Chris Dadge lives in Calgary, Alberta, where he works as a percussionist, producer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, record label operator, and concert organizer.
As an improvising musician, Dadge has spent the bulk of his years playing percussion, attempting to develop a voice using an increasingly open-ended variety of sound-generating objects, integrating found items and re-purposed strings. To wit, Massimo Ricci writes, “the almost perfect balance between skin, wood and metal-derived timbres is definitely cherished,” and a review from Volcanic Tongue noted, “Dadge has a fleet, needling style that would transpose Milford Grave’s multi-pulse work to a looser, more thought-paced setting, working in bursts of propulsion and single emphatic sound events.” This underlying quest for a unique vocabulary led to the broadening of the instrumental palette, adding violin, broken electronics, crude sampling, and various other small instuments to the list. The current realization of this approach can be heard in Dadge’s work with Scott Munro in the Bent Spoon Duo, in which “the two approach improvisation from an anti-classicist stance, instead opting for a scrape and drape sound that finds the two moving between instruments and mood in rapid fire succession,” (Henry Smith, Ear-Conditioned Nightmare) as well as on his solo albums, A Bird Is A Light Thing and What Comes After Dust, and the self-titled release from The Midnighties, with Cody Oliver. Dadge has worked with, among others, Peter Evans, Eric Chenaux, Mats Gustafsson, Christian Munthe, Gordon Allen, Chad van Gaalen, Rachael Wadham, Colin Fisher, and Shane Krause.
The activites in improvised music were umbrella’d over a half-decade ago, under the name Bug Incision (www.bugincision.com), which is a concert series and record label run by Dadge. Over 50 recordings and five years’ worth of near-monthly concerts have occurred.
Dadge is also tied to the world of pop music and songs. Since 2000, he’s appeared on over 25 albums and played a lot of shows with acts such as Lab Coast, Jay Crocker, Lorrie Matheson, Samantha Savage Smith, Sandy Cassels, Extra Happy Ghost, Faux Fur, You Are Minez, Laura Leif, Snailhouse, Thighs, Dolly Sillito, Woodpigeon, Aaron Booth, Clinton St. John, and Chris Vail. The debut recordings from Phil Withers, Dadge's solo project, are finished, and available online. He is currently playing drums with Samantha Savage Smith, You Are Minez, Extra Happy Ghost, Sandy Cassels, and Jon Gant.
Dadge also co-leads (along with David Laing) Lab Coast, which is currently the main non-Bug Incision project. The band (whose live incarnation features Scott Munro, Shawn Dicey, and Henry Hsieh) has released two short albums (Exclaim! refers to the music as "short, deceptively simple drops of catchy-as-hell indie rock") and a split 7" with fellow Calgarians Extra Happy Ghost (" Effortlessly appealing pop songs," says FFWD). They just witnessed the release of their new split 7" (with Friendo, on UK label Faux Discx) and are preparing a tape for Night People.
“Perhaps the most prolific musical polygamist in town.” Swerve Magazine