Double takes

By JACK OATMON

The name Misstress Barbara generally conjures images of masses of preening, polished club clients arranged in enormous line-ups bending around the corner of, say, Amherst and Ste-Catherine (as a side note, drop by Parking tonight, Thursday, March 5, if you’re in need of any confirmation of that). So I was a tad surprised to receive a text message last Friday night claiming her new band would be playing their first live show ever at Green Room that night. Curiosity generally kills this cat, so I dropped by and, sure enough, there was the spindly, grinning, black-haired Barbara on the little stage hooting and growling reverbed choruses enthusiastically along to thudding, sequenced four-on-the-floor beats and synth lines while a live bassist at her side put some funky licks in the mix. The band, called Girls on a Ducati, were inevitably plagued by the stammers, stutters, fits and feedback of any group’s first live performance. But overall, there’s some potential in what they’re doing once they polish it a bit and work out the kinks, particularly if they’re able to evoke the popular appeal of Barbara’s DJ sets. Anyway, I’m telling you this because they’ll be back at Green Room this Friday, March 6 for one more intimate set, so if you’re interested, catch it before the crowds do.

If you’re in the area Friday night and want to check out something with a bit more teeth, particularly in the form of sawtooth waves that is, stroll up the street to Cagibi. Local hardware hacker XC3N will be there tinkering at video game synths for a performance of that most indulgent of privileged nostalgias, chiptunes. Alongside will be the fascinating Ghetto Pony, a quirky, raw trio of Montrealers tweaking out a brand of whimsical, experimental sound engineering that benefits from a catchy accessibility not normally associated with the more involved hardware-exploiting noise fanatics. They will appear with Kawaii of Paris. XC3N will be back next Friday for a huge chiptunes/8-bit blowout at the SAT. More news on that next week.

In keeping with this repeat performance theme, you should also note that even if you missed the most excellent and talented Glass Candy last night, Wednesday, March 4, at Zoobizarre, fear not! They’re back again tonight for an evening of energetic, cosmic, glitzy and glorious new wave jams at Zoobizarre, accompanied by Nite Jewel, another Johnny Jewel/Italians Do It Better synth project, and also the fabulous Loose Joints DJs. Prepare to be blasted off into space!

And, finally, I have a few other odds and ends to mention here. A great Sunday-night booking comes to us this week in the form of Kinetic Stereokids at Divan Orange. They’re a Flint, Michigan-based, sample-exploiting indie rock outfit and something of a stripped-down, raw version of Beck with a bit less bombast and a bit more folk flavour. And, lastly, Baltimore’s Rye Rye joins local Rilly Guilty at Coda this Saturday for a night of Pixy Stix-grade breaks, shuffling B-more beats and rhymes, the likes of which the kids love oh-so-much. That’s cheap and candy sweet with lots of bright colours, for the record.

AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN!
jack.oatmon@gmail.com