Toronto is quickly becoming a breeding ground for sub genres of music, including a burgeoning noise rock scene. Toronto's own Gastric Female Reflex fits snugly between improvised noise and performance art. Kat Burns took some time to email the band, consisting of Jacob Horwood and Andrew "Charles Balls" Zuckerman, and ask them some questions.

Your name is quite interesting. What's the story?

Jacob Horwood: When we formed as a band there were three of us. Each person picked one word, and that would be a jumble of a band name. The ex-member choose "female", Andrew choose "gastric "and I choose "reflex".

Toronto is becoming somewhat of a Mecca for noise bands, with the spotlight really being shone on them in the last year or so. Do you think this helps things or is it just too much of a good thing?

JH: Noise can be terrible to listen to, if it is pulled off for the sake of making noise. I have contempt for a lot of 'noise genres'. I think that noise music both insults the intelligence of some listeners, while making others feel as if they are in a higher dimension. In terms of the Toronto noise scene, Brian Ruryk is still tops. Toronto noise shows are cool, but fans aren't yet ready to party. I really want to mosh in a circle pit at the next 13 moons gig!
AZ: Mecca is enormous. Is that why we're playing Wavelength?

So you seem to have a penchant for producing strange noises, especially "creaks" and "groans" as many live reviews mention. Could these sounds be echoing any sort of gastrointestinal noises? Is there any connection?

JH: There wasn't any connection at the beginning, (see how band was named question) but eventually our sounds became much like our band name. This occurred for me by listening to pulses widths or 555 based synths very slow, EQing the shit out of them and taking it from there. It's actually very easy; you just produce a lot of shitty sounds on a road to a bunch of good ones. Yes it would most likely sound great if you could amplify the internal system of a woman giving birth...7" material no doubt. Body sounds are great, they tell you when you need more nettle and astragalus.
AZ: Interesting that you should mention that. I guess now is a good time to state our conceptual backbone which is scatophilia and the symbolic retention of feces. Maybe we think that hovering over the porcelain latrine in utter ecstasy whilst a husky turd lingers somewhere bellow the surface is something to giggle about, so it would only make sense that the sounds we discharge should be an analogue to this, although I'm not going to lie and say that I haven't somewhere down the line recorded myself in the very act described.

Upon googling you I could find very little other than short descriptions of your creaks, groans and beeps. Is there a reason there isn't a lot of information available on you guys online?

JH: I guess it's cause we can't afford to send promos to people unless they are willing to distribute Beniffer Editions (GFR's latest release). But come on, we have a bunch of cool hits. I think we are the number one google result for "scatophilic locker room drama" OR "pizza hocus pocus". We have a geocities website without flash, so people should find it quite easily.

By Kat Burns