Eric Chenaux, Rafael Toral, Masahiro Takahashi @ Standard Time, Thursday

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. 
 

Do Right! Record Pop-up w/DJ John Kong @ Standard Time, POSTPONED

Do Right! label boss John Kong says today's Pop-Up Sale at Standard Time has been postponed due to the blizzard-like conditions. 

Here's the scoop...

Do Right! Music & Standard Time are putting on a special Family Day Long Weekend celebration featuring DJ John Kong, The Patchouli Brothers, Automaticamore, Janina Marie and Moon Hymns along with a Do Right! Record Pop-Up where you can dig through crates of vinyl being sold by some of the city's top selectors & collectors including Jason Palma, Dave Yan, Sandy Gordon, John Kong and many others. Unfortunately the event scheduled for Sunday (February 16) has been postponed due to the weather. Once John Kong has a new date and time, we'll let you know.  

Jason Palma will be selling some records... although he may hang on to his rare Fat Boys "pizza box" RSD release.  

Do Right! Family Day Celebration

1-5pm - Vinyl record fair

5-10pm - DJs!

Standard Time: 165 Geary Ave, 2nd Floor. 

Sunday (February 16) 

Postponed until further notice.  

Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux) & Bill Nace Duo, Völur @ Standard Time, Monday

Haley Fohr and guitarist Bill Nace will be joined by Völur at 165 Geary (Unit A) tonight starting at 8:30 pm sharp. 

HALEY FOHR & BILL NACE 

"I wish I could take credit for bringing Bill Nace and Haley Fohr together, but the idea was their own. I just figured out a way to make it happen; Covid delayed the inaugural performance a year, until February of 2022, when they played the opening night concert of Frequency Festival at Constellation in Chicago, but the wait was worth it. I was and remain a huge admirer of both artists, musicians driven by gut instinct and for whom nothing is outside the realm of possibilities. Although Nace’s playing might initially hit with gale-force intensity, beneath the lacerating surface is a detail-rich poetry, as one needling phrase or another whipsaw gesture opens up a rich tapestry to slowly-morphing patterns and internal networks of sound. Nace might play guitar or he might choose tashigoto, but it doesn’t matter in the end, because he utterly transforms whatever he touches into something new.

I first heard Fohr in her Circuit des Yeux guise, where she unbound voice throbs at the heart of mini-symphonies, blending primal howls and elegant arias into a devastatingly rich art-pop. I also had the pleasure of presenting a concert where she improvised using wordless voice and electronics that opened up radically different pathways. Their work seemed miles apart but their shared fearlessness seemed to guarantee a creative supernova. There’s no point in trying to pin down or describe what happens when they collaborate, because such encounters are deliriously unpredictable, apart from the promise that what they make together will leave you confused, transformed, and reeling. What more could a listener ask for?" - Peter Margasak

VÖLUR 

Toronto folk doom trio of Lucas Gadke (Blood Ceremony), Laura C. Bates and Justin Ruppel merge distorted strings with thundering percussion. Hard treble screeches out over crushing bass, and blood curdling vocals. Thundering silences give way to whispering distortion. Sounding like some funeral march anthem from the fiery pits, group vocals unite in an occult hum. Borrowing from post rock and folk traditions channeled through an obliterating lens of doom metal, Völur helps you become one with the flame. 

Get tickets for the show right here. Watch a recent Haley Fohr & Bill Nace performance along with one from Völur in Toronto last year below.  
 

Sir Richard Bishop, Hieronymus Harry @ Standard Time, Sunday

Sun City Girls guitar ace Sir Richard Bishop makes a rare Toronto appearance at 165 Geary Ave on Sunday at 8 pm. 

Burn Down The Capital presents...

SIR RICHARD BISHOP

HIERONYMUS HARRY

@ Standard Time (165 Geary Ave., 2nd Floor, Unit A, Toronto)

8pm, $20 Adv / $25 Door, All Ages. Get tickets here. 

SIR RICHARD BISHOP (https://sirrichardbishop.com)

Richard Bishop, guitarist and founding member of the band Sun City Girls (1981-2007), released his first solo record (Salvador Kali) in 1998 on John Fahey’s esteemed Revenant label under the moniker Sir Richard Bishop. Since then he has released albums on a variety of labels: Polytheistic Fragments, The Freak of Araby, Tangier Sessions, and Oneiric Formulary (Drag City); Improvika, Elektronika Demonika, and While My Guitar Violently Bleeds (Locust Music); Fingering the Devil (Southern Records, UK); Hypostasis: A Work in Three Parts (VDSQ); Intermezzo (Editions Mego); The Unrock Tapes and Road to Siam (Unrock), and many others.

“Sir Richard Bishop forces one to alter that hoary cliche to ‘jack of all trades, master of…damn near all.’ Renowned for his mercurial guitar-playing for 26 years with Seattle ethno-delic legends Sun City Girls, Bishop has wrought a distinguished solo canon as well. He combines soulfulness and advanced technique with a panache that’s nearly unrivaled among today’s guitarists. Bishop strums spiritual with incantatory ragas, free-folk excursions, crystalline flamenco flourishes, ruddy Appalachian folk, Middle Eastern-tinged fantasias and gypsy arabesques. This is eclecticism done with respect and third-eye-dilating filigree; his compositions attain a sepia-toned wistfulness and a psychedelic complexity.” - Dave Segal (OC Weekly)

HIERONYMUS HARRY (https://hieronymusharry.bandcamp.com)

Hieronymus Harry invokes a time, place, and feeling that is strikingly different from our present moment. Hailing from Toronto, Harry’s music conjures madcap, mystical worlds through naturalistic acoustical performances. His debut album, “The River of Doom” is an odyssey of spellbound surrealist folk songs on embracing weirdness and the present self wholly. 

Check out Sir Richard Bishop in action followed by Hieronymus Harry's performance of "River Of Doom," the title track of his latest album.