Tim Hecker /crys cole / Scant Intone

As part of the ninth Send + Receive Festival, the evening showcased an impressive range of video and audio art. Montreal’s Gabriel Coutu-Dumont and Marc Leclair started the evening with a screening of 5mm, an audio-visual piece that blended lulling soundscapes with fluctuating colours and shapes in an allegorical look at the development of human life. Montreal’s Scant Intone, aka Constantine Katsiris, set up next, following the video performance. With his laptop resting on the floor, inches from the crowd, Katsiris swayed over his computer while providing an assortment of aquatic textures that rose and fell featuring well-crafted drones. Turning the volume down substantially, crys cole came next, capturing tones that occasionally invoked a sense of distant ringing of bells. Using contact microphones set up at a table, she tapped out sounds by running her fingers along the table legs and also made use of a metal rod to create subtle noises. With the lights dimmed and only the glow of his laptop illuminating him, Montreal’s Tim Hecker closed off the night. While it had been years since his last performance in Winnipeg, Hecker drew a sizable crowd with all the seats taken and the crowd spilling over onto the floor and back of the room. During his set, rising cascades of sound poured out of the PA system with speakers set up in four corners of the room to deliver a quadraphonic sound. Hecker pushed the system to its limits with powerfully loud volume levels, as tracks flowed seamlessly from one to the next. A spellbinding version of "Chimeras” from Harmony in Ultraviolet served as one of the numerous highlights, featuring submerged melodies resounding underneath thick waves of distortion. Throughout the evening, Tim Hecker conveyed the captivating beauty and breadth of his audio work.