by LORRAINE CARPENTER

There are two notable trends in Saffron Sect’s interminable list of influences on MySpace. The first, and most easily explained, is the run-down of ’60s bands, among them the Seeds, the Byrds, Mungo Jerry and Fairport Convention. Toronto’s Saffron Sect is the long-running back-burner baby of Gaven Dianda, once the keyboardist with bands like the Flashing Lights, now a reviver of psychedelic folk, early garage and medieval music. The band’s EP, Phosphorous Flash, the flagship release on a new local label called Fig Records, presents these nostalgic “modieval” strains alongside Asian instruments and influences. Though the record was primarily played by Dianda (vocals, guitars, sitar, crumhorn, recorder, strings), bandmates Matthew MacLaren (double bass, jug), Katie Iarocci (flute, dulcimer, glockenspiel) and Jay Anderson (drums, percussion) present a fleshed-out Saffron Sect on stage.

“It’s a much more luxurious, dynamic sound,” says Dianda. “It’s less claustrophobic and more rolling and wavelike.”

Whether live or on disc, the band’s songs express Dianda’s “natural inclination” in music, after years of playing second fiddle as the resident George Harrison or Brian Jones.

“I was always the multi-instrumentalist guy in other bands, or a kind of dynamic catalyst, adding certain frills and trills,” he says. “You know, leftfield stuff that was a really good counterpoint to what the other guys were doing.”

Dianda’s hippie parents exposed him to offbeat music and exotic cuisine from infancy—his background is Irish/Italian but his mom is “a super-duper Indian cook,” which brings us to the number one influence on Saffron Sect: curried spinach. Marmalade and pumpkin pie are further down the list, as are Krishna and Jesus, in that order. Dianda’s reverence for food came to the fore during a period, roughly a decade ago, when he was living and working with Hare Krishnas in his hometown of Hamilton.

“There was a very serious Krishna consciousness vibe happening there,” says Dianda, explaining the group’s theory that eating is a gateway to opening the mind. “And then I realized they couldn’t really cook.”

Dianda started out as a waiter at the Krishnas’ dining room, then graduated to chef. But he was fascinated by their devotional singing and chanting, and when he got his hands on a sitar, he was quick to join in.

“I became the music guy as well ’cause they couldn’t really play instruments either.”

A typical day with the Krishnas began by “harassing” Indian shopkeepers for food donations, then preparing large quantities of grub, selling cheap dinners, and finally inviting his starving friends to eat the leftovers, and to play music.

“We learned how to jam for hours under the guise of this Hare Krishna music. The main guy would chant and we would just drone on forever.”

Though the situation was initially idyllic, Dianda had to extricate himself from expectations that he would provide the group’s food and music full-time. And, as a psychedelic rocker in his early 20s, Dianda’s lifestyle wasn’t entirely Krishna-approved.

“It was very easy to blur some of the finer points of their schtick ’cause the leader was himself an old hippie who used to hang out with the Fugs in New York City—that’s pretty heavy freakism, so he was really tolerant of things that the hardcore Krishna people viewed as deviant behaviour.”

With Emerald Cloud Cobra, Sailor White, DJs Transpleasantexpress, Thomas Von Party at the Green room on friday, july 21, 8:30 p.m., $6

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