Concert review

Electro-Pop / Electronic / hyperpop

FME 2025: UTO leaves much to be desired

by Jake Friesen

UTO emerges from the darkness of Cabaret de la Dernière Chance under UV lights, decked out in all white, their faces obscured by the contrast of the glow. The unrelenting experimental sonic profile of UTO precedes them, blending heavy synths, eclectic percussion, and distorted vocals with a Björk-like delivery. Their recordings are a tapestry of auricular exploration. Intrigue befalls the crowd as we take in the mysterious bodies weaving their way from the audience to the stage. Breaking out into semi-choreographed dance at times, standing and delivering at others.

The irregular dance breaks disrupted the natural flow of the performance as the audience themselves struggled to find their place in witnessing the spectacle. Attempts were made to create a performance as dynamic and interesting as their recordings. The ultimate effect, however, was not unlike tripping on Benadryl during a game of laser tag. The underdeveloped nature of the performance leaves much to be desired, but none more so than the desire to see these weirdos totally lose their shit on stage. Had the performance built to a sweaty, maximalist, lights-on crescendo, all would have been forgiven. The trouble with being a magnetically cool experimental music duo is the potential for emotional inaccessibility as displayed in this performance. This recital of intrepid musical exploration aches to be cut with thrashing vulnerability. As UTO continues to push musical boundaries as they have for over half a decade, I hope they work to find their emotional edge.

Performer shots: Jacob Zweig

Crowd shots: Julia Mela

Pop

FME 2025: Billie du Page Kicks off FME 2025

by Jake Friesen

Billie du Page kicks off the festivities at the FME stage with modern Fran-English pop.

Despite the sub-10-degree temperatures and an audience primarily clad in puffer jackets and gloves, Billie’s bouncy beats and echoey guitars, mixed with her silky smooth voice, take the audience on a summery pop getaway.  Moving about the stage with efforvecence and ease, she is a Quebecoise pop princess for the whole family. As she introduced her song “Malentendu,” she asked the audience if they had been ghosted before, and an elderly gentleman behind the crowd pipes up with an enthusiastic “OUAIS!” 

Billie du Page delivers songs about heartbreak, empowerment and love with Top 40 pop sensibilities. Her vocals do not falter, and her band doesn’t miss a beat. From Milky Chance, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, and Lana Del Rey, the influences in the music are undeniable. Each song sounds directly pulled from the alternative pop playbook of the last ten years. Inventing your own sound isn’t for everyone, but the talent du Page and her band displays leaves me with the impression that, given some more time to mature, they will step into pop stardom driven by their own sound.

Photos By Jacob Zweig

Photos by Julia Mela

Dark Pop / dark wave / Post-Punk / Synth-Glam / Synth-Pop / Synthwave

FME 2025: Baby Berserk wins the fashion show at FME night one

by Stephan Boissonneault

If there were a fashion contest at this year’s FME in Rouyn-Noranda, Baby Berserk, a trio with origins in Amsterdam, would definitely take home the winning prize. Dressed in some outfits that scream sleazy Paris runway: a pink, loose gauzy half-cut blouse & blonde beehive haircut (bass + vocals), a houndstooth jump suit (synth), and a black suit and tie beret combo (synth and guitar), this group laid down some dancey post punk pop music. Think Blondie meets the Human League and a bit of Björk, although they finished their set with a wild cover of “I Hate You,” by Monks—or The Fall depending on your preferred version. That was the last song and singer, Lieselot Elzinga, ran through the crowd, trying to get more energy out of the pretty lifeless crowd.

Baby Berserk would probably have faired better during a later Saturday set, when the crowd was younger ands more agile, but mixed with the fantastic visuals from Quebec’s superstar VJ projectionist, Anthony Piazza, it was still a cool set. I was only able to catch three or so songs from Baby Berserk, but they were just the right amount of dance and post punk I needed for twilight hours on FME day one.

