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)

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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)


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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


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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.

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

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... !

Shows with Caspian Sept. 18-19 in Montreal & Burlington, VT

So here's a short account about the two shows with Caspian during the weekend of the 18-19th of September. The Montreal show was moved from Bar St-Laurent II in the Mile End to Loft from Hell in St-Henri. If you don't know what that means, well it's like moving a show from Manhattan to Brooklyn if the former's the really cool hip & trendy cultural artsy area, and the latter is where the cheap low-rent trashy area.

Caspian usually attracts the clean-cut preppies and yuppies, so it was interesting to see who who trek down to St-Henri for a sweaty, dirty loft show in a courtyard surrounded by industrial lofts, practice spaces occupied by a commune of squeegee-punks & their nasty dogs. I'm pretty sure some drove by it and went back home. Some didn't even find the place, as it is hard to find as it's hidden behind a huge building whose civic number was the last one on the street, next to train tracks, above an underpass, near an alley. The good thing about all this is that the venue is really small, maybe 400 square ft. of space between the stage and the backwall. The other good thing is that when it's loud, it's fucking loud, and there is no escape.

For this show, I used some amps I found in the loft... I went there early to check what I could use, as there is no PA. I found a Ampeg Bass head going through a 2x15" cab, and a Laney guitar head through a 4x12" Marshall cab. TOTAL FACE MELTER. Might have been one of my most satisfactory performance, and that says a lot. I wish I had a picture of my setup, but I only have this picture of the courtyard while I was practicing some drones at the Loft around 4pm that afternoon:

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The next day, I was scheduled to play in Burlington, VT. More precisely: Winooski. Caspian was nice enough to do me the huge favor to drive my equipment across the border with their own stuff. Meryem joined me at the last minute for the 90 mins drive to the USA. When we arrived at the Monkey House venue, the nice guys from Black Lodge booking brought us some food that they made. We also had 2$ off bar consumption, so I had a few of the local Switchback on tap. Did you know that Burlington, Vermont is named the 4th best city in the WORLD for beer lovers?

Anyway. During the whole time, I was thinking about my show the night before with the two amps, and how I couldn't go back to playing into the PA anymore. Especially the Monkey House's, which looked like it would sound really thin & weak. I was really starting to stress about that. Finally, I asked Philip and Chris from Caspian if I could borrow their amps, and they agreed. Philip had a Fender Twin Reverb going into a 4x12" cab, and Chris had this really nice head (forget the name --- but wow, I felt bad about using it) going into an 8x10" cab. It sounded really amazing, and I think it might've been even louder than at the loft. Again, I wish I took a picture of that set-up. Thank you so much guys. I don't know what the Burlington crowd thought of my set, they were sort of Abercrombie & Fitch-ish mixed with Birkenstock-ers - a lot of them seemed uninterested, going outside back and forth during the whole evening. One Vermont Cynic didn't say anything bad about the performance, so that's good.

On the way back home to Montreal (left Winooski around 12:30am), we almost hit a deer. It was really freaky as it didn't flinch nor react... AT ALL. I've witness the true meaning of 'deer in headlights':


Ok, so that wasn't so short. I will write about The Théâtre Plaza show aka the Black Metal show, in another entry.

GAMIQ nomination & review of Meridians by EtherREAL

thisquietarmy's album Aftermath was nominated for 'Best experimental album of the year' by the GAMIQ (Gala Alternatif de la Musique Indépendante du Québec). The nominees were revealed last wednesday and the winner will be determined by a specialized jury and will be announced at the gala on November 14th.

I'm not taking this seriously, of course. However, one thing is certain: the nominees were voted by the local press, media, record stores, labels, promoters, etc. So it's definitely cool to have gotten noticed by the "industry" and appear in that list. I'm up against fellow friends & colleagues Menace Ruine, Black Feelings, Grimes, Millimetrik & K.A.N.T.N.A.G.A.N.O., whom I've all crossed paths with...


On another note, Fabrice Allard of EtherREAL, a reputed french webzine, seized the essence of the Meridians EP w/ Scott Cortez and wrote an excellent review in French. Always glad to read one of his reviews.


