Telephone Explosion Jazz | Fusion 14 Items

The mesmerizing debut LP by Nova Scotia’s Quilting on October 7, 2022. The album is a quietly stunning collection of pastoral ambience dotted with moments of tension that reflects the maritime environment in which it was created, inadvertently paying homage to the light and darkness of rural life.

Co-founded by Holy Fuck’s Brian Borcherdt, the quartet is comprised of a diverse and accomplished collection of musicians who came together when he moved back to his home province in 2019 after a lengthy stay in Toronto.

The shock of settling into a town of 600 people was softened almost immediately by a care package left on Borcherdt’s front porch. It included the curious juxtaposition of homemade preserves and a circuit-bent keyboard. His interest was piqued. As luck would have it, his new neighbour happened to be renowned folk guitarist Kim Barlow.

“Kim was in the process of organizing an improvisation series featuring over a dozen Nova Scotia-based musicians. The series struggled under lockdown restrictions, and on the second attempt only the four of us showed up.” Borcherdt recalls. “We didn't really know each other that well, were a bit shy and played very quietly. However, we really enjoyed how spacious our jam was.”

One week after their initial jam, Borcherdt was invited to perform a solo set at a Halifax-based experimental festival called Open Waters. He instead volunteered the same lineup: himself, Barlow, distinguished Isle Of Skye harpist (and Berklee professor) Mairi Chaimbeul, and Sahara Nasr, a noted songwriter and player of the rare Indian Sarangi. It wasn’t long before they began recording and soon realized a name was necessary to make the project official.

“When we get together to play music, it's our 'poker night'. That led us to think of other community or 'grown-up' gatherings, similar or antiquated... like barnraising bees, quilting bees.” Explains Borcherdt. “We were sort of quilting: four corners of fabric, texture, sewing threads, telling a story, all making one complete piece while drinking a few beers. We could've also called it ‘Therapy’.”

While providing a necessary distraction from early-COVID life, Quilting also offered a chance to improvise within a uniquely ambient soundspace. This was a welcome change for some of the members, including Borcherdt, who was used to creating music with decidedly more volume.

“Space is welcome. Writing in Quilting is a spontaneous and thoughtful process, very synesthetic and, of course, collaborative. I've only really gotten to explore space and silence with solo music.” He reflects. “With my other bands, even when spontaneous and improvised, the result is dense and cathartic, expressive through pulse and rhythm and volume. With Quilting we get to drift, no beats, no safety net. Every note counts. Yet rather than being stressed or scrutinized under a microscope we all have fun and daydream a bit.”

Sonics aside, Quilting has also given all four members the chance to experiment with the boundaries created by headquartering in a remote area not commonly associated with the avant-garde music community.

“Nova Scotia, unlike other provinces, has basically one city, one place where musicians congregate, play shows and hang out. Anything happening outside of Halifax can be considered an experiment, a test to see anything can get off the ground.” Borcherdt explains. “ In Toronto there's already an infrastructure, whether you play the same venues or build your own new thing- there's an audience, there are friends and like-minded individuals. It's healthier. Here we have to take what we get. But the good news is that it's kind of a blank slate.”

The LP, which features hand-calligraphed cover art from Upstate New York-based artist and musician Sarah Le Puerta, features five songs all recorded live off-the-floor in a single live performance. Moods range from reflective to unsettled, and even at its loudest parts a sense of intimacy persists.

“This album feels like a complete picture, a snapshot of one fun night.” He states. “That seems to me to be a perfect introduction. The listener gets to “attend” the concert, which is an amazing way to discover new music.”

The Badge Époque Ensemble return to Telephone Explosion Records with a new LP, Clouds of Joy. Featuring three vocal-led compositions, three instrumentals and three choral arrangements, this new album presents the Ensemble’s most ambitious, mature and engaging material to date. Clouds represents a shift from the group’s previous sonic excursions into the worlds of vintage soundtrack grooves and early electric jazz towards a more era-ambiguous, complex and all-encompassing approach to arrangement & production.

