While others will be typing into the night about legendary headliner Herbie Hancock closing the main stage at the Ottawa Jazz Festival's final night, it was drone-master Colin Stetson, playing an early 7:00 set in the NAC's Azrieli Studio, who seemed, sneakily, most interesting. And interesting it was, although perhaps too much so for some.
A former wrestler turned one-man saxophone force, Stetson alternated between a massive baritone sax and an almost comically smaller one, creating surreal, alien soundscapes with both. Many of these pieces unfolded with a massive, almost inhuman inevitability, like forces of energy conjured from some cyclopean nether dimension. A small projector screen (the only visual element in a show otherwise shrouded in darkness) broadcast abstractions that pulsed and surged in real time with Stetson's indefatigable blowing. If you were into it, you left feeling as though you'd glimpsed other worlds. If you weren't, well, maybe you just left, as more than a few did throughout.
Opening with a 15-minute soundscape of deep, shifting lows and fluttering trills in the mid register, Stetson at least let you know what was up right from the start. The second piece, a clanking, almost industrial track that transported you to a subterranean alien factory, featured a lung-like, Giger-esque graphic on the screen that, along with the music, suggested Stetson was enduring some kind of obscure audio-corporeal crucible up there for us all, a medium (or perhaps shield) between the audience and realms unknown. Clearly out of breath between songs, he assured us that the cans we could hear being opened on the darkened stage were only water — or some Lovecraftian inter-dimensional lubricant, who knows. Most tracks began with a deep, audible breath being taken, reminding us that these worlds were being created with one man's lungs — pure anima.
Ghostly air-raid sirens; mournful tugboats plying Lethe's waters; deep, sonorous dinosaur bellows heard over misty, unknown leagues. Many listened with their eyes closed, letting the multi-layered compositions wash over them. And if they kept them closed, they would have missed the ushers' flashlights working overtime in between tracks, helping those leaving not to stumble in the darkened aisles. There was always someone waiting to take their place in the three-hundred capacity room however — although the last piece, another fifteen-minute epic that featured some of the deepest, most soul-dredging drones yet, might have proved too much for those not there from the start. You left with a renewed understanding of your limits.
A former wrestler turned one-man saxophone force, Stetson alternated between a massive baritone sax and an almost comically smaller one, creating surreal, alien soundscapes with both. Many of these pieces unfolded with a massive, almost inhuman inevitability, like forces of energy conjured from some cyclopean nether dimension. A small projector screen (the only visual element in a show otherwise shrouded in darkness) broadcast abstractions that pulsed and surged in real time with Stetson's indefatigable blowing. If you were into it, you left feeling as though you'd glimpsed other worlds. If you weren't, well, maybe you just left, as more than a few did throughout.
Opening with a 15-minute soundscape of deep, shifting lows and fluttering trills in the mid register, Stetson at least let you know what was up right from the start. The second piece, a clanking, almost industrial track that transported you to a subterranean alien factory, featured a lung-like, Giger-esque graphic on the screen that, along with the music, suggested Stetson was enduring some kind of obscure audio-corporeal crucible up there for us all, a medium (or perhaps shield) between the audience and realms unknown. Clearly out of breath between songs, he assured us that the cans we could hear being opened on the darkened stage were only water — or some Lovecraftian inter-dimensional lubricant, who knows. Most tracks began with a deep, audible breath being taken, reminding us that these worlds were being created with one man's lungs — pure anima.
Ghostly air-raid sirens; mournful tugboats plying Lethe's waters; deep, sonorous dinosaur bellows heard over misty, unknown leagues. Many listened with their eyes closed, letting the multi-layered compositions wash over them. And if they kept them closed, they would have missed the ushers' flashlights working overtime in between tracks, helping those leaving not to stumble in the darkened aisles. There was always someone waiting to take their place in the three-hundred capacity room however — although the last piece, another fifteen-minute epic that featured some of the deepest, most soul-dredging drones yet, might have proved too much for those not there from the start. You left with a renewed understanding of your limits.