Moving Pictures

L Con

On Saturday night, I went to 204 Spadina to see the 537th show of the Wavelength music series. This underground space has been converted temporarily into a venue for the Images Festival running in April. 3 bands with audio-visual effects took the stage.

L Con was first up. They play laid-back, slow pop backed by an old analog drum machine. The lead vocal (Lisa Conway of Del Bel) also played violin, so with the cello and stringed bass, the string section was rich and full. This small, improvised space was a much better fit than the Horseshoe. Combined with projections of psychedelic colours and swirls, L Con a dreamy start to the evening and had the best performance of the night.

Shvrs followed at 10:45 pm. Some bands have been accused of too much knob fiddling with their effects and samples. But for this duo, this was literally all that they did. Although they had 4 synths set up, they rarely played. Minute adjustments of the various knobs and dials on the keyboards, fed through even more electronics, gave undulating sinusoidal music that was more generated than played. Even the projector was hooked up to a box that gave them control of the video signal coming through, so that colours and effects can be used. This worked better as ambient music, as a live act it palled rather quickly.

Fresh Snow inside Pod

Meeting up somewhere in between was Fresh Snow. A self-described kraut rock band, the drum and bass kept the songs moving forward, while the guitar and keyboard meandered away from chords and melodies into noise and feedback. For this show, they've completely encased themselves in a mostly opaque "pod", so they are only visible as back-lit shadows against a kaleidoscope of projected fractals and computer-generated patterns. For the last few songs, they were joined inside the pod by violin, tenor sax, trumpet and trombone.