All Your Base

With a light snow falling on Toronto Saturday night, I arrived at The Annex Live for some synth-pop. The space was cozy and amazingly clean, even the bathrooms. Unfortunately, the sound set-up was sub-par. They didn't have enough mics for both singers and instruments.

First up was Kashka, a synth-pop new venture from Kat Burns, formerly of Forest City Lovers. Her duo sang catchy beat-driven pop but with metaphorical lyrics and a good dose of jangly guitars and sonic effects. But tonight's muddled sound mix masked Burns' vocals and gave too much emphasis to the drum sampler.

The main act was Chicago's Advance Base. I had previously seen Owen Ashworth several years ago on his final tour as Casio Tone For The Painfully Alone: a one-man mix-master of a plethora of electronic equipment, singing sad, melancholic numbers. In this incarnation, he still uses some samplers, but concentrated mainly on his vintage synth. Sadly, this gave them an amateurish quality: like listening to pre-programmed sample songs from low-end keyboards. But his strength was his lyrics, and they remain trenchant. To that end, he gave us sharply observed snapshot of ordinary lives, often lonely, unmoored, and estranged. A bemusing amount seemed to have been inspired (by his admission) by watching horror movies: An American Werewolf In London, The Omen, and The Exorcist. The set was book-ended by two songs about Christmas, one set in Oakland, the other in Milwaukee, neither of which offered much cheery "Holiday spirit".