Teen Sleuth/and the Freed Cyborg Choir

Collaboration Ellen Smallwood/Aleks Schurmer

"A coming of age story that will make you want to stand up and cheer"

Visit the Teen Sleuth Web Archive

Festival Phenomenon, Montreal 2012
The Music Gallery, Toronto 2011
HTMlles Festival, Montréal 2010
Pop Montreal Festival, Montréal 2009
Fringe Festival, Montreal 2009

 

Teen Sleuth is a Montreal art rock band known for their other-worldy, multi-disciplinary performances. Ellen Smallwood’s songs are interpreted by seven musicians and brought to life by Frances Mckenzie’s video projections; creating an eco-feminist mirror of
fantasy/ reality.

Surrounded by projected trees, Teen Sleuth will occupy a sacred clearing. Exploring the eco-system of our hearts and minds is an attempt to reconcile our pasts/ presents/ futures. A glade in the forest is nature’s theatre, a gathering place for animals, an incubator of ideas, a shelter for spirits; from the darkest to the light. From birth we reside in man-made spaces, so where better to contemplate our disconnect than in a simulated clearing, in an artificial forest, in a bar, in the city- (with rock music)? Teen Sleuth will mask your senses, transporting you to uncolonized dreamscapes.

"If we don't stand up for love, that's how they're gonna kill us..."

 

Black Circle Shuffle

Choreography & performance Allison Elizabeth Burns

Montreal art rock band Teen Sleuth's official video for the song "Black Circle Shuffle" from their debut EP "Where the Animals Trace the Stars". Production by Frances Mckenzie (sets, art, costumes, editing, filming) and co-directed by Ellen Smallwood and Frances Mckenzie. Featuring many Teen Sleuth kids . "I have all my fears in a paper bag that I just can't seem to lose."

photo credit: Camille McOuat

Teen Sleuth/Ope-raw

Press/Uncanny Valley Girls/Teen Sleuth & the Freed Cyborg Choir. Mesmerizing.

 

Press Snippets

"A multimedia, hipster pop-opera may not sound appetizing but it was hard not to be won over by Teen Sleuth & the Freed Cyborg Choir, which ran every evening in a small theatre upstairs on St-Laurent. Equal parts high-school glee club, Andrew Lloyd Webber, eco-feminist honours thesis and Godspeed You Black Emperor!, its projections, puppetry, dance, pageantry and song burst with youthful talent..."
Carl Wilson, The Globe & Mail

 

"Well-crafted songs that mix Broadway musical with Irish drinking songs with Bowie take us through the ...other-worldly journey." Pat Donnelly, Montreal Gazette