Prior to working together on Kalte, we had both been playing music around Toronto for a number of years. Circling around the same Goth/Industrial and Electronic scenes in the mid 90s and early 2000s we were both aware of what each other was doing but we hadn’t actually met in person. Deane was performing as Akumu at the time, having already released a number of abstract electronic albums and performed at Montreal’s esteemed Mutek event, and Rik was making melodic ambient as mara’s torment, doing shows and releasing albums. But despite any similarities in our styles, for whatever reason our paths hadn’t ever crossed until a chance meeting outside of Queen Video in early 2001, when our mutual friend Chris Alexander finally introduced us. Immediately recognizing some shared interests, we soon booked an Akumu/mara’s torment show at The AMBiENT PiNG for later in the summer, and that was pretty much the beginning of us working together.
For those of you who aren’t already familiar with The AMBiENT PiNG, we’d like to take this opportunity to tell you about Toronto’s long running ambient showcase, because it really is a pretty amazing event. The PiNG began as a regular weekly concert series in the Kensington Market area of Toronto bringing together performers in a variety of different styles and disciplines that were focused primarily on Ambient, Electronic, Drone, and Abstract genres among others. Hosted by Scott M2 and Jamie Todd of dreamSTATE, the PiNG continues as a regular event to this day and during the length of its history they’ve presented countless local and international artists who have come through Toronto, including Aidan Baker, Zoe Keating, Falling You, Robert Rich, and more.
Just the act of maintaining an event like this for so long is impressive in itself, but even more impressive is the community that Scott and Jamie have nurtured around the PiNG, a group of artists and listeners who have supported each other in a balanced synergy for years now, and has also directly inspired collaboration between artists that’s resulted in some pretty amazing stuff. Aidan Baker’s project ARC began one night at the PiNG when audience member Rich Baker just walked up on stage and sat in on drums. Frequent attendee Heiki Sillaste has been working regularly with dreamSTATE for a few years now. And Kalte is another project that also sprung from the PiNG community. That first show we booked together in 2001 led us to book another Akumu/mara’s torment show in 2002, and a third in 2003, and pretty soon it became an annual event for us to play together at the Ping. And following the success of those shows, we eventually asked ourselves, “Hey, we’re well matched on stage, why don’t we try making some music together too?” And that was the starting point that would eventually become Kalte.
Join us again tomorrow as we discuss the themes that would define our work as Kalte…
For the entire month of October while we celebrate #10yearsofKalte, anybody that buys a copy of “The Lanthanide Series” through Bandcamp can send their email to info@kaltemusic.com and we’ll send them a free copy of our latest release “Covalencies“!