Multi-instrumentalist Colin Fisher has long been a vital presence in various aspects of Toronto’s exploratory music communities. You may have heard him performing alongside Brandon Valdivia as Not The Wind, Not The Flag, or on recordings by Caribou, or in a wide assortment of improvised scenarios. Fisher tends to gravitate toward energetic and often virtuosic performance modalities but these fiery surfaces bely his deep investment in mining music’s full expressive capacity. His recent explorations of resonant public spaces — such as those found in this video — see him engaging spontaneously with an array of different emotional registers and playing approaches.
The ever-curious Colin Fisher has a been a major presence in Canada’s music community for more than twenty years—particularly in more experimental and improvisational circles. Nothing short of a guitar virtuoso, he also wields saxophone, drums, and various other instruments with similarly refined musicality, vivid textural imagination, and sometimes feral abandon. On his one-man-bandtape Garden of Unknowning for Manchester’s Tombed Visions, one hears all of this as he spars with different iterations of himself on guitar, sax, drum kit, synthesizer and more. The Quietus’ cassette critic Tristan Bath extolled it as “miraculous,” adding that “it’s a visceral experience soaking up this record, and it’s all down to Fisher’s utterly innate sense of musicality.” He subsequently cited it in his 2018 contributor’s year-end chart for the Wire.
The diversity of his skill, entwines that of collaborator Brandon Valdivia to lend the high-velocity performances of their polymorphous psych-improv duo Not The Wind, Not The Flag an urgent intrigue. The pair darts between different set-ups, building kaleidoscopic worlds on a foundation of cunningly deployed loops.
The recent Living Midnight (on Astral Spirits), features him leading the all-star Colin Fisher Quartet on sax alongside seasoned free jazz protagonists Marc Edwards, Brandon Lopez, and Daniel Carter. He’s also made two duo albums with celebrated Nova Scotian jaw harp innovator chik white for Dylan and Lisa Nyoukis’ Chocolate Monk label.
In 2014 his partnership with Nick Millevoi’s trio Many Arms on Suspended Definition (Tzadik) prompted Spin’s Brad Cohan to remark”Many Arms have dug even deeper into math-metal wizardry, bolstering their already imposing lineup with gale-force blowing guest saxophonist Colin Fisher, thus blasting their outré sonic blitz into a fire-breathing free jazz otherworld.” Fisher later engaged the band’s bassist, Johnny DeBlase, to team up with him and Kid Millions (Oneida, Man Forever) as Monas. As an ongoing collaborator to introspective dance music auteur Caribou, Fisher first appeared in offshoot project Caribou Vibration Ensemble, and subsequently on acclaimed albums Swim and Suddenly. In addition to performing alongside the likes of Jaime Branch, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Laraaji, Gerry Hemmingway, and Fred Frith, he has contributed to recordings by the Constantines (Sub Pop), Bernice (Arts & Crafts), Rhys Chatham (Table of the Elements), Born Ruffians (Warp), Anthony Braxton and AIMToronto Orchestra (Spool), and many more. Photo credit: Ilyse Krivel
You can find Colin’s complete discography on his website
CMC Presents Multilocation is generously supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, the Department of Canadian Heritage, The SOCAN Foundation, FACTOR, The Ontario Arts Council, The Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Foundation. This presentation is also supported by The McLean Foundation and the Canada Arts Presentation Fund.
