MUTEK 2024 | Patrick Watson Electro-Instrumental, The Key to His Continued Success

The PAN M 360 team is criss-crossing the entire MUTEK 2024 program, observing 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!

When you look closely at the work of a songwriter, you realize more often than not the recurrence of certain chord progressions and melodic trajectories. This is certainly true of Patrick Watson, not to mention the use of his high, counter-tenor head voice, less willing to use his lower, differently textured body voice. At a certain point, however, we may grow weary of this recurrence, which seems to become redundant.

Did Pat Watson feel that way? It’s safe to assume that the Montreal artist understood the stakes, as he succeeded in re-launching his musical proposition with this electro-instrumental evening. Held at New City Gas on the second night of MUTEK 2024 as part of its special event, and to a packed house.

What we’ve discovered and enjoyed here will eventually be filtered, transformed and improved until we have a permanent recording, to the delight of his fans. As far as I’m concerned, this is the key to Patrick Watson’s continued success in the years to come. Without denying himself, he had to do some brainstorming and brainstorming to refresh his proposal without denying himself. That’s what he’s agreed to do now, and that’s what we witnessed on Wednesday.

The opening bars of this concert entitled Film Scores For No One led us into a richly textured, horizontal ambient form, i.e. without significant variations. The trio was made up of keyboards including PW’s custom-made modular synthesizers and proverbial upright piano, percussion deployed by Olivier Fairfield (Timber Timbre, FET.NAT, etc.), bass and electronic complements by Mishka Stein (a regular of PW, but also of TEKE::TEKE and more).

Little by little, the compositional patterns of the main player gradually reappeared, notably those French impressionist piano ambiences (Satie et cie) or American minimalist ones (transposed to synthesizers) slipped through natural or synthetic sounds, filtered, transformed for the most part.

The sound bank had been enriched with a host of textures, colors and patterns, and we were forced to watch as lighting and moving-image projections hit the translucent canvases to create a rather homemade but beautiful 3D effect, hipster as it should be. The concert concluded with an unsuspected vocal performance by the normal singer. The voice was vaporous, sometimes modified, autotuned.

I confess I was expecting less rather than more, as the notorious changes in Patrick Watson’s work seemed more and more behind us. So it was more than less. Which is why it’s all the more gratifying to remind everyone that there’s always time to reinvent oneself if need be, as long as the heart beats and the noggin works.

Photo credit : Frédérique Ménard Aubin