Thursday, June 11th ~ Montreal, QC ~ Suoni Per Il Popolo Festival ~ Divan Orange w/ Mendham Trio

Friday, June 12th ~ Quebec City, QC ~ L’Agitee

Sunday, June 14th ~ Hamilton, ON ~ Casbah w/ Hey Predator

Thursday, June 18th ~ Guelph, ON ~ Ebar w/ Canaille

Friday, June 19th ~ Toronto, ON  ~ Music Gallery Courtyard Series w/ Brides

Saturday, June 20th ~ London, ON ~ Call the Office - Early Show - w/ The Riderless & CJ Boyd

Wednesday, June 24th ~ Calgary, AB ~ Sled Island Festival w/ Final Fantasy

Thursday, June 25th ~ Edmonton, AB ~ Brixx w/ The Dead Science + guests

Thursday, July 2nd ~ Vancouver, BC ~ Vancouver International Jazz Festival ~ Biltmore Cabaret ~ feat. Mats Gustaffsen. w/ Secret Mommy

Photo by Paul Goertzen

Writer Alex Molotkow cobbled together a great feature story out of the convoluted ravings of the group:

“Vancouver septet Fond of Tigers is famously difficult to categorize: to rock fans they sound like free jazz, and to experimental listeners they sound like rock ‘n’ roll. But genre is the least of the band’s concerns. The band members are connected by chemistry, a dynamic approach to playing music, and not by taste—their songs come together intuitively, without prior planning or the mediation of musical conventions. Despite their disavowal of genre, Fond of Tigers are very enthusiastic about experimental music as an approach rather than a label. All are active members of Vancouver’s “creative music” scene, with Lyons and Zubot acting as organizers for a community which often finds itself encroached upon by authorities, according to some reports. Their musical activity has allowed them to make connections with a wide variety of bands playing in multiple styles, and cross-pollination has resulted, much to the band’s delight—call them B.C.’s ambassadors of “creative” music.”

PICK UP MUSICWORKS #103 FOR THE FULL ARTICLE.

Well, our last show was certainly an adventure…Thanks to everyone who came out (well, those who came without badges or guns). Read the rest of this entry »

Happy New Year

We’re going into the studio this week to do our third record (which will most certainly not be called “III“)…

We’ll also be playing in Vancouver at the avant-clubhouse that is 1067. The show is on Friday, January 9th.

The Vancouverian septet’s follow-up to the impressive debut A Thing to Live With takes their compositional skills and energy one step further: Release the Saviours is pure RIO dynamite. The playing is tighter, the tracks more complex, the music more exciting than on the first release — which wasn’t a bad run for your money to start with! Stephen Lyons and company (including the four-handed, four-footed drumming monster formed by the pairing of Dan Gaucher and Skye Brooks) are in top form here, blending influences from the fields of Rock in Opposition, avant-prog, free jazz, Americana, punk, and modern West Coast jazz.

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Here’s an article by Alexander Varty in the September 18th issue of the Georgia Straight

The theme of this year’s New Forms Festival, which takes place at various Vancouver venues from tonight to September 27, is mosaics. And when event organizers asked Fond of Tigers bandleader Stephen Lyons to curate an evening of music, he nearly responded with flippant perversity.

“I thought about it for a while and almost did a tribute to Moses,” he reports, interviewed by telephone from his Vancouver home. “But I figured that wasn’t the best way to go.”

Granted, if any local band could pull off an art-rock opera about the Ten Commandments, it would be Fond of Tigers: the all-instrumental septet’s ability to morph between twittering electronic soundscapes and bent, brassy anthems could be put to good use behind various poetic meditations or ranting discourses on greed, sloth, covetousness, and lust. Lyons might well want to revisit that original impulse.

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Here’s a recent article from Soundproof Magazine, by Cheryl Stornelli

As music lovers we’ve become too accustomed to constantly attempting to decipher lyrics and the hidden messages within an artist’s song. The real secret is that most songs aren’t meant to instill the same feelings the lyricist had at the time of writing. Most songs are simply meant to be felt and self-interpreted, which is exactly how Vancouver’s Fond of Tigers have so far intended it.
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We’re really looking forward to the WORLD PREMIERE of two pieces of music which were written based on the co-mingling of the most recent Fond of Tigers and Secret Mommy albums. The show is at Open Studios in Vancouver and features, appropriately enough, Fond of Tigers and Secret Mommy.

Click here for more details from the New Forms Festival Website.

Here’s an article from Montreal-based site Panpot.ca, featuring reflections on early records that influenced Wolf Parade’s Dan Boeckner, Signal to Noise’s Peter Gershon, Sir Richard Bishop of Sun City Girls, Fond of Tigers’ own Stephen Lyons, and others.

September tour dates:

September 3rd ~ Montreal, QC ~ Casa Del Popolo, with Special Noise and The Winks

September 4th ~ Toronto, ON ~ Tranzac, with Off World (Sandro Perri + Lorenz) and Canaille (Brandon Valdivia - drums Nick Buligan - trumpet Mike Smith - bass Jeremy Strachan - reeds Colin Fisher - reeds)

September 5th ~ Guelph, ON ~ Guelph Jazz Festival (afternoon workshop featuring Carter/Lyons/Zubot + nighttime full-band concert)

September 6th ~ London, ON ~ London Music Hall with guests the Riderless

September 7th ~ Toronto, ON ~ WAVELENGTH at Sneaky Dee’s

September 9th ~ Ottawa ~ CBC Studios, Collaborating with Sandro Perri

September 12th ~ Victoria, BC ~ Lucky Bar, with CHET and Listening Party

September 19th ~ Vancouver, BC ~ New Forms Festival ~ Open Studios, with the Secret Mommy Quintet

Here’s a couple of shots after our show opening for the Grande Mothers at Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom (where they give artists brown towels).

We’ll be heading east to play a handful of shows around this concert at the wonderful and eclectic Guelph Jazz Festival. Other acts coming to Guelph this year include Tortoise, John Zorn, and DJ Spooky. Here’s a link to their site.

Here’s a round-up of articles and reviews about the new Fond of Tigers album, Release the Saviours Read the rest of this entry »