MUTEK 2024 | Marie Davidson Puts All The Pieces Together

by Alain Brunet

Marie Davidson had disappeared from my radar during COVID, shortly after the release of her last studio recording and associated show, Renegade Breakdown, on the Ninja Tune label. At the time, the pop/rock/French chanson turn seemed a brave and welcome risk, but… I had the feeling that something was missing from this release.

All the elements of her pop culture were already present in her work, but much more tenuous. Then there was the Persona EP in 2021, a sort of dream pop mixed with French pop, Victoria Legrand meets France Gall, with the same impression of an unfinished exercise. Last April, her Bandcamp account provided clues to her current direction: Y.A.A.M. marks a return to her electronic inclinations. So there….

With the excellent show we were treated to on Thursday, we can already conclude that all facets of his art found their ideal place in this hellish set. From what we know of his vast palette, we can say that this integration is top-notch.

Marie Davidson’s edifice is topped by a new floor. The violence of noise, the violent drones, the extremely pronounced chords. The multi-referential dimension of electronics: heavy techno, house, UK garage, jungle, drum’n’bass, breakbeat, you name it. Direct references to French pop culture. The punk, almost gothic attitude, the bursts of distortion, the heavy 4/4. The movements on stage, the choreographed interventions on the machines, the infectious harangues. The sung voice, the spoken voice, the acquired authority.

Belted to her keyboards and machines, Marie heats up the pot with thick, saturated sounds, then takes the microphone for most of the rest of her show. Her songs are for the most part self-reflexive, cathartic in many cases, expressed in a straightforward way that doesn’t exclude poetry in the reflection on oneself, one’s profession as an artist and the world around us. It’s this unique blend that we love. It’s also the performer’s ease on stage and hellish presence, her power of attraction. Very solid!

Photo Credit: Vivien Gaumand

Publicité panam

Electronic / Techno

MUTEK 2024 – Piezo Dresses Up Sounds

by Sandra Gasana

For my first time covering a MUTEK event, I have to admit that I came away almost surprised at how much I enjoyed the evening. Let me explain: I don’t usually listen to electronic music, and I have even less opportunity to cover this kind of music. After the first few minutes, during which I thought the music was a little too loud and that my eardrums wouldn’t last the whole show, I gradually changed my mind as the evening progressed.

Piezo, real name Lucca Mucci, is a DJ, producer and sound artist, originally from Milan but trained in Bristol, England. He has set up his own label, Ansia, through which he also supports the work of like-minded artists. His debut album, Perdu, was released by Hundebiss Records. Last night, Piezo managed to get the crowd going, even if they didn’t show it at first, still a little embarrassed. He spent his time turning knobs on one, then two, then three consoles. The last one looked like a keyboard, with a laptop in the middle of it all, under a backdrop of light jets. I was also lucky to be there on a rainless day, having read my colleagues’ reports on the previous rainy days.

I’d describe Piezo’s style as a mix of techno, electro, garage, house at times, with synthetic sounds sprinkled throughout. You get the impression of having one main sound or rhythm, to which Piezo adds one layer at a time, and texture, as if we were dressing it up as we go along. And at certain moments, we would reach a paroxysm, during which the DJ would let loose completely, before coming back down quietly, and removing the layers one after the other. This paroxysm is often dramatic, and that’s the beauty of the exercise. Despite the absence of words, it still feels like we’re being told a story musically. And that’s when I stopped taking notes and started dancing, feeling the vibrations that Piezo was trying to convey.

With most of the audience dressed in black, all generations were represented. From the young, slightly drunk university student in the middle of initiation week, to the preppy 60-something with the colorful bag, the blue-haired girl or the young man with a shirt with Christ on it, everyone seemed to get their money’s worth.

The artist in me was trying to figure out which button was responsible for which sound, but from where I was, it wasn’t easy to see. The other interesting thing about this style of music is that you don’t always know when one song ends and the next begins. Maybe that’s the fun of it, because it changes all the codes of “music” by giving you carte blanche to do whatever the DJ wants.

It all felt like we were in a futuristic universe, with a mix of the artist’s signature fast percussive rhythms and unexpected melodic twists. All in all, it was a pretty good initiation into this new world for me. I’m almost looking forward to Sunday, when I’ll be covering Mutek’s Piknik Electronik special. More on that later.