I've just played 3 shows this week, I'll be writing about these shortly in another entry...

thisquietarmy + Yellow6 - DEATH announced by Basses Fréquences

Basses Fréquences has announced the release of the first installment of my collaboration with Yellow6 titled 'DEATH' for October 2010. The recording took place in Montreal when Jon (Yellow6) was in town for the Under The Snow festival in March '09, and it was mastered by Dirk Serries of Fear Falls Burning fame!

We are happy that BF has picked it up; I personally love to deal with Jerôme, especially for this record, because it's like he was part of our band and he played a great role tying up loose ends to help us finalize the album's concept, titles & artwork. He's also very attentive to every suggestion and every detail of the production. BF is a great emerging label in the ambient scene and they are highly motivated to release quality products!

'DEATH' will be released as a 180g 12" vinyl LP + CD!
Edition of 400 = 320 black + 80 gold.

We couldn't ask better...

Read the press release details by BF: here.
Listen to samples on BF's release page for TQA+Y6: here.

Interview with The Silent Ballet

Interview with Tom Meagher for TSB.

Another lengthy one. Here are the main topics covered:

- Scott Cortez / Meridians / three:four Records
- Album themes
- The Montreal music scene
- Live performances
- The ambient music genre
- Visuals
- TQA Records
- Future releases



Thanks to Tom & TSB for this coverage!

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On a side note: TSB is a pretty active webzine that covers all genre of instrumental music & more, and I really appreciate them. They've always treated me well, all my records I've been involved in have been given fair reviews and great scores even though I have been hearing bad things about their reviews from peers, as I mentionned in a previous entry, which is unfortunate.

Perhaps "hateful" is an exaggeration and I'd gladly re-iterate the term since "hateful" isn't exactly from my point of view, but rather from the resentment I've been feeling from other artists and labels that get bitter when they get a bad review, understandably. I won't name any names, and I do feel bad for them because sometimes I also don't agree with the reviews that were given. But as usual, I find myself in this neutral zone as I understand their hostility as hard working artists & labels as much as I understand the reviewer's right for opinion. Thus, "harsh" is a more fitting term for their overall reputation. On the other hand, I do approve of the need for harsh reviews, it filters the mediocre out from the over-saturation of material that there is out there. As long as everyone plays nice and is respectful of each other!

A TSB writer recently contacted me to discuss about it and has pointed out that most people who read the site don't pay attention to their scoring breakdown. I am also guilty of this, and I think it's pretty enlightening:

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The Silent Ballet uses a 10 point scale with .5 increments. 5 denotes an "average" score, and anything above that is considered generally positive, whereas anything below is generally negative. The Silent Ballet editorial staff respects the views and opinions of its reviewers, and due to this practice exact scoring will differ from reviewer to reviewer. However, reviewers are asked to rate albums with the following goal in mind:

* The 5-5.5 range denotes an "above average" release.
* The 6-6.5 range denotes a "good" release.
* The 7-7.5 range denotes a "great" release.
* 8 and above marks a cd of exceptional accomplishment.

The bottom half of the scale is a mirror reflection of the top, completing the idealized bell curve, but TSB reviewers are notorious for being unable to tell a "horrible" album from one that is just plain "bad."

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This is like the french high-school system (from France, but in Quebec) that I went to. Everything was graded on /20, but 12/20 was considered good and you needed 10/20 to pass. However, there was rarely anyone that received a grade above 16/20, especially in French literature classes. It was pretty harsh grading, but everyone who went through that school wrote in french a hell lot better than most people. Something to think about...

shows with unFact & Noveller last week

I recently played shows with Noveller & unFact (David Wm Sims of Jesus Lizard) in Toronto (August 28th) and Quebec City (August 31st). It was good to meet them. Thanks to Tad & Luke for setting up the shows.

Not much to say about them; the weather was really hot and humid. I gotta say that it was difficult to enjoy traveling and performing while breathing such heavy air; the atmosphere of both shows were somehow stale, exhaustive and almost depressing. The Toronto show, a saturday, felt like a monday or a tuesday, while the Quebec show was actually on a tuesday - so that was forgivable. I've never liked Toronto, I just get this 'why am I here' feeling every time I'm there, which is like 4-5 times a year. It's hard to get a good show there too, everything is so spread out and there's no tight scene, but I'm always trying to play there because in Canada's biggest city, there's gotta people who likes ambient and I gotta try to conquer them. The urban planning of the city hurts my eyes and makes me nauseous as well - definitely one of my least favorite city, sorry. The pulled-pork Big Fat Burrito in Kensington Market, while pretty good & filling, barely makes up for it, sadly. Speaking of food, one thing I like to do in Quebec City is stock up on pizza and quiches at Le Crac on St-Jean, and put them in the freezer for times you don't feel like cooking in the next month.

