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Music

Get Familiar with Toronto's DIY Experimental Community Through This New Compilation

Stream CHANNEL's 5-track tape featuring the city's most exciting drone, electroacoustic, and techno artists.
Photo courtesy of CHANNEL

When Brett Despotovich launched CHANNEL in January 2016, he envisioned the Toronto-based multi-disciplinary arts series as an opportunity to showcase "existing work and provocation of new projects." Past editions have featured explorations of how soundtracking affects meaning in film, and the relationship between social and private engagement. For their third installment, CHANNEL is hitting the road, curating a showcase at this year's Kazoo! Festival in Guelph, Ontario, with Toronto artists Brigitte Bardon't (who will also be performing her live score of Todd Haynes' 1987 biopic Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story ), HEXZUUL, Xuan Ye, and New York's Roarke Menzies. "The CHANNEL idea is still young, and honestly, I was very apprehensive about taking it beyond the first incarnation," Despotovich told THUMP over email. "The 'brand' provides a common ground and vehicle that allows me to speak and react to a larger context."

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To that end, they're also releasing their first compilation featuring new work by CHANNEL regulars (and touring lineup), which we're premiering today. CHANNEL 3 begins with a generous slab of noise courtesy of HEXZUUL's "Pleistocene Drift," before flowing into dreamier territory. Brigitte Bardon't's "B4 + After (Sexy Bitch Demo)" is a reflecting pool of field recordings and YouTube drone, while Despotovich's solo project Inchoate closes out side one with the spare-but-cavernous "Remains." Xuan Ye and Roarke Menzies split side two, with the former sounding like the gradual pulling apart of sound itself, and the latter countering by guiding the tape to a serene conclusion of spectral phases that build before slowly fading away.

Stream the compilation below and head over CHANNEL's website to get more info on upcoming shows.

CHANNEL 3 Tracklist: Side 1
1. HEZZUUL - Pleistocene Drift
2. Brigitte Bardon't - B4 + After (Sexy Bitch Demo)
3. Inchoate - Remains Side 2
1. Xuan Ye - Dawns Upon Me In The Snow, Becoming Ravens
2. Roarke Menzies - Prosthetic Memory

Michael Rancic is on Twitter.