Bias Ply has been making sounds and putting them out there since 1990. These
sounds are more like experiments than music. The first cassette issued in 1990 was favourably reviewed in Maximum Rock'n'Roll,
it was a weird review, comparing the recording to Adrian Sherwood... Not a bad thing mind you, he's pretty super cool, and
he's someone Bill Laswell didn't even know about, until I told him, ....that's another story. ... But anyway, a weird musical
comparison all the same.
Bias Ply's cassettes (and then cds) were put into handmade packaging and sold for a modest amount at various recordstores
around Southern Ontario, like the Orange Monkey in Waterloo, and a couple in Ottawa. Various cassettes made it onto
campus radio playlists too.
Another project by Bias Ply involved a stash of tunes that hadn't been put out yet, like 50 or so, so tracks were randomly
selected and burned to unlabeled cds and left in public places around Guelph. The idea being that people are predisposed
to the reception of music based on the influence of the packaging, band name, song titles etc. this experiment circumvents
that, but also provides no feedback on the results. Who cares, the effect should only be felt by the recipient.
Very few people pay any attention to Bias Ply these days despite the fact
he's never stopped putting out stuff and that it's been more accessable online. These sounds could quite possibly be
described as Difficult Listening (...you know like the opposite of Easy Listening).
Don't bother looking for a myspace, or some such crap, Bias Ply doesn't have time for things like that, he makes sounds
and then you listen to them, got it?
The sounds that B.P. makes varies... and includes straight up obnoxious noise, dub-reggae with a lo-fi/noisey bent, frantic
and crazy almost a-rythmic jungle, and other strange electro-acoustic things. He started releasing each 'genre' separately,
but decided to just put it all together, more of a complete picture.
