Monday, October 01, 2007

Blanche Exposures

Our Nuit Blanche Saturday night special - Radio Blanche - was a tremendous success, Thanks to all who participated.

The Irie Band started the evening with rock solid roots and dub on CIUT's outdoor stage. A crowd materialized quickly from the steady stream of pedestrians on St. George St. Back inside the building, the mixing board and 'dub table' were set up. At midnight Ravi Naimpally and John Kameel Farah duetted on tabla and Rhodes/Nord Lead with discreet dub moments. Steve rocked the decks, while I took the dub table for a spin. At around 1:30 the Music Gallery phoned in with (I think) Nick Storring on cello. It was a bad yet interesting connection (as I'd hoped) to which I added effects, clarinet, dumbek and Bryon Gysin talking about mucus. This lead to the guitar duets between Colin Fisher and Nilan Perera. Each was stationed in a different studio and couldn't see the other, but the music they made was remarkably fluid and simpatico. The second of their duets grew from them vamping over an Orchestre Baobab track to almost thirty minutes of free form, soulful electronics.

Glissandro 70 stopped by at 3:45 AM and Craig Dunsmuir played a "cough syrup" set as he described it, going heavy on the spring reverb of my battered Audio Technica mixer. Sandro Perri laid down the next, then Craig took us all higher with a funky throwdown until well after 5. Steve played once again, then it was over to Nadja via phone from 1116 King West. This phone connection was better quality, and the heavily compressed doomy drones amplified by a cavernous space (Sandro remarked that there was a second and a half natural delay in there) sounded sublime in the studio. The transition into Timbre Timbre was amazing, as Taylor opened with slowly modulating white noise. His quiet, folky and resolutely electronic set was the perfect ending to the night.

One more thing - thanks to the University of Toronto police for responding to the noise complaint (wtf?) about CIUT's outdoor speaker, and for not informing us that you went to the trouble to disconnect the speaker yourselves. Perhaps our noise was too weird to be art, unlike the other installation 100 metres up the street.


Members of the Irie Band and friends in front of the outdoor stage













Steve Birek aka Guy Stevos (image courtesy of Steve)















Dubwise Dacks (image courtesy of Steve)














Colin Fisher in session














Nilan "Gene Simmons" Perera














Sandro Perri close to the edit



















Timbre Timber near the end

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