Giving 'rock music' new meaning

Rising from the ashes of guerrilla performance organization Extermination Music Night, Bite Your Tongue is a Toronto Arts Council-funded series of unusual concerts in unusual venues. After a successful event in September that saw Final Fantasy playing in a park in Scarborough, the series returned on November 21st at Center of Gravity, a circus training school on Gerrard Street East. The show brought together acts spanning free jazz to synth pop, perfectly capped off by Los Angeles experimental duo Lucky Dragons.Sending off knotty guitar patterns into the darkness from the foot of the stage, solo performer Castlemusic opened the show. Mixing almost-detuned gritty guitar playing with a capella singing, Castlemusic held the audience rapt as she played a handful of pieces that suggested both improvisation and quotation from traditional songs.

Feuermusik is a duo split between saxophone and drumming on buckets, creating a sound that touches upon the "Fire Music" sound of American free jazz, Indonesian gamelan percussion, and the energy of the members' days in punk bands. As the duo began to play, Kansas City dancer Abbe Findley rushed onstage, her movements expertly complimenting the music. Between intricate drum rolls and ferocious saxophone runs, Feuermusik's set was an early highlight of the night.

The next act, Nif-D, managed to briefly turn the proceedings into a bizarre rave. Setting up behind a laptop and tables of tangled wires, he announced that "Dancing was ok." Besides a few pioneers, nobody seemed to take up Nif-D's offer on his first song, which spread his processed vocals over orchestral samples. Then, as suddenly as the pounding kickdrums emerged on his second song, the room erupted into dancing, and remained so until the end of his set.

The preceding acts offered no preparation for Corpusse. A Toronto legend, Corpusse is a massive man who haunts the stage in Kiss makeup, a hairdo in between a mohawk and a dunce-cap, and all black clothing. That night his only companion was a mystery man playing keyboard on an elevated platform. Over the most simplistic drum machine programming possible, the keyboardist spread harsh synthesizer tones, while Corpusse began to roll on the floor while growling and singing about sleeping neighbours, blood, and panties. Referencing the early industrial music of Suicide and Cabaret Voltaire, Corpusse's music struck a balance between horrifying and hilarious.

But the night really belonged to Lucky Dragons. Creative brainchild of artists Luke Fischbeck and Sarah Rara, the duo uses vocals, percussion, thumb pianos, computer processing and audience participation to create pulsating ambient pop. Setting up on the floor within the audience, the band quickly attracted curiosity as they set up piles of small tambourines and gongs, percussive rods attached to cables, an electronic receptor. and a pile of rocks.

They started things off with Rara's singing, processed by Fischbeck on a laptop into a Technicolor drone. Gradually Fischbeck passed out percussion instruments for the audience to freely shake, and finally demonstrated how to use the rocks. The receptor was a synthesizer, and moving the rocks next to it somehow created beautiful, sparkling tones. People dove in for a chance to play with the rocks, creating a tumult of dense but melodic sound.

As the piece grew, Fischbeck replaced the rocks with cables. By holding cables and linking arms, the audience formed new circuits and new notes, creating more beautiful sounds and more smiles among the participants. More gongs were distributed, and Rara gave the music a rhythmic pulse by playing a small cymbal through echo. Gradually the music faded out to the massive cheers of the audience. Lucky Dragons had transcended the barrier between audience and performer, creating an inclusive, positive atmosphere while playing fantastic music.