Undergoing a major shift of consciousness upon learning that he was expecting twins, BÉE leader Maximilian ‘Twig’ Turnbull found the spark to initiate the album within his reflections upon the nature of human joy. This shift in mindset also helped shape the record from an operational standpoint: Turnbull stepped away from his fixture on keys, leaving all of the musical performance on this record to his cast of collaborators. With Max assuming a more “directorial” approach to production and arrangement à la Barry White, David Axelrod, or Fagen & Becker, this album finds the Badge Époque Ensemble in its most collaborative mode to date. Vocalists Dorothea Paas, James Bailey and guitarist Chris Bezant all have co-writing credits here with Bezant contributing significantly to three compositions, including the album’s title track. The album was mixed collaboratively as well, as another joint effort between Turnbull, Steve Chahley and Tony Price, a trio who have teamed up behind the mixing desk for all previous BÉE albums, as well as U.S. Girls’ Heavy Light LP.

For the most part, the Ensemble on this record is made up of names familiar to anyone following the Badge cosmology: drummer Jay Anderson, bassist Gio Rosati, flautist Alia O’Brien, saxophonist Karen Ng, percussionist Ed Squires and guitarist Chris Bezant, with the new addition of young jazz pianist Edwin De Goeij, a perfect surrogate for Turnbull’s ideas on keys. (This in-demand collection of musicians represent a scattering of key cogs from a clutch of other premium Canadian exports; The Weather Station, Andy Shauf, U.S. Girls & Marker Starling). Clouds’ emphasis on the sound of the human voice finds its perfect outlet in vocal arrangements by labelmate Dorothea Paas and a return from lead vocalist James Baley. Their contributions find compliment by a choir composed of session vocalists, (including singers from Bernice and Bonjay) who come together to provide a series of show-stopping harmonic acrobatics.

Familiar Badge motifs are present through this album’s nine tracks: extended sections of dusty drum & conga breaks, swirling saxophone and flute flourishes, fleet-fingered guitar excursions, hazy Rhodes chords and lashing Clavinet stabs, but where Clouds excels is in its ability to weave tremendous vocal performances and choral arrangements into its dense tapestry of sound. The lilting melodies and multidimensional harmonies on tracks “Conspiring With Nature” and “All Same 2 Each, Each Same 2 All” bear the hallmarks of late sixties baroque AM-radio pop, while James Baley’s ecstatic, Stevie-esque lead vocal performance on “Zodiac” could light up the midnight sky, turning a nearly eight minute jazz-funk instrumental odyssey into a sure-shot dancefloor hit. Lyrically, Turnbull’s interest in an aphoristic spiritual mysticism condenses reflections on the complexity of human emotion into bold, succinct phrases, a quality most clearly communicated on the album’s three choral pieces, “The Greatest Joy”, “Let Breath Be The Sum”, and “Joy Flows” (upon first hearing these works Turnbull’s partner Meg Remy remarked that they sounded like “radio hits on the planet Dune”).

Clouds of Joy comes serendipitously as catalog number Ter0100 - the hundredth release for Telephone Explosion, the rapidly burgeoning Toronto label. It is the group’s third proper full length of five total releases for the imprint in only 4 years. It represents the Ensemble’s most fully realized presentation of a founding vision to create music as human, organic and alive as it is synthesized, produced and designed; music that transcends the notion of linear time, pulling in influences and ideas from the past and taking them far into the future.

Beyond whatever mood is likely struggling to be sculpted by the house playlist, restaurants are full of their own natural music. Porcelain and cutlery clatter in bus bins like little medieval battlefields; the chatter of patrons smears into a single stormy texture; the kitchen staff hollers and chides as their own chosen music competes for the ear of anyone walking to the restroom; the churning and hissing of the dish steamer leads the assemblage of sounds that leak out from the back of house to and cling to a diner’s subconscious. The fact that restaurants employ so many hustling musicians, whose entire lives are centered around sonic sensitivity and awareness, is either grand irony or total synergy. Toronto outfit Fresh Pepper, led by longtime friends Andre Ethier and Joseph Shabason, playfully navigates the mental and emotional mark left on many musicians by such places. Their self-titled debut is less concerned with their service-industry traumas, doldrums, and setbacks than it is with creating a relatable space for album’s contributors to fully be themselves within the ease and freedom of having similar histories. Shabason, Ethier, and company recount their culinary past lives across eight jazzy and benevolent tracks that exude their authors’ sheer enjoyment of the creation process. Though the mental image of restaurant inner workings might trigger a mix of urgency, weariness, and yearning for a better livelihood, Fresh Pepper recolors these frazzled scenes with fondness and levity, exorcizing past workplace woes through skillful musicianship and an earnest, slightly bizarre sense of humor.

