"Sho-Tel" - A Wild Night at the Aurora Motel with Mile Zero Dance

Allison, Jen, Gerry and Jodie descend on the Aurora Motel (source: Edmonton Journal)

I live in the west end of Edmonton. And for the most part I quite like it, and wish it would get more love. While Edmonton's city centre is green and increasingly inspired architecturally (as it should be), the west end is a mishmash of industrial and commercial sprawl - economically vital, teeming with life and hypnotic in the way a vintage Skinny Puppy album is, but on the whole unloved.

While Edmonton's new-found love for its downtown core is a welcome development, that love doesn't seem to extend west of 124th Street. The rest is pre-Mandel Edmonton - functional and essential to live but underpinned by a nagging sense of "It's better in the Bahamas."

But thanks to Mile Zero Dance's invasion of the classy confines of the Aurora Motel for one of their most memorable performances to date, I have a new appreciation for this repudiated part of town. In a show that felt like part Fernando Arrabal play, part Coen Brothers film (of the Barton Fink and Fargo vintage) and part episode of Portlandia, MZD again did what they do best - take an under-appreciated piece of Edmonton real estate and turn it into something wild and phantasmagoric.

Going to the show I had no idea what to expect, but it turns out a motel is a perfect space for an interdisciplinary dance-music-visual art installation: a bunch of rooms one after the other, occupied by a mix of MZD performers and actual paying tenants. At least I assume they were actual paying tenants, as in this show you were never quite sure who was a spectator and who was a conspiring member of the company whispering things you're supposed to hear into your ear.

Photos courtesy of Allison Nichols

The show began with simultaneous performances on opposite ends of the motel by Alison Towne of the Good Women Dance Collective and Jen Mesch of the Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy, the latter featuring bass saxophone of New Music Edmonton Production Manager and U of A reed instructor Allison Balcetis.

Alison-with-one-L's performance was a sort of shopping-trip-from-hell dreamscape in which she dances through a never-ending series of gigantic President's Choice shopping bags, while mezzo-soprano Michelle Milenkovic (the star of this month's Body of Colour show) serenaded the crowd from her bubble bath in the other room in what was clearly the cushiest gig in this show. A gig that anyone who saw Body of Colour can agree she earned.

Over on the other side of the motel complex, Jen Mesch managed to defy both her impressive dance resume and her US Midwest origins by inhabiting the role of a nameless Alberta rig pig with a fixation on cologne and lofty aspiration (if questionable aptitude) as a dancer, in what was one of the most compelling pure acting performances ever thrown up by Mile Zero. Her performance was punctuated by the constant trolling of the character's gnawing subconscious self, as portrayed by Allison-with-two-Ls' bass sax, a rare instrument that she employed in a similar role in Gene Kosowan's Ghosts that Guard the Gateway back in New Music Edmonton's Now Hear This performance back in March.

And then it went on - with one of Mile Zero's most endearing performances to date courtesy of Jodie Vanderkerkhove and Artistic Director Gerry Morita in what was the only show to date I've ever been to (with the exception of a couple of Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings) where I've been offered toast - with butter and honey no less. Which admittedly was nothing compared to the pair of live lobsters in Jen's room, which she repeatedly offered up for dinner - although no actual lobstercide was committed.

With this closing show in Mile Zero Dance's 2013-2014 season, a troupe best known for their outlandish reinventions of the urban landscape truly outdid themselves. With the additional participation of Le Tivoli performance art madman Patrick Arès-Pilon (owner of the Sho-Tel megaphone car), installation artists Carly Greene and Devon Beggs and sound design by Dan Brophy, Jeff Carpenter and Dave Wall, Sho-Tel was a tour-de-force by some of Edmonton's most outside-the-box arteests in a piece of creativity run wild that will forever change the way I look at cheap motels - in Edmonton and elsewhere.

We've all, I'm sure, been fascinated by what goes on behind closed doors in places like the Aurora Motel. And MZD, in their endless quest for new perspectives on, well, everything, just gave us a glimpse of some of the wild dreams and raw, chafed dialogue that invariably goes on in half-asleep, half-awake states in places like these. And coupled with the olfactory component of the show - the cigarette smoke, the cologne and the weed (the weed may have been an audience contribution), it was as raw and all-encompassing a performance as I've ever seen - with absolutely no fourth wall whatsoever.

The name 'Mile Zero' has always made me think of a repudiated, end-of-the-road cul-de-sac somewhere - kind of like that motel that you always drive by but never give a moment of thought, that still has VHS and doesn't turn up anywhere on Yelp or Trip Advisor. and this time, more than ever, they owned that name. Happy summer, MZD! Thanks for a wonderful season - and an epic closer!

See you next year!

Compose Something Edmonton (Why New Music Edmonton is the best show in town)

Back in March of 2012 I wrote a post about possible new names for Edmonton International Airport. Based on the premise that many of the world's most famous airports are named after famous individuals (John F. Kennedy, Lester B. Pearson, Charles De Gaulle, Indira Gandhi etc.). I came up with a list of 10 famous Edmontonians that might be considered airport name material, of which my personal favourite at the time was Leslie Nielsen International Airport, in homage to his career-transforming comedic breakthrough in Airplane.

