Dressed to the 9
Grab a costume and head to The Absent Sound’s ninth solstice celebration
Don Beat

“The Sircus is going to be a real packed evening of entertainment,” announces Absent Sound guitarist/wall-of-sound creator/ElementSircus co-founder Dave Fort.

“There’s been a real step up in enthusiasm, help, and a collective effort on putting together a great evening,” he says.

Fort’s abso-bloody-lutely right about Element Sircus 9, which will kick off at 8:30 p.m. on Dec. 22 at the Pyramid Cabaret.

The juicy solstice celebration is a stubbed ’n’ stuccoed soirée somewhere between a one-stop Festival Express train, the last day in the Folk Fest campground and the much-missed Corefest.

“This time the ElementSircus features Absent Sound with Fubuki Daiko, Mahogany Frog, Ham and Sortie Real, featuring guitarist Dave Sweatman from Redsayno,” Fort says before adding that he’s excited about “bringing different types of people together to celebrate the winter solstice.”

Then Fort hits on one of the main ideas of the Sircus event.

“Audience participation is a huge foundation of the Sircus. You are the Sircus,” he says. “It’s something that is still growing, and it truly is a forum to reach out to people and celebrate on the longest night of the year.

“And a big part of that is to come in costume. If you do have a ticket to the Sircus you can get costumes for half price at Ragpickers. You can be the person or entity that you never could be in public at the Sircus.”

Fort and original Absent Sound member Rob Menard, along with Ragpickers Antifashion Emporium proprietress Kristen Andrews, first introduced the ElementSircus to Winnipeggers back in 2001.

“Absent Sound was an entity that was already going before I joined. We lived out in Pine Falls for a year when we first started. Rob and I conceptualized the idea of having a solstice celebration in Pine Falls, and the first one we ever did was at the Albert. Kristen was involved right from the hop,” Fort summarizes after indicating that the group has since held eight consecutive solstice Sircus events in Saskatoon as well as Winnipeg.

“Rob and I played our first show together at the first Sircus — The Get With It Sircus,” Fort reminisces so U solstice-celebrating streetists can be sure-fire Absent Sound bio/info completists.

It’s been a busy year for The Absent Sound. As well as co-ordinating the Sircus celebration, the sound collective released its current inner-ear-washing album It’s All True on Lee Repko’s No List Records before travelling to New York with Jim Demos from Ham, where the guys lived for a month and a half earlier this year.

“We toured back and forth in the States in August through October,” Fort says. “We volunteered at the Touch & Go Records 25th-anniversary street celebration in Chicago, and we played shows in Michigan, Minnesota and New York.”

The A-Sound’s current lineup consists of Fort and Menard, Demos hammering drums, and recurring member Josh Butcher playing keys and plying visuals to enhance the collective’s live experience.

“He’s toured with us before. He ran projectors and painted while we played,” Fort says of Butcher. Then he drops a hint about one of the present highlights of ElementSircus 9:

“We’re going to be performing a portion of our set with Fubuki Daiko, and there will be Fire Pixies and Gaia Pente, which is a different kind of belly dancing, and I’m looking forward to the trader’s post this year. That’s the market area.”

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