29 October 2010

thisquietarmy live at Christ's Church Cathedral

Here's a video of my performance at the Christ's Church Cathedral in Hamilton a few weeks ago. Filmed it myself with a Canon Tx1 on a tripod, and recorded sound with a Zoom H4n, mixed and edited at TQA-HQ. I'm trying to gather more footage from a different angle to make it more interesting, but for now - watch this (10' segment, youtube friendly) :

27 October 2010

CKUT live performance available

You can listen to the live in-studio performance I did yesterday afternoon, for of the Kitchen Bang Bang Law funding drive show, which aired on the radio. Two 10-minutes improvised compositions.

You can download it in the CKUT archive:


Tuesday October 26th, 2010
Hour 2: 10'30-40'00

25 October 2010

Aural Diptych Series #5: Noveller / unFact

Aural Diptych Series # 5 : Noveller / unFact
Released: October 31st, 2010


Preview :

Double-split 3" CDR placed on a heavy stock folded & printed insert, packaged in a felt-textured harvest yellow envelope, with printed artwork by New York City-based artist Elayne Safir. It includes two sets of diptych photography by Montreal-based artist Meryem Yildiz. This releases comes with a digital download code with bonus tracks. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES ONLY.

ADS05 features two of the hottest names in the U.S. ambient scene today: Noveller & unFact. Noveller is Sarah Lipstate from Brooklyn NY - one-time member of Parts & Labor and Coldcave. unFact is David Wm. Sims from NYC, the bassist for the legendary noise rock band The Jesus Lizard.

On their US tour together last summer, they stopped by at CKUT 90.FM in Montreal to perform both solo & collaborative sets on the program New Shit, hosted by Lorrie Edmonds. The performance was recorded by Joe Winer & Andy White, and produced by Andrea-Jane Cornell. The release was made available for Noveller & unFact's European tour this fall, with none other than Aidan Baker. Special thanks to CKUT for letting us use the recording.

Disc 1 : Noveller - Live at CKUT

1. Toothness (for Chris Habib) / 2. Fades / 3. Redgrave

Disc 2 : unFact - Live at CKUT

1. Ox Ghost / 2. Hard World for Little Things / 3. Tell Me What You Need To Say

Bonus Digital Tracks (download included) :
Top Sister, aka Noveller & unFact collaborative set - Live at CKUT

1. Live improvisation / 2. Pre-show Practice.


PURCHASE HERE: http://thisquietarmy.com/records/#tqa017

Aural Diptych Series #4: Yellow6 / Absent Without Leave

Aural Diptych Series # 4 : Yellow6 / Absent Without Leave
Released: October 31st, 2010


Preview :


Double-split 3" CDR placed on a heavy stock folded & printed insert, packaged in a crumply brown paper bag envelope, with printed artwork by New York City-based artist Elayne Safir. It includes two sets of diptych photography by Montreal-based artist Meryem Yildiz. This releases comes with a digital download code with bonus tracks. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES ONLY.

This release teams up two recurrent names that have often been tagged as ambient, post-rock & electronica: Yellow6 & Absent Without Leave.

Disc 1 : Yellow 6 - Further Loops, notes and sketches

1. 05 Aug 2010 #03 / 2. 05 Aug 2010 #04 / 3. Tuesday 25 May 2010 / 4. 05 Aug 2010 #01

Yellow6 is Jon Attwood, a guitarist who grew up in the early 80s London punk scene in which he played in many bands. Inspired by space/post-rock, he launched his solo project in the mid-90s and went on to release 9 albums on various labels including the defunct Resonant Records and co-founded Make Mine Music (Epic45, Piano Magic, Library Tapes, July Skies). On this release, he documents his experimentations with newly acquired toys such as the Fender Bass VI guitar, Boss Feedbacker & EHX Freeze pedals.

Disc 2 : Absent Without Leave - Waiting for the Snow to Fall

1. Part 1 / 2. Part 2 / 3. Part 3.

Absent Without Leave is George Mastrokostas from Athens, Greece - not a place reknowned for its ambient/post-rock scene. Yet, it works to his advantage as Absent Without Leave stretches out his arms to artists from around the world, has collaborated with the likes of Port-Royal, Millimetrik & Televise, and has released objects on labels in Canada, UK, USA, Japan as well as his own Sound in Silence. For this release, George presents a long 3-part piece called 'Waiting for the snow to fall', which somehow reminds us of a hastier, driven composition from Stars of the Lid.

PURCHASE HERE: http://thisquietarmy.com/records/#tqa016

19 October 2010

Last performances for this year, condensed in one week.