Photo Credit: Vivien Gaumand

MUTEK 2024 I ENO. a surrendering generative cinematic experience

by Stephan Boissonneault

Roxy Music circa 1973, androgyny personified, the Berlin era Heroes Bowie sessions, the reason we as humans love music … the oblique strategies cards. All of these musings and moments in time—memories from Brian Eno’s illustrious, five-decade career, appear on the screen in the Maisonneuve Theatre—sometimes alone, sometimes as one crazy cluster. And this specific pairing or iteration will never be shown on screen again. This iteration is only for us, the audience.

ENO. is a generative documentary about the artistic impetus and history of the great Brian Eno, the father of ambient music, a sought-after music producer, and one of the reasons synthesizers became mainstream. Created by filmmaker Gary Hustwit, the film uses AI technology to create a different viewing experience during every screening. Hustwit himself actually mixes the film live and sometimes guides it along from the BRAIN ONE console on stage. Using an archive of over 500 hours of studio sessions, interviews, music videos, and more as well as the 50-odd hours Hustwit got from Eno himself, this film is a treasure trove for any music lover or artist—perfect for the MUTEK crowd.

The generative documentary style was the only way Hustwit was able to convince Eno to agree to be part of it and for someone with a career that has been at the forefront of musical tech and creativity and has changed how we make and listen to music, I can’t think of a better subject for this emerging style.

I can only say what we saw; which did follow many of the music documentary beats; a rise to fame, fuzzy studio sessions with Bowie, John Cale, U2, the day-to-day life of Eno now in his mid-70s, but also moments of pure abstraction, highlighted by multicoloured obelisks, discs, and cubist digital drawings.

Still from ENO.

The film also sometimes blips in and out of time, noted by the screen throwing up a number of sequences like, eno._1975_discreetmusic, Dutchtv_interview_hats, Bowie_milk_ambient. This is the AI deciding which next bit to show and sometimes the results are extraordinary, others a bit self-serving. You never quite know what moment in time is going to come next with Eno. which makes it an invigorating film to watch. Although this was made by a filmmaker, so there are a few tendencies to follow a narrative flow. An example could be when Eno is messing around with an Ominchord and Hustwit asks if he used the instrument for other music and Eno brings up Apollo. The transition is too perfect to be randomly generated, but then again, maybe not.

Eno is also the perfect documentary source. He kept stacks of journals, had a literal archive of tapes, and every kind of recording format known to man, and a fantastic memory. His view of art in general is deeply inspirational. I could spend hours of listening to him ramble about the abstraction of art, his creative process, and how songs are actually written. There are also a few laughable old-man moments as he gets pissed off with constant advertisements on YouTube before playing Fela Kuti’s Open & Close and talking about how it was hugely inspirational for him and his work with Bowie and Talking Heads. The doc is full of these music history gold moments.

This particular version of Eno. highlighted surrendering to the art, or in this case the AI, something Hustwit has to do every time he shows the film. For example, this version had no interviews with David Byrne, one of Hustwit’s favourite parts. He spoke in great detail about this artistic “surrendering” during the Q+A, as well as the future of generative technology in the film industry. If anything, this film made me want to dive into some of the more obscure Eno work, but also made me think and structure of films, music, and art. Why do we as humans like repetition? Why do we watch the same film over and over? Why have we not yet made the jump to more abstraction and randomness in art? ENO. is groundbreaking for being one of the first.

Electronic

MUTEK 2024 | Cinema immersion

by Salima Bouaraour

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!

Panorama: I’m feeling lucky could only be appreciated if all the intercultural keys were brought to the fore.

At first glance, this immersive film seemed simplistic and entertaining. Flying over a landscape of plains, forests and steppes on the ground, day and night, under a blue sky decorated with a few white cumulus clouds, you felt as if you were gliding like a bird. The immersive sound was coupled with clear, infinite layers, the chirping of birds in the middle of spring, and various sound effects. Characters appeared and disappeared at random.

And yet, nothing was obvious. The more the film unfolded, the more doubt was cast on the meaning of the work, the place, the identity of the individuals and the temporality. The initial simplistic approach gave way to complexity and multiple displays of content.