Fresh Pepper was played and assembled in-person during a gap between Covid waves, and the gleeful rarity of the occasion is palpable. Whatever brooding was stereotypical of artists and musicians pre-pandemic was not invited to this reunion. From the very beginning moments of Fresh Pepper, Shabason and Ethier guide their companions (a sort of super group of Toronto musicians from acts like Bernice, Beverly Glenn Copeland, and even Destroyer’s Dan Bejar himself) with breathy, hushed tones via saxophone and vocals respectively, casually traversing their own annexed corridor between smooth jazz, exploratory avant-indie, and subverted adult-contemporary. Mid-performance apologies are left unmuted in the mix, room-tones are evident in spacious moments, and the spirit of close collaboration is omnipresent. After a mini-parade of loose and glassy keys, the pensive funk highlight “Prep Cook in the Weeds” intros with the kind of furrowed-brow noir-smoothness of some yesteryear crime drama, buoyed by Ethier’s gently insightful musings. “Another fly lands on the clock,” he sings in a hushed tone through a half-smile, pointing wryly toward the relationship between wage-workers and timekeeping devices. “Flies on the hands of time,” he continues, resigning his sense of control, “the flies take the wheel.” Ethier’s slice-of-life lyricism and serene baritone delivery find a fitting counterpart in Dan Bejar who appears on “Seahorse Tranquilizer”. Where featured vocalists-- especially those as iconic as Bejar-- would threaten to out-charisma an album’s resident personalities, Ethier and Bejar heighten the charm of each other’s demeanor in a natural and relaxed way, leading to one of the gentlest moments of an already gentle affair.

Conversely, the track “Dishpit” is noticeably the most abstract chapter of the album, reminiscent of the factory-like, thankless, yet oddly contemplative corner of the kitchen after which it is named. The track begins with a toyish, motorik pulse that imparts the fraught motivation of a full sink during lunch rush with still more dishes on the way. Shabason’s saxophone spins in the mist and steam, disoriented but determined, rallying an equally bewildered percussionist behind it. On much of the album, Shabason’s playing assumes more practical form in contrast to the ambient impressionism of his solo output, but here his atonal fourth-world fingerprints are easily visible. Following all this, “Congee Around Me” again finds warmth in the chaos, imparting the same sense of peace within the jumble that characterizes Fresh Pepper. “Mushrooms in the frying pan,” opens Ethier, summarizing the album’s pathos, “throw another in, I’ll see you when I see you.” Album ender “The Worm” - fatigued and victorious, fluttery and decayed, sounds like a memory-rich bygone era that never really existed. Was that 1990-something? Did it really happen that way? Did the sunlight really look like it does through a camcorder, or has sunlight always been the same as it is now? Does it really matter if I couldn’t see it from the kitchen anyway?

It could be argued that the best art frames its subjects without any commentary, leaving as much room for the viewer to fill with their own experiences, shortcomings, and longings as possible. Fresh Pepper provides this kind of framing around a scenario so taken-for-granted that it becomes mythic under the slightest examination. In this sense, like so many projects that Shabason puts his sonic stamp on, Fresh Pepper conjures an unexpected slice of enlightenment from somewhat unnoticed circumstances. True to form, Fresh Pepper assures us not just that we are going to be okay, but that we are okay right here and now, overtired as we are amid the stainless steel, heat lamps, and spattering oil.

Moves is their sixth release, and somewhat of a milestone. In addition to it being the octet's most psychedelic and arrestingly soulful release thus far, it's also their longest—their first, in fact, to cross into bonafide full-length territory. They're marking the occasion by joining the roster of Toronto favourite Telephone Explosion Records.

