Matthew Ariaratnam & Adrian Avendaño: Novel Echopath
The live album captures their guitar-drums duo, one half recorded professionally at the jazzfest and the other at Tyrant
Go to a show of free-minded creative music in town and you're likely to either see or hear guitarist Matthew Ariaratnam and drummer Adrian Avendaño. Together, they released a live album called Novel Echopath to document their duo playing.
The duo performs Thursday, April 10 at Hypha Artists Association for a show titled Emergent Resonance, with Calgary's Jairus Sharif and Montreal's NPNP.
Ariaratnam and Avendaño are currently at the centre of Vancouver's vibrant and informal improv community. They are regulars at 8EAST, having presenting their duo there on February 11, 2023; February 10, 2024; July 26, 2024 as an album release event; and November 12, 2024 beside Eldritch Priest's album release.
The two halves of the album come from sets in the middle of all those 8EAST dates. The first took place at the 2023 jazzfest's Revue Stage, where the duo was double-billed with another: Giorgio Magnanensi and Andromeda Monk. The longtime sound engineer for Coastal Jazz's improv shows, Ron Ruiten, made a high-quality recording of the set. Ariaratnam riffs off a pedal pitch, then lets it ring out and sink into lower frequencies. From there, it goes to skronky and then jangly places before delicately winding down.
Side two is from later in 2023 at one of Infidels Jazz's New Thing shows They self-recorded it, playing strongly into the generously tempered acoustics of Tyrant Studios. The result is a recording that gets loud without feeling overly compressed. Slightly longer than the first, this improv journey features a softer riffing section with mallet drumming before it lifts off. Fuzzy guitars and drones pop up along the way.
The post-production work of James Meger successfully brings together these two sets, recorded under quite different conditions, into a cohesive whole.
As a guitarist, Ariaratnam can rock out with the best of them, like fellow travelers Cole Schmidt, Alvaro Rojas, and Jeff Younger. (All of whom did a four-guitars performance at 8EAST together in May 2024.) I also heard him in the band of singer-songwriter Harley Small in a show at the Firehall Arts Centre last year. But once in a while on Novel Echopath, he throws in soft, shimmering notes that sound almost like flutes.
Avendaño is to me a soft-spoken and friendly presence both in conversation and behind the kit, even when he stokes the fire in the hotter moments. He allows Ariaratnam's guitar tones to shine and meets any frantic energy that the guitarist sends his way. He brings a worldly and cerebral approach to improv; last fall, Avendaño traveled to Colombia for Canada Council-supported studies with percussionist Pedro Ojeda Acosta.
The two musicians often find themselves in special collaborations among friends. On November 8, 2023, the two musicians took part in an annual improv event for Montreal- and Vancouver-based artists called Trading Places: Un Échange. They played a set with Montreal multi-instrumentalist Raphaël Foisy-Couture and local sound-artist Ross Birdwise, and Ariaratnam was back for 2024's edition. They both took part in the inaugural New Improvisers Studio presented at the 2024 jazzfest, featuring artist-in-residence Shahzad Ismaily.
Other 8EAST specials that one or both of them contributed to back in 2024 include a Palestinian advocacy fundraiser event on January and the venue's birthday marathon in July. They're in bands, too; like Magic Maze, a project co-led by Feven Kidane and Andromeda Monk.
Another kindred spirit is Andrea Wong, who co-founded Improv Karaoke with Ariaratnam, Mike WT Allen, and her own duo partner Spencer Schoening. She brought Ariaratnam into an 8EAST night by that duo, Public Dreams, in September 2023.
Novel Echopath's two track titles are geographic markers from the UTM coordinate system. Despite a search for conversions to latitude and longitude and for information about the system, I can't quite get them to line up with what I suspect are the coordinates of the two venues. Can you? It's all part of the adventure with these two creative minds.
released July 26, 2024 | Buy CD (Bandcamp)