I missed one. I definitely should have included Violet Archer on the list. After all, composers figure prominently among major airports. Rio de Janeiro has Antônio Carlos Jobim International. Budapest has Ferenc Lizst International. Warsaw has Chopin International. And of course New Orleans, where I recently visited, has the wonderfully named Louis Armstrong International Airport. Who do we have? We have the Montreal-born pupil of Béla Bartók and Paul Hindemith who joined the U of A music faculty in 1962 and remained a fixture in Edmonton's music scene until her death in 2000. Edmonton-Archer International Airport - I love it!

Who says we can't be great up here? Edmonton's
own Violet Archer. (source: musiccentre.ca)

Of course I'm scarcely holding my breath for our local airport to be renamed after an avant-garde composer who the majority of Edmontonians haven't even heard of. Nevertheless, it is heartening to know that the spirit of the city's greatest exponent of new music is alive and well in the form of the organization she inspired, New Music Edmonton, the city's leading standard bearer for wild and woolly musical experimentation.

Last month I launched a series of blog posts about this great organization with a review of the NME-produced world premiere of some spooky Ligeti-inspired electroacoustic music by ex-pat Toronto composer Chiyoko Szlavnics by the Montreal-based Ensemble Transmission. And this past weekend I had the pleasure of attending NME's Now Hear This festival, focused on the work of Canadian modern music icon R. Murray Schafer.

While Schafer was the festival's main attraction, Now Hear This felt like as much of a tribute to Violet Archer owing to the prominent role of the newly formed Violet Collective, a new Edmonton ensemble formed under the aegis of NME and named in honour of the late musical experimenter. While I was only able to attend the Saturday program of the three-day festival, what I heard reminded me of why I have crazy love for my adopted hometown. Our winters may be awful and our alleged professional hockey team even worse, but when it comes to artistic experimentation, we've got it made. With local ensembles like the Violet Collective, the Windrose Trio (joined by dancer Gerry Morita from Mile Zero Dance), Pro Coro Canada and the Strathcona String Quartet as well as hometown sonic explorers Shawn Pinchbeck and Gene Kosowan doing their thing, it was the best local festival you probably didn't hear about.

Highlights? There wasn't much that wasn't one. Violet Collective reedwoman and U of A instructor Allison Balcetis demonstrated exactly what the saxophone in all its permutations is capable of, deploying the full saxophonic range from soprano to the rarely seen bass sax on Colin Labadie's minimalist Strata and Brazilian composer André Mestre's Passion of Christ-themed Sorrowful Mysteries. Chilean-born, Edmonton-based composer Raimundo Gonzalez used the space of Old Strathcona's Trinity Anglican Church like few others by piping (literally) the sound of violinist Tatiana Warczynski through electronically doctored copper pipes, creating otherworldly sounds that you truly had to be there to experience. And Vancouver composer Bob Pritchard conspired with Edmonton flutist Chenoa Anderson to deliver one of the day's most electrifying performances, the audiovisual Rebirth, featuring electronic armband-triggered surround sound effects and mesmerizing visuals.

The evening continued with some classic R. Murray Schafer vocal works courtesy of Edmonton choral group Pro Coro, most memorably the wonderful Magic Songs - a composition inspired by Schafer's famous hippie retreats in the Ontario backwoods (to which he would invite select friends and colleagues), replete with firefly chirps and Whitmanesque barbaric yawps. And then the evening got even wilder, delving into deep improvisational territory with bassist Thom Golub and dancer Kate Stashko, some very dark electroacoustic landscapes with Gene Kosowan's The Ghosts that Guard the Gateway featuring Allison Balcetis' otherworldly bass saxophone, and then some mad live improv by local lunatics Pigeon Breeders - featuring visuals by Montreal-based Edmonton filmmaker Lindsay McIntyre.

Edmonton's Pigeon Breeders (source: inb4track.wordpress.com)

Admittedly, I missed much of the R. Murray Schafer content on which this particular festival was focused. That said, the man's influence was all over the music on the menu. Now Hear This was, above all, about 'soundscapes', a concept that Schafer pioneered during his studies at Simon Fraser University in the 1960s, through which he sought to foster a deeper appreciation of sound as a whole by way of cutting and pasting sound from its original source to a 'musical' context (which he famously referred to as schizophonia). As with much of Schafer's output, the works on display at Now Hear This challenge the very notion of 'composition', and the late-night 'Astral Ghosts' session featuring Kosowan, Pigeon Breeders and others pushed well outside what many would consider to be 'music'.