Upcoming last performances for this year, all in one week... then I'm hibernating, working on recordings, a lot of mixing to finish, a lot of ideas, a lot of side-project to work on, etc. You know the drill. Performing takes a lot of focus out of the process of creation and production...

Summary will be as follow:
- 8 thisquietarmy shows in Montreal
- 11 thisquietarmy shows out-of-town (Qc, TR, Hfx, Ott, Ham, Guelph, To, VT)
- 5 offshoot projects performances (MdG, hmqt, Ghidrah)

++

Last official thisquietarmy show planned for this year:

Saturday, October 23rd 2010, 9pm
@ Casa Del Popolo, 4873 St-Laurent, Montreal
w/ Locomotiv (heavy local psychedelic stoner, new line-up)


++

Radio appearance and live performance at CKUT:

Tuesday, October 26th 2010, 1pm
@ Kitchen Bang Bang Law, CKUT 90.3 FM
Funding drive show with Vincent Tinguely
Listen live at: http://www.ckut.ca


++

Last performance of the year, as "hi my quiet tsar":

'hi my quiet tsar' is the live decomposition and reconstruction of thisquietarmy, the guitar-based ambient/drone project of Eric Quach from Montreal. While thisquietarmy's live performances are presented as real-time multimedia installations with structured compositions to prepared videos, 'hi my quiet tsar' acts as a live lab for experimentation & improvisation and is usually performed with (but not limited to) a synthesizer, fx & loop-samplers.

Saturday, October 30th 2010, 9pm
@ Cagibi, 5490 St-Laurent, Montreal

The Finite State Machine presents:
Pearls of Light, an evening of electronic music
w/ Freida Abtan, Ad·ver·sary & Holzkopf.

6 October 2010

Friday October 8th: Christ's Church Cathedral, Hamilton

New Harbour Music Series & Art Crawl present:

thisquietarmy
Friday October 8th, 2010
Christ's Church Cathedral
252 James St. N, Hamilton
9pm + pwyc


poster by thisquietarmy

3 October 2010

Théâtre Plaza w/ Miserere Luminis + Falls of Rauros, Sept. 24th

Sepulchral Productions, Montreal's underground black metal label & promoter, invited me to perform on a bill with Miserere Luminis, a collaboration between Gris & Sombres Forêts from Montreal & Quebec, and Falls of Rauros from Portland, ME. The idea of fitting on that bill & playing for a black metal crowd seemed odd at first, but it's also what drew me in as well. I liked the challenge and I'd rather play for new people anyway. Playing in a completely different music scene is like playing in an entirely different country.

The show took place at Théâtre Plaza, which is a really nice theater (approx cap. 500?) that is being used for the weekly shoot of Belle et Bum, a musical variety show with Genevieve Borne & Normand Brathwaite on Tele-Quebec. If that wasn't weird enough, this is also where I saw Godspeed You! Black Emperor four nights in a row, in January 2002. Back then, the place was falling apart and all, which fitted the mood... But now it has been given a face lift and it's fully equipped for high-end sound and lightning.

The latter was part of the problem for my performance. When you're playing such a big venue with tech, sound, light crews... you're completely at their mercy, no matter how much instructions you give them during pre-show. As a result, my video projections, a very important aspect of my performance, malfunctioned at the beginning and in the middle of my set, then completely disappeared. It really disoriented me as the videos are more than just a visual support, they're like my virtual band mates, and they're also being used to hypnotize and draw in the ADD-ers and get them to focus. When the videos failed, the light crew started to use some disco spotlights to try to compensate, which were really distracting and totally not appropriate. Sound-wise, I also made a bad choice bringing my two Traynor tube combos for such a big space, after my two shows with Caspian (see previous entry), and I was pushing them too hard.

Nonetheless. Considering that most people had never seen me before, the response was still good even though I wasn't satisfied with my performance. Sold some merch, signed some autographs (that's always funny) & got paid well. All in all, a solid evening for me - huge thanks to Sepulchral for having me.

The other bands were pretty good too and they all really liked what I did, which is always good, coming from other musicians, especially 'metal' ones which are usually more technically skilled than myself. I hung out with Falls of Rauros after the show and the day after. I took them around, to Profusion, to the Old Port, then to Aux Vivres for dinner. They're all really nice people and we got along great. We'll probably cross paths again, soon hopefully.

Here's a couple of blog reviews of the show:
http://lunarhypnosis.blogspot.com/2010/09/miserere-luminis-092410.html
http://boulevardbrutal.com/2010/09/27/miserere-luminis-la-fin-dune-sombre-aventure/

And photos that were sent to me by Bakt El Raalis:


Next show: October 8th at Christ's Church Cathedral in Hamilton, ON. - presented by the New Harbours Music Series. My 2nd cathedral show this year... !

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