
www.audisensa.com

With Like Hearts Swelling, Polmo Polpo, a.k.a. Toronto producer and lapsteel player Sandro Perri, has made the leap to world-renowned Montreal indie Constellation, and the CD changers of music fans everywhere, including Wavelength’s own Jonny Dovercourt (see his review on page 22). Jonny and Sandro undertook an interactive email Q&A, so let’s dive right in:

Hey Sandro. As you may know, Like Hearts Swelling is one of my favourite records of 2003. I listen to the disc at home a lot and find it very soothing, but last night I listened to the first track while driving through a midnight rain squall on the way home from a show, with the spray creating eerie auras around other cars' headlights, and found the music's subsonic assault fucking terrifying. Which feeling would you rather inspire in your listeners? Good question, but I think the most interesting part of the story is that which you haven't told me, which I heard from a secret source. And that is that, after everyone in the "Magnecar" had shit their pants, you were inspired to turn my record off and listen to Motown instead. There's proof that we never fully escape our roots, ‘cuz I grew up on Motown reverb. You know how they got those handclaps to sound like that? You need to see Standing in the Shadows of Motown. And also, strangely enough, The Wire has recently reviewed the record, in which they claim that "the subsonic assault is nearly a direct descendant of James Jamerson's thunderous bass palpitations.”

Ah, but your unnamed informant had his/her chronology mixed up! We put on yr disc after our triumphant post-rock-show Motown party. Seriously — the audio-visual spectacle made me feel like I was driving along the ocean floor. Which got me thinking — your music seems really inspired by water and the deep. Did you watch a lot of Jacques Cousteau as a kid? Yeah, I have strong feelings towards the water, as do many of us, I'm sure. It is, indeed, both soothing and terrifying at the same time. It can take life as quickly as it gives it. And it is, after all, as a certain music writer once said, "where life got its start," a fundamental element in all living things. So, you see that metaphor pop up quite a bit in music. But maybe when you try to work with somewhat "extended" production techniques — those which rely on a total immersion in sound — you can really start to push that metaphor into a more evocative place, the movie theatre of the nervous system. And, woven into the physicality of sounds are the emotional signifiers, casting the shadows and light, so to speak. That's the only way I can explain the "oceanic quality.” Oceanic in not just the literal (physical) sense but in a representational (emotional) sense as well. As for Cousteau, I don't remember seeing any as a kid, but I have seen a few of his Super-8 reels in the last few years — thanks to my man with the golden hand, Jordan Somers. You give him a projector and he'll give you a universe.

Your process seems, so far, to have been that of the classic solitary loner, creating and sculpting sounds according to your own unique vision. Yet your work with Jordan is indicative of a move towards a more collaborative approach, and the new record saw guest musicians make notable contributions. What do these people add to the mix, and how does it change your vision for Polmo Polpo? My vision is blurry at best, smeared from too much reverb and lacking a little definition right now... but there will likely be more reverb in the future, and more live playing, more collaboration... Hell, I might even start a band. Playing with others is probably the greatest joy there is in music. But if it's to last any longer than the honeymoon, a real maturity is required. Some people's creativity develops in a distorted way, where their ideas become so wrapped up in their identity that they find themselves using people like pawns. Either that or they must work alone, in order to avoid the risk of sharing that idea. It's one of the reasons many people have trouble in relationships. It's also why every band member of every band has their own side project. It's "I'm gettin' mine — no strings attached," the musical equivalent of casual sex. On the last record, I still used the players as puppets, but in a different way — treating a lot of the recordings we made together as source material, and twisting them into my own shapes. Gen Heistek (hangedup) was the notable exception to this... it was a step towards a true collaboration, where a section of her performance was almost entirely untouched. But with Brodie West (Zebradonk), he came in and did what I asked him to do... though I imagine if Brodie farted into his saxophone, I could have found a way to use it...

