MUTEK Montréal 2023 and PAN M 360, a combination that makes perfect sense! That’s why our team is focusing on it this week. Fans of cutting-edge electronic music and digital creation are in Montreal this week, so follow our team’s vibrant coverage through Sunday!
Photos credits : Bruno Aiello Destombes
Sara Berts
Sara Berts is a designer of parallel worlds. I arrived slightly after the start of her performance, and from the first sounds I heard as I left Saint-Laurent station, I felt gently transported elsewhere.
The Italian composer and sound artist uses round, smooth tones and others that clatter a little like a marimba, as well as recordings of wave sounds, crickets and other nocturnal noises, all in a very elemental way. It’s a real treat for the ears. Often, while the low melodies move slowly, other, higher-pitched sounds spin much faster: arpeggiated chords, little synthesized soap bubbles, electronic chirps… The compositions are layered, from underground to ground, from ground to clouds, from clouds to atmosphere.
In this way, Berts creates sonic spaces that strangely resemble living worlds, rich and ripe for the act of contemplation. Calm, strangely wild worlds, harmonious all the same. “A conversation between natural ecosystems and synthesizers,” explains the artist’s page on the MUTEK website.
It’s a sound very reminiscent of the crazy, tribal electro flavors The Knife advanced on their album Shaking the Habitual, only more relaxed. The same world, perhaps, but on a different continent, in a different era, under different skies, with different creatures. Just as enchanting.
Sheenah Ko
“I’m not a DJ,” says Sheenah Ko before beginning her 100% improvised performance. “The energy I’m going to get from you, I’m going to send back to you”. A spontaneous set, then.
It begins with a slow percussion loop and a buzzing bass. The artist quickly darkens the sound, using an unusual scale. It doesn’t take her long to start singing some reverb-drenched semblance of lyrics. After gradual changes in effects, polyrhythmic interplay, heavier bass stabs and intensified vocals, we’re in strangely celestial territory. One wonders where the Chinese-Irish musician might go next. She, too, probably.
The percussion is then buried, and the overall pace slows, for a new section. New, angry, metallic percussion sounds, accelerated tempo, luminous chord progressions that swell like waves, adding a touch of clarity and hope to the atmosphere. Fifteen minutes later, a whirring bass and club rhythm take over, while arpeggiated chords of varying intensity sail overhead, their timbre mostly reminiscent of the ’80s, an aesthetic that the artist often uses in her work.
The whole thing ends with a very cinematic musical brightening, a general zoom-out wide shot… on the synthesizer, followed by a panning movement towards the sky… also on the synthesizer. Back to the real world. A very fluid performance, certainly the result of rigorous preparation on Sheenah Ko’s part, as well as impressive mastery of her sonic arsenal. Above all, a satisfying glimpse into her atypical creativity.
OBUXUM
OBUXUM’s sounds are varied. We go from what might be a hip-hop sample to drums and sticks, to retro cyberpunk electro, to an abstract industrial groove, and lots more of these sounds that don’t seem congruent at all. All the same, and despite the abrupt transitions, there’s a narrative sense to the experience. We feel that a story is being built, that each little piece will eventually fit into the order of the others.
Through the confusing rhythms, the 90-degree turns, and the generally kaleidoscopic nature of its approach, OBUXUM is perhaps making an anthological work, a somewhat random raking over different eras of musical history. What she presents is a mosaic of creative samples from the four corners of the world and the mind, a great exercise in variety, in historical sonic bricolage that an hour can barely contain… or something like that. A towering work surely hides behind this music, and it’s not hard to appreciate.
ROSINA
It may be said of Rosina that they are not “people-pleasers”. Yet let’s look at their demands: a world where anyone can love the person they like, a world where people have their basic needs met, a world where people can feel joy. Wouldn’t these things make people happy?
The ROSINA trio is led by poet, singer and producer ROSINA, as well as drag performer and multidisciplinary artist Franny Galore-Wngz, with producer Murr at the DJ station. Eccentric personalities, the two pretend to be English during their performance, adopting the accent and everything. This is just a glimpse of the mischievousness that radiates from these two people.
The members of ROSINA like to play their music at dusk. A symbolic reminder of their mantra: that nothing lasts forever, that everything is ephemeral, both joy and suffering. “We’re tired. We don’t want to be mad all the f****** time.”, says ROSINA (the artist). In the face of adversity, these weeds that grow in the cracks of hope decide to turn towards love, towards others, to embrace the sensual weirdness of our outer and inner worlds. A reconquest of the world through a reconquest of the self, which, as they say, can be scary. All of this with a self-assured, liberated, almost punk attitude, the DIY spirit in full force, against a backdrop of danceable music, embellished by affirmative lyrics like “I want to feel joy”, and mantras that seem to come from a pure, unadulterated train of consciousness. Consciousness that has surely been tested, bent, twisted and scratched by the world, but honest nonetheless.
Maybe not the most coherent, or smooth, or musically impressive performance, but ROSINA’s strength definitely lies in the free-flowing energy. One of the best, rooted in the euphoria, the terror, the flourishing rollercoaster that is queerness, and ultimately provoking great pleasure, and, no doubt, great liberation to whoever needs it.
