InFlightPress

These Proud Canadians are W L Altman on computer and sound and Helen Pridmore on vocals.  They are together the “Spoiled Brats of theNew World Order” according to a quote by the infamous Rev Pat Buchanan after in2003, Canada refused to join in the Coalition of the willing to invade Iraq (although we did help).  Helen  Pridemore has studied music, both voice andpiano in Saskatchewan, The U of Toronto, Trinity School in the UK and the Eastman School of Music in Rochester NY, she is currently on faculty of Mount Allison U in New Brunswick.  W L Altman is originally from Saskatchewan, and now performs across NA.  He has a discography that includes, “There are days and then there are days” and a video called “Beauty is Everything”.  Altman has many interdisciplinary multi-media projects on exhibition in Sackville NB. As well as a weekly Improvised music, live radio show.

Sbot N WO arrived early to sous out our little café.  They had driven here from Thunder Bay, seventeen hours plus on a good day and they battled the lake effect snows of highway Seventeen to be with us on the coldest night ofthe year.  Helen P opened with audible lines from an EE Cummings poem while maestro W L Altman worked his Apple MacBook computer using Helen’s voice as adaptated by his “Abelton Live” soft ware and his own keen imaginings.  WL is a “Laptop performer” without fifties or fives lustily tucked into his belt loops or underwear. 

Loops were key to the performance though as layers of intertwined sound bites took the crowd to a great Earthen and skin covered lodge where seal fat lamps lit up the room and wondorous shadows of mothers and daughters and sisters told stories by throat  singing.  They called the herds of seals the Narwhales, Greys and Rights.  Baleen   supported the walls of UMI as twenty first century software accented a single female voice to transport us to the most North Strong and Free where “TheirCountry may be called our Country” but few of us get closer than Percy andSomerset.  This music, this chanting createda haunting shadow of a culture that we can only know a little of through Nanook of the North or from accounts by friends like my former student Florence Kyakjuak.  She would feel at home in our  theatre tonight.

In the third piece Helen Pridmore began an as impish Macbethian witch.  An old crow’s call turned by WL Altman into a murder in the trees as they flocked  about electric wire sires of the airwaves. We are in the middle of a very large flock the bee buzz of summer fields intensified and cicada and cricket choirs ignite the room.  W L plays intently on keys that do who knows what to Pridmore’s voice…then there is the “beep beep” of a truck in reverse, perhaps Altman is playing at set effects too.  A scratched record effect scores over Pridmore’s heckling witch and reverberates with a child like pursed lip sound all 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Our duo explain that many of their performance pieces have somewhat unrelated meaningless names this one comes from the use of PT Barnum’s, “This way to the Egress”…is that an exit oran exotic animal?  Each of our sonic expressions is indeed an exotic one off.  Helen P expirates – punchy – more a male voice, a beat box then a great ape – a mating call – a funky lord of the jungle – an Orang-utan that wants to “walkl ike a man, talk like a man…he wants to be like youuuu” ala Louis Prima.  Sbot N WO tease us as mating primates on a grassy knoll or tree top home at UMI fall into laughter and a chant that sets the jungle a titter.  Nobody heads for the door…even the espresso is quiet for this is the King’s call to order – to arrest a tingle up your spine a frenzied be-bop …makes me think that there is a jaguar in the trees…or    is    that    a   young mistress ape    enjoying      first sex and laughs as  her man ape enters, egresses, enters and egresses?!  Birds call all to flock this way.  Night ascends.   We climax and this jungle realm quietens forthe end of the first set. 

No one headsfor the door.

The menu at UMI includes FairTrade Coffee, Bliss Balls, Rice paper wraps and Nanaimo bars. 

Helen’s opening bar of the second  set is a chant like cathedral choir, a Cantor or Soprano as she hits both high and low notes, “OH – Ooooo”.  Kids at the thump-thump play of feet on a hardwood floor overhead make this an even more sacred place.  Long silences sing “silent– quiet”  Latin Tomes …it is the coldest night, the sky is clear the moon a fewdays off full.  We are drawn into what seems like a very late hour – perhaps a midnight watch – no heralding angels but  we are dreamy confused yet attentive to….Yes, something is going tohappen.  Thanks were given to André Alexis of Ottawa and his 1998 Childhood a story of life in an eerie silence.

Craig Pedersen and Linsey Wellman join for improve with muted horn and laptop keyboard, sax and flute.  Craig opens with a muted horn note held long and echoed as lick for lick Craig plays at W L’s game of electronica.  WL weaves a whale’s song and sonar blips asHelen calls the pod.  Linsey gurgles deepwater sounds then the reed vibes emit Blue and Grey whale sounds.  A gull joins in the whale spouts it breachesand the sonar tells of objects near at hand. A full purse seine is drawn aboard and gulls all go insane for fresh Atlantic fish.  A fog horn warns off shore the pod moves out to sea for krill and plankton there abound.  How do these sounds come to mind?  How sonic acoustics lead us past the Grand Banks past the Tail and the Nose to deep abyss is amiss to me; but there are computers at play in human hand and keys recorded sounds and playful artistscreate this space.  Wait, has somebody brought the piano back to Café UMI in a thin magic box?  A child plays at piano practise and each player awaits the impetus to interject. The clack of sticks emerges perhaps a favourite trading card is heldinto the spokes of a child’s bike like a chopper held together with a clothes pin …the kid rides beside the clip clop of the milk man’s horse -  time warp - we’re in the grunge garage with Iron Maiden or techno music transformed and tamed by Linsey’s Pan flute.

To close the night, Helen makes cute robot sounds while Linsey massages quirky saxophone notes.  Craig calls back, “ahha”- he played a few notes of something previously written down so changes the game but through hiscomputer and speaker the sound is different a hue of orange swirls of colour adorn horn reed and voice.

Laurie Brown of CBC Radio 2’s theSignal should be here as only she can play this music on the public airwaves. 

UMI’ s crowd are the “Spoiled brat” Jazz fansof Ottawa tonight

thanks to Sbot N WO of Sackville NB.