Weirdly, the highlight of this mini-tour was actually Hamilton, where I did not perform but drove there a day earlier to hang out with my friend Ryan/Electroluminescent & Beth. We had a good time hitting a lot of bars in town. I barely remember what we did actually, it's a haze, which means we had a good time. We started by getting beer & food at some type of pub-house place; popcorn alligator, sweet potato fries & vegetarian nachos were consumed while playing board games. Then we went to Academia, this sketchy bar on James St. - nicely decorated with airplanes and sports memorabilia left from previous owners. It was empty but we went for the cheap 2.50$ pint. Then we stopped by The Brain where they had a unique selection of beers I've never seen in their fridge, and some weird local encounter. Later, we walked back and bumped into people coming out of a house party. Turns out, it was actually a house show and there were people from Montreal playing! Of course, it was the Hobo Cult tour, with Magic Beach, JLK and Bernardino Femminielli accompanied by JS (of Red Mass, ex-Fly Pan Am, etc.) on bass. We got in just in time for the performance of the latter, which really made our night. We all went out for more beer later at the Four Stars Corner bar or whatever it's called, where more weird encounters ensued... I'll skip the details. We did however managed to stretch the bar's closing time up 'til 2:45am! Closing time in Ontario is 2am, almost felt like we were home.

Next shows will be with Caspian on Sept. 18th & 19th. Should be good times!

Meridians 12" now available via Thrill Jockey & Pirate Ship Records in the USA

Having a hard time getting your hands on the Meridians vinyl?
Shipping costs from Switzerland or Canada too expensive?

Thrill Jockey and Pirate Ship Records in the USA are now distributing it.

Artwork preview for upcoming releases

This is what it's the works for late fall '10: CD/LP releases on Aurora Borealis & Basses Fréquences. More info when available, here's a peak!

More reviews and my reviews of their pointless reviews

Actually, they're kind of pointless reviews. But this blog is like my scrapbook, so everything gets posted here. Et hop!

While the first reviewer claims he's a guitarist and decides to review the album based on what he thinks he knows about how I play with effects - not sure what he's trying to prove, really. I mean, what kind of reviewer write things like "Then some swooping flanger, etc. Blah."? Just for the record, no flanger was used on this album, ugh. But that's not the point. This statement is: "I fear that my familiarity with Quach’s technique prevents me from a more objective appraisal of this release". Brilliant.


The second reviewer decides to write some form of drifting prose poetry about the album, in polish. Evidently, I had to use google translate to get a feel of what was written --- unlike japanese, the polish-english translator is not bad at all. Check it out: here. Cute right? I appreciate the effort though, just writing whatever you're feeling as your own visual and emotional interpretation of the music while listening to it. But how does that justify anything about any given review score, good or bad... no idea.


And last but not least, this one is from S.S.G. The reviewer treats Meridians as a "post-rock" record, looking for "post-rock" within that record, writing this review from a "post-rock" point of view... I don't know. Essentially, the term "post-rock" is mentionned several times throughout this review and has funny statements such as: "But Meridians never claimed to go anywhere, post-rock was always more concerned about the journey itself."

... Post-rock? Seriously? Who said anything about post-rock. What the. Why. What. Why? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought post-rock was about using the elements in rock music such as guitar, bass, drums and you know, push its boundaries out of the traditional conventional sounds and structures of rock songs. But here we have two guys making drones out of their guitars... Uhhh. I don't get it. Maybe thisquietarmy does have a little of post-rock type of guitar sound on some past tracks, but that's about it. Scott & I made a collaborative ambient/drone record, why don't you treat it as one?


I honestly don't get these reviews - but hey, thanks for writing about the records, I still appreciate them. After all, 6 + 6.8/10 + 6.9/10 aren't bad scores at all. In fact, they're actually quite reasonable - no bitterness at all here. But their content... wow, just wow.