-- Jonny Dovercourt

HARRIS NEWMAN
WAVELENGTH 192 — Sunday Dec. 7, 11pm*

Purveyor of: Finger-picked acoustic goodness
www.harrisnewman.com

Whether it's mastering most of Montreal’s CDs or apprenticing in the art of the deep drone bluegrass blues, there's nothing remotely halfway about Harris Newman. Armed only with a copy of Harris' dazzling Strange Attractors solo acoustic debut Non-Sequiturs, Craig Fraid was set straight.

To quote brainwashed.com's review of Non-Sequiturs, "the real tragedy of the obligatory John Fahey reference these days is that in a case like this, when a namedrop is downright essential, one feels like a chump for following through with it." What interested me in your record was how you tweak that general Takoma framework to make the music your own. How important is it to you to carve out your own distinct stylistic space within that lineage? My music hasn’t developed out of a desire to honour a certain tradition or play homage. I try and write music that makes sense to me here and now, and in doing so, I draw on the cumulative influences of my musical experiences, which extends beyond the obvious Takoma fingerpickers. I do make a point of squelching song ideas that start sounding overtly nostalgic or dangerously pretty, but that’s just a matter of my personal taste, so if things sound dissonant or broken, it’s not because I’m trying to throw off the shackles of my forefathers, it’s just because that’s how I like things to sound.

A subtle thing that caught my attention when listening to Non-Sequiturs was how effective Bruce Cawdron's distant/ambient/room-mic'ed percussion was on several tracks. Does he ever tour with you? Hearing those tracks made me think about how relatively underused a technique close-vs.-room mic'ing can be when it comes to providing depth to a recording. All of the drum and guitar pieces were recorded live in my living room with four mic’s, so we were fairly limited in terms of kinds of sounds we could capture. But at the end of the day, we were able to get what we were looking for out of this arrangement – if we hadn’t been happy, we would have gone into the studio and tracked everything properly. Working this way gave us a lot of freedom, and almost all of the duo pieces were written and recorded as long improv jams, which is a liberty I wouldn’t have taken in a proper studio facility. I don’t have any great techniques or secrets to share, except to say that the album really found its wings in the mixing and mastering stages – the leap from the raw tracks to the final product was night and day. Bruce and I play together fairly often; I play bass with him in Esmerine, and we did a Maritimes tour this past summer where both groups played. We will definitely be playing more shows as a duo, possibly even at Wavelength.

To an outsider such as me, it seems as though in recent years you've been kept fairly busy with your mastering business, working with others’ music more than your own. How does that work affect your musical output? Mastering, much like my day job and everything else that keeps oneself busy in life, does occasionally feel like an unwanted interruption. But the fact that I’ve been able to devote relatively little time to this project (and playing music in general) in the past few years has shaped how things have come to pass so far, and I am for the most part happy with that. There are a lot of reasons I do most of my work solo, but I still really enjoy working with others, and assume that will be something I continue doing, regardless of the direction my solo stuff takes.

Are you still playing bass in Sackville? Are they even still around? Sackville has been in stasis for the past few years. I did make some contributions to their last full length album, Natural Life, which has not yet been released, a shame because in my mind it is the band’s most interesting work to date.

-- Craig Fraid

KIDS THESE DAYS
WAVELENGTH 192 — Sunday Dec. 7, 10pm

Purveyor of: Leading 40-love
www.kidsthesedays.ca

You know what guys in bands should do more often? Travel across the country and drunkenly introduce themselves five times before coercing me into bad group photos that unknowingly and embarrassingly end up on the CBC Radio 3 website as part of a NXNE tour diary. These sorts of shenanigans are usually the right sort of unerring key to most hearts, but Kids These Days didn’t stop there. Their tiny, yet heavily-promoted three-song demo is perfectly capable of catching attention itself. The earnest, twangy indie pop makes for a fine introduction to a band with a load of ambition and a penchant for the finer, racket-played sports. Okay, mainly just tennis. The band answers some silly and some not-so-silly questions:

Please explain the, until now, misunderstood connection between West Coast alt.country-influenced indie pop and tennis. There is no misunderstanding now — we just love to play. Both activities keep us on our toes and make us sweat.

But are you really tennis players? But are you really "Star from the Wavelength zine in Toronto, Ontario"? Actually, Marc prefers to curl. But, he looks really good in short shorts so we're going with tennis.

