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Greetings!
I've got a very exciting bunch of stuff below. So I'm not going to be too long-winded in this here preamble.
I do want to encourage you all to stay tuned for the details of a forthcoming release of mine, the follow-up release to My Magic Dreams Have Lost Their Spell. There's also soon going to be news of an online festival from the Canadian Music Centre and Riparian Acoustics...
Please also note, too—speaking of online events—that the Women From Space Festival (details below) has moved their event to April 9th-11th!
And now, without further ado...
Intersystems — #IV
(LP/CD/DL out: April 30th on Waveshaper Media) PRE-ORDER NOW!
Infamous psychedelic multimedia collective, Intersystems, makes a surprise return with their first album since 1968, #IV, out April 30th from Waveshaper Media (of I Dream of Wires notoriety). Comprised of architect Dik Zander, light sculptor Michael Hayden, poet Blake Parker, and musician John Mills-Cockell (of Syrinx, Kensington Market and more), this groundbreaking Torontonian group was known for its hi-tech pan-sensory events, and a trilogy of defiant and disorienting records that have since become coveted collector’s items (and seen lavish reissue via Alga Marghen)
Nearly fifty years on, Hayden and Mills-Cockell decided to revive the long-dormant project with a series of sessions at Hamilton, Ontario’s storied Grant Avenue Studio. This music, documented #IV remains congruent with the project’s original impulse, yet is irrefutably of the present moment. Taking cues from its stark predecessor, a modular Moog synthesizer system is the primary instrument, but here the sonorities that Mills-Cockell conjures are dynamic and diverse. Meanwhile, Parker’s texts are rendered in computer-synthesized voices that alternate between an eerily life-like delivery and slurred cybernetic faltering, bringing a glossy dystopian veneer to the group’s anxious surrealism.
PRE-ORDER & PREVIEW HERE
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Tim Brady — Permanent Moving Parts
(3xCD/DL out: April 23rd on Redshift Records) PRE-ORDER NOW!
Award-winning Montréal composer and guitarist Tim Brady has spent the good part of four decades unfolding a potent and polymorphous body of work. Once hailed by Guitar Player as one of the 30 most important guitarists for the future of the instrument, Brady’s virtuosity palpably drives his music, generating a surging energy that even illuminates moments of repose. Yet this same energy also propels his imagination well beyond the confines of the guitar. His catalogue bounds effortlessly from symphonic heft to moody electroacoustics, from sinewy chamber works to art-song mutations, all which can be heard over the course of the Actions Speak Louder triptych, sold both separately and as a set from Vancouver's Redshift Records.
PRE-ORDER & PREVIEW HERE
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Colin Fisher — Reflections of the Invisible World
(LP/DL out: March 26th on Halocline Trance) PRE-ORDER NOW!
As many of you will already know, multi-instrumentalist Colin Fisher has been an active ingredient in the Canadian music community — especially its more experimental factions — for the past two decades. Known as half of Not The Wind, Not The Flag, as a collaborator to Caribou, and for recordings on labels like Astral Spirits, Tombed Visions, and Tzadik, Fisher has performed alongside some of improvised music’s key figures including Sabir Mateen, William Parker, Jaimie Branch, Laraaji and countless others. On Reflections of the Invisible World — his second album to feature Jeremy Greenspan (Junior Boys) at the controls — Fisher employs treated guitar and saxophone and travels gentler terrain along the border between holographic jazz abstraction and organic ambience.
PRE-ORDER & PREVIEW HERE
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See Through 4 — Permanent Moving Parts
(CD/DL out: March 12th on All-Set! Editions) PRE-ORDER NOW!
Toronto bassist and composer Pete Johnston's variable-lineup quartet See Through 4 is back with a new disc of energetic para-jazz compositions. Permanent Moving Parts completes a trilogy (alongside False Ghosts, Minor Fears and Bog Standards) and teems with the same eccentric charisma as its predecessors. Chris Baber of JazzViews said of the former "As a primer for the vivacity of the contemporary Toronto jazz scene, you could do worse than this set" and I would certainly assert this is equally—if not more—true of this new one (at least far as vivacity goes). Johnston's angular writing finds new dynamism through the band's current cast: Jake Oelrich's driving quirkiness behind the drum-kit, Michael Davidson's kaleidoscopic vibraphonisms, and the powerful and insightful trumpet-playing of Lina Allemano.
PRE-ORDER & PREVIEW HERE
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Alex Eddington — A Present from a Small Distant World
(CD/DL out now on Redshift Records)
Toronto composer Alex Eddington’s unorthodox debut A Present from a Small Distant World is many different things all at once. Sometimes dark, sometimes downright silly, certain moments resemble traditional art song, whereas others unfurl strange synthetic textures. Traversing — and often revisiting — music from the past 18 years, it serves as a portrait of his close collaborative relationship with soprano Kristin Mueller-Heaslip, who plays a number of different protagonists throughout the album. While this timespan accounts for some of the album’s gleeful heterogeneity, that trait can also be attributed to its underlying inspiration, the so-called Golden Record, the phonographic “earth’s greatest hits” disc that was hurled into space in 1977 by the Voyager spacecraft.