Indeed, the two artists, Timothy Thomasson & Tatum Wilson, have created a real-time computer-generated installation that questions relationships to image, geography, virtual space, historical media technology and massive data collection systems. Inspired by 19th-century panoramic painting and populated by thousands of figures taken from Google Street View, this film had the expected effect. It raises questions about our constantly evolving modern world, where confusion and the arsenal of images lead us into a collective daze.

Publicité panam

Funk / UK garage

MUTEK 2024 | Bored Lord, a Sudden Euphoria

by Salima Bouaraour

Memphis-born, California-based and regularly touring internationally, American Bored Lord distilled a euphoric performance on the Esplanade Tranquille. Equipped with her analog synths, drum machines and controller, Daria Lourd was majestic! Smooth and delicate, she etched track after track of round bass lines and smooth vocal samples against a breakbeat backdrop. Known for her UK garage club sets, there was a distinctly funk feel to this performance. Bored Lord turned Maara’s rave-trance page with virtuosity, and the Mutek audience went wild for a completely different reference. The American is a seasoned producer and a regular on raves, clubs and other stages. The T4T LUV NRG label has promoted many of her EPs. Founder-DJ-producer Octo Octa followed Bored Lord with a two-hour electro dj set on vinyl turntable.

Photo Credit: Bruno Destombes

Publicité panam

Electronic

MUTEK 2024 | Maara Made Us Rave

by Salima Bouaraour

On Wednesday evening, an atmosphere worthy of an underground rave between the end of the night and the beginning of dawn took hold of the Expérience 2 stage from 6.45pm. Barely had she set foot on her machines, Montrealer Maara distilled a fiery live set. The energy was palpable from the very first minutes, even if the performance was based on gradual increases in BPM, fluctuating between 130 and 170. The dominant sound was techno, interspersed with trance, dubstep and jungle. Voice samples filtered to perfection.The transitions between each track were so fluid that the audience remained on the edge of their seats, and the adrenalin never let up! A producer on the rise worldwide -EP Ultimate Reward on NAFF Recordings, EP Potion Activated on Sonido Isla, track The Forbidden Plum nominated for Best Song 2021 by Resident Advisor- the Montrealer deployed all her talents to electrify the crowd, working her performance like a dj set. Indeed, it was not uncommon for her to mute the bass, pass some vocals under echoes or add a slight delay to maintain the tension and electricity. She really did. Maara blew us away!

Photo Credit: Bruno Destombes

Publicité panam

MUTEK 2024 | Colin Stetson Harder Than Ever

by Alain Brunet

Another hipster darling reinvented himself at MUTEK as part of L’Événement spéciale de MUTEK, and not the least. Colin Stetson has been wowing the crowds for the past fifteen years with his novel use of saxophones. The effect of admiration lasted a long time, but we were due for a conceptual relaunch as we were losing interest.

A native of Ann Arbor, Michigan’s famous university town, Stetson chose Montreal in the 2000s, and has been seen playing with Arcade Fire, Bell Orchestre and Bon Iver, as well as in spectacular solo and duo performances with violinist Sarah Neufeld, with whom he was in love for several years, and even with a chamber orchestra devoted to Henryk Gorecki – Sorrow, in 3 movements. The power of his circular breathing to produce a continuous sound, the use of contact microphones on his instrument and his own body, and his penchant for loops of notes recorded and superimposed in real time – these are just some of the features that have made his playing famous.

That said, this free-jazz and electroacoustic approach has tended to run out of steam in recent years… until Wednesday, that is, with the audience at New City Gas!

On the saxophones, including the imposing bass sax, Colin Stetson stayed the course as blower and (sometimes) simultaneous vocalist, using the same techniques, but this time with a post-industrial, darkwave, noisy, in short, much more violent version of this already highly dynamic music.

Stetson usually expresses himself with an overlay of three or four separate tracks, usually created in real time. This time, however, it was very muscular, very hard, and no one will complain. For those interested, the material played at MUTEK was recorded in the studio, and the album The love it took to leave you is due out in September on the Envision label.

Photo credit: Frédérique Ménard-Aubin

Publicité panam

MUTEK 2024 | Kara Lis Coverdale in a difficult space

by Alain Brunet

For more or less a decade, the work of Ontario-born Kara Lis Coverdale, a classical organist with a passion for sacred music and converted to experimental ambient has been praised…. Increasingly important, her contemporary work has been broadcast in churches but also in electro-immersive contexts such as the Satosphère or the Akousma festival.For more or less a decade, the work of Ontario-born Kara Lis Coverdale, a classical organist with a passion for sacred music, has been praised… and converted to experimental ambient. Increasingly important, her contemporary work has been broadcast in churches but also in electro-immersive contexts such as the Satosphère or the Akousma festival.