But as experimental as the proceedings got, it never ceased to be fun. Fun and totally unpretentious, a fact that anyone who's been forced to sit through a "highly serious" program of serialist music by the likes of Schoenberg, Webern and so on. Somehow the program managed to exude a certain Edmonton-ness, which I can only characterize as self-deprecating cleverness. In this town you can be as smart as is humanly possible provided you never lord it over your audience. That's the hallmark of the Edmonton Fringe and many of our other festivals - we'll happily do 'challenging' but only if you don't throw unnecessary forbiddingness into the mix. And on this front New Music Edmonton and its incredible cast of artists hit it out of the park once again.

I'm sure Violet would have approved.

6 Reasons To Re-Watch The Original RoboCop Before Watching The Reboot

Source: IMDB.com

For the record, I have yet to see the brand-new remake of the 1987 action classic RoboCop. Moreover, until a few days ago, I felt no particular need to go out and see it. These days the price of movie tickets coupled with the existence of Netflix means I hardly ever go out to see movies, especially Hollywood blockbusters. But after having re-watched the original RoboCop for the first time since I was a kid, I'm now quite curious to see it. Although in all honesty I'm probably going to wait until it comes out on Netflix. I'm cheap that way.

I was around 10 years old when I first saw the original film, which means a) I was definitely too young to be legally watching it without a parent or guardian (sorry mom, sorry dad); and b) a lot of its content went completely over my head at the time. Seeing it now made me think there's more to movie age restrictions than simply sex and violence, of which there was none of the former but a great deal of the latter. The graphic shoot-em-up scenes in the movie certainly made a big impression on my young mind, but the subtler aspect of the film, like its socio-economic critique and liberal use of Biblical symbolism, were beyond what I was able to process at the time. If anything, the "inappropriate content" was the stuff I wasn't intellectually ready to grapple with.

The original RoboCop was, in many ways, ahead of its time. While critical reception of the film was on the whole positive in 1987, it received considerable flak for both the quality and quantity of gory on-screen violence as well as its liberal use of profanity. While still most definitely stomach-churning at points, the film's violence pales in comparison to much that was to come within a decade thanks to movies like Reservoir Dogs and Natural Born Killers, which in turn pale in comparison to the likes of the Saw and Hostel franchises - which make the original RoboCop look like My Dinner With Andre by comparison. As for the profanity, it certainly shocked my 10-year-old sensibilities at the time but in an era when F-bombs are a dime a dozen on primetime TV, there's no shock value there.

That said, I definitely wasn't ready to appreciate RoboCop at age 10, and as a result dismissed it for the next 20-plus years as simply one of the many gratuitous big-biceps shoot-em-up extravaganzas that defined much of 1980s Hollywood. It wasn't until this Monday that I rediscovered the film and completely changed my mind about it. Granted, I still hate the way the film ends, with the villainous Omni Consumer Products CEO Dick Jones (brilliantly played by Ronnie Cox) being blown out of a glass window atop the company's skyscraper, in one of the worst cliche movie deaths ever. That said, it's still an excellent film, and one that definitely needs to be re-watched before going anywhere near the re-boot. Here's why.

1) Peter Weller's performance

Source: robotsinmasquerade.blogspot.com

One of the most interesting aspects of the original RoboCop film is director Paul Verhoeven's very counterintuitive casting choices. For the titular role, Verhoeven initially considered A-list action stars Arnold Schwarzenegger and fellow Dutchman Rutger Hauer for the role, but ultimately settled on the smaller and highly cerebral Peter Weller, a guy whose other most memorable roles have been Dr. Buckaroo Banzai in the cult sci-fi classic The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension and William S. Burroughs in David Cronenberg's twisted 1991 rendering of The Naked Lunch.

The decision was made in large part because the diminutive Weller had an easier time moving in the RoboCop suit than the aforementioned big guys, but it ended up being a brilliant move. Weller's portrayal of both the mild-mannered Detroit cop Alex Murphy and the brooding titular cyborg gives the film an intense humanity that Arnie would have been hard-pressed to deliver. Hauer, on the other hand, would have been an interesting choice given his own track record for playing emotionally disturbed androids. But Weller's acting combined with his delicate features makes the original RoboCop really stand out in the predominantly brawny and brainless domain that is '80s action heroes.

2) Two iconic '80s movie villains for the price of one

Source: whatculture.com

If there's one thing 1980s action movies did right, it was creating awesome over-the-top bad guys. While the action heroes of this era tended to be bland and one-dimensional, Hollywood directors made up for it by delivering the likes of Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) in Die Hard, The Kurgan (Clancy Brown) in The Highlander, Koji Sato (Yusaku Masuda) in Black Rain, Johnny Lawrence (Billy Zabka) in The Karate Kid and, of course, Jack Nicholson as the Joker in the 1989 Batman. The 1987 RoboCop goes one step further by delivering two of the decade's most memorable bad dudes in a single film.

