shows:

NEW RELEASES:

• Mike Khoury & Christopher Riggs
  Abandon Rate
  bim-38, summer 2010

  The Khoury-Riggs duo tape that appeared on Holy Cheever Church sometime last year was a favourite around Bug Incision headquarters, so it was a no-brainer when it came to scooping these recordings and getting them out there. The two are closely aligned with Detroit's fertile scene of creative improvisors, and are often involved with Ben Hall and Hans Buetow, two other Bug Incision-released artists, and their excellent label Brokenresearch. Both players have previously released material on this label (Khoury on Battlefield Medicine and Airwaves, Riggs on Tanto Impresos Como Sistemas and I Feel So Strong. I Feel I Could Punch A Hole In A Fucking Wall.) and have also filled their own and a good many others' release schedules with quality product. The strength of this duo is that they manage to succeed in finding some middle ground between Riggs, who's taken it upon himself to overhaul the guitar quite thoroughly, often rendering it unrecognizable, and Khoury, who has taken the violin at face value and studiously honed a unique sound and approach. There is a wonderfully controlled and varied bank of sounds from which Riggs draws, and Khoury keeps up with deft manipulations in tone, tremolo, bow pressure, etc. Look for a sister release on the House of Alchemy label.

  edition of 66, cdr, color covers in plastic sleeves

• Eric Chenaux & Bent Spoon Duo
  Live In Calgary
  bim-37, summer 2010

  Eric Chenaux is a long-standing fixture of Toronto's creative music scene. He runs Rat-Drifting, a beautiful label that deals in the finest of the city's more creative musical thinkers. He also plays with Drumheller, a quintet that gives jazz a good name, and he also has a string of wonderfully cracked, song-based solo albums on Montreal's Constellation records. The Bent Spoon Duo, Chris Dadge and Scott Munro, is one of Calgary's longer-running improvising units, and have played with a variety of people including Peter Evans, Chad van Gaalen (in the new group Blanket), Gordon Allen, Darren Williams, Simeon Abbott, and the late Dan Meichel (the Musk Cup). The first performance by this trio took place in Toronto in 2008, on the same tour that produced the two BSD tapes (on Holy Cheever and Middle James Co.) and the recently-released collaborations with Abbott. Their follow-up to that initial meeting took place at the jazz fest in Calgary during the summer of 2009. The music they played that evening had two distinct qualities. There is a forward-moving, yet rambling aspect to the music that reminds one of Derek Bailey's notions of 'playing', treating the word in its most natural, unaffected sense. There is also a type of folksy intuitiveness to the proceedings that glazes the harmony and complimentary rhtyhm in a rather spectral fashion. Chenaux's playing conjures a sort of amalgam of Roger Smith's ultra-introverted scrabblings and John Russell's patient unraveling of patterns and inversions, but anyone who's spent time with his music knows he sounds mainly like himself. Munro is the wildcard here, playing viola, sampling keyboard, vocals, and trombone. He skirts around Chenaux, and Dadge's mixture of dry drumset playing and violin work, filling in odd, but excellent areas of the music.

  edition of 100, cdr, color covers in plastic sleeves

• Slut Mouth
  Amateur Hour
  bim-36, summer 2010

  New recordings from this Fossils-related duo from Hamilton, Ontario, following some recent releases on Middle James Co. and Fag Tapes. 30 minutes of deconstructed free rock jams on guitar and partial drumset, edited down from an epic 60 minute session. Some extremely crude and loose playing styles, backgrounded by the sound of dying amps and buzzing patch cables. Skeletal grooves and patterns occasionally emerge from the wreckage, and are usually abandoned just as quickly. Closest thing that comes to mind in this ballpark would be those Vampire Belt CDRs from a few years ago, but way slower and scrappier.

  edition of 45, cdr, color covers in plastic sleeves

• Fleischhaker/Munro/Dadge
  Daikons
  bim-35, summer 2010

  The people comprising this lineup have been orbiting one another for some time. Dadge & Munro play together in the Bent Spoon Duo, as well as a number of other projects (Blanket, Lab Coast, Phil Withers, Jay Crocker), and Munro & Fleischhaker have had an intermittently active vocals/electronics improvising duo (German Witchcraft, their first disc, which Dadge recorded and produced, was issued on Bug Incision as bim-10 a few years ago) for the last few years. This set was initially intended to be a simple addition of Dadge on drumset to the dual vocal/electronics setup the other two had been previously exploring . However, Munro added the electric bass, his primary instrument, and his vocal contributions were lessened, giving the trio a somewhat more conventional instrumental lineup. That nod towards the rock canon can be heard clearly in this live recording; the trio shares a certain headspace that allows them to operate in a fairly tight, un-flabby framework, producing pieces that end up sounding like small compositions. The recording is a straight document of the set, including a count-in, applause, and between-piece mumbling.

  edition of 30, cdr, color covers in plastic sleeves

• Chris Dadge
  A Moth That Smiles As It Burns Is Better Than You
  bim-34, summer 2010

  This is a live recording of a solo performance at Weeds Cafe in Calgary, in March 2010. The set was thrown together at the last minute, having arrived home from a trip a few days prior to the performance. Features percussiont, violin, and acoustic guitar. Recorded and assisted by Brad Hawkins.

  edition of 45, cdr, color covers in plastic sleeves

WEEDS CAFE (1903 20th AVE NW), 8-10pm, PAY WHAT YOU CAN, ALL AGES

• JULY 28:
  • Protagonist/Antagonist is Larry McDowell's solo project, always smart and thoughtful.
    
  • Mark Fleischhaker is a vocalist and drummer, whose intense, short bursts of work have peppered Calgary's improv and metal scenes for the last decade or so. His vocal/electronic improvisations & will be paired with Chris Dadge's kitchen sink percussion. There will be... copies of their new trio CDR with Scott Munro, titled Daikons, for sale at the show.
• AUGUST 11:
  • RAPHAEL ARSENAULT
  • SIMEON ABBOTT/CHRIS DADGE
• AUGUST 28:
  • Beneath These Idle Tides
  • Chris Reimer
  • Blanket
  • separately and together

updates:

NEW RELEASES:

• details on new batch coming soon