One man’s trash is Danny Shaddick’s treasure. The Toronto architect-artist-musician’s latest work marries recordings of everyday sounds with pieces of scrap metal to create intricate instruments that produce rhythmic soundscapes on their own.
The project, a collaboration with award-winning Canadian rapper and recording artist Shadrach Kabango, a.k.a. Shad, aims to express the energy of Toronto and represent the city’s unique culture.
“Our creation is a collaborative robot percussion instrument built from reclaimed materials and designed to perform with live vocals,” says Shaddick, who, like Shad, grew up in nearby London, Ontario.
If that sounds unusual, so was Shaddick’s process: He salvaged pieces from Toronto Transit Commission refuse barns and made field recordings throughout the city, in and around transit vehicles, and down by the water. These recordings were cut and mixed together to create a sonic backdrop to the project’s mechanical centerpiece.
Next, Shad layered his original lyrics and vocals live on top of the robotic percussive components and found-sound atmosphere. Shad pays tribute to Toronto in verse: “Friends blending machine and machine like / The wide screens so / We represent the scene right … We make space / Where trees stood in the Great Lakes / Meeting place where new / Relations would take shape.”
The result, Moving Monuments, reframes what a monument can be – not something fixed in place, but the living, breathing movement of the people who give Toronto its rhythm.
Listen to Moving Monuments
“Toronto is home, first and foremost,” says Shad, host of Netflix docuseries, “Hip-Hop Evolution.” He’s found the city’s embrace of all genres and rhythms to be unique. “This is a savvy music town.”
The duo landed on the idea, in part inspired by Toronto’s annual street festivals like Toronto Caribbean Carnival, celebrating the city’s Caribbean community, and Taste of Manila, which centers on Filipino food and culture.
Shaddick has been passionate about finding the rhythm and music in machinery for decades. A previous project, Robot Orchestra, in which machines played acoustic instruments, was a response to the pandemic physically separating artists.
“You can invent new music when you invent a new instrument,” Shaddick says.
With “Moving Monuments,” which looks a bit like a drum machine that wants to be a towering tree, the repurposed parts create their own unique sounds when struck by programmable electronic components. Shaddick also sourced additional pieces from favorite shops, including drums from Soul Drums in Uptown Toronto, shakers from African Drum and Arts Craft on Dundas Street, and cabasas from Steve’s Music on Queen Street West.
The structural center of the instrument is a standard lighting rig truss, meaning the parts can be attached in dozens of different ways. Shaddick imagines that as the piece travels around the world, showing off the best of Toronto, it can be broken down and reassembled “in ways that are a little bit improvisational,” reflecting the humanity of the automated rhythms. The robot stands tall, covered and surrounded by human elements: local instruments, personal lyrics, the rhythms of Toronto’s cultures and community.
Sustainability is a vital element of all of Danny’s inventive projects. “Danny’s approach to sustainability is, like Toronto, charmingly understated and practically wise,” says Shad.
Shaddick values how Shad brought an essential lyrical layer to the endeavor. “With this project, it couldn’t just be rhythm. It needed more of a soul. It needed a voice. That’s where Shad comes in,” Shaddick says of his multidisciplinary collaborator. “He’s amazing, an amazing lyricist.”
Both collaborators hope that the project will bring new attention to the possibilities of combining art and technology as well as to Toronto’s unique mix of sounds and cultures.
