Peripheral Vision - Irrational Revelation and Mutual Humiliation (2020)

This double album celebrates more than ten years of the collaboration that is Peripheral Vision. Both between Don Scott and Michael Herring, as the leaders and composers, but also our close collaboration and friendship with Trevor Hogg and Nick Fraser. This music is truly a collective process, born out of long hours in vans and late night currywursts in Germany. This is our third album collaborating with Jean Martin and we’re really excited by his “mad scientist” creative input on this double album. We’re really grateful for support from the Canada Council for the Arts, as well as the continued contributions of Jeremy Darby, Jeff Elliott, Howie Shia, our families, The Tranzac, our great Toronto music community, and all the presenters and audiences that gave us the opportunity to shape this music.

We are building on the themes of our last two albums - Sheer Tyranny Of Will and More Songs About Error And Shame. Trying to balance the drive for forward momentum with the neuroses that hold us back. In the Chinese yin-yang symbol we see a dot of black in white and white in black - yin in yang and yang in yin - Irrational Revelation is the dot of yin in the yang and Mutual Humiliation, its opposite. The “Mutual Humiliation Society” is when Michael and Nick get together to practice - the gain that comes from working on something hard (even humiliating) together. We hope this music might bring you an irrational revelation!

A note from Michael about the Reconciliation Suite:
I am grateful for the support of the Toronto Arts Council for a grant to write the Reconciliation Suite. When I got the grant, I wrote my high school friend Ry Moran, who is the director for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, and said “what do I do?” and he said “the work of reconciliation is as much (if not more) about the non-indigenous population as about aboriginal peoples. Speak from your own perspective, your own journey and your own personal discoveries.”

As a non-indigenous Canadian, writing instrumental music for a non-indigenous band, my hope for this music is that it will evoke feelings and start conversations of the need to face and address the past (and present) actions of Canada and the inequities that persist in that relationship. This music was written soon after the death of my Jewish grandfather and part of it draws on a childhood memory of him chanting the Mourner’s Kaddish in Synagogue. I hope this music makes you think, talk, and begin to address reconciliation in your life and community, and if it does, a good place to start is by reading the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Report.