Ostrich Tuning

Ostrich tuning began in Toronto during the winter of 2007 when Ian McPhedran and Ami Spears decided to put theirs hearts and minds together to make music. The two connected shortly after Ami moved to Toronto from Austin TX, to join another band (infighter). With similar musical interests and a great appreciation for each other’s past projects, they originally planned to elaborate on songs Ian had written for an earlier band (the Slovenian National Cinema). However, after playing together for several weeks, they began to collaborate on new material and a new direction for the band that would infuse their love of drone, psychedelic, shoegaze, and experimental music. Adopting a minimalist standpoint, the group's songs are exclusively in d and favor texture and timbre over melody. Ian Mosby completed the band’s line-up in the summer of 2007. A friend of Ian McPhedran’s from the Graduate History program at York University, Mosby co-founded and was a long time contributor to revered Canadian music blog Popsheep. Having played in several Vancouver area bands, he was eager to contribute to a new project. Blending elements from Canadian Doukhobor radicalism and Texas populism, the group completed their first album in the summer of 2009, which is distributed worldwide through Toronto’s Fathom Distribution. Although Mosby left the group shortly after the release of the album, he continues to participate occasionally in the group’s live performances and will continue to contribute material for future recordings.

After a year of solid shows throughout Toronto and the GTA playing with bands as diverse as Red Mass, The Easy Targets, Old World Vulture, The Flowers of Hell, The Kinetic Stereo Kids, Action Makes, and a brief U.S. tour playing with Austin TX based Hotel Hotel and Salesman, the band evolved to include friends from other local groups (The Easy Targets, Teen Tits Wild Wives) who help thicken up the sound and allow for new levels of experimentation with the group’s material. Summed up best by noted Toronto music critic Lonely Vagabond, the shows are “Delivered with hypnotic precision and liberal doses of noise, this is a sound that merges the spirit of the Jesus & Mary Chain, The Black Angels and The Velvet Underground, a thrashing wall-of-sound, grinding guitars, glossed over by acid-tinged keyboard drones. A living monument that gives a nod to the psychedelic 60’s, shoegaze, and spacerock.”

see also: A brief history of the Ostrich Tuning-- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plugooEaQ3k&feature=related