While the Wavelength series continues every Sunday at Sneaky Dee’s with band interviews running online, Wavelength takes some tentative steps towards professionalizing, including applying for — and receiving — its first Toronto Arts Council grant and hosting its first indie-music panel discussion as part of its sixth-anniversary festival, Wavelength 300 (Feb. 9–12). Memorable WL300 moments include live collaborations between Lullabye Arkestra and No Dynamics (as “LAND”), and Castlemusic (a.k.a. Jennifer Castle) and the Silt, both at Kensington Market hotspot the Boat. 2006 is a time of participatory, artsy weirdness, and the fest closes with sets by Henri Fabergé and the Adorables, and Ninja High School, acts that blurred the boundary between performer and audience.
Wavelength also begins to step more outside the confines of Sundays at Sneaky Dee’s, kicking off co-presenting partnerships with Harbourfront Centre, the Images Festival, Mercer Union, and the Music Gallery’s new X Avant Festival. One of WL’s volunteer programmers, Ryan McLaren, launches the WL-adjacent all-ages concert series ALL CAPS!, held at Whippersnapper Gallery. And beyond the indie scene, Toronto’s cultural renaissance continues unabated with the first Nuit Blanche all-night art event and the opening of the Canadian Opera Company’s Four Seasons Centre, the first of a slate of gleaming new culture palaces that soon includes revamped AGO, OCAD, ROM, and TIFF buildings.
Memorable shows:
- Toronto electronic duo Crystal Castles play Wavelength three months before blowing up with the release of their debut EP, Alice Practice (WL 305, March 19 @ SD)
- A week later, Tokyo Police Club play Wavelength shortly before blowing up with the release of their debut EP, A Lesson in Crime (WL 306, March 26 @ SD)
- Wavelength’s first collaboration with experimental audiovisual film fest the Images Festival includes the Singing Saw Shadow Show, a project that combined musical saws with shadow puppets (WL 309, April 16 @ SD)
- Experimental poet Christian Bök performs at a rare non-Sneaky’s Sunday (WL 326, Aug 13 @ the Boat)
- NYC avant-rock sensation Dirty Projectors perform as part of the Music Gallery’s first X Avant New Music Festival (WL 332, Sept. 24 @ SD)
- Regular WL attendees Paul Banwatt, Amy Cole and Nils Edenloff unveil their new-ish project, the Rural Alberta Advantage, who go on to become one of Canada’s biggest indie bands (WL 338, Nov. 5)
- T-dot nerd-rap hero More Or Les performs at the launch party for the second uTOpia book anthology (Special Event, Nov. 26 @ Gladstone Hotel)