It’s been a long time since I reviewed a music festival. Two years, three months, three hours, five minutes and fifty-two seconds, to be precise.
That was Osheaga 2023 where, among other things, I met a guy called Alan in the street who gave me a beer, Billie Eilish jumped up and down in front of a million mobile phones, and I risked my freedom by sneaking a jumbo bag of Miss Vickies (Spicy Dill Pickle flavour) down my man-knickers.
This time would be different no doubt, but I was hoping for Even. More. Drama.
Project Nowhere is a multi-venue music festival in Toronto’s West End showcasing a diverse range of talent, from psych rock, to punk, to electronic, plus a bunch of other places in-between, culminating in what they call “nowhere”.
Celebrating its third year, Project Nowhere takes place around Dundas West, a road whose name will surely one day be changed, because who wants one of the main streets in their city named after a Scottish politician who thought slavery was cool?
Anyway, let’s park that there for now because this isn’t a politician piece, or a lesson in history… it’s a god damn music festival review! But still, it’s important not to brush things under the rug.
So the music festival, Project Nowhere, ran from a Thursday to Saturday in October. Armed with an old digital camera, a single lens, a hip flask filled with moonshine, and a wrist band giving me three-day access, I was ready to spread my wings and fly.
When attending a music festival, I would normally always pack some ear protection for safety. But this time I decided to “raw dog” it, and I also didn’t wear my glasses, which I’m legally required to when driving.
Why? Sometimes it’s better to hear everything but not see too much…
First thing’s first, I headed to St. Anne’s Hall, where Kat Duma performed solo on a big stage, lit in wondrous technicolor by The Oscillitarium – Toronto’s premiere liquid light show crew! It was dazzling and Kat had a nice voice.
Jump on the Free Car – a handy Toronto service that runs down College and Dundas at all hours day and night – and just a few minutes later I was at a tucked away venue, known as Nineteen Seventy Eight.
Gus Englehorn, an Alaskan born musician, performed a great set of quirky tunes for a buoyed crowd. The two-piece with guitar and drums was engaging and entertaining, with a simplicity and a freshness.
From there I headed to The Garrison, which is where I had earlier that day picked up my weekend pass for Project Nowhere. In sporting terms, The Garrison is the home venue for the music festival, and it’s a place you can always rely on for a 4am last call if you’re the type that just will not go to bed.
At The Garrison I saw Noble Rot, a project made up of members of local legends Metz and Holy Fuck, who make some of the most cutting-edge music coming out of Toronto. They combined well and it was a great spectacle.
The thing with Project Nowhere is, unlike the sickening corporate shenanigans of many big festivals, this one feels much more tightly curated, much more supportive of local and independent venues, shops and businesses, and much more in tune with what is right in the world.
The city really does hum in downtown Toronto, a swarm of restaurants and bakery’s and café’s and ‘vintage stores and it’s ON all the time. It’s bumpin!
Well this year the festival had an app with a customisable schedule that also listed all the local businesses you can get a discount for with your wristband, which was a super cool addition.
Oh and on top of all that, I just remembered seeing on the Free Car that they have posters up announcing, “POP is Required.” It’s amazing to see music being so wholeheartedly and embraced by the city.
As coincidentally as is possible, given this is a piece of sculpted writing and not just a line of conscious thought, the next group I caught was called Desire, and they were the poppiest of the day. The TTC will be delighted to hear, I’m sure.
Long. Live. Pop!
And just as fast as that, the first night of the festival was over… well, mostly just cos I wasn’t feeling that well.
I missed Dreamcrusher, whose shows have blown me to the stratosphere and back before, including when I reviewed their 2018 performance at a small experimental music festival in Ontario called Electric Eclectics.
It’s an intense spectacle of noise and energy and the produced material is some of my favourite. Dreamcrusher is well worth checking out, but not if you have a headache and generally sickness like me.
Maybe it was too much moonshine?