Montreal Mirror review of Meridians

Johnson Cummins reviews Meridians in his weekly column Punkusraucous:


"The real gleaming gem for me this week is the collaboration of ambient drone artist thisquietarmy (aka Eric Quach) with fellow dronester Scott Cortez (lovesliescrushing) under the moniker Meridians. On these two epic and minimalist tracks, released on a limited-edition 12-inch with a pressing of 500 on Three:four Records, the pair expertly explore the limits of space while inviting the listener into their dark and desolate soundscapes. Longtime readers of this column may notice that I’ve been fawning over thisquietarmy quite a bit lately, but with his amazingly prolific output and the results remaining this astonishing, it seems like Quach could soon become a major player in the overcrowded ambient underground."

VOIR article

Olivier Lalande writes an article about thisquietarmy in this week's VOIR:

thisquietarmy: l'invasion silencieuse

Eric Quach doit m'envoyer un diagramme pour mieux retracer les collaborations auxquelles il s'est prêté sous le pseudonyme thisquietarmy. Cette année seulement, il lançait le projet Mains de givre, en collaboration avec la violoniste Émilie Livernois Desroches (l'album Esther Marie est fort bon), signait un EP en compagnie de l'Américain Scott Cortez (de lovesliescrushing) en plus d'un autre en solo, Aftermath, inspiré des œuvres de l'artiste allemand Anselm Kiefer. Et par le biais des parutions de son micro-label TQA Records, Quach collabore avec nombre d'amis pour l'emballage, etc. "Chaque parution est comme un petit projet artistique", explique Quach, qui s'est fait connaître comme guitariste au sein du combo post-rock Destroyalldreamers. "Vu que je suis seul maintenant, j'aime aller chercher des gens pour faire des choses."

Les "choses", dans son cas, sont du registre ambiant spécial-très-spatial. Une progression logique après le post-rock, selon Quach. "Ça se rejoint pas mal. C'est instrumental, atmosphérique... Et ça peut se faire seul à la guitare." Hormis d'occasionnels ajouts, Quach se débrouille en effet avec seule sa six cordes ainsi qu'une horde de pédales. Un choix d'arme qui lui permet de se produire live "pour vrai" et d'improviser à sa guise. Ce dernier élément est très présent sur scène, où il s'accompagne de visuels de son cru. "Il y en a qui se font des listes de chansons à interpréter, moi je fais des listes de visuels. Ce sont eux qui dictent où je m'en vais." Le 5 août à la Sala Rossa avec 01ek, Alexandre Saint-Onge et L'Ami Jacob.

Tokafi reviews Aftermath & Meridians, Losing Today reviews Parallel Lines, Sonomu reviews Mains de Givre

Tobias Fisher of Tokafi intertwines his impressions of "Aftermath" & "Meridians" in a double-review:



Roberto Mandolini reviews Parallel Lines' 38:22 for Losing Today (in italian):


Sonomu reviews Mains de Givre:

Aural Diptych Series #3: Millimetrik / Elika

Released: July 15th, 2010
Order: http://thisquietarmy.com/records/#tqa015

Double-split 3" CDR placed on a heavy stock folded & printed insert, packaged in a delicated ivory white Artoz 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. Also for the first time, this releases comes with a digital download code, appropriate for the current ipod-age and the inability to read 3" via sliding CD slots. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES ONLY.

ADS03 features returning artists from our roster: NYC-based electro-dreampop duo Elika and Quebec City's lo-fi electro-dub ambassador Millimetrik aka Pascal Asselin, also known as one-half of LCBO - both of which have released their first EPs on TQA(r) back in '06 & '07 respectively.

Both discs from both artists strictly features remixes of some of their best tracks by renowned names in the ambient, electronic & shoegaze scene: Auburn Lull, Engineers, Sug(r)cane, Absent Without Leave, Project Skyward, The Invisible Kid and thisquietarmy (x 3).

The release was made available for Elika's performance at the OFF festival in Quebec City, July 15th 2010, curated by Pascal's label Chat Blanc Records. Don't you love how everything is so incestuous?

Disc 1: Millimetrik / Music by Pascal Asselin.

