ACT! - Face to Face, Day by Day (2024)

On August 16th the Toronto-based musician David Psutka presents the latest ACT! album, ‘Face to Face, Day by Day’, on his Halocline Trance imprint.

With improvisation and happy accidents at its core, Psutka put his faith in oblique occurrences, letting them lead, with no idea where he’d end up. Across calm sea rock, treacle-toned rich vox, liquid guitar, jazzy sax, vintage electronics and modern sonics, the pleasing results are unconventionally coherent.

This smooth, northern hemisphere soul is shaped by current sound design, but also shares DNA with bygone luxe recordists; think 10CC Y3K, a deconstructed Hall and Oates, or a zonked-out Zapp and Roger. It’s recommended if you like Conan Moccasin, Visible Cloaks, Eddie Chacon, and likeminded Canadian cohorts Junor Boys’ last album.

JB’s Jeremy Greenspan did in fact lay down some synth on the album, whilst other guests including Ben Gunning, and Robin Dann from Bernice on additional vocals, plus Caribou/Laraaji/Fred Frith collaborator Colin Fisher on sax.

David Psutka on Face to Face, Day by Day:

“In 2018, at an Egyptrixx concert at Bagni Misteriosi de Teatro Franco Parenti - a gorgeous, sprawling outdoor pool theatre in Milan - I had a clarifying moment. Gigs around then had mostly been in pummelling, dark music venues, so I wasn't prepared for this expansive space. It was the midday soundcheck that struck me most - brittle digital sounds from the set echoed off the colonial Milanese facades and ricocheted down the Via Carlo Botta, pinging off buildings in the distance and clashing with the noise of traffic, tourists and whatever else. It was a strange, collisionist moment, and a reminder that my essential approach to music is, above all, a preoccupation with the materiality of sound.

Everything on ‘Face to Face, Day by Day’ began as an improvisation. Openness to unintentional ocurences like my experience in Milan, IE aesthetic accidents on the periphery of the ‘work’ can be the message. The emotional complexity that comes from centering them in composition has become important to my output, and helps the music go beyond the possibility of what is playable, imaginable.

I also wanted to channel adventurous pop records of the 1970s and 80s, like those by Yasuaki Shimizu, Jon + Vangelis and Stevie Wonder. These came from an interesting era in commercial music, as studio production techniques became increasingly formalised as compositional devices, like AMS RMX16 percussion sounds and early digital stereo effects.

Recently I’ve wanted the studio to feel more collaborative and improvisational, and the writing and recording sessions for this album had real chemistry. Vox, synth, sax and guitar jams - much of what ended up on the record isn’t edited much, if at all. I stuck a SM57 into Colin Fisher’s sax bell and created feedback loops using various pre-amps and distortion units. The clunky sounds were sampled and used as percussion elements. I also had a great synth jam session with Jeremy Greenspan at Barton Building Studio in Hamilton, Ontario, which was recorded by filmmaker Liz Adler.”