Vancouver fake jazzers and seekers of unusual artistic experiences might wish to take note. While Ejaculation Death Rattle, whom I last wrote about here, have been "slumbering" for awhile, now, there are two events this weekend involving members of the band: a set by Ross Birdwise (and collaborator Raj Gill, who I do not believe has been a member of EDR) and another by Dan Kibke and Heather McDermid (who has a bandcamp with nothing on it and, under the alias Lee Shoal, is also in the Creaking Planks, who are a very different band from EDR; not sure where to link!).
The first event, taking place this Friday, is a multi-artist evening of improvisatory and exploratory music with free passages cultivating a relationship with beats and grooves; and the second evokes memories of the noise pancake breakfast, one of my very favourite traditions in the Vancouver avant-garde music scene, at which I have occasionally flipped pancakes.
First things first, we have Broken Groove, aka bRoKeN gRoOvE, taking place Friday at Hypha Arts (1410 Venables; no pancakes will be served; those of you who are in it for the pancakes will have to wait until Sunday morning, more on which below). I gather that Friday will be a bit of a "happening," with room for some interactivity with the audience, and that some of it may serve as a springboard for further explorations on December 6th, at a separate event (more on which below). As for the sounds involved, Gill has described the music to be made as "combining beats and free jazz improvisation, a fusion of freedom and structure."
I've listened to recordings of some of the beats that Birdwise will be weaving electronically-modified vocals and synths over, under, and through. Other beats will be provided in situ by Brady Marks and by Adrian Avendaño, who has a background in free jazz, I'm told, and I believe will actually be drumming; I'm not sure. But the beats I have heard are quirky, glitchy things, very much electronic in nature, and of interest in their own right, possibly the basis of a future recording of their own. Birdwise explains that
the beats - even the ones with polyrhythms, non-grid elements, extreme syncopation and swing, and some elements that drift out of time, are still largely based on grooves - in the sense of counts of four and regular sense of meter underlying everything else. I'll be using some that do not groove or break the groove more as well (more chaotic kinds of rhythms, arhythmic stuff etc), but it's important than many beats do groove, because I'm not really trying to set up an opposition where its grooves vs. chaos or one thing is better than another. It is more about contrast, or in some cases merging disparate elements, and also embracing both repetition and change. In some ways mixing popular and experimental hopefully in a mutually edifying way, and all in the context of a larger event or happening.
I presume that this image, provided by Birdwise, of a mangled chainlink fence is a photo he took. I rather love it -- how there are junctures, a framework, but also things running between them, twisting through them, like strands of music weaving amongst said beats. These explorations -- freedom and structure, pattern and chaos -- also extend to painting, AI, and things in-between, "related to my interest in musical grids (and grooves) as well as notions of abandoning or stretching or breaking or contorting the grid..."
There are also dense interweavings traceable between the performers Friday. Birdwise has connections to with Nikko, Jeannette, and Haley via the Co.Crea.Tive Collective, though he is not, he says, on their website; he was involved in a project they had a hand in called Crawling Human. Meantime, he explains,
Adrian, Matt and Prophecy also perform with Soressa Gardner and I in Sounding The Dusk Meridian, another improv heavy group which originally formed to provide sound (live) for an installation by Keith Langergraber, partner of Heather from EDR. In some ways STDM is in that spirit. Prophecy and Heather also had ties to Her Jazz Noise Collective and I've worked with Prophecy (and Soressa) from around 2008 or 2009 onwards in various groupings, including projects related to my ‘bent time’ beats, the latest album of which [having been] eventually released on mille plateaux in 2023.
The Friday show "continues in some ways that artdamaged EDR tradition of both regular and irregular rhythms and anti-rhythms combined with left-field improv, in a DIY setting akin to a happening. But at times its going to make a more explicit nod to techno and other groove musics. but in a very singular way."
Raj and Birdwise may make this event into "a series of some sort," he speculates, "with different musicians invited to contribute different grooves and improv approaches and other people experimenting with the setup of the evening." People with an interest in furthering these conversations will also want to check out the upcoming event on December 6th at KW Studios, involving Mike WT Allen, Magneticring, Matthew Ariaratnam, and Ivan Lu.
As for Dan Kibke and Heather McDermid, they will be performing as Crow Moon on Sunday as part of the first (annual?) COLLIDE Festival, offering what McDermid describes as "noise-synth, offbeat drone, random voltages and temporal slices of further localities" at the Dec 1 Pancake Noise Breakfast event (this begins at 11:30AM at the Russian Hall, at 600 Campbell). The Instagram links Dan sent seem to be directing me to the wrong places, so I'm not entirely sure what to expect, but THERE WILL BE PANCAKES.
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