Photos by Jacob Zweig

hyperpop / nu-jazz / soul-pop / Soul/R&B

FME 2025: Virginie B’s jazzy medieval hyper pop at nightfall

by Stephan Boissonneault

I’ve only heard Virginie B on recording, specifically her romance hyperpop album Astral 2000, so at her outdoor FME set, I was expecting more of a backing track popstar kind of vibe. I was ecstatic when I saw she was playing with a full band. Decked out in an outfit that could be described as medieval chic, think a pauper in rags who just got dubbed a knight, she brought out a full band: bass, drums, saxophone, synths, melodica, and herself sometimes slaying some chords on the axe—for a set of jazzy medieval hyperpop.

The set on a corner Alley in Rouyn-Noranda was ablaze, and everybody danced in the brisk, air-filled dark. Virginie B is a delight to witness live. Her positive energy and bouncy nature are infectious, and she works the crowd, bouncing between running around the stage, her synths, and the microphone. She even played a song from the Legend of Zelda video game universe. What a delight.

Photos by Jacob Zweig

Ambient / Electronic / Techno / Experimental Techno

MUTEK | Valesuchi: Diamonds in the Rough

by Loic Minty

As the night carried on and more people arrived into the dome, the heat and pressure of bodies tumbling against each other gave form to a diamond.

Behind the decks, Valesuchi presented something unique that shone through the club atmosphere. Her set had a truly live feel. If you paid attention, you could follow the trail of thoughts in real time as she built rich hardware polyrhythms. Valesuchi brought us on a journey from elongated clave loops to dense series of claps that sounded like sped-up Brazilian Caixa grooves.

At the peak of intensity she brought the bass back into the mix and everything suddenly fell in place, we were at once in two worlds, between gyrating percussions and grounded kicks. Arms flailed in harmony, dancers filled the space like liquid. The mix was raw in the best way, as if she had a deep relationship with her instruments and didn’t care to hide their imperfections. This is what made her sound truly authentic, and unmistakably live. While the drums had everyone dancing, dirty hovering pads and wailing sirens subtly exposed a more grungy aesthetic and moodiness that echoed through the rest of the night. The depth of emotion was refreshing. From start to finish, Valesuchi skillfully managed to draw our attention through a panorama of detailed sonic landscapes. Her imaginative approach to sound brought excitement for the future of electronic music.

What will come next? We will surely find out, as Mutek continues to deliver incredibly soulful manifestations of electronic music year after year. This year’s lineup left us wanting more as artists like Valesuchi fueled the discussion on how music can be played and experienced, and on the importance of human touch.

Photo: Bruno Aïello-Destombes

Afro-Electro / Central African traditional music / Drum & Bass / Experimental / Contemporary / jungle / noise / Techno

MUTEK | Slikback: Digital Frenzy in Black Africa

by Alain Brunet

Transplanted to Poland after passing through Angola, Kenyan artist Slikback, whose real name is Freddy Mwaura Njau, generated a wave of synthetic percussion on Saturday, accompanied by visionary specters and warrior spirits. To describe this approach as frenetic, undoubtedly my favorite on the Nocturne 4 program (Saturday night to Sunday), is an understatement.

Fired off at extreme tempos, this barrage of beats had no other effect than to propel the audience, already feverish with Saturday night fever, into a sea of fire. Each as abrasive as the next, Slikback’s electroacoustic interludes connect bursts of distinct rhythmic sequences of extraordinary density.

The polyrhythms featured in the program are nothing exotic, and any facile references to Africa are excluded from the outset: violent noise, paramilitary evocations, tensions and explosions à la Ben Frost (who created documentary music at the heart of conflicts in interlacustrine Africa), sounds typical of the electronic lexicon… We can discern fragments of trap, footwork, jungle, drum & bass, techno, and more… The sequences on the program draw us into an irresistible maelstrom, jolting us as soon as we feel comfortable and pushing us into the next scene. What a punch!

Emotional radicalism and the formal search for this signature lead us to discover the African continent as it is today in its urban areas, far beyond its pop culture. The guy is where Westerners don’t expect him to be, at least not yet. We are not dealing with some predictable extrapolation of trendy Afrobeats and Amapiano (all of which are cool, mind you). And yet, here we are in digital Africa, with an authentic contribution on an international level.

