serial consign

I'm thrilled to announce that Vague Terrain has once again been invited to assist in programming the X Avant festival in Toronto. We co-curated a show with the Music Gallery last fall as part of the inaugural edition of their festival and built a night around the Toronto premiere of Jan Jelinek. I am completely confident that our event this coming Friday September the 14th will be equally provocative.

X Avant will feature the Toronto premiere of Marc Leclair's 5mm project. Marc is quite famous for the work he's recorded under his Akufen pseudonym and his 2002 album My Way is probably one of the most influential techno albums of the last decade. For X Avant, Marc will present a project he premiered at Mutek 2006 which marries the sleek introspective minimalism of his Musique pour 3 Femmes Enceintes project with the video of Gabriel Coutu-Dumont. We will also be welcoming one of our favourite artists back to Toronto, Montreal's Des Cailloux et du Carbone. Neil Wiernik and I have been championing this ultra-talented producer for about two years now. He has released two EP's worth of material for Vague Terrain and his lush, gorgeous production can be spoke about in the same breath as that of Vladislav Delay and Ezekiel Honig.

We will also be featuring an appearance by drone music pioneer Pauline Oliveros, who will perform One Long Piece in collaboration with Anne Bourne. Pauline was one of the original members of the seminal San Francisco Tape Music Centre, a hotbed of electronic music innovation in the 1960s and also founded the Deep Listening Institute in the 1980s. Last but not least, CONTACT Contemporary Music, who will be performing a suite of acoustic chamber versions of "classic" electronic music by artists like Aphex Twin and Brian Eno.

In addition to this amazing roster of musicians, Noir and Patricia Rodriguez will be performing live video to accompany the first three acts of the evening. Noir is a filmmaker and developer for Derivative's Touch software and performed alongside Peter Mettler and Monolake at the Pusher show earlier this summer. Patricia Rodriguez is a frequent collaborator and like Des Cailloux et du Carbone, has contributed to Vague Terrain on numerous occasions. I know both of these talented visual artists quite well and I'm curious to see what evolves out of this collaboration

In planning this event with the Music Gallery we really wanted to blur the boundaries between 21st century classical and contemporary electronic music. I think this show is destined to be something very special and I'm thrilled to be involved with it. Official event info and ticket information is available at the event page at the Music Gallery's site.

[image: 5mm at mutek 2006 - image courtesy of basic_sounds]