As with the main character, Verhoeven made a point of making counterintuitive casting choices for the film's two antagonists, CEO Dick Jones and 'Old Detroit' crime lord Clarence Boddicker. For Jones he went with Ronny Cox, an actor and singer-songwriter best known for playing genteel fatherly figures in series like Apple's Way and St. Elsewhere. In a similar vein, Verhoeven cast Kurtwood Smith, an actor best known for playing uptight squares in That Seventies Show and movies like Dead Poets Society as probably the only ever movie supervillain named 'Clarence'. Both men clearly embraced their anti-typecasting roles and threw themselves into their respective evil characters will full aplomb.

(As an interesting side note, Clarence Boddicker's trademark rimless glasses were a key element in Kurtwood Smith landing the role, as Verhoeven thought they made him resemble Nazi SS commander Heinrich Himmler.)

3) A great female action hero

Source: imfdb.org

In her seminal critique of post-second-wave culture Backlash, feminist author Susan Faludi dismisses RoboCop as simply one of "an endless stream of war and action movies" in which "women are reduced to mute and incidental characters or banished altogether." While I have the deepest respect for Faludi and Backlash and I have to agree with her overall characterization of 1980s action movies, I think she is dead wrong about this one. Aside from the titular character, the strongest character in the movie is without doubt Murphy's stoic and determined partner, Officer Anne Lewis (played by Nancy Allen) - one of Hollywood's toughest and most memorable female cops.

While her character is clearly secondary to Murphy/RoboCop, Officer Lewis is the type of female character you still rarely see in Hollywood films - a shrewd, independent, non-objectified woman in a typically male role. Most strikingly, the relationship between Lewis and her ill-fated partner is very much in the classic buddy-cop mode and is refreshingly un-sexualized. (RoboCop is a lot of things, but it's about the least 'sexy' film I can think of.) Depressingly, I fear Hollywood has gone downhill in this category since the 1980s. In the 2014 reboot, Officer Lewis is gone, replaced by Officer Jack Lewis (played by Michael K. Williams), and the only female character in sight is Murphy's wife, played by Abbie Cornish. So much for that.

4) Symbolism galore

Source: screened.com

An interesting (and little-known) fact about Paul Verhoeven - a man best known for sci-fi blockbusters RoboCop, Total Recall and Starship Troopers and then-scandalous 1992 suspense thriller Basic Instinct - is that he is also a dedicated Biblical scholar and a onetime member of now defunct Jesus Seminar, an scholarly association dedicated to shedding light on the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Of all his output, RoboCop is without doubt the most overtly 'Christian' in theme. Indeed, Verhoeven asserts in the documentary Flesh and Steel: The Making of RoboCop that he intended the main character to be a 'Christ figure'. Christian symbolism abounds throughout the film, from Officer Murphy torturous death at the hands of a mocking rabble to RoboCop walking ankle-deep in water during the climactic showdown at the abandoned steel mill.

Biblical allegories aside, the most obvious literary parallel is, of course, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Indeed, there is a certain Boris Karloff-type quality to Peter Weller's performance in this film, while the amoral and singularly driven Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer), RoboCop's creator, is clearly a modern-day stand-in for Dr. Frankenstein. In this sense, RoboCop fits more within the classic horror cannon than within the annals of science fiction, as does Verhoeven's later ultra-violent riff on the Book of Revelations, Starship Troopers. Interesting stuff at the very least.

5) An eerie caricature of Reagan-era America

Source: empireonline.com

While socioeconomic and cultural caricature are not hard to find in the 1980s Hollywood action movie cannon, in many if not most cases directors felt the need to critique American culture within a 'foreign' context. In Die Hard, the protagonists are American but the villain is, of course, German and the corporate context in question belongs to the then Leviathan presence of Bubble Economy-era Japan, a context that reappears in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (ostensibly LA in 2019 but clearly 1980s-vintage Tokyo with flying cars) and Black Rain. Meanwhile, the Rambo saga starts on the terra firma of the United States but then heads off to the safe refuge of Commie-ruled Vietnam.

RoboCop, by contrast, focuses unflinchingly on a decaying (and increasingly crime-ridden) post-industrial US, centred, appropriately enough, on the city most frequently held up as a poster child by both the left and the right for everything wrong about the country. While the exact epoch of the movie is left intentionally ambiguous (set at "some point" in the near future), the cultural setting, from the over-the-top corporate greed to the cowboyish gangsters, is unquestionably the 1980s America of Gordon Gekko and company - complete with a severe case of the military industrial complex. In that sense RoboCop can be seen in a similar light to Heart of Darkness, where, like with Verhoeven's film, it took a foreigner (the Polish-born Joseph Conrad) to shine a light into the skeleton closet of British/Belgian colonialism.

6) Future echoes

Source: blackagendareport.com

In an ironic development, the character of RoboCop has become an iconic figure in the beleaguered city of Detroit where the film was set. In 2011, following then Detroit mayor Dave Bing's announcement of the building of a 'New Detroit', the mayor was asked (as a joke) if he planned to erect a statue of the iconic movie cyborg, and his rejection of such plans led to an Internet campaign aimed at raising money for a RoboCop statue. Today it looks increasingly likely that the statue will indeed happen.

