Check out "Orange Slice Blues" and "Knock 'em Out" off Jon Spencer's new album. Catch him live in T.O. this September!
Songs of Personal Loss And Protest
Picking up where 2024’s mini–LP SICK OF BEING SICK left off, Jon tears it up with KENDALL WIND on bass and SPIDER BOWMAN on drums (also famously the rhythm section of Woodstock’s punk powerhouse The Bobby Lees). They deliver garage punk for today — hyper-driven soul and powerhouse groove, beats hard as diamonds and slick as ice, fuzz bass in your face, and an avalanche of uncontrollable urges, pushing Jon’s latest outbursts — hollering, drooling, sexified crooning, and vociferously lamenting these difficult times — to new levels of rock’n’roll expressionism. SONGS OF PERSONAL LOSS AND PROTEST is the New New Super Heavy Rock for Hard Times.
SONGS OF PERSONAL LOSS AND PROTEST is set for release on June 12th on vinyl, CD (with bonus tracks), and all digital platforms via Shove Records, Bronze Rat Records in the EU/UK, and Sony Japan in Japan. Stream/Pre-order here: https://shoverecords.lnk.to/knockemout
Check out "Orange Slice Blues" and "Knock 'Em Out" below.
Don't miss Jon Spencer live in Ontario! Catch him September 8th in Ottawa, September 10th in Toronto, and September 11th in Hamilton. Tickets go on sale May 15th at 10AM right here: https://www.weare-inthefuture.com/jon-spencer-ontario/
Eric Chenaux & Ryan Driver split the impressive TONE triple bill with Rafael Toral & Masahiro Takahashi with Brodie West!
ERIC CHENAUX & RYAN DRIVER
Constellation Records' guitarist & singer Eric Chenaux returns home to Toronto for a foray with long-time collaborator Ryan Driver. Gentle acoustic guitar notes stretch out & ripple underneath electric psych inspired meanderings. Eric's voice weaves seamlessly among this textural landscape, like a silk sheet in the wind. Every movement is subtle, yet beautiful. A storyteller from a slower time, a player from the jazz tradition borrowing gracefully from the folk form. Two sonic ramblers existing out of time, but in step with their own hearts.
RAFAEL TORAL
Portuguese experimental guitarist & synthesist Rafael Toral comes to town in support of his newest record on Drag City, “Traveling Light”. A collection of jazz standards put through Toral’s elongated ambient treatments. Notes stretch and crackle as they become humming landscapes. Ethereal drones emerge out of woozy jazz phrases. Throughout his close to 40 year career he’s built a plethora of home brew electronic instruments that now work in conversation with his guitar work. Together this intricate textural & rhythmic dance moves his work into a totally other sonic universe where it feels like a rare bird sending its bent coos & tweets back to earth from a distant space station. Rafael catches these errant notes and arranges them perfectly. Don’t miss this!
MASAHIRO TAKAHASHI with BRODIE WEST
Toronto-based Japanese composer-musician Masahiro Takahashi has been crafting gently spellbinding pieces that simultaneously embrace electronic abstraction and a palpable, even brittle, humanity. His delicate and evocative landscapes always seem to be illuminated in vibrant magic hour tones as golden synth lines emanate from between soft flickers of acoustic instrumentation. He has released music on an array of labels, such as Not Not Fun, JJ Funhouse, Slow Editions and his 2026 record In Another on Telephone Explosion Records. He also composes for films and art installations.
Get tickets for the TONE presentation right here. Check out a couple of performances below.
GEORGE is what happens when groove meets inquiry — when analog warmth and digital edge blur into something both unexpected and deeply human. Formed by composer/drummer John Hollenbeck during the stillness of the pandemic, the quartet quickly became a fully realized ensemble.
