Thursday, August 27, 2015

Signal to noise

Summer is headed into its final stretch, and that means festival season is winding down - but at least it's going out with a bang instead of a whimper, with some pretty sharp lineups at of CityFolk and last week's Arboretum. I caught a couple of nights at the Rolf Klausener-curated fest, starting with an evening at St. Alban's, featuring Montreal's Organ Mood, Ottawa's Flying Horses and headlined by Julianna Barwick. St. Alban's was perfect for these acts (sometimes too perfect, when its acoustics made every pin drop behind me audible during the quiet parts). Organ Mood were the first group up. The duo combine music, some instruments of their own design, a lot of audience participation and some overhead projectors. Unfortunately they were also positioned just behind me, where the lighting was so dire the chances of a decent photograph were zero. That said, we'll start things off with Laurie Brown, whose show The Signal co-presented the night.

Laurie Brown at St. Alban's

Overhead action with Mathieu Jacques!

Organ Mood at St. Alban's

This is what was appearing on the silver screen.

Organ Mood at St. Alban's

A very grainy Christophe Lamarche-Ledoux provides the music.

Organ Mood at St. Alban's

An audience member uses one of the band-designed instruments to add some rhythm. Another audience member used a modified doppler to project the sound of her heartbeat, which was pretty cool.

Organ Mood at St. Alban's

Next up, Flying Horses provided some instrumental sounds while grainy black-and-white images that (I'm guessing) showed off Iceland's stark landscapes played overhead. Raphael Weinroth-Brown on cello and JF Beauchamp on trumpet.

Flying Hórses at St. Alban's

Jade Bergeron winds things up.

Flying Hórses at St. Alban's

Organ action!

Flying Hórses at St. Alban's

The whole lot take their bows.

Flying Hórses at St. Alban's

Julianna Barwick tied the night up in a bow with some lovely looped sounds.

Julianna Barwick at St. Alban's

As you can see, I didn't take all that many photos ....

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