In a very real sense, the nightmarish, dystopian Detroit dreamed up by Verhoeven did become reality. Between 2000 and 2010 the city lost 25 percent of its population, dropping to just over 700,000 (down from a peak population of 1.8 million in 1950), and in July of last year the city filed for bankruptcy in the largest municipal bankruptcy case in US history. This ongoing decline has resulted in notorious urban blight, with the abandoned industrial structures of RoboCop eerily reminiscent of the city of today, while the city continues to grapple with stubbornly high rates of violent crime.

In spite of its deeply entrenched problems, Detroit remains a city with intense civic pride, and since the city's bankruptcy filing in mid-2013 there's been an upsurge in social and economic activism in the city aimed at bringing the city back to health, by groups such as Revival in Detroit and World Hope. In that sense, the character of RoboCop himself can be seen as an allegory for Detroit itself - agonizingly shot to death but still managing to cling onto life and re-emerging stronger than ever. At least that's the hope of Motor City's stubbornly proud residents. Perhaps a RoboCop statue isn't that far-fetched an idea after all.

So, in sum, before you go pay however much tickets for the 2014 Jose Padilha reboot of RoboCop, I strongly suggest sitting down to watch the old one. If for no other reason, by what I've read of the reviews of the new film, the old one is definitely better. But I should really go see the new one before I say that.

NME Concert Review - Ensemble Transmission

Ensemble Transmission (Source: ensembletransmission.com)

This is the first in what I hope will be an ongoing series of performance reviews for New Music Edmonton. For those of you familiar with NME, this 25-year-old arts organization is Edmonton's leading promoter of new and experimental music, with a particular focus on new works by Canadian composers. By reaching out to new audiences through new performance spaces, NME continues to do what Edmonton's artists and arts promoters have always done: bring daring new creative works directly to the people without a shred of pretense or elitism.

That said, NME was, until recently, completely off my radar - until I was approached by NME President Ian Crutchley about reviewing its current concert series. That's the trouble with Edmonton: too many shows but not enough PR, with our artists generally too humble to blow their own proverbial trumpets. But as I argued in my review of Mile Zero Dance's most recent Salon Series performance earlier this month, most Edmontonians have no idea what an artistic treasure trove our city is. Consider this review series my own humble attempt to do it justice.

Last night's NME concert at Muttart Hall featured Ensemble Transmission, a dynamite sextet from Montreal and the current ensemble in residence at the historic Chapelle du Bon-Pasteur in the heart of the city's arts district. (Montreal's arts and culture organizations have been the saviour of the city's innumerable old churches in an era where barely anybody attends mass anymore.) Founded in 2008, Ensemble Transmission consists of flutist Guy Pelletier, clarinettist Lori Freedman, violinist Alain Giguère, cellist Julie Trudeau, percussionist Julien Grégoire and pianist Brigitte Poulin - and for this performance was joined by Toronto-born, Berlin-based electro-acoustic composer Chiyoko Szlavnics on live electronics for two of her new works.

The show, while perhaps not for everybody's tastes, was nonetheless very eclectic. The opening piece Reimsix by clarinettist Freedman seemed to consist of a series of prickly, cut-up statements (none more than 30 seconds in length) with shrieking sforzandos and tonal extremes more reminiscent of Ornette Coleman or Albert Ayler than of the avant-garde classical cannon. This was followed by Omaggio a Burri by Italian composer Salvatore Sciarrino (probably the best known of the bunch), a delightful trio for alto flute, bass clarinet and violin featuring various extended techniques, including percussive effects by the two wind players.

The third piece Feuilles à travers les cloches (Leaves across the bells) by French composer Tristan Murail was among the concert's highlights, a haunting, spectral work clearly inspired by Debussy for flute, violin, cello and piano that seemed to eerily capture the cold darkness of Edmonton in February with its dark piano intervals, chilling flute vibrato and incessant violin pizzicati. This was followed by more new music from Italy, Il volto della notte (The Features of the Night) by Paolo Perezzani, a playful and sarcastic trio for flute, bass clarinet and piano that swings from pure cacophony to sublime lyricism.

Chiyoko Szlavnics (Source: anechoicpictures.com)

After a short break the concert continued by two new works by ex-pat Canadian soundscape artist Chiyoko Szlavnics, Openings I and Constellations IV, both world premieres commissioned by New Music Edmonton. In stark contrast to the dense atonalism that characterized most of the first half, Szlavnics' twin works were characterized by sparse intersecting planes inspired by artwork - very much reminiscent of Ligeti's works from the 1960s and 1970s. Constellations IV was particularly striking, a crystalline creation that seemed to conjure up the winter night skies of northern Alberta.

The performance concluded with another Italian work, Encore / Da Capo by Luca Francesconi (a pupil of Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio), which completely shifted the tone again to almost a party atmosphere with a toe-tapping pulse and dramatic crescendos in which the sextet managed to sound like a full orchestra.

