Band Details

From the Promoter

Last year we celebrated National Drone Day (established by Weird Canada's Marie Leblanc Flanagan) with Drone Therapy, which was part drop-in drone session, part therapeutic unburdening. This year we undertake a more conventional concert format in pursuit of drones from diverse sound sources. Our last event in the church for the 2016-17 season is headlined by the mind-altering maelstrom that is Pharmakon, touring in support of her latest album Contact.

The release date of Contact marks the ten-year anniversary of Margaret Chardiet’s project, Pharmakon. While working on her newest release, she began to evaluate the project as a whole. Though the content of each record has been very different and specific, the pervading question, which has underlined them all, is what is means to be human. Her last album, Bestial Burden, focused on the disconnect between mind and body, looking at the human as an isolated consciousness stuck inside of a rotting vessel. For Contact, she wanted to look at the other side of the spectrum – the moments when our mind can come outside of and transcend our bodies. Because an album is itself an object, she struggled with how to convey the transcendence of the physical, through a physical medium. She started to study trance states and equate her live performances to them. In trance states, music and the body are used to transcend the physical form and make contact with some outside force. In the live setting, she used sound and her body to create an exchange of energy and make contact with outside forces - humanity, empathy, the audience. This energy/empathy exchange has always been at the heart of a Pharmakon performance, but she felt that on records, it wasn’t translating. They were one-sided and flat – declarations rather than conversations. She decided to structure the compositions of each side of Contact after the four stages of trance: preparation, onset, climax, and resolution. By using these stages as a biorhythm for the album, she animates it, and instills the intention of communion into the music.

British-born, Vancouver-raised, Chicago-adopted, Mamalia aka Amalia Townsend was first introduced to the art world by way of her involvement as lead vocalist/writer in Juno nominated contemporary jazz troupe Sekoya, the past decade has been one of exponential growth. 2 solo albums birthed via Germany,'s Tokyo Dawn Records, circling the globe with ol' Swedish funk cohort Opolopo, she sought to push herself beyond her comfort zone, mindfully she always seems to return to her first love of cosmic soul & jazz. Recently relocating to Toronto, she now reignites her passion for divine frequencies to help elevate/stimulate from her new abode.

Kristina Guison is a Manila-born, Toronto-based, Filipino-Canadian artist. Her practice derives from pathways of socio-political interactions and intersections between pre-colonial and post-colonial, contemporary cultural identities in the heavily globalized 21st century. Guison's process emerges from themes that delve into the socio-political associations people make, unconsciously or consciously, in relation to their relationship or lack of, with objects and materials within a cultural/ scientific context. Her recent works are a combination of material fabrication, performance, community-immersion, multidisciplinary collaborations and social practices.

DJ Garbage Body aka Julie Reich (Bile Sister, Dohn Valley) warms it up preshow and between sets.