Saturday June 28 • MUSIC GALLERY PRESENTS
FEUERMUSIK + NEPTUNE
Double bill, with special guest Marilyn Lerner, solo piano
Part of Suoni per il Toronto

Doors 6pm, concert 8pm (arrive early for a Summer BBQ in the Courtyard)
Tickets: $15 regular, $10 advance, member + student
Advance tickets at http://www.ticketweb.ca

PLEASE NOTE: This concert will not be seated for its entirety. Please be prepared to stand for portions of the evening.

In affiliation with the Suoni per il Popolo Festival in Montreal, Suoni per il Toronto features some of the best and brightest in creative music from your backyard and around the world. This double bill of “busker punk” jazz duo Feuermusik (releasing their new CD No Contest) and Boston trio Neptune (who perform on home-made rock instruments) marks the finale to the Music Gallery’s 2007/08 season, before we take our summer break. Please join us for the Music Gallery Summer BBQ, preceding the concert at 6pm, a fundraiser for St. George the Martyr Church.

Feuermusik "Big Band"
Jeremy Strachan - saxophone/conductor
Gus Weinkauf - buckets
Nick Buligan - trumpet/french horn
Lina Allemano - trumpet
Scott Thomson - trombone
Alia O'Brien - flute
Jason Hay - bass clarinet/flute
Mark Laver - soprano sax
Evan Shaw - alto sax
Colin Fisher - tenor sax
Kyle Brenders - baritone sax
Damien Valles - percussion

Tonight’s concert celebrates the launch of Feuermusik’s second album No Contest, on Standard Form. This Toronto-based duo (whose name is pronounced FOY-er-mu-zik) has been writing and performing since 2004, and their music has been described variously as "busker punk" and "avant-jazz." Their first record, Goodbye, Lucille (2006, independent) features nine arrangements for various woodwind ensembles and percussion, and is an extension of their live performances as a duo. It was released to wide critical acclaim and topped many year-end lists of 2006 (NOW, Exclaim!, Toronto Star). On the album, Strachan's Mingus-esque orchestral tapestries are offset by Weinkauf's raw yet intricate bucketwork. As much following the tradition of firebreathing tenor players like Peter Brötzmann and Charles Gayle as he does the delicately shifting harmonic big band colourations of the Miles Davis/Gil Evans charts, Strachan's reedwork belies his presence in the pop/rock world where he has been in high demand as a guitarist and session player (past groups include Sea Snakes, The Hylozoists, Nathan Lawr, Jim Guthrie Band, in addition to appearances on records by Laura Barrett, Golden Dogs, Deadly Snakes, Constantines, Fembots, Jon-Rae and the River etc).

Weinkauf's roots trace back to the mid-‘90s post-hardcore scene, playing drums in Mississauga basement-legends Blake. They would eventually play together in the post-punk trio Rockets Red Glare, whose four-year existence saw them tour North America exhaustively, releasing two critically acclaimed full length records. Weinkauf, who still maintains his presence behind the kit in instrumental upstarts ETAOIN SHRDLU, made the precarious switch to bucket playing sometime between the demise of RRG in 2003 and his unexpected phone call to Strachan, in which he explained his concept of a saxophone-bucket duo capable of creating energetic and expansive music using limited tools. In 2007 the song "Doppelspiel" from Goodbye, Lucille was nominated for the SOCAN Echo prize.

Neptune
Jason Sanford — Baritone guitar, spring harp, bass lamellophone, foot controlled oscillators, vocals
Mark Pearson — Baritone guitar, oscillators, light switch synthesizer, percussion, drums, vocals
Daniel Boucher — Drums, amplified floor tom, pipe xylophone, homemade synthesizer, vocals

Behold: Neptune, the most harrowingly original band on this planet — or the next. Founded in 1994 as a student art project by sculptor/musician Jason Sanford, its three members are equal parts musicians, sculptors, scientists, blacksmiths, electricians, and industrial machinists; relentlessly inventive, possibly sane. Together, they construct all of their instruments, forging guitars and drums out of circular saw blades, gas tanks, oil drums, bike parts, VCR casings, and miscellany from the trash. Electronics, and even cords, are homemade as well. The combined effect is a bizarre, post-apocalyptic mélange of steel, iron, wire, rust, rivet, knob, and cable; it's lunacy, arc-welded for maximum destruction. Concerts are seizures of motion. Wearing 40-pound guitars assembled entirely from scrap metal, the members don't play their instruments — they battle them, like mechanized golems.

But make no mistake, this is not simply art with sharp edges and serious customs issues. Neptune rocks hard. Recalling the slapdash angularity of The Fall, the rhythmic blasts of This Heat and the sheer proto-clangour of Einstürzende Neubauten, they count as one of the best experimental rock bands of any era. Their dynamic, expertly wrought songs and skilled improvisations don't start; they explode.

In 2006, Neptune signed with Table of the Elements, a record label that is home to acts such as Rhys Chatham, Tony Conrad, Faust, John Cale, Zeena Parkins and Jonathan Kane. ToTE has also released records by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, Thurston Moore, Jim O'Rourke, Keith Rowe, John Fahey, Gastr Del Sol, Lee Ranaldo and many others. Gong Lake is the band's first unlimited CD release, and with it listeners will discover what fans of their live shows have known for years: Neptune is otherworldly.