For the record, I enjoyed the performance much more than Edmonton Journal reviewer Mark Morris did. While I agree with him that the works performed were less groundbreaking than they were a throwback to the avant-garde chamber music of the 1960s, I found the performance to be thoroughly warm and engaging. I would like to have heard it in a cozier, less staid performance space (perhaps the UniThéâtre), but there are only so many concert spaces in this city for all the ensembles and troupes lining up to use them. My feeling is that any lack of warmth or humour on display last night, such as Morris alleges, was much more to do with the venue than the performance itself.

Like Mile Zero, New Music Edmonton should be applauded for bringing challenging art to the masses via social media, inventive choices in venues and sheer grim determination - not to mention the unwavering support of backers like the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the Edmonton Arts Council, CJSR Radio and, in this case, the Wee Book Inn - and beloved Edmonton literary institution with three locations in town. While the music of Ensemble Transmission is certainly not for all tastes (and indeed not all the music they do is up my alley), there are far more people out there interested in this sort of out-there music and art than there were in the audience, and it actually wasn't too bad a turnout for a crappy Friday night in February in Edmonton.

Edmonton may be cold and sprawled out and have inadequate public transportation, but don't let anyone tell you we're uncultured here. And if you live in Edmonton and are a fan of out-there musical experimentation - and aren't already acquainted with New Music Edmonton (as I wasn't until recently), please check out their website as well as their Twitter and Facebook pages. Groups like this need all the support they can get.

Mile Zero Dance Will Save Us All (When The Next Great Depression Comes)

When it comes to the arts, most Edmontonians have no idea how good they've got it in their own backyard. Sure we've got our summer festivals and our world-renowned symphony orchestra and a Ukrainian dance troupe or two, but that barely touches it. Edmonton's arts scene is as lush and untamed as the vegetation of its river valley (the longest interconnected urban park system in North America), and on any given Saturday night you can walk into any given theatre or live house and be pretty sure of hearing something either inspired or highly skilled or, more often than not, both.

Consider Edmonton's own Mile Zero Dance. One of the city's best kept secrets for over a quarter century, MZD is its own festival - and one that doesn't shut down during the summer. For those who haven't had the pleasure of seeing them, MZD is a dance troupe best known for their irreverent avant-garde performances (often in public places) that have ranged in style from the NYC José Limón school in the 1980s to the macabre world of Japanese ankoku butoh and Noguchi Taiso under the stewardship of current artistic director Gerry Morita. They've also - with very little fanfare - emerged as one of the greatest promotional platforms for the city's most outlandish artists, both within and outside the medium of dance, through their cabaret-esque 'Salon' performance series. For a newcomer looking to sample Edmonton's wildest creative output, Mile Zero's Salons are a great place to start.

MZD's latest Salon-series performance, The Great Depression, was held last night on a suitably bleak late-January Edmonton evening at L'UniThéâtre, the cultural and artistic hub of francophone Edmonton. The theme: depression, both the 'great' one and the psychological condition by the same name, and how great they are. Yes, both of them. At a time when Edmonton's well-heeled denizens are plotting their latest escape to Manzanillo or Maui and the rest are commiserating about the frigid darkness on Facebook, MZD urges us, in Morita's words, to "find new ways to break the spell of winter and embrace our creative collective with the talented artists among us." In other words, creativity will keep us warm. And if The Great Depression is any indication, it certainly can. At least in this town.

Dance conspirator Jen Mesch (dance-conspiracy.org)

The show opened with "Psychology of a Strip Tease" by MZD fellow traveller Jeannie Vanderkhove, which featured a remarkably compelling 'reverse' stripper routine (yes, involving getting dressed and complete with backwards burlesque music). This was followed by a very matter-of-fact appearance by Edmonton poet laureate Mary Pinkoski, who delivered two of her trademark poetic torrents on the show's subject matter.

This was followed by a brutally intense dance performance by Edmonton's own Jen Mesch (of the Jen Mesch Dance Conspiracy) entitled "Anna and the Other Anna" featuring the noise soundscape accompaniment of Edmonton-based sound artist Scott Smallwood - a performance that more than any captured the grinding blackness that I've always associated with the dread word 'depression'. The first half finished with a lecture-turned-barn dance party led by University of Alberta folklorist and accomplished Ukrainian folkdancer Dr. Andriy Nahachewsky, which ended up with over half the audience on stage recreating a 1930s-style prairie diaspora hoedown.

The second half of The Great Depression kicked off with a Chaplinesque trapeze performance by the very talented Edmonton circus performer Annie Dugan followed by an experimental film montage entitled AurA centred on derelict farm equipment by filmmaker aAron munson - with a soundtrack evocative of Boards of Canada's woolier moments.Following this was a montage of archival photos from Dirty Thirties Edmonton courtesy of the Alberta Provincial Archives (which MC Kristine Nutting described as "like a prison, except more fun"), an interlude that allowed local noise punk deviants Rubber Nurse to set up their elaborate stage setup consisting of 'prepared' guitars, electronic gear and a 1980s-vintage school overhead projector, featuring a procession of night terror-inspired transparencies. Rubber Nurse's nerve-jangling performance "Sister Missing" was followed by the prodigious and absurdly charming Edmonton rapper/multi-instrumentalist Mitchmatic, who delivered his own heartfelt take on the titular subject to close the show.

