Brittany Fraser

Wyrd Science | Wyrd Fest organizer Aaron Levin has listened to so much strange music over the years, it all sounds normal to him.

WYRD FEST
Featuring Peace, Shearing Pinx, Gobble Gobble, AHNA, Myelin Sheaths, Moby Dicks, The Famines, Friendo, Grown-Ups, Ex-Boyfriends, Feral Children, Outdoor Miners, The Wicked Awesomes!, Krang, JAZZ, Test Patterns & more? Cosmopolitan Music Society (8426 Gateway Blvd). Sat, Nov 14. Tickets: $15, available through Blackbyrd Myoozik.

“Edmonton is an embodiment of the difficulties of living in Canada: it’s cold, it’s remote, it’s a victim of suburban planning. It’s a classic example of the things that go against building a musical scene.” So says Aaron Levin, former CJSR music director and the man behind Canada’s most important source for independent Canadian fringe music, the blog Weird Canada (weirdcanada.com). He’s also the central planner of Wyrd Fest, an all-day, 16-band event taking place in the heart of a city that seems designed to discourage independent, challenging, experimental music.

The lineup includes local indie, weird pop, and puke garage (Outdoor Miners, The Famines, Gobble Gobble, Wicked Awesomes!, Krang, JAZZ), doom and noise rock from Vancouver (AHNA, Shearing Pinx), experimental noise-pop from Saskatoon (Feral Children), echoing garage-punk from Lethbridge (Moby Dicks, Myelin Sheaths), lo-fi and punk from Calgary (Friendo, Ex-Boyfriends, Grown-Ups) and even some less-weird but still outstanding sounds from abroad (Peace).

Edmonton’s remote locale (and in November, no less!) is a strange (or maybe perfect?) place to stage a festival of the bizarre, but Levin sees it as a reflection of Weird Canada’s online presence. “It almost should be ‘Weird Canada Fest,’” he says, “but I wanted to keep it as a vaguely separate entity to give it a little more freedom and room for growth in a way that the website can’t. The process of curation is the same. It’s not all weird music, though my own tastes definitely venture into area of the fringe musical cosmos. There are bands that resonate with me that are on musical genre boundaries, none of them are signed to major labels (or even big indie labels), and they’re all Canadian.”

It seems like a festival with a mission, but Levin says that it came together by accident. Six touring bands from Canada’s musical fringe all happened to be playing Edmonton the same day, so Levin decided to have them all play together ... and then add some more. The brainstorm looks like it’s paid off. “Usually when you’re promoting a show,” Levin says, “you want people to buy advance tickets so there’s this cushion there. But now I’m experiencing something I’ve never experienced before: I’m trying to get friends to buy tickets so that I don’t have to turn them away at the door.”

This is not Levin’s first show; he’s previously set up successful all-ages shows at eccentric venues like Steel Wheels Pizza and the Bonnie Doon Bowling Lanes (he’s approached 25 Cent Peeps and Laser Quest too, but so far they haven’t bit), but Wyrd Fest is definitely the biggest and most complete assemblage of Western Canadian fringe music ever assembled.

“It’d be great if Wyrd became something that attracted bands to Edmonton in the same way that Sled Island [in Calgary] and Pop Montreal do in those respective cities,” Levin says. “But I have to start slow and start small, so at this time I’m just trying to take it as it comes. I’ve certainly been stressed out and have reached a number of roadblocks, like getting insurance, alcohol, security. I mean, it’s not easy doing this. But it’s also been quite rewarding and quite successful, so that’s really encouraging.”