The Chemical Spray was a blight of noise emanating from the deserted alleyways of east Vancouver in the dull pocket of a new age. The towers had come down and the world seemed like it was on fire, it raged with uncertainty and everywhere around us were the trembling minions of panic. We thought that we were different, that we were somehow capable of pushing back the waves of madness around us with layers of sonic dissonance and stabs of accidental feedback. We worked hard to introduce random and unpredictable events into our songs. Jordyn would create a daisy chain of phases and delays with his pedals and I’d push some shredded loops thru my 808 to keep the head nods guessing. Parker put it better, though, as she often did. She loved that weird shit that we used to do just Jordyn and I before she and Alice joined and took us from weird unlistenable freak show noise to eat your heart out post punk jam alliance. It was a bit of a make over, for sure. “Hey Buster,” Parker said into the mic between songs during a packed gig at the Piccadilly on Pender. We were opening for some Sub Pop wannabes that nobody ever saw or heard from again. “Give me some of that old school 808 and put it thru the paper shredder. We gotta keep the dance floor honest.” | image @chrispyrate