Gentleman rapper Mitchmatic (dealerofpeopleemotions.com)

The Great Depression was more than simply a good show. It was akin to an audio-visual mix tape that Edmonton could hand to any other city with a reputation for artiness and knock its proverbial socks off. The show made me think of another Nordic city that Edmontonians have been crushing on of late, namely the Icelandic capital of Reykjavik, which starting in early March will be a non-stop flight away from Edmonton International Airport. Thanks in no small part to the international success of alt-pop pixie Björk and the molasses-paced post-rock of Sigur Rós, the pint-sized Icelandic capital has become magnet for hipsters and genuine freaks alike. Are we as cool as Reykjavik here? Well, we don't speak a living fossil language little changed from Old Norse, nor do we have glaciers or thermal pools within an easy day trip of the city. And unlike Iceland, our winters are genuinely bone-chilling. But in artistic terms, surely we're in the same league.

We are that cool here. We just don't know it. While the Make Something Edmonton campaign has done an admirable job raising local awareness of our truly creative and outside-the-box nature, we're still too hung up on being an Oil City, a northern Houston or Abu Dhabi, and have yet to truly embrace our inner Reykjavik or Berlin. But the time will come when we're going to need to. Iceland experienced its own miniature version of the Great Depression in 2008 when its entire banking sector imploded and the country teetered on the edge of bankruptcy - while its arts scene surged, aided by an influx of currency devaluation-driven overseas tourism. Ditto with Berlin, the capital of the beleaguered hyperinflation-plagued Weimar Republic, capital of cabaret and all things racy in the 1920s. Economic history clearly indicated that our runaway oil and gas economy will eventually sputter. And when it does we'll need other things to fall back on.

If we're smart, we'll realize that our arts and culture sector, which unfailingly injects vast swaths of capital into our economy on less than a shoestring, is one of our greatest economic assets. It's also a sector that always seems to thrive when everything else is in the crapper, while simultaneously making bad times a little more bearable. Eventually our runaway oil and gas leviathan will grind to a halt, either slowly or precipitously, driven by plummeting world prices that will once again render bitumen processing unprofitable, and possibly exacerbated by another global recession. It'll suck, but so long as we continue to nurture our arts community we'll always have the likes of Mile Zero Dance waiting for us with open arms, ready to teach us how to enjoy the coming depression.

Leaflets from heaven, courtesy of the Provincial Archives (photo by author)

Music Review - A History of Now (Asian Dub Foundation)

I don't generally do music reviews on this blog. It's not its raison d'être and there are far better blogs out there for audiophiles than this one. But I couldn't resist doing this one. Not only was Asian Dub Foundation's latest album my audio highlight for 2011 but it was also an album which, for whatever reason, fell completely through the critical cracks. Virtually nobody reviewed it. Here's my review, for what it's worth.

I first fell in love with Asian Dub Foundation in the late-1990s following the release of their critical breakthrough album Rafi's Revenge. At that time of their emergence, the Indo-British collective occupied completely unprecedented musical territory with their idiosyncratic blend of punk, rapcore, dub reggae, drum 'n' bass and Indian raggas and their angry-yet-nuanced lyrics that touched on everything from anti-Asian racism in the modern-day UK to Britain's colonial heritage in India and the social problems that continue to plague the Subcontinent today. Many pegged the band for eventual stardom along the lines of the Beastie Boys and Rage Against The Machine.

From left: Martin Savale, Aktarv8r, Cyber, Chandrasonic, Al Rumjen, Sun-J

Somehow this never quite happened. After two critically acclaimed albums, ADF's iconic teenaged frontman, the elfin Bengali rapper Deeder Saidullah Zaman, left the band, leaving a hole that ADF has continually struggled to fill. The first post-Deeder album Enemy of the Enemy (the band's big anti-Bush statement in 2003) took the approach of a 'collective', featuring various people in the MC role. The disappointing 2005 album Tank introduced MC Spex into the leading role - an arrangement that didn't last long - while uneven but occasionally brilliant 2008 album Punkara introduced a twin MC format featuring rapper Aktar 'Aktarv8r' Ahmed and the punk-oriented vocals of former King Prawn frontman Al Rumjen, as well as memorable cameos by punk legends Iggy Pop and Eugene Hütz.

