Brainwave controlled music?! I was approached by Ariel Garten and Chris de Castro from the Toronto company InterAxon, who are developing a control technology for brainwave readout to MIDI control. They were preparing a piece to be demonstrated at the Ontario Innovation Awards at Toronto’s MARS centre and needed a soundtrack for four performers to work with. The challenge was to produce a track that was sufficiently controllable to demonstrate the technology, but would still carry as a piece of music if things became variable on stage.

Here’s a studio version of the track.

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It’s spring in Toronto and May is the month for cherry blossoms.  The stand of cherry trees in the south end of High Park comes into full bloom, creating a beautiful atmosphere for ambient electronic music gatherings.  Promise has done this for years now and the crowd on May 3 was one of the largest I’ve played to.  They set a musical direction of beatless ambient music, which involved a lot of crate digging on my part to find those rare pieces.  In retrospect I would have loved to play my usual mid-tempo sound, having spent much time over the winter collecting new music.  The afternoon was perfect though, so many friends gathered in one place and a great vibe all around.

David and Irving from Promise have a knack for bringing together warm gatherings based on music. The Chamber event series is focused on piano, string intruments and ambient performances. This year was something special as the venue was Irving Shaw’s family home in west Toronto.  Irving’s parents are world travellers, anthropologists and importers of  ethnic art - almost every square foot of wall space had something beautiful or interesting to look at.   I played a DJ set towards the end, slow and beautiful tracks progressing to some playful IDM material.

Hans Ohm has put together a ton of shows in the last year with a good cross section of Toronto musicians and DJ’s. So I was happy to play a set and bring my sound to the mix.  Thursday night on the busy College strip west of Bathurst (Harmony Lounge), ended up working into some pretty upbeat electro IDM sounds.. rare.  And a nice discovery of how Autechre’s ‘Montreal’ mixes perfectly with Klute’s ‘Torrential Pain’ track.  Funny how ten year old Autechre tracks sound just as good as anything produced recently.

Played at Harvest Festival this year, 8-9:30 on Sunday morning in the downtempo pyramid.  It’s just the right time for emotive IDM, blissful sounds to chill out after the techno mayhem on Saturday night.  Thank you again to Justin, David, Irving and all the volunteers for an outstanding production with the festival. 10th anniversary this year!

Boreal is a canoe camping trip organized once or twice a summer by my friends Justin & Lana (AlienInflux).  100-200 people pack into buses with all their gear and a soundsystem, drive to a put-in spot north of Barrie Ontario, and paddle to a beautiful location for a weekend of partying and camping.  Due to some changes in the lineup, I got almost a three hour timeslot on Sunday afternoon!  This is one of those rare chances to play slower, deeper ambient tunes while everyone is waking up in their tents after partying Saturday night.  Pieces like ‘Air Song’ by Solar fields and ‘Between the rain and my skin’ by Orla Wren, progressing into beats and melodies IDM for a chilled out dancefloor.  The Facebook event page has over 850 photos now..

Played a mid-tempo opening set for the Cherry Beach soundsystem this afternoon.  Perfect sunny day on the beach with a great crowd.  CB was my first Toronto gig back in 2004, always feels good to play here.  It’s more popular than ever this year -  sometimes a thousand people there around sunset for the techno sounds.  Really pleased to finally drop Ulrich Schnauss’ latest masterpiece - a powerful remix of ‘Strawberries’ by Asobi Seksu.

DJ’ed at an event in High Park today, put together by Promise productions. There’s a gently sloped area at the south end of with a number of cherry trees, in full bloom for only a week or two each spring. Picture a warm sunny afternoon with 300+ people picnicking, enjoying the sunshine with an ambient music soundtrack and beautiful cherry blossoms everywhere… magic.

photo credits: Matt Burpee, Martin Tan

What an amazing evening. Happy to see things work out smooth after all my worrying and running around promoting this the past month. The Drake Underground was at capacity and Tycho delivered a solid audio/visual performance. I think Scott Hansen will probably be recognized as a creative genius one day - can’t wait to see what this guy has accomplished 5-10 years from now.

My DJ set and photo slides seemed to go over well. This was my first time showing photography in Toronto and I’d like to do more visual work with future performances. I’ve got a few more ideas for NewElectronic shows, showcasing art and music from local artists I’ve connected with. We’ll see what the year brings. Thanks to everyone that turned out!

* update - I’ve created a digital scrapbook page for the show.

photo credit: Alexander Harrison