Was Montreal ready for Pitch Blender? Were we seasoned enough to listen to contemporary techno and deconstructed club music? Equipped enough to experience a cybernetic rave?
It looks like Mutek has taken the plunge for you!
For several years now, techno music has been evolving along a musical spectrum that is still difficult to name, a spectrum symbolized by artists such as Blawan, Rhyw or Peder Mannerfelt and many others. Wicked bass lines. Syncopated offbeat rhythms. Sound deconstruction. Magnetic ricochets. Filtered frequencies. In Europe (England, Scandinavia, Germany), the scene is full of geniuses, still little-known here, where experimentation and musical innovation are not incompatible with the ability to make people dance.
Zoë Mc Pherson, a dynamic French-Irish multimedia artist based in Berlin, combines performance, sound design, DJing and installation art to create unusual sounds. Teaming up with motion designer Alessandra Leone, the two creators gave Métropolis a foretaste of new trends in techno. This cybernetic rave was transcendent and theatrical. Long sessions anchored by powerful, enveloping bass, ricochets of filtered kicks, deconstructed rhythms with a touch of hardcore punk or sometimes accelerated dub. Majestic and monumental, this trance session opened the door, I hope, to further invitations in the same vein.
Zoë Mc Pherson & Alessandra Leone