What made you wander out from your bedrooms and decide to play music? Bryan Adams said it best when he said "waking up the neighbours"! (He did say that, didn't he?) Actually, how it happened was we wandered "in" to Pete's bedroom and started playing...

What were you doing before that? Did anyone almost become a Marine Biologist or some shit like that? All of us have always had music in our lives in one incarnation or another. The current tally is two grad students (English and biochemistry), one current student and drum teacher, and two former radio station employees.

What's the most exciting thing (art, music, politics, otherwise) coming out of Vancouver right now? Major Campbell's safe injection sites, which offer clean needles and medical supervision, have been well received by the community and have resulted in preventing at least six overdoses since September 15. As for music, the scene has been taking off. Watch for releases by our friends in Explaining Colours to the Blind, Bel Riose and Second Narrows.

Please outline the single most important event that occurred during your recent adventure to and from this year's NXNE. Getting the taste for touring and deciding we want to get back out on the road.

What're you gonna do next? We're playing Guelph, Hamilton, Montreal and Toronto. After our Toronto show we are heading down to play two NYC shows at CB's Gallery and the Knitting Factory. After that, it's back to Vancouver to continue writing and recording for our first full-length due out in early Spring. Other plans include filming a documentary of our European tour this summer. In between all of the aforementioned activities will obviously be heaps of tennis.

-- Star DT

NINJA HIGH SCHOOL
WAVELENGTH 193 — Sunday Dec. 14, 10pm

Purveyor of: 31 flavaz of vanilla?
hiphopjorge@zombieworld.com

Well well, Ninja High School. What can I say that a IRC chatroom 'bot can't? teh-borg (from #asciipr0n on freenode) questioned this clever dance-rap mastermind, who I must say is hard to get a hold of, since he is working like a dog. But it leaves me time for getting his record financially secured and promoted for our big release on the 14th of December! Guess I gotta get practicing on some fresh hip movements for the extravaganza as well...anyone know how to break-dance? Give us a holla...

OK...you are now logged on to...
teh-borg: hi you are just ectobia sub here just like all day
NHS: Don't gimme that neo victorian shit. It's alright.
teh-borg: uncover cyborg phobia
NHS: Clone sex versus android thing.
teh-borg: I sort soil and decode u albums get monitor bad
NHS: Album? It'll come out when we're ready.
teh-borg: I think we r British fags and genesis said mummy I have 2 pretend
NHS: You can be British, I'm still not down with the Genesis shit, you know, pretending and all of that.
teh-borg: maybe eatin some pr0n ar0using site will be my drugs DIPWIT
NHS: Right. Mine too. You weird idiot.
teh-borg: don’t dance, let me totally exist
NHS: Fine...
teh-borg: man uhhh drunk person creating these robots msgs often
NHS: ...
teh-borg: oh god damned self stretching time
NHS: The second the drum machine starts I'm stretching myself across the stage, and it never hurts...
teh-borg: I will make dinner via web cam
NHS: It's not about hip-hop. It's about packing words in, it's
about not being boring or afraid to try to use combinations of music.
teh-borg: computers feeding humans doomed without the guy measure
NHS: Yeah, but are amplifiers and guitars any better for you?
teh-borg: music is my cereal
NHS: Copyright violation is my bacon and eggs.
teh-borg: i told afford for vsnares ride come home grips get a talent
NHS: Brutal.
teh-borg: but busy create dont love
NHS: Whatever. Not everybody should be creating. Not every creator should be organizing and promoting, either. Pay attention to what you do, and get in tune with your sucks and unsucks. I am sick of sucks!
teh-borg: to chop the future i go
NHS: The future is here when we get he lowest common denominator back from the average person and raise it a little bit. I mean, FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK! We gave you a chance, common people, and what did you do? JOE FUCKING MILLIONAIRE 2!
teh-borg: I fun thank you philosophical 100ft of coming sometimes
NHS: Whalecock.