Publicité panam
Ambient / Ambient / Drone / Drone / Electronic / Experimental / Contemporary / Experimental / Noise / noise

MUTEK | Daniela Huerta, brujedos from the inside of the earth

by Sandra Gasana

With a large, low, deep Soplo, Daniela Huerta calls the audience into the dome and the insides of the earth – what follows is a story about the life from deep within; about the water that flows, the breath that awakens, the thunder that reactivates, the earth that trembles.

On the stage, Daniela embodies the female archetypes she so evokes in her work – bold and powerful, deep and piercing, she brings the ancestral divine to life in this hypnotic performance of her recently released album Soplo, one that feels more like a ritual, a ceremony, and a great overture for the night ahead at SAT.

Pulsing, enchanting, dark. We enter this unique sensitive world tied to the collective consciousness – evolved in mystery, Daniela’s research on the human psyche and collective memory stretches beyond performance – it is an environment for connectedness, one in which we evoke the spirits of what was kept untold, secret, hidden. 

Already a terrific aural imagery to be experienced at home, a live Soplo unveils an extra dimension – the one of being a body part of that tissue of the story it tells, the one of feeling that breath in-between our cells. Blended with the minimal, vaporous, beautifully in tune, visuals crafted by Bunbun and supermarket_sallad.

Photo: Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

Dub / Electronic / Post-Punk / psychédélique

MUTEK | Exploratory Vibe at Holy Tongue, Dub Trio

by Alain Brunet

On Thursday night, Holy Tongue’s performance was one of the highlights of the Nocturne series. The London trio has been around since the end of the previous decade and can count on solid experience, with two albums to their credit and a third soon to be released, not to mention the convincing collaboration of Sam Shackleton (album The Tumbling Psychic Joy of Now), which shows the respect the master has for the trio.

Thus, percussionist Valentina Magaletti responded to producer Al Wootton (formerly known by the pseudonym Deadboy) and Japanese bassist and producer Zongamin, whose real name is Susumu Mukai.

Together in this halo of bluish or glowing colors, they transform Jamaican dub into a transcultural and exploratory journey that is typically British—we can trace its roots and spirit back to the 1980s and 1990s, the heyday of Jah Wobble and Transglobal Underground. More specifically, the overall vibe is dub, but these thick layers of sound draw on psychedelia, post-punk, ambient, and even ancient European music.

The bass is electric, the rhythms are acoustic or electronic, and the harmonic and textural environment is generated by Wooton. It was during this set in particular that we were able to appreciate the skill of percussionist Valentina Magaletti, who was welcomed as a star of the 26th MUTEK, performing there three times. Her strokes are precise, the sound of her drums and cymbals has been rigorously fine-tuned, and this queer woman is an excellent percussionist, at least for the stylistic corpus to which she devotes herself with her colleagues.

Perfect for gliding through the night with minimal effort.

Publicité panam
Club / Électro / Électronique / IDM / jungle

MUTEK | RICO X PARIA Ensemble, heritage and radical futurism

by Félicité Couëlle-Brunet

Last night, at l’Esplanade Tranquille, I attended the premiere of RICO X PARIA Ensemble and was struck by its contrasts and intensity! The set opened in a dark, almost punk atmosphere, where the haunting voice of RICO RICA carried a raw energy, filled with tension and character. The electronic textures of Bclip accentuated this sense of urgency, as if we were witnessing a liberating cry from the margins.

Then everything changed. When accordionist Jose Daniel Rico Nieves and percussionist Elias Musiak joined the stage, a whole new dimension unfolded. The traditional Colombian sounds brought a vibrant softness that suspended time. It was as if the memory of a carnival or village festival had suddenly filled the space, reminding us of the enduring power of a living musical heritage.The encounter between these instruments and Bclip’s electronic manipulations gave the impression of a fragile but powerful dialogue, where each note resonated with depth.

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The final part blew everyone away. The rhythms quickened, the bass thickened, and RICO RICA projected her voice in an irresistible electro-Latin frenzy. Guaracha, champeta, and mutant reggaeton—all fused into a collective energy that filled the crowd with exhilaration. This powerful, vibrant, and danceable finale was not just a musical celebration, but a liberation, a moment when tradition and queer futurism came together in a single incandescent breath.

