MUTEK 2024 I Nocturne 2, Strobing Club Nights with SEULEMENT, No Plexus, and Jacques

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!

The first act of this Nocturne night was one I particularly wanted to witness, SEULEMENT, the alter ego of Montreal musician/producer Mathieu A. Seulement. We haven’t seen much from him since his debut with the EX PO more than three years ago, but this MUTEK, he brought a new performance he calls Bricolage Architecture, a twisting AV modular synth performance featuring sporadic shapes and images, heavy bass, and tons of strobe. SEULEMENT loves strobe, you could actually call him a strobe artist, as every live performance features voluntary flashes of light. It’s as much part of the music as the actual patches he builds to make his electronic soundscapes live. There is no way to watch the full performance without looking at the ground or away from the screens. The music was very SEULEMENT, weaving in and out of complex and off-beat drops, bleeps and bloops, and the odd anthemic vocal delivery. I’m curious if we will get an album accompaniment to Bricolage Architecture.

Next up was the self-identifying, genre-queer electronica duo from Amsterdam, No Plexus—whose first batch of songs felt a bit Björk and Portishead-y, with wild vocal effects and deep industrial synth work. Then it kind of became more of a weird hyper-pop set, mixing in some dubstep, and too-on-the-nose lyrics about being “Typically millennial.” This portion just wasn’t my cup of tea, but some of the younger or high crowd seemed to enjoy it. The visuals were very cool and MUTEK-y, featuring mutating flowers and shapes, and at one point when the singer live streamed in, creating a Black Mirror type vibe. Still, some of the vocal work was too over the top and a bit piercing at times.

I was a bit fatigued from No Plexus, so I ventured to the back of the room before watching Jacques, a sound and video artist from Paris, France. Jacques immediately brought the heat, even though his weird tube microphone, which sounded like a digital didgeridoo was cutting in and out, dancing on stage with his heavy Euro crime wave vibe and tickle trunk of objects. The video performance was really interesting to watch as Jacques would record the sound and video of an everyday object, like a whisk, and live mix it on screen. But Jacques took it really far and did this with four or five different objects creating a hypnotic effect. I think other AV artists could learn a thing or two from Jacques.

photos by Vivien Gaumand