Drone at the Global Market feast for the ears

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This article was published 30/05/2022 (1565 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Some strange sounds emanated from Brandon’s downtown core on Saturday, drawing a crowd for a very unique live music event.

Local singers and musicians hailed the arrival of spring with Prairie Wires’ Drone at the Global Market 2 concert to Downtown Brandon after a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19. The free performance was also part of International Drone Music Day, which usually takes place on the last Saturday in May, said organizer Brandon Ehinger.

The performance included opening songs and prayers by the Sweet Medicine Singers. The concert included Wire+Bone (Ehinger and Aaron Wilson) and Brandon-based experimental music ensembles Susurrate + Whir (Leila Kristjanson, Jaime Wong and Immanuel Smith), as well as Erickson synthesist Acid Basement (Iain Edye).

It was good to be back in front of live audiences after two years, Ehinger said. They scrapped the concert entirely in 2020 due to COVID-19 uncertainties and moved to an online format for 2021. The audience for the concert was small, but he said it was great to see people come out once again to take in some soothing tones and showed people still appreciated live music by local artists in the city.

Each artist brought their own spin on the drone, which Ehinger said can’t really be defined but can be described as like yoga music; low-frequency, monotone and can include everything from background noise to certain instruments.

It is up for interpretation, he said, which is the driving force of the concert as it lets artists experiment with what they think is a drone.

“Things like bagpipes, didgeridoos, sitars, hurdy gurdys and even the din of traffic create a drone sound,” he said. “It forms the base of music to create melodies and is sometimes described like the ‘ohm’ sound in meditation. It is said to be the sound of the universe, and studies have shown it can bring one’s breathing into alignment with their bodily rhythm.

“It’s relaxing for many, but for others we can just tune it out and carry on with our lives. Either way, it is always there in some form,” he said.

He and Wilson brought theirs in the form of synthesizers and a modified trombone.

Modern drone artists gravitate toward synthesizers, effects or electronics to create drones. They can be found across genres, from folk music, to doom metal, Ehinger said. No matter the basis, they all have the same thread, a sound that is low, slow and oddly comforting.

International Drone Day was founded in 2014 by Montréal-based artist and organizer Marie LeBlanc Flanagan. This is seen as a kind of holiday for experimental musicians to get together and create a global drone sound.

This was the first of a three-part series. The next concert will be on June 8 with another free performance by visiting sound artist Jason Kahn of Zürich, Switzerland, at the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba. Brandon’s Wire+Bone will return on June 18 for another free concert at the Brandon General Museum and Archives.

To find out more about Prairie Wires, check out prairiewires.ca.

» kmckinley@brandonsun.com

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