Toronto/Guelph label brings Wolfcow, Foam, Dories
The Army Navy and Airforce (ANAF) legion hall was treated to an evening of noisy, articulate punk on Thursday, Feb. 26, presenting the bands Wolfcow, Foam, and Dories. Greydyn “Wolfcow” Gatti, a genre-shapeshifting noise-punker from Toronto, performed the first set. Wailing, surreal vocals and crushingly heavy guitars filled the room, as did Wolfcow’s disjointed, frantic stage presence. While usually more synth-informed musically, the instrumentation of guitar, baritone guitar, drums, and delay and reverb-drenched vocals still captured Wolfcow’s bizarre, compelling, and multi-faceted style.
Incline/Decline, an experimental label and concert organizer split between Guelph and Toronto, presents an evening of noisy punk at the ANAF as part of their ongoing series.
London’s Foam performed second, with an energetic, noisy bundle of thrash-punk music. At one point, guitarist Nathan Patrick’s patch cord broke, and all hell broke loose on his pedal board and amp and, in true punk fashion, this rather painful mistake offered some off-the-wall flavour to their otherwise straight-ahead thrash set.
Dories, a post-punk quartet from Montreal, capped off the night with a set of meticulously orchestrated and rawly performed art-punk tunes – the interplay between the guitars and bass is reminiscent of Gang of Four, Television, and fellow Montrealers Ought, but it forges a unique sound that is an offshoot of Montreal’s distinctive, ever-growing post-punk scene.
Incline/Decline, a label and promotional organization based between Guelph and Toronto, began as a weekend festival in the summer of 2014. I spoke with John Pritchard and Brian Schirk, of the noise duo Stüka and founders of the Incline/Decline festival and label.
“I’ve been doing shows independently in Guelph for a long time, and John’s been doing them with me for a long time as well now, and it just kind of made sense to put a name on it. […] Everything we do is DIY, or ‘DIT’ I guess you could say, because it’s two of us,” said Schirk.
The label stresses a grassroots, handmade aesthetic and production process. Pritchard elaborated on the process, saying, “We have some friends whose music we’re interested in that we’re trying to bring coverage to, but we don’t want to do it in a capacity that would put a financial strain on us […] It’s usually just Brian and I, so we don’t want to press 1000 [copies] of a record and have a 1000 of them sitting around, so everything is kind of, at this point, by demand […] So, it’s more than making tapes for people, but making a cool, tangible product that people are interested in.”
The Incline/Decline Festival is slated for the weekend before Hillside, and looks to showcase the finest in experimental music from Guelph, the region, Toronto, and the country. In the meantime, they plan to host shows in the area until then.