Touted as “innately personal” by DownBeat Magazine, Brodie West's unique vision has been nourished by a bafflingly diverse array of sources. Meeting the legendary Dutch drummer Han Bennink in 2000 at age 24 not only sparked an ongoing creative partnership (including two records), but also led him in a number of other fruitful directions. Bennink was the connection to exploratory punks The Ex, who brought West aboard for their collaboration with Ethiopian saxophonist Getatchew Mekurya, which produced recordings and tours worldwide.

Where the Brodie West Quintet (Astral Spirits, Ansible Editions) trades in clever jazz asymmetry and his duo Ways is a stark and focussed exploration of rhythm, Eucalyptus is where this eclecticism is most audible. The band simmers with polyrhythmic percussion, laid-back jazz sweetness, various strains of psychedelic wonk, and subtle tropical aromas from dub on “Rose Manor,” named after the retirement home of his musical grandmother Lorna (ever a source of inspiration for West) to Bossa Nova, as heard on “It's In A Move.” Its streaks of free-form bedlam and pure sonic texture keep listeners poised for perplexity and cheerful volatility.

Moves manages to approximate the playful, intoxicating warmth the band conjures in their beloved local live appearances. Eucalyptus has made a tradition out of mounting month-long residencies at Hirut, a cozy east-end eatery that serves delicious Ethiopian cuisine. Hirut even gets a nod in the credits. Perhaps it's because this record's subtle whimsy and inviting disarray draws so much from the spirit of those evenings.

A large part of this odd concoction's success comes down to West's co-conspirators, a veritable who's who of Toronto's underground music community. Trumpet player Nicole Rampersaud, who has since relocated to Fredericton, New Brunswick, has sculpted her unique tone as composer-in-residence at Halifax's Everyseeker Festival and in collaborations with the likes of Rakalam Bob Moses, Anthony Braxton, Joe Morris and Telephone Explosion's own Joseph Shabason. Ryan Driver (clavinet) has cut a series of gorgeous song records for Tin Angel Records, and collaborated with Eric Chenaux (Constellation) in various projects, while leading a number of his own imaginative outfits. Michael Smith (bass) plays with Toronto psychonauts the Cosmic Range and has toured and recorded with Mv+ee, Sandro Perri plus countless others. Fellow Perri collaborator, percussionist Blake Howard brings the palpable joy of his playing to collaborations with Marker Starling, Little Annie, and the surrealist mischief of GUH. 2021 saw Nick Fraser (drums) leading a disc on Hat-Hut's Ezzthetics imprint. It follows a string of other celebrated recordings with international out-jazz heavyweights like Tony Malaby and Kris Davis for Clean Feed, Astral Spirits and more. In addition to pursuing his delicate solo song work, drummer Evan Cartwright plays in both of West's other projects, and has performed and recorded with Tasseomancy, The Weather Station, US Girls, Badge Époque and Andy Shauf.

Another exciting development unveiled on Moves is the presence of guitarist Kurt Newman, who replaces longtime member Alex Lukashevsky. Newman's whirling treatments and colorful array of tones figure prominently into the ensemble's new and disorienting sound. Newman was the co-founder of premiere Austin improv festival No Idea alongside Chris Cogburn. A ceaseless collaborator who's worked with the likes of Sarah Hennies, Tetuzi Akiyama, Mats Gustafsson, he also leads his own projects such as Country Phasers and the Nashville Minimalism Unit.

Before forming outer limits jazz-rock outfit Badge Époque Ensemble, Max Turnbull masterminded the oddball pop persona Slim Twig, wrote and performed with U.S. Girls, and moonlighted in varyingly experimental groups across his native Toronto. While this was going on, the devout crate digger had his third eye trained on another project—one that would span the breadth of his mercurial creativity. This “journal album,” as he puts it, is titled Scroll, and it collages together the pearls of Turnbull’s eight-year dive into his songwriting imagination. Sprawling across 90 audacious minutes, Scroll—released simply as Badge Epoch, a tidy distinction from the collective Époque Ensemble—sounds unearthed from a lost musical Atlantis. Turnbull calls it “a cosmic hodge podge of funk, jazz, ambient techno, aggressive guitarmonized rawk, musique concrète, and hip hop.