In the context of New City Gas, this was less propitious, and had little to do with the quality of her music.

Other factors worked against her.

Sandwiched between Patrick Watson and Colin Stetson, her calm, airy music from the outset took a while to capture attention at New City Gas, part of the MUTEK 2024 Special Event.

The music lovers near the stage seemed to be listening, but the level of attention waned as one moved to the back of the huge discotheque. Admittedly, the audience had come to hear the male colleagues, and a minority knew their work from the start. Kara Lis Coverdale’s music demands sustained attention to reveal all its subtleties, and the conditions were not ripe for this.

So all the finely chiselled elements of this music, which is more horizontal than vertical – drone, ambient, sacred music, classical music, etc. – were less perceptible than they would have been in other places, with only the hushed ambiences and vaporous melodies, too delicate in a difficult context. In such a triple program, things would have had to get more rhythmic, harder and more dynamic for people to abandon small talk and start listening.

But that’s not what Kara Lis Coverdale is about. And so it wasn’t the best context for the wow effect. In the silence and total immersion of another evening, another room, another program, the same performance would have generated much more enthusiasm and congratulations. At last…. like mine, a few hundred pairs of ears were able to focus and recognize her very special talent.

Publicité panam

Electronic

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

by Alain Brunet

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

Publicité panam

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

by Stephan Boissonneault

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

Publicité panam

Mutek Forum 2024 – Storytelling For All

by Elsa Fortant

The panel Storytelling For All: Using Technology To Place Humans At The Core Of Experiences, presented by TAIT at Monument-National on August 22, explored how designers and engineers (mainly from TAIT) are transforming the way we experience physical and digital spaces, from theme parks to immersive installations to large-scale concerts.

To put people at the heart of the experience and “reach them where they are”, we first need to question our own biases and take the time to self-assess before we even start designing. While taking into account the diversity of the participants’ backgrounds, you need to be able to touch on what might unite them in the experience.

The discussion highlighted the importance of creating shared experiences where individuals can connect with each other, offering paths of engagement tailored to different audiences. The discussion also touched on corporate accountability in the implementation of large-scale experiences. A responsibility that must “come from the top”. Discussions surrounding this notion of accountability are often difficult to have, since the priorities and interests defended by operational teams often differ from those of executive teams and corporate leadership.

As a PhD candidate interested in music communities redeploying themselves on subscription-based sociofinancing platforms like Patreon, I was challenged by the idea that designing a Taylor Swift concert amounts to “building a community, a mini society”. This raises an ontological question: what is a community, and where and how does it exist? In my opinion, it’s not the design of the concert that builds a community, but as one element among many – it offers a framework within which an already existing community can be in a particular context. The community is neither born nor dies at these events: it exists independently and in other spaces, and the design helps to reinforce these ephemeral links. This synchronous experience shared by members of the community will then be integrated into the memory of part of the community, and in this way, perhaps, the design of the concert participates in its construction.

Publicité panam

House

MUTEK 2024 | Nosaj Thing & Jacques Green, Live Set in Tandem

by Alain Brunet

Californian Jason Chung, aka Nosaj Thing, is a respected artist whose career has been on the move since the 2000s. From punk and experimental hardcore, he has gradually developed a language meaningful enough to attract giants such as Kendrick Lamar and Flying Lotus. His art extends beyond the world of music, and is much in demand in film, television and multimedia production. In the SAT’s main hall, he kicked off Wednesday’s very first hour with his eminent Montreal colleague Jacques Greene, a regular at MUTEK, Piknic and Igloofest, known for his singular declensions of house, future soul and other sub-genres mixed with brilliant insertions, including female declamations in French please. Nosaj Thing and Jacques Greene presented their first live set, a creative extrapolation of a long B2B DJ set tour. The tandem offered a conclusive set, typical of the Nocturne series: sonic exploration, conceptual audacity wrapped in better-known referents and, needless to say, conducive to nocturnal libations.

Photo Credit: Bruno Destombes

Publicité panam