One of our most favorite shows that we’ve ever played was part of a gallery event curated by our friend David Keyes and the House of Pomegranates, a collection of artists, designers, magicians, alchemists, ne’er do wells, and lovable scoundrels who are among some of the most awesome people we’ve ever met. The event was called Scary/Monster/Beautiful, and it ran from October 7-18, 2009 at Gallery 1313 in Toronto. Bringing together art and fashion and music and writing, it was a truly wonderful and magical event, and we were very flattered to have the opportunity to curate a live performance for one of the evenings.
Inspired by the nature of the event, we decided that we should do something a little more interesting than just standing in front of a crowd and playing our songs, so we decided to present a headphone concert mostly because we really liked the idea of somebody walking into the space and seeing a bunch of people with headphones on listening very intently to a performance that nobody else could hear. It seemed very much in keeping with the solitary elements of Kalte’s music, and there was a sense of humour to the idea that really appealed to us as well.
We billed our evening as “Monsters in Your Head” and invited composer and cellist Nick Storring and L’Ombre to play with us because we really liked their music and we’d never had a chance to play with either of them before. We spent a lot of time trying to source headphones for people to use at the show and figuring out how to make it all work, but in the end it all came together and it was pretty great. As noted above, “Monsters in Your Head” stands as one of the best shows we’ve ever done, and it inspired us to start thinking about new ways that we could present the music that we were doing to new audiences in new spaces.
It would take a little while for those thoughts to fully form, but ultimately they would lead us to start a visual arts companion project to Kalte. We’ll tell you more about that project in a couple of days, but before we get to that we should tell you about our third album, which we’ll do after we share another surprise tomorrow…
For the entire month of October while we celebrate #10yearsofKalte, if you buy a copy of “The Lanthanide Series” through Bandcamp you can send us your email at info@kaltemusic.com and we’ll send you a free copy of our latest release, “Covalencies“!
