POP Montréal is undoubtedly one of the major fall events for true music fans. From Wednesday, September 27 to Sunday, October 1, dozens and dozens of discoveries and acclaims from artists nestled in pop are taking place in Montreal. Follow the PAN M 360 team until Sunday!
Activity
Activity is a quartet offering slow, atmospheric rock with occasional crescendos. The post-rock inspiration is clearly present, but there are also occasional references to trip-hop in the rhythms, in the manner of Mezzanine, let’s say. Extensive use is made of feedback, string rubbing and reverb to set up the soundscapes. The singer’s voice is nasal and listless.
Dark and stoic, this band’s music stands out for its restraint. We sense that we’re only being offered the surface, that things are bubbling underneath without our being able to see it. And yet, the bass drum resonates to the max, it’s tectonic. Activity evokes the mouth of a volcano as much as a calm, threatening lake in the middle of the night. It’s gloomy. Even if we’d like to feel less in constant anticipation, the music is spellbinding.
N NAO
If the experimental side of N NAO is a little overrated, this music takes on its full meaning in live performance. The proposition is much more striking, especially in the cramped space of L’Escogriffe. It veers towards the noisy, towards performance art. N NAO’s watercourse, a symbol of choice for the album, becomes a waterfall, a tsunami. With a percussionist and a guitarist-sound magician, Naomie de Lorimier pulled the crowd completely into her deep currents. Using looping, bricolage, recorded sounds and the use of various objects, the music tends towards sensual impressionism. The whole is evocative, romantic, chaotic and sometimes violent. These strong feelings have charmed, and are not about to leave us.
Water From Your Eyes
Take garage rock, offer it as many excitants as depressants, make it spit black ink, throw a few knives and shurikens at it, and you’ve got a picture that looks a bit like Water From Your Eyes. It’s a mix of pop, punk and rock, with programmed jaw-breaking rhythms and a nonchalant vocal presence, a sort of acidic, corrosive patchwork of modern life. The guitar tone is damaged, the bass is crunchy… every musical element seems to have been pulled out of its original place, held to the others by barbed wire. Water From Your Eyes, as their name implies, shun sentimentality, have an almost extraterrestrial point of view. We wouldn’t say we were dancing, but we were swinging our heads violently from side to side.
