about the record

Matthew Bailey, Carl Schilde, and Scott Harper play improvised music that oscillates between bingo hall Casio suites and kosmische dreamscapes. Performing under the name Playdate, the trio is sometimes accompanied by '90s instructional videos, larger-than-life amateur dancers, and outdated light shows.

Their sophomore album, Wonderland, was sourced from a monthly residency in a sports bar basement and a one-off show at a now-defunct cassette duplication facility. Each night, they were joined by one of Toronto’s more adventurous musicians: no warm-ups, no practice sessions, no pre-game huddles. Every track is an artifact of performers discovering each other in real time, with clarinets, vibraphones, and pedal steel grounding and offsetting Playdate’s synthesized romps. The guests—Christine Bougie, Michael Davidson, Michael Eckert, Karen Ng, and Daniel Pencer—are all pillars of Toronto’s improv/jazz community.