Wavelength Festival Night 2 at Adelaide Hall Feb 14
I'm taking a break from my Bowie project to report on some awesome bands. Marnie Stern was originally headlining this night but, due to flight issues, couldn't make it. Since I'd been listening to Marnie Stern all this week, I was pretty disappointed but I decided to check the show out since Wavelength always has something interesting and last year's festival was excellent. It ended up being quite worthwhile.
Hail Matrox, our new robot overlords! The first band of the night and probably my favorite, these guys owned the robot rock. I was immediately impressed by the level of commitment in the costumes and presentation of Matrox. The music had elements of Kraftwerk, hardcore techno and some of the funkier Daft Punk songs, but still felt completely unique. My favorite track used TTC announcements like "506 Royal York, call control", to create a synthetic transit soul anthem. Could this replace Kardinal Offishall's "
The Anthem" as the official Toronto theme song? Being the first band, they had the smallest crowd but definitely got the biggest response. "DISPERSE!!!.....DISPERSE!!!"
As someone with an occasional musical project titled
And More, I appreciate a good ambiguous name. This duo was a last-minute replacement for Marnie Stern but still put on a polished performance. Their sound felt like a more sprawling, experimental take on
Unforgettable Fire era U2. They combined strong melodies, plaintive vocals, soaring guitar riffs and occasional pounding drum breaks to a powerful effect.
A strange combination of avant-garde and blues, Weaves have a very unusual sound largely held together by an outgoing and charismatic vocalist. The instrumentation was consistently unpredictable, veering from Zepplin-esque blues to atonal, aggressive riffage more reminiscent of no-wave acts like DNA or early Sonic Youth. Their songs often had a wandering structure characteristic of the blues. The only downside is that I think they could really benefit from a physical drummer as the programmed beats seemed stiff compared to the variable bass and guitar. I particularly enjoyed the bass player's intermittent thrashing on his instrument, a level of aggression one rarely sees with bass players.
These guys were one of the bands that I was most excited to see as their sound particularly appeals to my tastes. Having listened to their music online as well as seeing them in person, I find that they are a band in transition. Their earlier material has a heavy Swervedriver influence on their sound and they perform this type of music quite proficiently. Their newer material has a much heavier industrial punk edge to it, and I feel that this sound suits them better and exposes more of their personality as a band. "Are We Friends" effectively demonstrates their newer sound and is one of their most memorable tracks.
DIANA are easily the most well-known of all the bands playing this night. Oddly, in researching them, I found that they have a decent profile in Britain. They specialize in hazy, new-wave influenced synth rock. It's a sound that is fairly common in indie circles but they pull it off fairly well with strong melodies and good musicianship. They varied it up a bit with some heavy percussion breakdowns that got the crowd grooving. My favorite DIANA song is probably "Born Again".
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