It’s been a hard year, what with recovering from all the surgery where they pieced me back together with metal and drills and a nerve block, syringed to the neck, that numbed my complete left arm precisely.
So yeah, physically, I couldn’t quite make it. And while I felt sad, I also had a long sleek black cat at home waiting for me; surprising big and chatty; we call him “Bob” but that’s not his real name.
Cue the next day and, after a short venture to a beer festival for breakfast specialising in cask ale, I returned to the Project Nowhere music festival schedule by catching Orbital Ensemble at St. Anne’s – a super cool Brazilian influenced psychy-funk jazz-fusion group.
It got me going. Great stuff. Tip top. An unstoppable force.
You need different genres and styles of stuff at a music festival like this, because it just binds it all together and means there’s a fantastic array of different vibes on offer.
The way Project Nowhere curate each venue so carefully with a different style… I found myself walking around always feeling refreshed by the options available.
Take BSMT 254 for example – another venue that I’ll get to by the end of this dastardly tale, but with an electronic focus, and always a great space for a DJ party.
This band called The Armed were playing at Nineteen Seventy Five, but unfortunately it had sold out / was at capacity so I decided to divert myself elsewhere.
Something to be aware of for people attending Project Nowhere is that as well as three-day wristbands, there are also individual show tickets on sale and some venues have relatively low capacities. So, if you want to see a certain band with the three-day wristband, it’s always a good idea to get there well in advance, which can make show hopping a little tricky.
However the great thing is, it doesn’t matter if you can’t get in somewhere as there’s always another venue right around the corner and on this occasion, I saw Freak Heat Waves.
Now I know what you’re thinking. Who the fuck are Freak Heat Waves?
Well, they’re Mr. really fuckin’ awesome, that’s who they are! I’m a huge fan, which started with their crazy good album XXXL and has continued with all their releases since.
But hell, the visuals at The Garrison… they really set the scene. Anthony Piazza from Montreal set that all up apparently, and it was the best I’ve ever seen that venue look. So classy.
Freak Heat Waves is a kind of oozey, laidback synth-based music, but with guitars and shuffly beats that wash in and out. This, combined with the singer’s low voice, gives the effect of a band playing far away in the distance, somewhere across the mountains.
The audience was both entranced but also with pockets of conversation, which for a show like Freak Heat Waves, feels super right somehow. It added some chaos, and it doesn’t always feel to me like I want to be staring at them too intently for too long – I mean, I’m sure you can if you want – but more, I like to just bob around and let my mind wander off.
From there I rushed to Teke::Teke, where I caught the final few moments and it was striking.
After, I tried to take the Free Car to Baby G to see Truck Violence, but quite fairly, I was refused entry because the show was visibly at capacity.
From what I could see through the glass, steaming with perspiration, it was quite the ticket.
The nice thing about a multi-venue festival in the city, is you get to go home each night, can sleep in your own bed, and you can even take a shower.
I’m used to camping festivals, the big ones with 80,000 people, or probably more after you include all the ticket dodgers, fence hoppers and identical twins sharing wristbands.
Not to mention they were all raging teenagers.
At those festivals in the UK, you couldn’t even bring your car onsite (unlike the defunct Way Home (RIP)), it was just tent pitched right up to tent for miles!
Sometimes the whole place would get flooded. If it wasn’t a year for rain, people would build massive fires and explode gas canisters on them. It was more like something from a war movie.
Jesus, what else did I see?
People would somehow get shopping trolleys inside the camping area, and then you’d get two people, one in each trolley to face off… like a Mexican standoff.
Two other people would push a trolley as fast as they could towards one another… faster and faster… until the pushers would let go, and…
Boom!!! (Trollies collide; limbs go flailing).
But no, you don’t have to worry about anything like that for this kinda festival. It’s busy, and the shows are all packed with an energy, but people are generally pretty sensible and just out to enjoy some good music culture in the city.