1. On the road to Kula [Auburn Lull Rmx] / 2. Outhouse/I wish you will never leave [Sugrcane Rmx] / 3. On the road to Kula [Thisquietarmy Rmx] / 4. Les artefacts du futur [Absent Without Leave Rmx]

Disc 2: Elika / Music by Brian Wenckebach & Eva Maravelias.

1. Death & avalanches [Engineers Rmx] / 2. Let down [Thisquietarmy Rmx] / 3. Nowhere [Project Skyward Rmx] / 4. You win hearts [The Invisible Kid Rmx] / Bonus Track - digital download only : 5. Nowhere [Thisquietarmy Rmx]

Preview it on Bandcamp:

Buy on TQA Records or Bandcamp.

QRD guitarist interview

58 questions about guitars & related. Pretty geeky actually, and some questions were just so random that I couldn't answer them seriously...

First reviews of Meridians 12" vinyl w/ Scott Cortez

Fluid Radio:


Textura:


Norman Records:

Montreal-Quebec City-Trois Rivières-Montreal (June 8-10-11-12) recap

I played my first Suoni Per Il Popolo gig at Casa del Popolo with Grouper. I played well enough. Dave Bryant from Godspeed was doing my sound and it sounded real powerful. On a local message board, he gave me huge props: "i think it was an insult that TQA was slotted first in the lineup. people should be losing their shit for this dude."


Not much to say actually about the other shows, just momentary good times. The first thing we did when we got to Quebec City was to unload the gear at the venue, ditch the cars and buy some booze. We drank in the streets all afternoon. The show was pretty good for me... I'm always attracting black metal fans in Quebec City.

Montreal at Katacombes was another story... the show kept getting delayed and I was playing last, ended hitting the stage at 2:40am. Everyone was drunk, included myself, and the sound was pretty bad. There was this guy who came on the stage and unfolded a huge flag of a shark. Then he sat down on stage and started pounding for the rest of the set... by 3:00am, I had just about enough, and the soundman was probably about to pull the plug, so I ended up doing that myself.

Monarch played again the next day at the LFH, as their powerviolence project called Rainbow of Death. They were excellent, and it was quite an astonishing contrast to see them play a 12-minutes hypercharged set after seeing their slow droney doom set half a dozen of times. We were sad to see them leave St-Henri a couple of days later.


The church show in Trois-Rivières was very special... The performers were in the middle of the dome, with 6 speakers around them. Mattresses were placed on the floors so that people could sit or lay down. It was quite a success, a lot of people attended. Even neighbors and regular church go-ers. One old lady came to hug me after my set, she must've been over 70 years old, said I played music of angels.

Toronto + Guelph shows (June 5-6) recap

I should've updated this a long ago, but... laziness got in the way.

First, just wanted to say that it was fun meeting and hanging out with the guys & girl from Monarch! It wasn't the greatest tour on earth but we had a blast with our entourage at every show and for the whole two weeks that they were in town...

Despite not playing the Toronto show, I had fun getting acquainted with everyone there for the first time. The show got moved to a house on Dupont. There was about 50 people smoking and drinking in front of the house, and we just hung out there until it got dark. We got booze at the LCBO. The police drove by the house before any band had started playing, but funnily enough they just said to get off the sidewalk and they drove off... !! Then I started to realize that it was almost 10pm by then, and no bands had played yet --- the show was supposed to be over at 11pm, which is why there wasn't any room for me to play anymore. I learned that the house people paid off the neighbors so that they wouldn't call the police (whaaaa---?) so that the show could go on much later than planned. Turns out the trick worked as Monarch started to set up around midnight and by the time they played, it was 1:30am and everything was fine! No complaints or anything. If they had thought of that before or whatever, then... why couldn't I & the other bands have played? We still don't have an answer.

We drank until late, even tried to get some food with everyone but we ended up losing the pack with the guy leading us to the burrito place (I managed to get one the next day, killer burritos in Kensington Market!) because a bunch of us bumped into this guy in the street who apparently drove from Philadelphia to catch Monarch... and he had a trunk full of beers! He gave each of us a can before he went back to the U.S. Then it started pouring. So we got back to the house and ordered some pizza for the rest of us. It was also great to meet some people that still came to the show and buy some tqa merch off me to help me out with gas money despite the cancellation. That was really appreciated.