-- teh-borg the 'bot

THE BOSTON LETTER
WAVELENGTH 193 — Sunday Dec. 14, 11pm*

Purveyor of: Lo-fi beats for the soul
www.escapegoatrecords.com

Aside from performing his acoustic guitar stuff and playing with the math-rock ensemble Nouns, Neil Haverty also stirs shit up with crazy beats and electronic goodness (à la Prefuse 73, The Notwist) under the handle The Boston Letter. While wrapping up a three-month stay in Australia and New Zealand, Haverty took some time out at an internet café to electronically discuss with Wesley J Ramos, among other things, the sorry state of Aussie hip-hop and why an organization called AE Music sent him down under in the first place.

Hi Neil, could you please tell us a little about AE Music? AE Music is a fairly new organization based out of Montreal that's basically a union for electronic music 'professionals'. I met them after writing an article focused on the injustices of Canadian music funding. They have been working on that crusade for ages now and have managed to secure funding through different departments of the government (thankfully cutting out Factor and their counterparts). As luck would have it, I was just finishing up my electronic record when I found out about their program to "send young electronic music industry professionals abroad." A little application later and I was funded to live in Sydney for a few months to work with a similar organization down under.

What exactly were you doing in Sydney, Australia? Officially, I was working for an organization called The Association for Independent Record Labels and a trade magazine called The Music Network. I won't get into the details but I will say that we need an independent force as strong as AIR back home (look into it at http://www.air.org.au). Unofficially, I was touring the EP. I played a bunch of shows in Sydney and managed to get on some really great bills in places like Newcastle and Perth. Considering maybe only 50 or so people in Toronto have a copy of the EP, it's nice to know that there are now 400 of them floating around Australia.

During your stay in Oz, did you grow to love Vegemite, those Euro-types on Bondi Beach and (my guilty pleasure) Kylie Minogue? I absolutely loathe Vegemite and believe me, it's been forced on me a number of times. Everyone here loves it because they were raised on it but I think it tastes like sand. It's sick. Be thankful we don't have it in Canada. There are thousands of beautiful people on the beaches in Australia and, considering how lovely the beaches are on their own, it makes it hard to stay away from them. As for asking about Kylie, that's like some Australian asking about Avril or Celine. There's a lot of crap music here (Savage Garden, almost all of their hip-hop etc.) but there's a lot of good stuff that people should know about. Forget Kylie. Look into Spod, The Herd and Prop. Those are just a few of my newest discoveries.

What do you miss most about your hometown, Hamilton, Ontario? I miss Warsawpack. Honestly, the only good hip-hop band in Australia is The Herd and everything else is completely terrible. They overdo their accents, have really weak beats and try to copy American rap. It's hard to bear. There are a bunch of good things about Hamilton (friends, family, Brodie and the Underground, etc.) but I've been listening to the new Warsaw CD non-stop lately, so I figure they win. I've played them for a few Aussies and they've all gone completely nuts over them. I think it's time for Lee to start rhyming about (Aussie Prime Minister) John Howard.

Why should one choose a beat-box over the guitar? It's not about choosing one over the other. If anything, it's about using them both. I'm just about done a new collaborative EP with an incredible Sydney guitarist named Ross Waldron. That just goes to show that beats and guitars can be friends. Really, I just got into beat-making because the audio-in's on my soundcard were crappy so I couldn't do any tracking. So I learned how to use the computer to make music and it just went from there. I still play solo acoustic stuff and Nouns will pick up again early next year so don't assume my guitar is packed away for good.

-- Wesley J Ramos

THE BARCELONA PAVILION
WAVELENGTH 194 — Sunday Dec. 21, 12am*

Purveyor of: Poppy’n’political electro-punk
www.barcelonapavilion.cjb.net

Maggie yelps, Steven twists, and Kat shreds bass with the poise of Mata Hari. You would think that Ben Stimpson, laptop wielder for The Barcelona Pavilion, would be often overlooked. But the ever-modest Ben is finding himself more and more the centre of attention in Toronto’s fore-most party band. Ben has recently dropped out of university, quit smoking and started playing squash compulsively. Jam Butty gets personal with Ben. Here’s what’s on his mind:

So, Ben, what turns you on? I get excited about gate-crashing media events, the prospect of being middle-class when I'm older (more so), French, gender politics, the oppositional gaze, gastronomics, the success of my friends, standing relatively still onstage and probably lots more.

