From my short-term stay, I headed along Dundas St. W and down Dovercourt to Longboat Hall. This basement venue below the main Great Hall can be great and transcendent but also dull and listless especially for openers. What kind of show will I see tonight?
It didn't start well with experimental rock band Animatist. In a different venue, with a different audience (preferably chemically enhanced), their skittering EDM meets Colin Stetson might connect with the crowd. Tonight's set only got cheers from their friends but luckily they play "gapless sets" so applause wasn't necessary. Their percussive but noisy sound reminded me of this show at Somewhere There, when Sterling Road was still industrial. But I did enjoy Animatist slightly more tonight.
Headliner Teke Teke was a Japanese psych-rock outfit from Montreal. I was intrigued from a short set I saw on Youtube. In person, they were a high-energy band that combined surf rock, punk, funk-esque base lines, and complex poly-rhythm. I was pleasantly surprised that they had included more East Asian melodies and harmonies (especially in the guitars) than a band like Tricot that does not stray too far from a Western sound. Trombone, flute, and lead singer Kuroki's vocals often interplayed in dynamic ways. The most crazy-but-it-works moment came when the trombonist switched over to a bagpipe. Sometimes a song moves into a pulsing, trance-like loop that reminded me of Ethiopian music or the circular guitar of Aroara. It was a fun set that was both dance-able and sonically interesting.
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