Thursday, December 6, 2007

NOW Toronto / Improv Session

NOW TORONTO

Discs
critic pick
NOW critic's pick THE DISCORD OF A FORGOTTEN SKETCH Improv Session (New Romance for Kids) Rating: NNNN

When you consider that most jazzy-metal spazzcore outfits tend to rely on bursts of violence and chaos rooted in precision and infinitely concrete structure, a band as talented and adept as Montreal's TDOAFS approaches from a completely improvised direction.

Recorded during a four-hour live session, this is a distinctively more sprawling offering than the band's past work. Broken up into nine parts, the free-form songs deviate from past explosive stop-start assaults and occasionally build up from sparse noise and discombobulating rhythms into panicky crescendos. Very little drags on unnecessarily, as is often the case with the self-serving and, well, masturbatory motivations behind improvisation. The end result is both a fine experiment as well as a neat compendium from an already versatile group.

Evan Davies
NOW | DECEMBER 6 - 12, 2007 | VOL. 27 NO. 14