Instrumental jazz fusion is having a moment and while they may not have Angine de Poitrine’s polka dots and masks, Yellowknife’s Cold Fusion is leading audiences into an altered state.
Their style is a blend of jazz, funk, rock and soul, drawing from the period of music in the late 60s and early 70s when jazz and rock merged. “What came out of it was the cream of the crop of music composition and improvisational playing,” Tyler Hawkins said.
While Cold Fusion’s four members began performing together in 2023, Pat Braden and Norm Glowach had played together before – “when dinosaurs roamed the Earth,” Glowach joked.
“We thought it would be really great to play this music again,” he said. The two added Hawkins and Andrew Jossa to round out the group.
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Cold Fusion shows feature instrumental covers and some original music, but their shows have no lyrics. They instead leave room for improvisation, so the same song comes across differently from show to show.
“That’s exactly the reason,” Braden said.
“We’re playing these songs that have been written by other people, and they have melody lines and they have structure. We do an interpretation of that. It’s improvisation with the reins still on.
“Once we hit the solo section, we just let go of it, and it can go wherever it wants to go. So it’s never the same performance from one time to the next. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a rehearsal or whether it’s a performance.”
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“Things emerge that you couldn’t have planned for,” Hawkins added.
“Sometimes we play a song that we’ve been playing for three or more years now, and something new happens.”
Friday night’s show at Yellowknife’s Top Knight, titled Altered State, reflects this improvisational nature and serves to pull listeners into being one with the universe. Glowach said the psychedelic sound and visuals all work to draw you into a different state of being.
As musicians, he said, the four are influenced by the audience and other performers. “We become one with the dancer, the dancer becomes one with us.”
“We’re hoping the same thing happens as the lights are flicking on and off, you’re looking at giant mushrooms and we’re playing,” Glowach said.
“We’ll have some visual elements,” said Jossa. “The idea is that these visual elements and these audio elements merge into this one cohesive experience – an altered state, if you will.”
Asked who should attend Friday’s show, the members said they’ve been surprised by the wide range of ages at recent gigs.
Braden said they’ve been told their song choices can spark a forgotten memory. “Some of the old people will hear one of the older songs that we play and go, ‘Oh, geez, I remember hearing that when I was in a café in Paris when I was a kid.’ They all go on their own little trips,” he said. For others, it’s “a whole new experience.”
Hawkins said the style of music has come back with more audiences interested in exploring jazz fusion. “You hear people talking about bands that are playing polyrhythmic rhythms, and they’re actually playing. It’s not sequencers doing the work,” he said.
Doors for Cold Fusion: Altered State are at 7pm on Friday with music from 8-10:30pm. Tickets are available at the door.