The Guelph show the next day wasn't a great situation either, show-wise. Apparently two events were happening next to each other on a sunday evening, and they somehow decided to merge both of them together, making it an 8 bands bill! When we got there, none of the Guelph local bands wanted to start playing because they were... local. Reverse logic, anyone? So they pleaded me to start... even though my friends from the area were coming to see me and they hadn't arrived yet. In their defense, it was 6:30pm. Whatever. It took a lot of convincing but I was being a too good sport and started playing half an hour later... Surprisingly, all the kids that were at the venue came close and got into it. I don't think anyone had heard of me before either. You can imagine how atrocious it was to get through 6-7 bands afterwards... Most of them were just horrible and we had to make fun of them. But then it just got really long and we were all falling asleep. The pay wasn't worth it either... but still, good times.



Part 2 w/ Monarch! in Quebec City & Montreal later...
+ about the Suoni Per Il Popolo & the Church show in Trois-Rivières...

thisquietarmy & Scott Cortez - Meridians 12" LP out now!

The collaboration between Scott Cortez and thisquietarmy doesn’t really come as a surprise. The latter acknowledges that the previous works from Cortez (under the lovesliescrushing moniker) greatly influenced his work, to the point of using the same way of writing the band’s name (no capital letter and no spaces between words) for his actual solo project. The main thing that they have in common is their unconventional use of the guitar, which they consider as a signal generator. They then process those sounds through various effects, to obtain a different result than that of the original signal until the source becomes almost undetectable. Meridians is also the first vinyl production from thisquietarmy, as it is Scott Cortez’s first under his real name.

Meridians is a cross-project between the two artists. Separated by 1.000 miles, Eric Quach (thisquietarmy) and Scott Cortez simultaneously began to record the first guitar layer for both sides on December 18th 2009 at 1pm EST. The original drone was supposed to be played like a three tones piece, with the use of a different string for each tone. They then sent the result to each other to work on the piece that the other had begun. This is how they recorded the two tracks that feature on this record.
This is definitely an unusual practice, far from the classic split exercise and the result is fascinating: abstract, radiant and hypnotic drones that intertwine with numerous harmonic structures. They created a coherent whole that goes beyond their unique recording method.

Written and pressed to be played at 45 rpm, the record can also be played at 33 rpm. Darker and more mystical, the result is stunning.

Tracklist

A. 41° 52' 50" N, 87° 42' 39" W
B. 45° 30' 4" N, 73° 33' 29" W

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Available on three:four Records. Order here: http://www.three-four.net/releases/TFR005

There are a few available for Canada/USA through TQA Records: http://thisquietarmy.com/records/#tfr005

écho. musique pour égarer.

thisquietarmy will play this, along with Aun, L'Oreille à 60 cordes, Martin Bournival, Antoine Bareil & Marc Bourassa --- Friday June 11th. This is worth a roadtrip from Montreal or Quebec City at least.

Toronto/Guelph shows with Monarch this weekend

Hi,

Due to circumstances out of my control and some kind of overbooking mess, I've been forced out of the lineup at Brohaus in Toronto, 364 Dupont, on Saturday June 5th.

Seeing as I am still touring with Monarch!, I will still be present at the show, in case people want to buy merch --- I will have all the CDs of all of my projects, t-shirts, TQA recs' label releases, and last but not least... the 12" vinyl LP of my collab with Scott Cortez (lovesliescrushing) magically arrived at my doorstep this morning!!! I will be bringing some of those as well, as a world-premiere merch item.

I hope you're not too disappointed. Can't be more than I am for not being able to perform, it really sucks. I've been looking forward to this for weeks...

++

I will still be performing in Guelph the next evening if you can make it to that one - the venue has been changed to Van Gogh's Ear on Wyndham North Rd.

Hope to still see some of you at these.
Sorry about the last minute changes...

-eric.

The new Aftermath digipaks have arrived!

A month late, but we finally got the corrected digipaks from the printers!!! Some people still think the misprinted version is cooler, but this new version is definitely as close as we wanted it to look: gone is the oddly placed catalog number on the front cover, and the weird pink halo in the inside... the print is also greener in general.

