MUTEK 2024 | Lamin Fofana (Live set) and JS Baillat (VJ) Launch the Nocturne Series

The PAN M 360 team is criss-crossing the entire MUTEK 2024 program, picking up as many artists as possible during this 25th edition of its Montreal version. Keep up with our experts until Sunday evening, as no other MUTEK event promises such extensive media coverage!

Opening the Nocturne series presented at the SAT until the last night of MUTEK, West African-born New Yorker Lamin Fofana and Quebecer JS Baillat formed a more than enigmatic audiovisual pairing. The first set featured visual tryptics on the wall behind them, vaporous black-and-white images set against a backdrop of lunar craters and moving waves. This music was the fruit of a hybrid set: controller, drum machine, vinyl turntable, 45 minutes of experimental, highly mental ambient drone, on the fringes of contemporary concrete music. The prevailing noisiness exerted its hold with endless layers of sound.

We also felt the sizzle of the needle on the groove. The SAT was in suspension until the final techno explosion: hardcore drums and percussive kicks. Fofana likes to integrate original compositions, outdoor sound recordings and archival elements to create multi-sensory installations that challenge the audience and then bring them back to their vital impulses. His most recent exhibition –Dark Waters with William Turner – was at Tate Liverpool. And that’s just the beginning. The VJ – accustomed to working for C2MTL, Ariane Moffat, Place des Arts, Moment Factory, Cirque du Soleil – played on this correlation to transcend the whole and lift us into this hypnotic universe.

Photo credit: Bruno Destombes