Anyway, I digress, where were we…
So I then went back to The Garrison to see James K – solo, electronic, mostly to backing tracks with vocals. Some nice production and, despite not knowing any of the material, you could feel that the room did and the vibes were tip top.
Wake up Saturday, the final day.
I went back to Nineteen Seventy Eight and caught Dana, which was super heavy. I could barely see them because the lights were full on in the face, but the photos came out ethereal so I’ll let you imagine what it sounded like ~
I then stayed at that same venue for CDSM, which turned out to be probably my favourite set from the whole weekend because I wasn’t expecting the punch that they packed.
CDSM feature a posse, or maybe that’s not the right word, maybe they’re a collective?
But basically, the band is full of people that are super talented, each with their own distinctive style and the vocals and mood rotated around song by song, meaning it went from heavy to funky to poppy and back again. Fun stuff.
The lights at Nineteen Seventy Eight continued to be pointed in the face of the audience and strobed quite a lot, so I ended up watching about half the performance with my eyes shut, and even then I ended up with a milky-way behind my eyelids that took a good hour to die away.
I thought I was savvy ditching the ear protection, but next time I’ll wear sunglasses for sure. Oh, and just a quick update on my lack of earplugs, but I found the volume level to be great across the weekend, which was nice because I don’t need brain damage from listening to live music.
Back to St Anne’s, déjà vu, for Her New Knife, which I enjoyed for a while but honestly felt pretty understated after the bananarama of CDSM.
I enjoyed a few of their tracks, but then they had this one, which went on and on, and I was kinda glad when it finished, but that turned out to be just a dramatic pause and they started playing it again. So I took a moment to check out the church.
Again, not that this is a history piece, but St. Anne’s hall is in front of the church by the same name that burnt down in June 2024, destroying the roof of the building and torching a ceiling that was painted by members of the famous Group of Seven.
I walked back behind the hall to see the bones of the beast, and Jesus, it is pretty sad.
I guess there was a shortage of miracles the day that thing went up, although it’s just been reported this week that the police are now investigating the fire as a likely arson?! I don’t know if miracles can prevent arson, but the big man might want to look at his policies.
The good news is, apparently, three canvases from the Group of Seven were miraculously saved from the ashes. So maybe that’s the miracle after all? Or is it all just a little too convenient?
You could feel the grounds are definitely haunted by the Group of Seven, and then going back inside St. Anne’s hall it was also very hot in there, what with all the human bodies in the room.
At least that’s what I assumed, as I waited for headliner Water From Your Eyes. Unless there was actually a devil in the basement? Best not to go there.
Water From Your Eyes was super fresh sounding and the energy was great. The New York duo – what is it about New York that’s so cool? – well they’ve got what it takes, I think.
And yeah, its funny because I see a lot of Canadian bands, and there is an element of Canadians copying the music they think they should be making and just re-purposing it, but it’s something else to be making music in a well-defined genre and yet to somehow make it feel unique and genuine, which Water From Your Eyes achieved. Maybe the Americans just do it better?
And all my Canadian buddies, don’t take that too hard because I know a good bunch of you are quite easily upset.
My message to you would be to keep creating without looking over your shoulder or checking the chords of your favourite songs, cos we’re here living in the future, and the past will inevitably impact you, so no need to recreate Pink Floyd.
Let it rest in peace with Syd Barrett. And by all means, bump it in the shower.
So as I promised, I then headed to BSMT 254, where a different member of Holy Fuck was playing in another cool project, and it was a great sign-off. Thank you Cut Cult.
And yeah, I think that’s more than enough ramblings from me.
Thank you, Project Nowhere, for an excellent weekend of music, and I’ll see you all in another dimension. Find out more about the festival on their website.
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What is Gonzo Journalism?
Popularized by Hunter S. Thompson, it features a first-person narrative, often using exaggeration, sarcasm, and humour to convey the feeling of events rather than just the facts. This approach prioritizes the author’s personal experience and “subjective truth” over traditional objectivity, often resulting in a stream-of-consciousness style with social critique.
