As we here at Wavelength look ahead to our 10th anniversary coming up just six months on the horizon (Wavelength 500: Feb. 10-14, 2010 — mark it on yr calendars, kiddoes!), we like to pay our respects to those who came before us and laid the groundwork for us to create a free-form, freestyle indie music night where we could book whatever awesome music we felt like and didn't have to worry about keeping bar owners happy and able to pay their bills and all that.... William New and Elvis Mondays, Steve Poppyseed and Sedated Sundays, we salute you.

And then, there's our fellow-travelers, The Ambient Ping. Starting just ahead of our curve, the Ping is celebrating their 10th birthday tonight at Supermarket, back on Augusta Avenue in Kensington Market, the same street their weekly started on back on a Tuesday night in August of '99.

By their own description, The Ambient Ping is "a Toronto based creative community of audio artists, performers, musicians and visual artists. The Ping presents live multi-media performances featuring ambient, electronic, soundscape, chillout, trip hop, dream pop, downtempo, space, darkwave, drone and experimental artists from around the world." Founders Scott M2 and Jamie Todd provided a unique and invaluable forum for artists that wouldn't get booked anywhere else in the commercial club scene, yet by presenting this "serious" music in a club setting they made it more accessible to the general public. And they never sold out their mandate either, riding out six venue changes before switching to a monthly format in 2006. (Anyone remember Garvey's? Cafe Vernon? Po Boys Club? Tequila Lounge/Hacienda? The weekly also held court at the better-known and still-extant C'est What, the Gladstone and the Drake.)

Many Ping regulars have played Wavelength over the years — from Beef Terminal to The Flowers of Hell — resulting in a fertile cross-pollination between the two scenes, and we also share a visual icon in Steve Lindsey of General Chaos Visuals, master of those psychedelic abstractions that Ping-ers and WL-ers know so well. 

Tonight's bday party at Supermarket (268 Augusta Ave.) features performances by Wally & CJ Jericho (who played the very first Ping), Kalte (the live debut of a new collab by Deane "Akumu" Hughes and rik "mara's torment" maclean), dreamSTATE (Scott and Jamie's own project) and General Chaos Visuals (of course). Doors at 8, cover is $6.

So happy birthday Ping, and may you keep on droning for all eternity!

- posted by Jonny