POP Montréal is undoubtedly one of the major fall events for true music fans. From Wednesday, September 27 to Sunday, October 1, dozens and dozens of discoveries and acclaims from artists nestled in pop are taking place in Montreal. Follow the PAN M 360 team until Sunday!
Thursday Evening at Piccolo Rialto
Loraine James
Loraine James has just released Gentle Confrontation, a 16-track album on the Hyperdub label. That’s pretty much what it was all about on Thursday night at Piccolo Rialto. Hailing from the UK, the producer and DJ had shone at last year’s MUTEK, and this time she migrated to Pop Montreal to present a thoroughly conclusive set. The material of Gentle Confrontation was not duplicated on stage; instead, the musician opted for an inspired re-reading of this material. The more conceptual elements of the album are set aside in favor of an energetic approach, given the context of a set presented at 1 a.m. in a nightclub setting.
The foundation of this material lies in the contrast between rhythmic machine-gun fireworks in the tradition of Afro-British electronic culture (jungle, dub, drum N bass, dubstep, grime) and “orchestral” counterparts featuring rich harmonies and gentle melodies, sometimes vocal, that are at once tributary to soul, modern classical music and electronic ambient. The key to this brilliant art lies in the dialectic between these muscular pulsations and the ethereal music that hovers over them. Some of this tension is exaggerated, with too much percussion confronting melodic-harmonic voluptuousness.
Kate NV
The previous set on the program was by Russian producer Kate NV alias Katya Shilonosova, a program that was certainly electronic, but more pop and even traversed with jazz-world harmonies, involving various on-stage manipulations. Her biographical profile indicates that the 30-year-old studies architecture creates “curious and colorful” characters and improvises live with various gizmos such as bells and toy synthesizers. Kate NV’s universe is clearly linked to childhood, to phantasmagorical worlds where sounds are at the heart of wonder. That said, we’re not exclusively in the world of childhood, as beefier beats and more complex harmonies come into play, leading to the conclusion that Kate NV has notions of instrumental composition in addition to being the electro producer of an original if not at times disheveled, corpus.
LaFHomme
First up was LaFHomme, a visibly gender-neutral artist from Montreal, who presented a dynamic set with Afro-British and soul/R&B influences. Jungle/drum’n’bass rhythms alternated with typical soul harmonies and melodies. In short, quality is the order of the day in this nice set, but we’re left to conclude that it’s more a case of synthesizing than asserting singularity – musically at least.