What is your official title? My official title, if I were to make one up off the top of my head, is Punctuation.

Despite the histrionics of your fellow stage members, many people are most affected by your comparative placidity. On your European tour, many show-goers were quoted as saying, “There’s a guy on stage that doesn’t do anything!” What do you suppose sparks this reaction? In an immediate sense, I don’t do very much. I would argue that on a conceptual level I do a great deal. Maybe such dynamism as is evident in The Barcelona Pavilion required a fulcrum and some people appreciate that.

How much don’t you do? Do you help load the gear?
We don’t have any gear to load.

Hold on. The Barcelona Pavilion are about co-participation, subverting the tradition barriers between audience and performer, right? So why does the band need a
fulcrum of non-participation? No. Wrong. You hold on. First of all, it's inaccurate to describe it as "non-participation." I think standing still can be extremely active and participatory given proper context. It's a mistake to think that participation and physical stasis are mutually exclusive and, if anything, standing relatively still can be an especially efficient way to participate. Secondly, I've always thought that the audience/performer barriers that The Barcelona Pavilion is "about" subverting are primarily governed by a mixture of contagious auto-fascism on the part of the audience and a contrived and solipsistic sense of purpose and earnestness on the part of the performers. I think it's more complicated than just having everyone 'participate' in a uniform fashion because the onus is on both sides of this crummy equation to change independently as well as collectively if anyone is going to have any fun.

You’ve been successful in your subversion. Win Butler of The Arcade Fire recently improvised a light show during your set. Audience members have spontaneously broken into calisthenics and/or fist-fights. At one show, every audience member danced with Maggie. Do you have any wise words for Wavelength attendees so we may function collectively to increase our fun and yours? Doing all of the things that you mentioned is definitely helpful. Ideally you would be doing them at the same time. Complacency and hesitation are the rancid fruit in Toronto's fridge and should be discarded in the Compost of Throttled Psychology.

-- Jam Butty

THE BLOW
WAVELENGTH 194 — Sunday Dec. 21, 11pm

Purveyor of: Olympia’s one-woman mystery pop machine
www.krecs.com/TheBlow/

So: The Blow is a one-woman show/band/thing/project done by Khaela Maricich. She’s put out something like two records on K (Bonus Album and The Concussive Caress) and both of them were so full of awesome that it made my head spin. Listening to her records was like having the best crush in the whole world, because having crushes is both a dizzying break from the everyday, but also simultaneously part of the everyday. This is the main thrust of Jean-Francois Lyotard’s The Libidinal Economy. Basically, you have desire and things, but they aren’t really separable, desire can cool into a thing, but then could also heat up back into desire again. He uses other words, he also uses an awkward analogy to machines that he probably cribbed from Deleuze, but anyway, The Blow sings awesome songs about thingly-desire, although I’m not at all sure she’d agree with that.

Things I said to Khaela: Why are your records so awesome?
Why do you think I think your records are so awesome? I like and appreciate “normal” sounds. Like drums that sound like good old drums, not weird studio drums. I’m going to mention the much-touted theatrical extravaganza that lots of the advance press tells us to expect when preparing to see a Blow concert, what should I say about that? So, recording is just a way of working on shows? Or is it what’s left?

Things I didn’t say to Khaela: Your records are so full of sex but they never feel lewd, what’s with that? Have you heard the song “French Kiss” by Lil’ Louis? How do you keep your records so healthy-sounding?

Things she said to me that I tried writing down very quickly and kind of failed to do properly: You tell me. Maybe you don’t take music making that seriously. Maybe you (that’s me) like to listen to things that don’t necessarily sound like records are supposed to sound, like, production standards and things. It’s no fun to tell. It’s no fun if people know what to expect. I’m confident about the shows, lots of people really like them, I get lots of satisfied customers. The show gets mentioned so much because, in a way, the show is more important, or I guess, performance is what’s interesting. I think of what I do as mostly performing. Making a record was like an assignment that I said I had to do, but now I’m excited about doing another one.
I was doing some recording with Phil (Elvrum, of The Microphones) and Calvin (Johnson, of K Records) said he’d put it out and that seemed like a good idea, putting out a record on K, so then I actually had to finish the record and make it happen. I had the idea for The Concussive Caress, like, in 1999, but recordings were really inconclusive until something like 2002.