New release by Canadian sweethearts referred to in the press as “Toronto’s ever-evolving backing band”
This LP “openly plays with the shape of a pop song,” drawing on the band members’ backgrounds in jazz, subverting rhythmic formulas, and resting in grooves that sit just outside of
The album’s sound is experimental in its truest definition, chopped up like musique concrete and then delicately placed back together with the loving touch of a scrapbook collagist

Bernice is the experimental pop vessel of musician/songwriter Robin Dann and her longtime collaborators Thom Gill (keyboards, guitar), Philippe Melanson (e-percussion and drums), Daniel Fortin (bass) and Felicity Williams (voice). Together and apart, they have performed with Martha Wainwright, Andy Shauf, Lido Pimienta, Bahamas, Knower, and Beverly Glenn Copeland among many others, which led to them being referred to in the press as “Toronto’s ever-evolving backing band.”

In their own right, however, they have repeatedly proved to be far more than the sum of their considerable parts. Bernice’s Polaris Prize-nominated 2018 LP 'Puff: In The Air Without A Shape' received major international attention, described as an “analytical, self-dissecting monument to ephemerality” by The New York Times, and “a fascinating musical conversation” that blends pop and R&B influences with C86 aesthetics by Pitchfork, alongside high praise from outlets like NPR, Fader, and Stereogum, and many more.

Nearly three years on from that release (for Bernice a rapid turnaround by comparison to the seven-year gap between their 2011 debut and Puff), the band return with their third full-length, Eau de Bonjourno, out March 5th from Telephone Explosion and figureeight records. It marks their first collaboration with producer Shahzad Ismaily, the acclaimed multi-instrumentalist who has worked with artists as varied as Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello, Iggy Pop, John Zorn, and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy. While their genre reconstruction remains distinctly Bernice, Dann’s lyrics bring a newfound focus to storytelling in the present moment, compassionately meeting ourselves where we are, and finding joy in spaces that are familiar but ever changing.

Eau de Bonjourno, according to Dann, “openly plays with the shape of a pop song,” drawing on the band members’ backgrounds in jazz, subverting rhythmic formulas, and resting in grooves that sit just outside of predictable. Instead of letting instruments take extended solos, the tone is set on opener “Groove Elation” with brief blurts of synthesized sax, patient passages of space, or clusters of beats, tenderly held together by Dann and Williams’ intimate vocals. The album’s sound is experimental in its truest definition, chopped up like musique concrete and then delicately placed back together with the loving touch of a scrapbook collagist.

Forthcoming on Telephone Explosion. Bob Bell _Necropolis_. Canadian private press mega-rarity/ obscurity from the artistically schizophrenic Bob Bell. Recorded in 1978, Bell splits the difference between his love of basement psych splatter/pummel and squalling free jazz ramble, the former occupying side A with a stunning four part suite of wasted guitar scuzz and churning Krautrock-like drama with an akin to German Oak, Roland Kirk, Albert Ayler, DNA, Melt Banana (minus the vocals) and Guru Guru. The latter represents Bell as a saxophonist on side B, and the music itself translates into a 15-minute free-jazz exploration.

Melodic Energy Commission is a Canadian gem and an interesting branch of the Hawkwind family tree (featuring Del Delmar on electronics.) Hailing from British Columbia, their unique blend of space rock, progressive and hippie psychedelia began in 1977 as a recording-only project titled "The Melodic Energy Commission of Collected Artists."
In 1985 Ken Man showed up in the studio with this IBM AT computer. It had a 1/2 MB of RAM and some Voyetra software that could sequence music, becoming the duo’s backing band. Fist Of Facts contributors included Mark Cunningham from Mars, Felice Rosser, Genevieve De Monvel Boutet, Carlos Vivanco, Scott Hartley from the Liquids and a whole host of others. Fist of Facts expand the natural groove that Liquid Liquid established over their quick career, with a strong political message combined with abstract dub soundscapes.

Melodic Energy Commission is a Canadian gem and an interesting branch of the Hawkwind family tree (featuring Del Delmar on electronics.) Hailing from British Columbia, their unique blend of space rock, progressive and hippie psychedelia began in 1977 as a recording-only project titled "The Melodic Energy Commission of Collected Artists."