Featuring Anna Webber (tenor saxophone, flute), Sarah Rossy (voice, synthesizer), Chiquita Magic (synthesizers, voice), and John Hollenbeck (drums, composition), GEORGE creates music that lives in the margins — between vintage funk and futuristic electronica, jazz and art-pop, structure and improvisation. As DownBeat noted, “Magic happens in the margins and the middle.” As Pitchfork observed, when the band locks in, its energy is “as infectious as a perfect pop tune.”
But GEORGE isn’t just about sound — it’s about resonance.
The band is named in tribute to George Floyd — in remembrance of his life and the violence that ended it. The name also resonates with a wide constellation of Georges: the Greek georgos (“earthworker”), George Washington Carver, George Clinton, George Orwell, Georgia O’Keeffe, George Saunders, George Lewis, George Gervin. Saints and revolutionaries. Artists and outsiders. The name carries history, contradiction, groove, and gravity.
These themes are woven seamlessly into performances audiences describe as sublime, immersive, surprising, and deeply nourishing.
Their debut album, Letters to George (Out Of Your Head Records, 2023), was praised by AllMusic as “a remarkable debut” featuring “captivating, provocative compositions.” In 2026, GEORGE releases Looking for Consonance, also on Out Of Your Head Records, recorded at Hansa Studios in Berlin. The album expands the band’s sonic world while deepening its emotional and political clarity. From groove-driven pieces like “bounce,” to the diasporic offering “Nassam Alayna-LHawa,” to “Norma (in support of reproductive autonomy),” the music moves fluidly between celebration and reflection, tension and release.
Live, GEORGE is immersive, dynamic, and deeply felt. Wordless vocal harmonies dissolve into microtonal synth textures. Tenor saxophone lines soar over rhythmic frameworks that are both tight and expansive. Drums shift from whisper to thunder. The band’s compact instrumentation belies a vast sonic palette — at times orchestral, at times intimate.
Each member brings a singular voice:
Anna Webber is a flutist, saxophonist, and composer whose interests and work live in the aesthetic overlap between avant-garde jazz and new classical music. She was recently named a 2021 Berlin Prize Fellow and was voted the top “Rising Star” flutist in the 2020 Downbeat Critic’s Poll.
Sarah Rossy is a vocalist, keyboardist, composer and producer based in Montreal, Canada. Sarah's practice combines live electronic processing with jazz, folk, and Arabic music to create autobiographical, ethereal, and socially-outspoken soundscapes. Recent themes in Sarah's work include ancestral continua, intergenerational linkage and community healing. A debut audiovisual album, a tender autobiographical soundscape imagined through a kaleidoscopic electronic jazz lens entitled 'OF WHO WE HAVE BECOME', is set for release in 2024.
SPECIAL GUEST: Yvonne Rogers is a pianist, composer, and multimedia artist from Maine, now based in Brooklyn, New York. Her work is rooted in improvisation and play, blending avant-garde jazz with contemporary composition and intuitive, textural exploration. Described as a “fresh, new voice on piano” (The Free Jazz Collective), she leads her own projects — including her 2023 debut album Seeds, a suite of lyrical, playful and collaborative music — and appears on trumpet-leader Adam O’Farrill’s 2026 album ELEPHANT, where her piano and synthesizer work contributes to the quartet’s fluid, genre-blurring sound.
Genre-crossing composer/percussionist John Hollenbeck, renowned in both the jazz and new-music worlds, has gained widespread recognition as the driving force behind the unclassifiable Claudia Quintet and the ambitious John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, groups with roots in jazz, world music, and contemporary composition. He has earned six GRAMMY nominations and has worked with many of the world's leading musicians in jazz including Bob Brookmeyer, Fred Hersch, Tony Malaby, and is well known in new-music circles for his long-time collaboration with Meredith Monk.
Together, they deliver music that is inventive yet deeply human — groove-centered, emotionally generous, and instantly engaging.
For more info and dates, check out John Hollenbeck's site: https://johnhollenbeck.com/band/george/. Check out a couple of George performances and a recent recording below.
