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Babylon Telecom
Sometimes we wonder if Matt Blair (pictured above) is a Cylon. There’s only so many explanations for the man’s inexhaustible prowess with, well, pretty much everything.
Already renowned as the mind behind Indiepolitik, Mediareform.ca, and the co-founder of Strong Words, Matt’s at it again. Babylon Telecom, his newest turntable-driven musical experiment, kicked off on March 14 to a rousing debut at the Gladstone Art Bar, drawing a diverse sonic roster. After another performance on May 2, featuring Now Yr Taken, DJ Nemo Burbank, and We Love, Babylon Telecom kept rolling with a pilot project called Superliminal Sound, hosted on May 14 at IV Lounge. This Saturday, following a dizzyingly meteoric past few months, Babylon Telecom is at Lot 16, hosting the first in a series called Social Work.
Despite his well-deserved acclaim, Matt will be the first to tell you that Babylon Telecom—like many of his projects—transcends one person’s ownership. True to form, he humbly shrugs off the credit and takes a back seat, allowing the project to speak for itself. “They’ve got a pretty novel, humourous approach to some pretty heavy social issues,” he says of the group, “and that makes for a totally different kind of show than the kind I’m used to seeing or doing.”
In keeping with the ethical mandate of his many endeavours—Strong Words, for example, is a firm supporter of the Metro Toronto Movement for Literacy—Social Work is billed as “music with a message,” with Saturday’s event promising “an eclectic night of socially-conscious music.” “Hundreds of people are going to go out to a club in Toronto on a Saturday night and play a bunch of other people’s records,” Matt explains. “If we’re going to do the same, then we might as well play some music with a message.” As an alternative to the regular club fare, Matt hopes to give the progressive caste of Toronto’s music scene a fair shake. “There are plenty of talented people out there making music with meaning, and a night that celebrates those people is really the best of both worlds.”
The series’ first night once again features DJ Nemo Burbank of Brampton, an artist Matt describes as “the perfect kind of DJ for a night like this. He knows more about hip hop than anyone else I know, and he’s got a real love of meaningful, honest music on one hand, and a total contempt for phony bullshit on the other,” adding “It also doesn’t hurt that he’s a great DJ.”
Social Work goes down at 10 p.m. Saturday night, Lot 16, 1156 Queen Street West. “In light of Monday’s events,” Matt says, “you can bet there will be plenty of George Carlin.”
Photo by funkaoshi from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.