Other topics we discussed informally: Jona Bechtolt (YACHT and the Badger King) and Positive Attitudes. Adam from VVRRSSNN’s word “Vibe Blanket.” Touring with Anna Oxygen. Gene Defcon. Outkast. Getting things from the car.

-- Steven Kado

Purveyors of: Pan-Canadian road tunes
shotgunjaybird@yahoo.ca

When Dick Morello first arrived in Dawson City, Yukon, some 19 months ago, he immediately searched out and joined the town’s only band. After being fired for showing up late for a rehearsal, he swore he would start a rival band and drive them out of town. Some time after his friend and former bandmate Shotgun Jimmie (Drummer, The Janitors) came to town. They started the guitar and drums duo (though the band can swell to five members when you include puppets) Shotgun and Jaybird. The other band doesn’t exist any more. Our Marcel Gonsalves caught up to Shotgun and Jaybird at a local watering hole.

You’ve been living in the Yukon for a while now. Has it changed your songs? Dick Morello: It started me writing songs pretty much. Before I left for there, I had like three or four. Something about the wintertime, and probably being hammered all the time made me prolific. This is when I was alone up there I had this really crazy crush on this girl, so I started writing a bunch of songs for her and she was a really good muse. But now we’ve overcome the drunkenness and gambling and all that kind of stuff. I can write songs sober now, so that was a good thing.

So the experience was different for you, Shotgun, because you were there in the summer and had company. Shotgun Jimmie: Yep. But I wrote a lot more for some reason. I was pumping out a song a day for a while. But that’s because I spent the winter in New Brunswick practicing writing. Writing a lot of bad songs, just getting used to the process. I had a lot of time to myself because our work schedules didn’t match up.

I was talking to a couple of people recently who were insisting that there is nothing more useless than touring across Canada. I know you guys are into touring Canada...
DM: Best thing ever. Because you’re going to a new place, and you’re there for the first time and you can work at winning over brand new people. It’s not gonna make you famous, per se, to tour across the country, but you’re getting to play shows.

SJ: And people fucking love it, man. That’s a lesson I learned in Dawson City ‘cuz the majority of our fan base was over the age of 40 and they genuinely liked it and they were happy they were there. So many people came up to us and said: “We’re so lucky you guys came here this summer and played every week, ‘cuz this never happens.” I totally prefer playing small towns to big cities. That’s why we’ve been avoiding Toronto.

It’s been a really long time since either of you have played in Toronto... SJ: Last was the Wavelength 100, I think.

How are you feeling about the pending homecoming?
DM: Well, it’s gonna be a great show.

SJ: We’re used to playing shows that we organize, so it’s kind of a weird thing to be playing one that someone else has put together. Every other concert we play we do all the legwork for. I’m excited about it. All summer I’ve been wondering what the big Toronto show is gonna be like.

How does being in this project differ from your previous bands? SJ: We still play and write Janitors songs, and we still play Drummer songs, but in the style of Shotgun & Jaybird. In Drummer, it was like four guys, and even though we would play a song I wrote, it gets changed in a major way. But the cool thing with this band is that it’s just two guys, and when you write a song, it’s only influenced by one other guy and he’s usually just playing the drums. Whatever arrangement you end up doing on a song, it pretty much stays true to what you write. Of all the projects I’ve ever been involved with, this isn’t my favourite or anything, but it feels like the most mine.

DM: We’re both better guitar players than we are drummers. So when I write a tune and Jim’s drumming, there’s no one you have to say to, “this one goes to G after...” whatever. It’s total, perfect freedom.

SJ: You can just start playing a different song in the middle and there’s no bass player that has to know that song. You can just go for it.

-- Marcel Gonsalves