Month: June 2023

Mere days away, Initial Shock is proud to be presenting two local heavyweights: SKIN TONE and UN REGARD FROID.

skin tone is a solo performance practice; is saxophone, voice, mbira and electronics; is an exploration of possible futures; is a recapitulation of hi-stories erased; is an echo of free jazz both spiritual and harsh; is black.

Un Regard Froid is the nom de guerre of multimedia artist Frederick Maheux (Death Orgone, Lamashtu), the musical entity behind his work in cinema, video games, and academia. Blending all forms of audio degeneracy, his project continues industrial culture’s information war through philosophical and technological hijacking. URF performances are known to be intense and cathartically hostile, favoring junk metal, power tools, and accelerated meat as instruments. “Snorting gunpowder and the ashes of philosophers”.

Saturday, July 1. 2pm-11pm. $30 at the door. See you there.

With the fest only a week away, two more acts playing Initial Shock on July 1st are Ontarian noise artists SHAMEFUL and REACHING NEEDLES + BOMBAYPAINCO.

Shameful is a London, Ontario-based noise project formed in 2017. The goal is to create electronic sound that is as dynamic as it is harsh. Most recently, Shameful has had releases on Abhorrent A.D., Absurd Exposition, Industrial Coast, and most recently, an appearance on the four-way split tape released by Table Scraps. This will be Shameful’s first show back since 2018.

Granulated, glitching wall noise malpractice from Ottawa, Reaching Needles is Scott – chief bystander of Public Display of Affliction, the capital city’s best (only?) current noise show curator. For no other reason but to make things harder, R/N makes it’s Montreal debut as a duo with professional tattoo artist Jessica Vivian (Bombaypainco), armed with an amplified tattoo gun. With a general indifference to the pain of her partner, in an environment too loud for safe words, come witness the damage done.

With the festival encroaching, we’re excited to highlight two more performing artists: TOANCHE DWELLING and AXIOM.

Barrett E. Lediard is the sole director and lead sentient conduit for the Toanche Dwelling Preservation Society. Toanche Dwelling is an elemental pulse of information connecting specific places, people, events, etc. to the non-linear aspects of space/time. All of the answers are there, you just have to dig for them. Expect decayed washes of environmental invocations processed through little-to-no equipment.

Axiom is a Montréal-based noise research project. Having released their debut tape with Absurd Exposition in 2020, they also operate as a label with releases from Hellerine M, Anesthésie Locale and Malpertuis. For the last three years, Axiom have been refining their experiments through live performance and will soon release the resultant Axiom II recordings. Having birthed an intricate system of live electronics and computational modules, the resonant ratios of Axiom undergo conversion from numerical phenomena into sonic parameters observable by man while preserving the circularity of their boundaries, resonant with those of the human circumstance.

Any edge of a Möbius strip is topologically equivalent to a circle. Axiom similarly admits a complete metric of constant negative curvature, Take the subset of the upper half-plane between any two nested semicircles, and identify the outer semicircle with the left-right reversal of the inner semicircle. The result is topologically a complete and non-compact Axiom. Axiom may also be observed in the Cartesian fold, where it may emerge as another non-orientable umbilic Torus-like structure. This is an intrinsic property of a Möbius strip itself. In Axiom’s circumstance, a permutation of Lamentations 3: 2—6 emerges from this transformation: “Il m’a conduit, mené dans les ténèbres, Et non dans la lumière. Contre moi il tourne et retourne sa main, Tout le jour. Il a fait dépérir ma chair et ma peau, Il a brisé mes os. Il a bâti autour de moi, Il m’a environné de poison et de douleur. Il me fait habiter dans les ténèbres, Comme ceux qui sont morts dès longtemps.”

Advanced tickets are still available.

Headlining the daytime show at Initial Shock on July 1 is B.P. (Bret Parenteau), an artist from Winnipeg, MB, Treaty 1 Territory. He is head of the Makade Star label, a tape label solely focused on local experimental artists present and past. He helped compose the soundtrack to Métis filmmaker Rhayne Vermette’s “Ste. Anne” (2021). Also currently active in ambient / tape music duos, Ardor & North Shield. Parenteau has released a steady amount of work across Canada, US & internationally. @b.p___’s set in Montreal last summer was a scorcher and he is not to be missed!

Advanced tickets are still available. Raffle prize packs will be drawn the night of the fest.