Sound Symposium XXII: Temporal Waves, friends&

Temporal Waves

Temporal Waves is the latest project from renowned Canadian tabla player Shawn Mativetsky, transporting the tabla into a retro-future cinematic sound world. Inspired by sounds of his childhood years growing up with Atari, Nintendo, and early PCs, along with an 80s dystopian sci-fi vision of the future, the music carries a message about the environment, and our need to balance our relationship with nature and technology. Tabla, bathed in the neon glow of analog synthesizers, Temporal Waves is an excursion deep into aural science fiction.
Dynamic performer Shawn Mativetsky is widely regarded as one of Canada's leading ambassadors of the tabla and a pioneer in bridging Western and Indian classical music traditions. Acclaimed as an exceptional soloist and a leading disciple of the renowned Pandit Sharda Sahai, he is highly sought-after as both performer and educator. Mativetsky is an accomplished practitioner of Indian classical music, and is equally embedded in the contemporary music realm. An avid improviser, he can also be found accompanying countless other artists across and beyond the spectrum between jazz, pop, and global traditions.

friends&

“Here is what it feels like to listen to [friends&]. An absolutely disorienting experience, one that makes you feel like you are being dropped into a swirling ocean of sound--tones and noises, familiar and unfamiliar, rocket from one channel to another, coming back in various distorted and undistorted forms, melodies coalesce and dissipate--a totalizing, sensorily all-encompassing feeling. But one that is never not friendly and inviting! Because, thing is, [friends&] is more than anything else a dance-pop [band]--there are hooks for years... hummable melodies and shining, beautiful tones, and propulsive, electrifying rhythms. Sometimes it feels like overcomplex noise, but other times something so pure and melodic and direct will come out that it hits you right between the eyes."
- Merton, folx RYM review, February 17, 2026

friends& is a four-piece pop band featuring BC power, CT Pond [aka Amateur Painter], JC Grame [aka tirestires], and jksims. We plunder and collage glitch pop, folktronica and neo-psychedelia to produce maximalist electronic dance music. Our debut album, folx, was recently released on Dawk26 Records.