From Our Dog Park to Yours
Intro from James Bailey
This is the music of Lorde Awesome. It is not “pretty” music, though it is at times quite pleasant. It is not difficult music, though it does present a challenging listening experience. It is what it is. There are no pre-conceived tunes, it is all made up on the fly.
Lorde Awesome began in mid-2008 when Richard Vainio presented Avery Strok with a discarded Roland keyboard he had found on the street. Avery had been recording and releasing his own sounds for ten years prior, and they had both been presenting DJ shows around Toronto for a few years so this presented them an opportunity to form a partnership for live creation of their own sounds. In short order, they secured a monthly residency at The Only Cafe which was to continue for more than 100 events over a ten year timespan. During that time, the ensemble grew from the humble duo into a collective of many musicians and sound artists of widely different backgrounds, styles, and abilities, some of whom passed through briefly while others stuck it out for the long haul. While leaning heavily towards an electronic sound, acoustic instruments have also been a part of the mix, starting with percussion and later including saxophones and occasionally erhu.
As with many things, these monthly events were curtailed by the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, and so a new outlet was sought. Not far from The Only is a park next to one of the maintenance yards for subway cars of the local transit system. It is designated as an off-leash park for dogs, and referred to as The Pocket. This seemed like an ideal location to gather in the relative safety of an outdoor space, where we could perform mainly for our own pleasure (which had often been the case before anyway) but still be accessible for anyone who just wanted to sit and listen - though always welcome to join in if the spirit moved them. It was also nice to have the involvement of both furry and feathered passers-by as well as the odd squeals and other mechanical noises from “over the wall”.
Here then, we present selections taken from some of these gatherings from our little dog park to fans of Dog Park Records. We hope that you will find it to be an enjoyable experience and that a new era of canine camaraderie may be forged from the experience. Oh, and there are a couple of tracks exclusive to this collection that are not available on any of our previous releases
credits
released February 3, 2022
Track 1 (Unleashed 1, May 31, 2020) Players: Avery Strok, James Bailey and Richard Vainio
Track 2 (Unleashed 3, June 28, 2020) Players: Avery Strok, James Bailey, Richard Vainio, David Shelly
Track 3 (Unleashed 6, November 8, 2020) Players: Avery Strok, James Bailey, Richard Vainio, David Shelly
Track 4 (Unleashed 7, May 16, 2021) Players: Avery Strok, James Bailey, Richard Vainio, Heloise Simone George
Track 5 (Unleashed 8, June 7, 2021) Players: Avery Strok, James Bailey, Richard Vainio, David Shelly
Track 6 (Unleashed 9, June 20, 2021) Players: Avery Strok, James Bailey, Richard Vainio, Heloise Simone George, Suzanne Farkas
Tracks 2 and 5 are exclusive to this release
Track 2 is a dedication to the Sydney punk band the Screaming Abdabs, and their drummer's post Abdab project Ram City Waddy
We'd like to thank the many people who have joined us to make sounds in the park:
Mike Letourneau & Robert Howard (Mr. Pharmacist), Duncan McRae, Charles Hackbarth & Marc Cohen (The Body In Question), Rob Cruickshank, Sarah Peebles, Colin Scheyen, Nick Brooks, Milky Milk, Mike Fuchs, Tiffany, Andre Tiemann, Christina Rose Aleksandar Ilievski, Tracy Alves, Karen Helm, Erika Nininger (Shiver For Yeti)
This release is dedicated to the memory of Nicholas Brooks, who wielded a mighty electric can opener.
It was a pleasure to know you ~ thank you for fighting for the green space in which we play
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