With all the personnel changes that the group has undergone in its 15-plus years of existence, Asian Dub Foundation has come to resemble a prog rock group along the lines of King Crimson or Genesis. Of the original six members, only three remain: guitarist Steve Chandra 'Chandrasonic' Savale and DJs Sanjay Gulabbhai 'Sun-J' Tailor and John 'Pandit G' Pandit. Enemy of the Enemy saw the introduction of percussionist Prithpal 'Cyber' Rajput whose dhol and tabla mastery gave the band far greater rhythmic depth, while Chandrasonic's brother Martin Savale eventually replaced Dr. Das on bass. As always, the new album features a lineup of guest artists, which this time around include female vocalists Shahla Kartouti and Kerieva, hip hop-influenced flutist Nathan 'Flutebox' Lee, string duo Chi-2 and a group of Cyber's own percussion students under the banner 'Ministry of Dhol'.

One reason why A History of Now received very little press was that the album was not paired with a tour - at least not in the western world. However, the new album was marked by a significant event in the band's history, namely its first ever tour of the band's motherland, a four-leg tour that began with an appearance at the Bacardi NH7 Weekender music festival in Pune in December 2010, will follow-up performances in Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi. ADF's first ever India may have set the tone for the new album, which provides some of the freshest, most energetic and most focused music we've heard from them in a decade.

The album's epic opener 'A New London Eye' establishes a fierce intensity that refuses to let up until the album's gentle eighth track 'Power of 10'. 'Urgency Frequency' is classic drum 'n' bass-heavy ADF that hearkens back to Rafi's Revenge, while 'London to Shanghai' is a charming 21st century travelogue underpinned by sampled Bollywood orchestra and Cyber's peppery tabla. The album's title track (a smart little song about digital media overload) features Aktarv8r at his verbal finest, while the subsequent 'Spirit in the Machine' (possibly the best track on the album) is a thundering instrumental jam featuring Cyber's Ministry of Dhol drummers and some steroid-fuelled riffs by Chandrasonic.

Cyber, Sun-J and Chandrasonic at the Hard Rock Cafe in Mumbai

Other highlights on the album include the haunting, funereal 'In Another Life' (a number that evokes nighttime riverside funeral pyres in Varanasi) as well as the furious nu-metal-esque 'Futureproof', in which the band sounds like an Indian version of Pitchshifter. As is now ADF tradition, the album steers off for a track into decidedly un-Indian musical territory, this time into Tierra Latinoamericana with the Indigenous Resistance-themed 'This Land Is Not For Sale', featuring angry Spanish-language vocals from British-Roma vocalist Kerieva. And the album finishes with a decidedly un-ADF sounding piece of shoegazer dreampop reminiscent of Galaxie 500 or Cocteau Twins ('Hey Lalita'), possibly the closest this band has ever come to a bona fide love song.

It's not a perfect album. 'Where's All The Money Gone?' (Track 6) is probably the weakest number on the album, a retreat to the sort of tired leftist 'Occupy' platitudes that made Tank a less compelling album. 'Temple Siren' is a sludgy, slightly irritating statement on organized religion (or something like that) that doesn't quite hit the mark. But other than this, there is very little to fault the band on here. Among the few who have reviewed the album, some derided it for lacking the sort of undistilled anger that characterized their earlier albums. While this is unquestionably true, it's equally true that this is an older, more self-reflective band than the rage-fuelled sextet of Rafi's Revenge and Community Music. The big themes are still there but the lyrics are more philosophical and measured. And I'm inclined to think that they don't owe us anger all the time.

Even at their youngest and most petulant, Asian Dub Foundation always did an admirable job being even-handed in their political criticism. When criticized in some quarters for what was seen as focusing on anti-Asian racism and western imperialism while neglecting social problems within their own community, the band responded with '1000 Mirrors' on Enemy of the Enemy (memorably featuring Sinéad O'Connor as guest vocalist), a scathing indictment of misogyny and domestic violence in the Indo-Pak community. A History of Now carries on this tradition with 'In Another Life', an obvious commentary on poverty and caste in India. At the same time, their tireless solidarity with oppressed peoples around the world continues on with 'This Land Is Not For Sale', a track that will surely score them a continued following in Latin America.

There's more I'd like to see ADF do. While the band has notably stayed away from the Israel-Palestine conflict (and refreshingly refrained from any discernible Israel-bashing), it would be nice to hear ADF take a stance against Islamist extremists in the wake of cartoon and video controversies and continued religious violence in the Middle East. Coming from a band with a strong following on the ideological left and at least a couple of members of Muslim background, such a statement would pack quite a punch. I would also love to see these boys confront the enduring homophobia and LGBT discrimination within South Asia and the diaspora, particularly given recent moves by LGBT groups in India to push back the tide of homophobia. Guys, if you're reading this, those are my thoughts.

Requests aside, A History of Now is Asian Dub Foundation's strongest album in a very long time, both musically and lyrically. It's certainly their best material since Community Music - and certainly a more evenly excellent album than Enemy of the Enemy or Punkara. It's an album that points to a very bright future for these now-firmly middle aged Desi electro-Bhangra-punkers as they bang and riff their way into what looks to be a tumultuous decade both at home and around the world. This band's rediscovery of its old moxie is not a moment too soon. A revitalized Asian Dub Foundation might be exactly what this angry and confused world needs right now. ADF Zindabad!