Photo: Bruno Aïello-Destombes

Ambient / art visuel / Electro / Experimental

MUTEK | Quayola, Luce – Between memory, cognition, and technology’s interpretation

by Z Neto Vinheiras

We see one human but Quayola is not alone: the machine speaks as a second entity in what appears to be co-creation between the Italian artist and that which he gives autonomous life to. 

Quayola presents us Luce, an audiovisual piece emerging from the space between memory, cognition, and technology’s interpretation.

As virtually as vividly articulated, Luce is a space for reflection – images from the Archivio Luce become impressionist glitches, messing with the perception of the past with the fragility of the future. There’s a clear interplay with dichotomies – tradition and technology, human and machine, past and future, old and new, figurative and abstract, opposition and equilibrium – in Quayola’s neat approach to sound and image. 

But referring only to sound and image feels reductive: what we see is a fusion of seemingly distinct worlds into a critical dimension of reality that is algorithmically operated, questioning what remains real and human in such a present time where machines and artificial intelligence take over; what hybrid forms of perception, experience and interpretation are being created and developed between the obsession and the caution with technology.
Luce is a reminder that perhaps one thing we have in common, humans and machines, is the inevitability of error.

Photo: Vivien Gaumand

Electronic / Électronique

MUTEK | K-Phi-A – organic digital breezes and mechanofluidity 

by Z Neto Vinheiras

A very just example of the synergy between human and machine, the Vancouver’s trio K-Phi-A bends, twists, re-imagines the limits between the organic and the virtual and takes us into that portal – an ecstatic voyage of pure sensorial exaltation… and a feast to the body-machine.

Revival invades not just the scene but the whole room and the insides of our bodies in a perpetual movement and collision – multiplying, expanding, mutating – an experience of continuing renewal, which might address its title, conveys a reality in which we live now, where information and even time travels in velocities beyond our sane comprehension while our breath is taken away (which might, again, address its title?).

K-Phi-A investigates, dissects the potential of the creative relation between human and artificial intelligence in a space of ultimate spontaneity – Revival is the result of real-time audiovisual composing and dynamic dialogue with designed AI systems, where image responds to sound, machine responds to human and human to machine – a whole ecosystem that is very much alive, that crosses both dimensions in and out, permeates the barriers – a wall becomes a membrane, and it is extremely elastic.

K-Phi-A is composed by Keon Ju Maverick Lee, electronic drummer designing and improvising with AI systems; Philippe Pasquier aka Monobor, researcher and composer performing live-electronics; VJ Amagi designing and operating audio-reactive systems and AI agent Autolume.

Photo : Vivien Gaumand

Publicité panam

Electronic

MUTEK | Imaginary Forests by RAMZi

by Marc-Antoine Bernier

In an already feverish atmosphere, Montreal composer Phoebé Guillemot, aka RAMZi, opened the second evening of the Métropolis series at MTELUS. Opening for legendary Japanese DJ Satoshi Tomiie, the artist immersed the audience in a lush universe where hybrid rhythms and surreal soundscapes intertwined. For over a decade, RAMZi has been developing a unique musical mythology, driven by his forest alter ego, a spirit animal who watches over an imaginary ecosystem that is both backward-looking and futuristic. His latest album, balmini, released on his FATi label, served as the matrix for this performance: a lush mosaic where elastic dub, fourth-world ambient, and post-tropical grooves intersect. On stage, Guillemot played music that was sometimes vaporous, sometimes catchy, enriched by the intriguing sounds of his Electronic Wind Instrument, a sort of digital saxophone reminiscent of the experiments of trumpeter Jon Hassell. These electronic breaths gave the ensemble a mysterious and tribal aura, reinforced by a voice transformed into short, high-pitched, almost childlike incantations that seemed straight out of an anime.

The visuals perfectly complemented this parallel world: lasers and light effects bathed the room in contrasting palettes, shifting from the warmth of reds and oranges to the cool atmospheres of blues and magentas. By offering this constantly evolving set as an opening act, RAMZi established a poetic and immersive intensity that ideally set the stage for the rest of the evening. A performance that confirmed his essential role in Montreal’s electronic music scene.

Publicité panam

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