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Music

Sandro Perri

SANDRO PERRI at the Tranzac (292 Brunswick), Saturday (November 12), and Sunday (November 13), 8 pm. $10-$12. 416-923-8137. See listing.


Sandro Perri’s new album, Impossible Spaces (Constellation) isn’t just his best work yet but also a strong candidate for best album on many critics’ year-end lists (mine included).

Perri’s always enjoyed a fair amount of love in the press, but Impossible Spaces finally succeeds at combining his experimental techno side with his intimate folk-pop side.

The Toronto musician and producer, however, had no idea he was working on anything particularly special.

“I really have no gauge for things like this,” he says, laughing, during a tour stop in Montreal.

According to Perri, his main motivation is always simply to do something new with each release.

“My working method has a lot to do with reacting to what I’ve done previously. I’m trying to see what’s out there that I haven’t explored yet. Music is a safe place to explore different things.

“With this album, I wanted things to be a little more artificial-sounding, but that was all I knew in the beginning.”

Perri first came to our attention as Polmo Polpo, making left-field ambient house based around lap steel. Using his own name and various other pseudonyms over the past decade, he’s experimented with dozens of styles, all of which come together perfectly on Impossible Spaces.

But as beautiful and original as the sonics are, it’s the songs themselves that make it an essential listen. While it’s not a morbid album, the spectre of death looms in the background, and not just on the title track, whose co-writer, Jordan Somers, passed away before the song was recorded.

“I don’t think there’s any mourning on the record,” says Perri. “It’s more like acceptance, or trying to get closer to acceptance. Death is a pretty rich topic to write about and offer a listener. It tends to resonate with people, maybe because we all know it’s going to happen.”

If anything, music gives him a place to talk about mortality as well as a way of dealing with his own.

“Any creative act gives you immediate evidence of your existence. In the absence of having children, the creative act is the next logical thing.”

benjaminb@nowtoronto.com

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