Eddington’s restless creativity has led him into collaborations with some of Canada’s most renowned ensembles including Continuum, Quatuor Bozzini, the Toronto Consort, the Talisker Players, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Mujirushi, and junctQín as well as performances across the globe. Winner of a 2004 SOCAN Award Eddington’s eclectic and often playful oeuvre embraces everything from choral music to electroacoustics, from period instruments to steel pan ensemble.
ORDER & PREVIEW HERE
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A. Hutchie — Potion Shop
(LP/CD/DL out NOW on Cosmic Resonance)
Potion Shop is a pop record but embraces everything from ethereal folk to esoteric rhymes, from sunburnt soul to lysergic lullabies, all the while showcasing Hamilton's A. Hutchie (aka Aaron Hutchinson) and his distinctive and decidedly psychedelic arrangements. One may know Hutchinson as a member of Haolin Munk, Eschaton or as one of the founders of celebrated venue/label HAVN. He has also collaborated with the likes of Lea Bertucci, JFM, Ellis, Zoon and YlangYlang. Here, his crisp wind arrangements crawl forth from thick synth haze, as 808 drums rain down on choruses of birds, and muffled pianos meander past distended, muck-encrusted drum samples. It's also a vehicle for songs courtesy of a diverse cast of guests, variously featuring Hamiltonian vocal protagonists Sarah Good and Benita Whyte of Persons Crew, Doom Squad's Allie Blumas, pre-eminent MC Emay, Kirk Starkey of classical fusionists Quarteto Gelato, and countless others. As Bryon Hayes observed in his Dusted review "When imbibing these intoxicating concoctions, you will be immersed in a warmth of familiarity tempered with the unsettling yet exciting sense of the uncanny. Like absinthe, the disquiet is illusory while the intimacy is authentic."
ORDER & LISTEN HERE
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WOMEN FROM SPACE ANNOUNCES ITS 2021 DIGITAL... AHEM... HOLOGRAPHIC EDITION!
April 9th-11th
I'm certain that any curious listener in Toronto—at least those of us who can actually recall the incomparable joy of live music—would enthuse copiously about the mighty Women From Space Festival. Entering their third year, they're the proverbial new kids on the block, however, they've already managed to host some exploratory music's leading innovators including Susan Alcorn, Amy Brandon, Ingrid Laubrock, Kris Davis, Germaine Liu, Elisa Thorn (of Giving Shapes infamy), William Parker, Anne Bourne, and Sam Newsome. This year's focus is quite local in orientation but maintains their commitment to visionary artists. Featured in 2021 are Eve Egoyan, Fides Krucker, Pursuit Grooves, Thanya Iyer, Tania Gill, Slowpitchsound, Laura Barret, Laurel MacDonald, Anh Phung and many many more.
And while it's happening online, the organizers have also done something unprecedented to enhance the remote viewing experience!
Read all about it at the following links:
Women From Space is Toronto’s first hologram music festival, Richard Trapunski NOW Magazine
Exclaim! News
and have an in-depth look at their official site:
www.womenfromspace.com
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ADDITIONAL TITLES FROM R~M ARTISTS
  
           
Recent coverage for Riparian Media Artists:
See Through 4's Permanent Moving Parts on All About Jazz
Colin Fisher and See Through 4 at Full Circle Music Blog
Alex Eddington's A Present From a Small Distant World on Nieuwenoten
Women From Space In The Whole Note
A. Hutchie feature in the Hamilton Spectator
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FURTHER BANDCAMP SOUNDS...
Bernice — Eau De Bonjourno (Telephone Explosion)
Pop music that's as strange and complex as it is addictive. Fragmented, catchy, pensive, playful... I cannot stop listening to this record!
Daniel Brandes — who has travelled this path before you (Self-Released)
This digital release from Victoria, BC-based Wandelweiser composer Daniel Brandes is part field-recording, part contemporary composition. Brandes is heard softly threading a melody through a landscape populated with many other sounds.
Insides — Soft Bonds (Further Distractions)
UK duo Insides' first album in 21 years is a curious affair featuring hushed open-ended songs that crawl with unsettling instrumental and electronic texture.
Michael Gregory Jackson — Frequency Equilibrium Koan (Self-Released)
Brilliant and eclectic guitarist and singer Michael Gregory Jackson has unearthed this beautiful live recording from 1977, where he is joined by fellow free jazz-royalty, Julius Hemphill (on Alto Saxophone), Abdul Wadud (on Cello) and drummer Pheeroan aKLaff.
Isnaj Dui — Bright Star (textura)
If the dim, fog-laced flutes of the preview track are any indication, this release for Peterborough, ON label/ music-blog textura promises a brooding and beautiful listen.
Jessica Ackerley & Patrick Shiroishi — Extremities (Notice Recordings)
Speaking of improvising guitarists, this tense and invigorating duo recording from Canadian-American player Jessica Ackerley and LA-based saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi is well worth a listen!
Troublemaker — Music Of Nick Fraser, Vol. 1 (All-Set! Editions)
Yes, Rob Clutton has made a "pandemic record" featuring quirky (mostly) home-recorded interpretations of Nick Fraser's music. Aside from the closing cut, Clutton mostly sets upright bass aside in favour of heavily tweaked electric.
For more recommendations, check out my collection (and wishlist) on Bandcamp : https://bandcamp.com/nickstorring
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