The misprinted versions has thus been called back and are now classified as a limited edition. We'll be selling the new corrected version for all orders starting today. Please head to the TQA store or the TQA Bandcamp (comes with instant download via Bandcamp) to buy it!

If you already bought the misprinted one and would like to get the corrected one, email me. I can include it in your next order or come up with some kind of arrangements...


++

To celebrate the occasion, Aftermath received a couple of positive reviews this week. First, an 8/10 by The Silent Ballet, which is has gained quite a hateful reputation lately for some harsh cold-blooded reviews in the past year or so. Some labels have even started to avoid sending material to them. Like some of my close friends who recently got burnt in their latest reviews, my past material has always been well-received by TSB. Needless to say that I was actually quite curious to see how Aftermath would fare through this new cutthroat honesty system:


And one in Vital Weekly, an e-mail magazine from the Netherlands, always nice to be reviewed by a publication that has been around for as long as them (since 1987) :

Aural Diptych Series reviews

TQA Records' Aural Diptych Series are featured on Hard Format, a wonderful blog whose headline is "Reaching for the sublime in music design" --- I'm honored to be part of it. Thanks Colin!

Inspired by reputed magazines such as The Wire covering their favorite covers or art books covering CD packaging such as this one, Hard Format focuses on their favorite records covers and design packaging, some revisited old favorites but mostly new and current contemporary works being produced in the now. One of my favorite blog to spend an afternoon on, browsing their archive. Take a look:


The latest June issue of Textura also features a review of the music featured on the first two Aural Diptych Series. Mains de Givre/thisquietarmy & Quilt/Hoefizer are given the heads up by Ron Schlepper:


We do have a few left of these two releases --- limited to 100 copies only...
Don't wait up, get them while you still can: here.

thisquietarmy remixes Kino by Arms and Sleepers

Between 2007 & 2009, thisquietarmy has played something like 8 shows with Arms and Sleepers in Montreal (QC), Burlington (VT), New York City (NY) & Boston (MA). We've gone a long way since, releasing a few albums, touring extensively and we've remained friends since, following each other's progress.

On August 30th 2009, I was in Boston for the release of my friends Caspian's third opus Tertia; Arms and Sleepers were opening for them. That's when they asked me to do a remix for them. A couple of months later, I received the remix kit for Kino which contained about 40 tracks for 2GB worth of files that I had to go through & familiarize myself with.

I've always felt like this song could use more intensity and I wanted to expand the potential moments of climax in that track, and make it more explosive. I thought, "what if Arms and Sleepers was played by Caspian, how would that sound?" --- of course, within the limitations of a remix. With that concept in mind, the drum sounds were tweaked to sound more like it came from a rock drum kit, distortion were added on certain lead synth tracks, I added some fuzzy/phasey guitar tracks, and I also tried make it more ethereal & noisy as to add some thisquietarmy glazing to it. It was a very fun remix to work on, and I'm glad it will be released in vinyl.

Here's the info from their label, Expect Candy:

Matador Remixed limited edition vinyl is available for pre-order through Expect Candy's website starting on April 25. The first 100 units come on beautiful clear transparent vinyl and all copies include a digital download code. The first 25 orders will also include an Arms and Sleepers European tour poster. Pre-orders ship before the official release date of May 28, 2010. The release will also be available via iTunes and other digital stores on that date. For more info and to pre-order the limited edition vinyl, CLICK HERE.

Tracklisting:

Side A
1. Matador (Uzi and Ari Remix)
2. The Architekt (Lymbyc Systym Remix)
3. Twentynine Palms (Nolens Volens Remix)
4. Simone (Amanda Rogers Remix)
5. Helvetica (The American Dollar Remix)

Side B
1. The Architekt (The Consulate General vs Boy In Static Remix)
2. The International (Arms and Sleepers Remix)
3. Kino (Thisquietarmy Remix)
4. The Architekt (Bigadiga Remix)
5. The Paramour (Elika Remix)

Grouper + Grimes + thisquietarmy - June 8th @ Suoni Per Il Popolo

More info about the festival: http://www.suoniperilpopolo.org/

Mini-tour with Monarch! doom band from France in June

I'll be playing the Toronto, Guelph, Quebec City & Montreal gigs, June 5-6-10-12.

More info on Monarch!: http://www.myspace.com/monarchuberalles