(June 6, 2024)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
by maggie astrid clark<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If\u2014as Phil Elverum sang during his performance of an unreleased Mount Eerie song at the West End Cultural Centre (WECC) on June 26\u2014recorded music is a \u201cstatue of a waterfall,\u201d then concert reviews are poems about a blurry photograph of said statue. Words cannot capture the experience of a sound, let alone reconstruct a memory that is already fading from the mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
But this isn\u2019t a review of that concert. I\u2019m here to talk about a different<\/em> concert that took place at the WECC earlier in the month: \u201cPulse,\u201d the Cluster Festival show featuring Debashis Sinha, Jason Tait, and Compost. I do not know exactly why the festival organizers felt inspired to group these acts together on the same bill, but I\u2019m glad they did. It made for an entertaining and eclectic set of tunes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The evening began with the festival\u2019s artistic director Ash Au introducing all three upfront and closing with a plea. \u201cThe world\u2019s burning,\u201d Au said before encouraging the audience to take the energy we received from the night\u2019s music and put it back into the community. I couldn\u2019t quite envision what they meant by this\u2014and, moreover, it\u2019s always been difficult for me to discern where my energies are best spent\u2014but it was a lovely sentiment nonetheless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Up first was Debashis Sinha, an electronic composer from Toronto. He played a quadrophonic drone composition which I seem to recall Au telling us was untitled but which the program pamphlet I received referred to as \u201cR\u00fcckstreuung.\u201d (This is part of the reason I opened the review with a reference to that Mount Eerie lyric. I am writing about this concert a month-and-a-half after the fact, so my recollection\u2019s a bit hazy at this point. Unless you were there and remember otherwise, you\u2019ll just have to take my word for it!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In describing the piece, Sinha noted that the \u201cphysics of the sound\u201d change depending on where you were in the auditorium; it apparently sounded different to each person. He invited us to sway, to get up and walk around, as the drone itself was\u2014by his own admission\u2014\u201cnot very dynamic.\u201d As he began his performance, the screens behind him displayed swirling, grey plumes of smoke that seemed to move slightly but which very well could have been an optical illusion. I\u2019m once again uncertain, but it seemed thematically appropriate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I now offer you a series of descriptions of the sounds that I believe I heard over the course of Sinha\u2019s approximately 20-minute performance: an aluminum can being kicked around on a tiled floor, a metallic whir, 2-by-4s clanking together, the static hiss of a record spinning in its groove, a shaving razor, wind flapping a chain around a pole, creaking wooden planks. When someone opened the door\u2014to go out for a smoke or to buy a beer or to use the restroom, I can\u2019t say\u2014it too became part of the piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I shifted my head from side to side, leaning across the empty seats next to me, I could detect slight variations in tone and texture. Perhaps these might\u2019ve been more pronounced if I had stood up and walked around, but I was comfortable where I was seated and didn\u2019t feel like moving. I guess I\u2019ll never know what the piece might have sounded like from a different vantage point. I\u2019ll have to live with that lack of knowledge for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the drone had concluded, Sinha rubbed his hands together and said, \u201cThank you, everyone,\u201d to which I felt like responding: \u201cNo, man, thank you<\/em>! All I did was sit here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, on the docket was Jason Tait. I was curious to see what his performance would entail, as I was previously familiar with him as the drummer of a little-known local outfit called The Weakerthans. Would it be an extended percussive arrangement, Steve Reich-style? Apparently not! Tait\u2019s offering was instead a semi-improvised modular synth piece. It was syncopated, polyrhythmic, and fun, so I had a grand old time. Unfortunately, I don\u2019t know how else to describe the composition beyond an appeal to the concepts of \u201cbleep\u201d and \u201cbloop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n After the performance, I ran into a friend of mine who explained to me and my partner what a \u201cmodular synth\u201d even was, which helped immensely. It\u2019s one of those terms I\u2019d been aware of for many years but, for whatever reason, hadn\u2019t felt inclined to Google. And now I don\u2019t have to!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tait left the stage area without a word and made way for Compost, a three-piece instrumental jazz trio. According to the Cluster Festival program, the band takes influence from \u201c90s beat makers and European electronic music, cycling between movement and meditation,\u201d but I would describe them\u2014perhaps reductively\u2014as \u201cWinnipeg\u2019s answer to BadBadNotGood.\u201d They, too, devoted their allotted time to the performance of a single piece titled \u201cDecomposed.\u201d The drums, bass, and electric piano were accompanied by spoken word sections and a time-lapsed video projection of unfurling stalks, growing seeds, and pulsating yellow fungus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To accommodate the video display, the WECC killed the lights\u2014a choice that made perfect sense in context but which had the unfortunate side-effect of making it hard for me to scribble in my little notebook. One phrase in particular rang out to me, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere are no words for anything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (June 6, 2024) by maggie astrid clark If\u2014as Phil Elverum sang during his performance of an unreleased Mount Eerie song at the West End Cultural Centre (WECC) on June 26\u2014recorded music is a \u201cstatue of a waterfall,\u201d then concert reviews are poems about a blurry photograph of said statue. Words cannot capture the experience of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1663,198,1664,1666,1665],"class_list":["post-12759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-bait","tag-cluster","tag-cluster-festival","tag-compost","tag-debashis-sinha","tag-jason-tait"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12760,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12759\/revisions\/12760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ckuw.ca\/stylus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}