Roarke Menzies

Kazoo! HQ, Guelph ON, April 8

Photo: Matt Forsythe

BY Tom BeedhamPublished Apr 9, 2017

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Helming a complex nest of analog effects pedals, loopers and mixing boards, Brooklyn-via-Vancouver Roarke Menzies set to work filling Kazoo! Fest's spacious gallery headquarters with heavenly vocal drones that washed over all with celestial warmth. It all took on a deeply hypnotic quality when Menzies started introducing fluttering palpitations that swelled into a storm cell of rumbling volume.
 
While this first piece offered a relatively contained view of Menzies' process, a second work that incorporated a talk box — "Elegy" — emphasized his artistic relationship with spatial immersion when, in the middle of the track, he activated a contact mic fixed to the gallery HVAC system and a faint rattle was amplified into a wall of snowy noise.
  

 

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