Kevin Shutterbug passed notes under the door between his and Don Scott's rooms. Don and Michael Herring chinwagged until Kevin banged on the wall and said, 'œShut up, I'm trying to sleep.'? Between viewings of Homestar Runner and Slime Volleyball matches, Don and Michael emailed Kevin rambling answers. Kevin prepared their answers for publication.

Bokker? Buckle? Band? We were jamming with Rob Mosher one day and realized that we should be a band. So we brewed up a pot of Gen Mai Chi and headed to the roof of Don's house for the obligatory band name discussion. Rob had been playing his horn with his belt buckle and we thought it would be funny to be some sort of Buckle Band. After much talk, we invented the word Bokker. Long circular debates and bullshit discussion quickly became the basis of the Bokker Buckle Band. We soon added Joe Sorbara on percussion, who also liked to talk. The group discourse has become as important as the actual performed music.

Do I need a degree? Definitely not! On stage we are musicians. All of our chatter is mostly left at home and in the studio. During our recent recording session, the engineer asked for a copy of our manual. The process of creating through dialogue and interruption fulfills our desire to find new means of bringing structure and concept to improvised music. This has manifested itself through a system of verbal instructions, often in the form of games, which has developed into a set of hand signals, and usually results in a lot of chaos on stage. A lot of this came from checking out John Zorn's music, especially the Cobra game-piece. Our composing, both collectively and individually, also comes from this same process. We listened to a lot of Anthony Braxton and Dave Douglas' music and started experimenting with graphic pieces (pictures and diagrams that we try to turn into music), and pieces that provide a framework for improvising. The rocking sections and live antics make the band a lot of fun to see and keep it accessible to a wide audience.

'œSongs'? or 'œPieces'?? If a song means that there is written material, we do play them. There is written material that does get played every time. Due to the nature of improvised music, we are constantly changing and re-interpreting our pieces, possibly not giving the work the same recognizability as a pop song. We are releasing a CD in the fall of 2004, and will hopefully have the Candy set out on VHS or DVD by our Wavelength gig.

'œCandy set'?? Our friend Leilah brought us a box of musically inclined candy, and we molded it into our set and stomachs on stage. We've used a lot of strange things musically, along with our regular instruments. Michael plays the double bass but will pick up some strange sticks, antennae, and fun beads. Don uses a few effect pedals, alligator clips, chopsticks, and a toolbox. Rob mostly plays soprano saxophone, Crayola-box-o-flutes, and occasionally his belt buckle. He used to play accordion but doesn't seem to bring it to gigs anymore. Joe is a fantastic drummer and brings mystery stuff to bang, mystery stuff to shake, and balloons. We integrate anything that's around (we're like musical raccoons) into our set '” the space, random objects, even the audience.

Two scenes: 'œImprov Jazz'? vs. 'œIndie Rock'?? Our interest in the indie scene began with checking out the Escape Goat Records Compilation release show last summer. It was our first Toronto indie rock show and we were surprised to find an audience digging music that has elements of noise and sound art mixing with intellectual compositions and crazy odd meters. The improv jazz scene generally seems to attract an older, sit-down kind of audience, and we were excited about an opportunity to play for our own generation, who would appreciate our type of music like they would a rock show. We played a great rooftop patio show with Colin Fisher of Sing That Yell That Spell, and a house party with Guitarkestra and Matt Schmidth. The two scenes are very similar with many people crossing over, which is leading to a great new sound in Toronto.