Story & Photos by Emily Scherzinger

Wavelength 14 is the fourteenth instalment of an annual music festival featuring artists in venues across Toronto, running from February 13 until February 16.

The third night of Wavelength took place at the Polish Combatants Hall, a relatively unknown but large, acoustically sound venue. Gambletron, hailing from Montreal, stepped on the floor for the first set, using theremins made out of radios, a mask amplifying her voice, and images of yarn unraveling projected onto a screen in the background in order to create an incredibly strange piece of performance art.

To be honest, I have no idea what to think of Gambletron. Amidst the heavy beats, the sound of somebody’s voice if they were trapped inside a computer, and the violent sampling of Azealia Bank’s “212,” I found myself contemplating that the music being fed into my ears was modern art: interesting to look at, but incredibly inaccessible in trying to understand the meaning. Gambletron’s music was not easy to listen to, but was incredibly fascinating to watch and hear, making it fit into the genre of music that should be enshrined in a piece of installation art and kept in a museum.

Next, Petra Glynt took the stage armed with nothing but her electronic equipment and a drum. Since I’ve seen Glynt perform before I knew what to expect, and as an experienced viewer, I can honestly say that there are many ways to describe one of her shows: unrelenting, honest, and beautiful. Glynt delivered as always during her tight set, leading the audience into an ethereal wonderland with her incredibly strong vocals, ambient sounds, and beautiful drumming. Glynt even threw the audience a treat, playing a new song that may be even more tribal-influenced than her other songs (if that’s possible), but was one of the many highlights of her set. It was incredibly exciting to see a performer as promising as Glynt to be creating even more promising new material.

The next band, Biblical, put on a great traditional rock show. As is typical of any rock band, Biblical provided strong drumbeats, notable guitar solos, and screaming abound. However, for a concert series such as Wavelength that often prides itself on showcasing experimental music, I would expect something a bit more innovative. Biblical warmed up the crowd with their amazing stage presence and an impressive demonstration of the lead singer’s head-banging skills, and even got the audience swaying with a slightly rockabilly-influenced song (think Chris Isaak’s version of Cheap Trick’s “I Want You to Want Me” but with more echo-y guitar), but it was nothing the audience hasn’t heard before.

US Girls took the stage next, perching a vase of flowers on top of the bass drum before launching into a skilled mixture of electronic and rock music, featuring minimalistic drums and the lead singer’s incredibly unique voice. US Girls played a great, tight set that was comprised almost entirely of covers, but not without putting their own unique spin on the songs, proving why they were chosen out of many to open for The Kills’ most recent show at the Danforth Music Hall.

Finally, the big headliner of Wavelength 14, Colin Stetson, stepped on stage with no words spoken – just him and his alto and bass saxophones – before breaking into some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard. Stetson rocked back and forth, pushing sounds out through his lungs and into his instruments that I didn’t know could come out of saxophones. It was easy to see why Arcade Fire, Tom Waits, and many more have courted him to play on their tracks – he can make his saxophone groan like an exhausted human, reverberate like a drum, or sound jazzy, like the instrument is famous for. Stetson should truly strike fear and inspiration into every performer, because he can do more with one instrument that most can do with four or five.

That being said, the third night of Wavelength 14 was a night of inspiring and creative music. If nothing else, the Saturday show proved all high school music teachers right: you can do something with music outside of school, whether you play electronic music like Petra Glynt, piano and drums like US Girls, or saxophone like Colin Stetson.